Albert Béguin

Albert Beguin ( born July 17, 1901 in La Chaux -de-Fonds, † May 3, 1957 in Rome) was a Swiss essayist, literary critic and editor.

Life

Beguin put his baccalaureate in 1919 in La Chaux -de-Fonds from. From 1919 to 1924 he studied at the University of Geneva and graduated with a licentiate. Then he moved to Paris. There he worked as a bookseller and translator of German Romantic authors such as Jean Paul and ETA Hoffmann. He then spent five years as a lecturer in French language and literature at the University of Halle. At the same time he worked on his book L' âme romantique et le rêve, a monograph on the German Romanticism, which was bestowed a great success. Even with the rise of Nazism he worked. In this context he questioned the role of academics and attacked the labor camps and the persecution of Jews to.

1934 Albert Beguin was appointed lecturer at the Collège Jean- Calvin. In 1937 he submitted his doctoral thesis with the title Le rêve chez les romantiques allemands et dans la poésie française modern (Eng. "The Dream at the German Romantics and in modern French poetry " ) at the University of Geneva. From 1937 to 1946 he held a chair of French literature at the University of Basel. His seminars reflect his personal interests contrary: the spiritual dimension of poetic creation in Paul Claudel or Gérard de Nerval, existential anxiety in Léon Bloy or Georges Bernanos, the lost paradise with Alain -Fournier. 1942 Beguin called the Cahiers du Rhône to life. This allowed him by the publication of works by Charles Peguy, Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, Pierre Emmanuel, Loys Masson, Pierre Jean Jouve, Guy Lévis Mano, Jean Cayrol and Jules Supervielle during the Second World War to provide critical French authors a platform. Also to other publications of the resistance he added, such as the anthology Cri de la France, where he published a now famous translation of the legend of the Holy Grail.

In 1946, Beguin back to Paris. After the death of Emmanuel Mounier 1950 he headed until his own death, the magazine Esprit, in which he fought for artistic freedom of writers. He also published studies on India and Germany, as well as literary texts about Blaise Pascal, Honoré de Balzac, Gerard de Nerval, Charles Peguy, Léon Bloy and Charles Ferdinand Ramuz.

In 1929 he married the writer Raymonde Vincent, in 1937 awarded the Prix Femina. His brother is the journalist Pierre Beguin.

Works

• L' âme romantique et le rêve, essai sur le romantisme anglais et la poésie française, 1937 ( German: . Dreamworld and romance Essay on the romantic soul in Germany and in the poetry of France, Germany Jürg Peter Walser, edited and with. an afterword provided by Peter Grotzer, Bern / Munich: Francke, 1972).
• Gérard de Nerval, 1937
• Nos Cahiers, 1942.
• La Prière de Peguy, 1942.
• Léon Bloy l' Impatient, 1944.
• Le Livre Noir du Vercors, 1944.
• Faiblesse de l' Allemagne, 1946.
• Balzac visionnaire, 1946-1947.
• Patience de Ramuz, 1950.
• Pascal, 1952.
• Création et Destinée Volume I, Essais de critique littéraire - L' âme romantique allemande, L' expérience poétique, Critique de la critique
• Volume II, La réalité du rêve

Editions and Anthologies

• Gérard de Nerval, text choisis, Guy Lévis Mano, 1939.
• Gérard de Nerval, Poésies, critical edition, Mermod, 1944.
• Gérard de Nerval, Aurélia and Les Filles de Feu, Skira, 1944.
• Gérard de Nerval, oeuvre (2 volumes), critical edition (ed. with Jean Richter), Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard ( 1952).
• Honoré de Balzac, Balzac Petite collection, 12 volumes, Albert Skira, Geneva, 1946.
• Honoré de Balzac, L' oeuvre de Balzac, 16 volumes
• Saint Bernard de Clairvaux, text, along with Paul Zumthor, LUF, 1944.
• La Quête du Graal, LUF, 1945
• ETA Hoffmann, Oeuvres completes, éditions Phebus ( with Madeleine Laval ), 1956-1958.

Translations

• ETA Hoffmann, Salvator Rosa - Kreisleriana - Le Chat Murr, Schiffrin, Fourcade, Gallimard, 1926, 1932, 1943.
• E. T. A. Hoffmann, Le Chat Murr, Gallimard, 1943.
• Eduard Moerike, Le Voyage de Mozart, Fourcade, 1929.
• Jean Paul, Choix de Rêves - Hesperus - Le jubilé, Stock, 1930-1931.
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Entretien avec Müller - Confession d' une belle âme, Stock, 1930-1931.
• Ludwig Tieck, La Coupe d'Or, Denoël, 1933.
• Achim von Arnim, L' invalid fou, Fontaine, 1945.