Name Lucien Fabre Role Writer | Awards Prix Goncourt | |
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Died November 26, 1952, 15th arrondissement of Paris, Paris, France Books Rabevel ou le Mal des ardents | ||
Lucien Fabre (14 February 1889 - 26 November, 1952) was a French writer who experienced early notoriety following the publication of a popular science book on the emerging theories of Albert Einstein, ahead of an award-winning career as a novelist, essayist, and poet.
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Personal life
Fabre was born on 14 February 1889 in Pampelonne and died in Paris on 26 November 1952.
Publication of Einstein's theories
In 1921, Fabre published a popular science book titled Einstein's theories: a new face in the world with a "foreword" attributed to Albert Einstein. The preface text was taken from a letter by Einstein to Maurice Solovine, which was later purchased by Fabre. Following publication, Einstein contacted the editor, resulting in the preface of the book being withdrawn for the second edition in 1922, and replaced with a derogatory comment directed at Einstein
Literature
He was a brilliant character of the French Third Republic, industrialist, artist, and close friend of the poet Paul Valéry, Leon-Paul Fargue and the violinist Jacques Thibaud. He is now largely forgotten, probably because of his extreme eclecticism which is no longer popular; a characteristic which sealed his style, making him difficult to read. His story is interesting: restless cosmopolitan businessman who scoured Europe before the war, in his private plane, leaving a board of directors, to join a literary salon, he embodied now outdated image of a lover of high culture, who could be a hard man of action in business, and make the biggest play in a variety of fields ranging from science (theories of relativity) to poetry through drama, the novel (Prix Goncourt 1923), theology, and art of engineering.
This great Parisian bourgeois who had a golden wedding by marrying a young woman, from one of the richest families of the Champ de Mars in Paris never lost touch with his Languedoc roots. Born near Carmaux in the Segala Tarn, he kept all his life a deep affection for country life that grounded his childhood. Several of his books recreate the atmosphere and character which prevailed in this austere and poor land. In Carmaux he met Jean Jaurès, who won a scholarship to prepare the Central School which he entered in 1908. He kept all his life bonds of affection and conviction with the socialist circles, and in particular with Léon Blum. His attachment to his land and how he had managed to combine the brilliance and rawness of the Occitan language of his origins, with the French conceptual refinement, into the prestigious universal language dominant at the time, make him a model of regionalism, rid of any naïve nativism that allowed him to combine the writing of poetry texts, in the sophisticated vein of his master Paul Valéry (who had dedicated "the sleeper", one of his best known poems) of learned science treatises, and theology, and novels very much alive when the native Languedoc was depicted in an original and inspired.