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Pierre Gamarra

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Pierre Gamarra
Gamarra in Toulouse, 1945
Gamarra in Toulouse, 1945
BornPierre Albert Gamarra
(1919-07-10)10 July 1919
Toulouse,France
Died20 May 2009(2009-05-20)(aged 89)
Argenteuil,France
OccupationWriter
GenreNovel,Children's literature,Fable,Poetry, Essay
SubjectToulouse,Midi-Pyrénées
Notable works
  • La Maison de feu(1948)
  • Le Maître d'école(1955)
  • La Mandarine et le Mandarin(1970)
  • Mon cartable
Notable awards
Signature
Website
pierregamarra

Pierre Gamarra(French pronunciation:[pjɛʁgamaˈʁa];10 July 1919 – 20 May 2009) was a French poet, novelist andliterary critic,a long-timechief editorand director of the literary magazineEurope.
Gamarra is best known for hispoems and novels for the youthand for narrative and poetical works deeply rooted in his native region ofMidi-Pyrénées.

Life

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Pierre Gamarra was born inToulouseon 10 July 1919. From 1938 until 1940, he was a teacher in the South of France. During theGerman Occupation,he joined various Resistance groups in Toulouse, involved in the writing and distributing of clandestine publications. This led him to a career as a journalist, and then, more specifically both as a writer and a literary journalist.[1]

In 1948, Pierre Gamarra received the firstCharles-Veillon International Grand Prize[fr]inLausannefor his first novel,La Maison de feu.[n 1]Members of the 1948 Veillon Prize jury included writersAndré Chamson,Vercors,Franz HellensandLouis Guilloux.[n 2]The novel is described inBooks Abroadas "a beautifully written tale of humble life, whichPhilippeandJammeswould have liked ".[3]

From 1945 to 1951, he worked as a journalist in Toulouse. In 1951,Louis Aragon,Jean Cassouand André Chamson offered him a position in Paris as editor-in-chief of the literary magazineEurope.[4]He occupied this position until 1974, when he became director of the magazine. Under Pierre Gamarra's direction,Europecontinued the project initiated in 1923 byRomain Rollandand other writers.[n 3]Until 2009, Pierre Gamarra also contributed to most of the magazines's issues with a book review column titled "La Machine à écrire" (The Typewriter).[n 4][5]

Most of his novels take place in his native South-West of France: he wrote anovel trilogybased on the history ofToulouseand various novels set in that town, along theGaronne[6]or in thePyrenees.
John L. Brown, inWorld Literature Today,writes that Pierre Gamarra's descriptions of Toulouse, its people and its region were "masterly", "skillfully and poetically" composed "with a vibrant lyricism"[7]and that:

Few contemporary French novelists can communicate a feeling for place, melding poetry and realism, myth and history, more movingly and convincingly than Pierre Gamarra.[8]

Pierre Gamarra is also the author ofThe Midnight Roosters,[n 5]a novel set inAveyronduring theFrench Revolution.[9]The book was adapted for the French television channelFR3in1973.The film, castingClaude Brosset[fr],was shot in the town ofNajac.[10]

In 1955, he published one of his best known novels,Le Maître d’école;[n 6]the book and its sequelLa Femme de Simon[n 7](1962) received critical praise.[11]
Reviewing his1957 short stories collectionLes Amours du potier,[n 8]Lois Marie Sutton deems that, although war affects the plots of many of "all (those) delightful thirteen stories", "it is the light-hearted plot that Gamarra maneuvers best" and that "as in his previous publications, (the author) shows himself to be a master delineator of the life of the average peasant and employee."[12]

In 1961, Pierre Gamarra received thePrix Jeunesse[fr]forL'Aventure du Serpent à Plumes[n 9]and in 1985, theSGDLGrand Prize[n 10]for his novelLe Fleuve Palimpseste.[n 11]

Pierre Gamarra died inArgenteuilon 20 May 2009, leaving a substantial body of work, not yet translated into English for the most part. TheEncyclopædia Britannicasees in him a "delightful practitioner with notable drollery and high technical skills"[13]in the art of children's poetry and children's stories. His poems[n 12]andfables[n 13][17]are well known by French schoolchildren.[18][19][20]

Selection of works

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In French unless otherwise stated

Literature for the youth

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Stories

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Fables collections

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  • Salut, Monsieur de La Fontaine(2005),ill.Frédéric Devienne,ISBN2-916237-00-3
  • La Mandarine et le Mandarin(1970)

Poetry

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CD

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Adaptations

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Novels

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Reedited De Borée (2014)ISBN9782812911491
Editions of the book since 1948
  • Toulouse trilogy:
Book cover of Pierre Gamarra's poetry collectionEssais pour une malédiction(1943), Hélène Vascaresco Prize for Poetry

Short stories

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Poetry collections

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About Pierre Gamarra

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In French unless otherwise stated

Book reviews in English

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Literary journals special issues

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  • Poésie Première"Tarn en Poésie 2003: Avec Pierre Gamarra"
  • Poésie PremièreNo. 29 (2004)

Interviews

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Homages

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Two streets (one inArgenteuil,one inMontauban) and acul-de-sacinBoulazac—, two schools (one inMontauban,the other inBessens[22])— and two public libraries (one in Argenteuil,[23]the other inAndrest) are named after Pierre Gamarra.

Notes

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  1. ^La Maison de feumeans ″The fiery house″. The novel takes place in Toulouse during the 1930s.
  2. ^Gathered inLa Tour-de-Peilz,the jury also includedLéon Bopp[fr],Maurice Zermatten,Charles Guyot,Louis Martin-ChauffierandRobert Vivier.[2]
  3. ^For instance, many issues were devoted to an extensive presentation of countries whose literature is not internationally very well known.
  4. ^In FrenchLa Machine à écrire;since 2009, the column is continued inEuropeby Jacques Lèbre.
  5. ^In FrenchLes Coqs de Minuit.
  6. ^French forThe Schoolmaster.
  7. ^French forSimon’s wife,Simon being Simon Sermet, the main character in both novels.
  8. ^French forA Potter's lovers.
  9. ^L’Aventure du Serpent à Plumes,French for ″The Adventure of the Feathered Snake″, is a novel for the youth.
  10. ^In French, Grand Prix de laSociété des gens de lettrespour le roman.
  11. ^Le Fleuve palimpseste,French for ″The Palimpsest river″. The river is theGaronne.
  12. ^Pierre Gamarra’s best known poems includeMon cartable(My schoolbag),[14]My School[15]andThe Clock.
  13. ^His best known fables includeThe Cosmonaut and his host,The Apple,The Ski,The mocked Mocker(Le Moqueur moqué) orThe Fly and the Cream.[16]
  14. ^French forThe Woman and the River.The river is, again, the Garonne.[21]
  15. ^L'assassin a le prix Goncourt(French for 'The Murderer receives theGoncourt Prize’) is set inMoissac.

See also

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References

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  1. ^″This is how a countryside schoolteacher who had been studying at the 'École normale primaire', became, through the turmoil of the Phoney War and the Resistance, a poet, a novelist, a journalist living in the region of Paris, member of the editorial board at the magazineEuropefor some fifty years.″
    (...)c’est ainsi que l’instituteur rural préparé par ses années d’École normale primaire s’est mué, les bouleversements de la drôle de guerre et la Résistance aidant, en un poète, romancier, journaliste vivant en région parisienne, membre pendant quelque cinquante ans du comité de rédaction de la revueEurope(...)
    Claude Sicard, ″Pierre Gamarra″ inBalade en Midi-Pyrénées, sur les pas des écrivains,Alexandrines, 2011 (Excerpt on the Publisher website(in French)).
  2. ^Simone HauertAnnabelle,Year 8, number 85, March 1948 (Lausanne), p. 45. See alsoLe Confédéré(Martigny) number 59, 19 May 1948 p. 2. (Read online).
  3. ^Georgette R. Schuler (Spring 1949). "Review ofLa Maison de feu".Books Abroad.23(2): 156.doi:10.2307/40086832.JSTOR40086832.
  4. ^Encyclopédia Universalis:Pierre Gamarra(in French).
  5. ^See the Journal tables:
  6. ^″Pierre Gamarra kept for all his life his passion for the regions along theGaronneriver: it was present in his poems, novels and stories.″ (Pierre Gamarra conservera toute sa vie une passion pour ces terres de Garonne qui reviendront dans ses poèmes, ses romans, ses récits.)
    Alain Nicolas, ″Pierre Gamarra est mort″,L’Humanité,25 May 2009. (online version(in French))
  7. ^John L. Brown, Review ofLe Fleuve palimpseste,World Literature Today,Vol. 59, No. 1, Winter, 1985ISSN0196-3570.
  8. ^John L. Brown (1987). "Review ofLes Lèvres de l'été".World Literature Today.61(2): 236.doi:10.2307/40143008.JSTOR40143008.
  9. ^Les Coqs de minuit(1950, reed. 2009) De BoréeISBN9782844949097
  10. ^"TV adaptation (Les Coqs de Minuit) on the Internet Movie Data Base ".Retrieved9 August2011.[permanent dead link]
  11. ^″The manner of telling is so matter of fact that the tragedy takes one unaware.″, according to Helen M. Ranson, reviewingLe Maître d’école,inBooks Abroad,Vol. 31, No. 1, Winter, 1957,ISSN0006-7431
  12. ^Sutton Lois Marie (1958). "Review of Les Amours du potier".Books Abroad.32(4): 394.doi:10.2307/40098002.JSTOR40098002.
  13. ^ArticleChildren’s literature (20th century)inEncyclopædia Britannica:

    Children’s verse has at least one delightful practitioner in Pierre Gamarra. HisMandarine et le MandarincontainsFontainesquefables of notable drollery and high technical skill.
  14. ^Mon cartableis for instance chosen inFrance Interpoetry yearly selection for 2012, read byGuillaume Gallienne:listen online(in French);or onÉdouard Baer'sRadio Novaprogram, "Un enfant, un poème" in December 2017:listening online.
  15. ^"Mon école", online reading on Radio Nova (2017).
  16. ^La Mouche et la Crème,online on Radio Nova.
  17. ^Most of Pierre Gamarra’s fables are collected inLa Mandarine et le Mandarin(1970) and inSalut, Monsieur de La Fontaine(2005), (rewiewed on Le Printemps des poètes’ website(in French)).
  18. ^″His abundant body of work has earned him a prominent place in Children’s literature; his poems are read in schools, taught and learned by heart.″ (Sa frénésie d'écrire lui confère une place de choix dans la littérature enfantine; on lit ses poèmes dans les écoles, on les enseigne, on les apprend.)
    Guillaume de Toulouse-Lautrec, foreword toMon pays l'Occitanie,2009, p. 12.
  19. ^"The homework that inspires horror in families - BBC News".BBC News.19 June 2016.Retrieved16 August2016.
  20. ^"Projet pédagogique. Les élèves passent aux fables à Mesnils sur Iton"(in French).Retrieved24 January2018.
  21. ^Armen Kalfayan, Review ofLa Femme et le Fleuve,Books AbroadVol. 26, No. 3, Summer, 1952
  22. ^"Chronologie".Les Amis de Pierre Gamarra(in French). 3 June 2018.Retrieved17 June2019.
  23. ^Pierre Gamarra Library in Argenteuil page.(in French)

External resources

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