biography
| name: |
Louÿs, Pierre
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| |
pseudonym of Pierre Louis
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pronunciation:
[looees]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1870–1925)
|
| biography:
| Poet and novelist, born in Ghent, NW Belgium. Born into a Napoleonic family of nobility, he was raised by his half-brother, the ambassador to France. In Paris he founded Le Conque (1891), a literary review in which he published his first poems, most of which later appeared in Astarté (1891). His prose poems Chansons de Bilitis (1894), purporting to be translations from the Greek, fooled even experts. His lyrics, based on the Greek form which he so much admired, are masterpieces of style, and in 1896 his novel Aphrodite brought him considerable fame. This was followed by his psychological novel La Femme et le pantin (1898, Woman and Puppet). A friend of Oscar Wilde, he oversaw his play Salome (1893), and was of the opinion that Pierre Corneille wrote the plays of Molière. Louÿs married Louise, daughter of Hérédia, whom he divorced in 1912. After 1914 he became almost blind. |
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