Abstract: How should we read Jean Follain today? Long misleading in its deceptive immutability, his work deserves closer attention. A subtle poet of memory and transparence, Follain was also a clear-eyed humanist and a chronicler of his century’s violent history. The opening of his archives to the public makes it possible to reassert his originality, particularly at the turn of the 1930s, when his quiet revolution was drowned out by the fanfare of surrealism: finely honed free verse, rejection of imagery, and effacement of the lyrical subject. This book offers a “genesis” of Jean Follain by tracing his intellectual and esthetic development through various forms of literary sociability; by examining the role he assigned to the poet and poetry in a century scarred by two world wars; by revealing his previously unpublished theoretical writings; and finally, by shedding light on his creative process through a study of his manuscripts.
