Tristan Corbière

He is the author of a single collection of poetry, Les Amours jaunes, and of a few prose pieces. He led a mostly marginal and miserable life, nourished by two major failures due to his bone disease and his "ugliness" which he enjoyed accusing: the first is his sentimental life (he only loved one woman, called "Marcelle" in his work), and the second being his passion for the sea (he dreamt of becoming a sailor, like his father, Édouard Corbière). His poetry carries these two great wounds which led him to adopt a very cynical and incisive style, towards himself as much towards the life and world around him.

He died at the age of 29, possibly from tuberculosis, a childless bachelor with no work, entrenched in his old Breton manor, misunderstood by his contemporaries, and his innovative poetry was not recognised until well after his death.

Family and schooling

His mother, Marie-Angélique-Aspasie Puyo, was 19 years old at the time of his birth, and belonged to one of the most prominent families of the local bourgeoisie. His father was Antoine-Édouard Corbière, mariner and writer known for his best-selling novel Le Négrier. A cousin, Constant Puyo, was a well-known Pictorialist photographer.

During his schooling at the Imperial Lycée of Saint-Brieuc where he studied from 1858 until 1860, he fell prey to a deep depression, and, over several freezing winters, contracted the severe rheumatism which was to disfigure him. He blamed his parents for having placed him there, far from his family's care and affection. Difficulties in adapting to the harsh discipline of the college's noble débris (distinguished relics, i.e., teachers) gradually developed those characteristics of anarchic disdain and sarcasm which were to give much of his verse their distinctive voice.