Jules Supervielle

Jules Supervielle (16 January 1884 – 17 May 1960) was a French poet and writer born in Uruguay.

Jules Supervielle always kept away from Surrealism which was dominant in the first half of the twentieth century. Eager to propose a more human poetry and to rejoin the real world, Supervielle rejected automatic writing (that the Surrealists very quickly gave up themselves) and the dictatorship of the unconscious, without disavowing the assets of modern poetry since Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Apollinaire, like certain fundamental innovations of surrealism.

Attentive to the universe which surrounded him, as he was to the phantoms of his interior world, he was one of the first to recommend this vigilance, this control that the following generations, moving away from the surrealist movement, put at the forefront. He anticipated the movements of the years 1945-50, dominated by the powerful personalities of René Char, Henri Michaux, Saint-John Perse or Francis Ponge, then - after the bracket avant-gardist of the years 1960-70 - those of the poets eager to create a new lyricism and to introduce a certain form of crowned or, at least, a more modest approach to the mysteries of the universe, without radical questioning of the language: Yves Bonnefoy, Philippe Jaccottet, Jacques Dupin, Eugène Guillevic, Jean Grosjean, Andre Frénaud, Andre du Bouchet, Jean Follain, to mention only a few.

Amongst his admirers are René-Guy Cadou, Alain Bosquet, Lionel Ray, Claude Roy, Philippe Jaccottet and Jacques Réda

reat events in the life of Supervielle

A very plain family

From 1880 to 1883, Bernard, uncle of the poet, founded a bank in Uruguay with his wife Marie-Anne. This company quickly became a family-orientated business. Bernard asked his brother Jules, the father of the poet, to come to join him in Uruguay. Jules made the trio a perfect quartet by marrying his own sister-in-law, Marie, sister of Marie-Anne and mother of the poet.

Birth of an orphan

Supervielle was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, to a father from Béarn and a Basque mother. The same year, the little Jules and his parents returned to France to visit their family. It is in Oloron-Sainte-Marie that a tragic accident occurs - his father and mother die brutally, either poisoned by tap water or victims of cholera. The child is therefore initially raised by his grandmother.

In 1886, his uncle Bernard brought the young Jules back to Uruguay, where he was raised by his aunt and uncle as if he was their own son.

Beginnings of a literary vocation

1893: At the age of nine, the young Jules learns by chance that he is only the adoptive son of his uncle and his aunt. He begins the drafting of a book of fables on a register of the Supervielle bank.

1894: His uncle and his aunt settle in Paris. Jules will receive all his secondary education there.

1898: Jules discovers Musset, Hugo, Lamartine, Leconte de Lisle and Sully Prudhomme. He starts to write poems in secret.

1901: He publishes in account of author a plate of poems entitled Brumes du passé. He spends his summer holidays in Uruguay in 1901, 1902, and 1903.

From 1902 to 1906: Jules continues his studies, from the baccalaureat to the licence of literature. He makes also his military service but, of fragile health, he badly supports the life of barracks.

Entry into the adult life

1907: He marries Pilar Saavedra in Montevideo. From this union will be born six children, born between 1908 and 1929.

1910: He deposits a subject of thesis on the feeling of nature in Spanish-American poetry. Extracts will appear in the Bulletin of the American library.

1912: After many voyages, he settles in Paris, in an apartment (located at 47, boulevard Lannes) where it will remain during twenty-three years. But, very often, he will cross the Atlantic Ocean to go to Uruguay, his second homeland.

From 1914 to 1917: Jules is conscripted. He will carry on in particular activities with the Ministry of Wa