Tristan Corbière (1845 – 1875)
Related: les poètes maudits - French literature - poetry
Frontispice des Amours jaunes, dessin par Tristan Corbière
image sourced here.In his 1913 essay The Serious Artist, Pound discusses two types of art; The "cult of beauty" and the "cult of ugliness". He compares the former with medical cure and the latter with medical diagnosis, and goes on to write "Villon, Baudelaire, Corbière, Beardsley are diagnosis." - "beauty is difficult": Cantos LXXIV, LXXX
Biography
Tristan Corbière (July 18, 1845 – March 1, 1875), born Édouard-Joachim Corbière, a poet from Brittany who wrote in the French language, was born at Coat-Congar, where he lived most of his life and where he died.
His work was little known until Paul Verlaine included him in his gallery of poètes maudits, "accursed poets;" but Verlaine's recommendation was enough to get his work noticed and established him as one of the masters acknowledged by the Symbolists.
His only published verse in his lifetime appeared in Les amours jaunes, 1873. Corbière died of tuberculosis at the age of 29. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan Corbière [Dec 2006]