Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau (French: [ʁɛmɔ̃ kəno]; 21 February 1903 – 25 October 1976) was a French novelist, poet, critic, editor[1] and co-founder and president of Oulipo[2] (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle), notable for his wit and cynical humour.
Raymond Queneau
Biography[edit]
Queneau was born at 47, rue Thiers (now Avenue René-Coty), Le Havre, Seine-Inférieure,[1] the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot. After studying in Le Havre, Queneau moved to Paris in 1920 and received his first baccalauréat in 1925 for philosophy from the University of Paris.[1] Queneau performed military service as a zouave in Algeria and Morocco during the years 1925–26.[3]
During the 1920s and 1930s Queneau took odd jobs for income such as bank teller, tutor, translator and some writing in a column entitled, "Connaissez-vous Paris?" for the daily Intransigeant.[1]
He married Janine Kahn (1903–1972) in 1928 after returning to Paris from his first military service.[1][4] Kahn was the sister-in-law of André Breton, leader of the surrealist movement.[1] In 1934 they had a son, Jean-Marie, who became a painter.[5]
Queneau was drafted in August 1939 and served in small provincial towns before his promotion to corporal just before being demobilized in 1940.[1] After a prolific career of writing, editing and critique, Queneau died on 25 October 1976.[3] He is buried with his parents in the old cemetery of Juvisy-sur-Orge, in Essonne outside Paris.
Queneau and Surrealists[edit]
In 1924 Queneau met and briefly joined the Surrealists, but never fully shared their penchants for automatic writing or ultra-left politics. Like many surrealists, he entered psychoanalysis—however, not in order to stimulate his creative abilities, but for personal reasons, as with Leiris, Bataille, and Crevel.
Michel Leiris describes, in Brisees, how he first met Queneau in 1924, while vacationing in Nemours with André Masson, Armand Salacrou and Juan Gris. A common friend, Roland Tual, met Queneau on a train from Le Havre and brought him over. Queneau was a few years younger and felt less accomplished than the other men. He did not make a big impression on the young bohemians. After Queneau came back from the army, around 1926–7, he and Leiris met at the Café Certa, near L'Opera, a Surrealist hang-out. On this occasion, when conversation delved into Eastern philosophy, Queneau's comments showed a quiet superiority and erudite thoughtfulness. Leiris and Queneau became friends later while writing for Bataille's Documents.
Queneau questioned Surrealist support of the USSR in 1926. He remained on cordial terms with André Breton,[3] although he also continued associating with Simone Kahn after Breton split up with her. Breton usually demanded that his followers ostracize his former girlfriends. It would have been difficult for Queneau to avoid Simone, however, since he married her sister, Janine, in 1928.[1] The year that Breton left Simone, she sometimes traveled around France with her sister and Queneau.
By 1930, Queneau separated himself significantly from Breton and the Surrealists.[1] Eluard, Aragon and Breton had joined the French Communist party in 1927; Queneau did not, and instead participated in Un Cadavre (A Corpse, 1930), a vehemently anti-Breton pamphlet co-written by Bataille, Leiris, Prévert, Alejo Carpentier, Jacques Baron, J.-A. Boiffard, Robert Desnos, Georges Limbour, Max Morise, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, and Roger Vitrac.
Queneau also joined the Democratic Communist Circle founded by Boris Souvarine and took up numerous left-wing and anti-fascist causes.[7] He defended the Popular Front in France and the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War.[7] Under the Nazi occupation of France, he published in many left-wing journals associated with the Resistance. After World War II, Queneau continued to lend his support left-wing manifestos and petitions, and condemned McCarthyism and anti-communist persecution in Greece.[7]
He wrote more scientific than literary reviews: on Pavlov, Vernadsky (from whom he got a circular theory of sciences), and a review of a book on the history of equestrian caparisons by an artillery officer. He also helped with writing passages on Engels and a mathematical dialectic for Bataille's article, "A critique of the foundations of Hegelian dialectic."
Jacques Lacan became seriously interested in mathematics, and made early contributions to game theory, after reading Queneau's works.[8]