Maurice Nadeau

Maurice Nadeau ( born May 21, 1911 in Paris, † June 16, 2013 ) was a French writer, literary critic, editor and publisher.

He founded in 1953 Les Lettres nouvelles and 1966 was editor of the well-known French literary magazine La Fortnight littéraire since. A standard work on the surrealism is to be translated into several languages ​​book Histoire du surréalisme, which was first published in 1945 Éditions du Seuil in Paris. In 1984 he founded the publishing house Éditions Maurice Nadeau.

Life

Maurice Nadeau was a war orphan; He attended school at Saint-Cloud, where he came into contact with politics. In 1930 he became a member of the French Communist Party PCF, from which he was excluded but in 1932 again. He then joined the Ligue Communiste de France, which was headed by Pierre Naville. During these years he met Louis Aragon, André Breton, Jacques Prévert and Benjamin Péret know.

As Professor Nadeau taught from 1936 to 1945 and worked with Breton on the magazine Clé. During the occupation of France by the Nazis, he joined the Resistance and was able to escape deportation. In 1945 the publication of his book on Surrealism, Histoire du Surréalisme, which is still a reference work in the present.

During the time of Liberation from 1944 Nadeau was for seven years an employee of the Journal of the Resistance, Combat, which was led by Albert Camus. He was responsible for the literary division and learned authors such as Georges Bataille know, René Char, Henri Michaux, Claude Simon and Henry Miller; Furthermore, he began in the publication of the oeuvre of the Marquis de Sade to work and stood up for the standing in the critique writer Louis -Ferdinand Céline.

There was a long period of work in publishing houses and magazines. For example, Nadeau was a literary critic for the Mercure de France, France- Observateur, L' Express, worked at the Éditions Julliard, where he remained until 1976, the literary journal Les Lettres nouvelles edited from 1953. Signed with Jean -Paul Sartre and he distributed 1960 during the Algerian War, the Manifesto of the 121 From 1965 to 1977 he worked at the publisher Robert Denoël, and later with Robert Laffont.

On March 15, 1966 published along with François Nadeau Erval the first issue of today twice -monthly literary magazine La Fortnight littéraire its 1000th issue was published in 2009. Les Lettres Nouvelles The title was from 1977 to the name of his publishing company, which was renamed Éditions Maurice Nadeau 1984.

Maurice Nadeau died at the age of 102 years in Paris.

Awards

Writings (selection )

• Histoire du surréalisme, Le Seuil, 1945 & Points Seuil 1970 In German: history of surrealism, Translator Karlheinz Laier. Rowohlt, Reinbek, 6th Edition 2002, ISBN 978-3-499-55437-7

Film

• Maurice Nadeau (32 ') L' épisode 17/20 de la collection Passages, ensemble réalisé par Michel Burnier ( Université de Bretagne, Brest ), CNRS, 2005: online.