Paris 2017: Cimetière de Montrouge, Hauts-de-Seine (92) #3: Cécile Aubry

Cécile Aubry (1928–2010) was a novelist, screen writer, and an actor most remembered for her TV series success 'Belle et Sébastien' based on her novels, from which the English indie group Belle and Sebastian took its name.

Paris 2017: Cimetière de Montrouge, Hauts-de-Seine (92) #2: Michel Audiard

Michel Audiard (1920–85) was a screen writer, a film director, and a novelist. Sometimes called a right-wing anarchist, one of his greatest regrets was not to have adapted Céline's Voyage au bout de la nuit to film. He is the father of the film director Jacques Audiard. His novels include Priez pour elle (1950), Massacre en dentelles (1952), Ne nous fâchons pas (1966), Le Terminus des prétentieux (1968), and Le Petit cheval de retour (1975).

Paris 2017: Cimetière de Montrouge, Hauts-de-Seine (92) #1: Albert Kazimirski de Biberstein

Albert (or Albin) Kazimirski de Biberstein (1808–87), of French nationality but born in Poland, was an Arabic-speaking orientalist who was the author of an Arabic-French dictionary, and the translator of several Arabic-French works, principally the Koran.

Cimetière de Montrouge #10: De Colins de Ham

'J. G. C. A. H.

DE COLINS DE HAM

PHILOSOPHE   SOCIALISTE

1783–1859

––––––––––––––

'L'ORDRE MORAL, C'EST L'HARMONIE

ÉTERNELLE: ENTRE LA LIBERTÉ DES

ACTIONS, ET LA FATALITÉ DES

ÉVÉNEMENTS'

Jean Guillaume César Alexandre Hippolyte de Colins de Ham was one of the first theorists of socialism, his condemnation of bourgeois society having a profound effect.

Many thanks to the employees of the Cimetière de Montrouge for being so helpful and making the job of finding the graves so much easier for us.

Cimetière de Montrouge #9: Joselia (aka Joseph Blanchard)

'JOSELIA

POÈTE

1892–1951

LUIGIA

SON ÉPOUSE

1894–1983'

Very little appears to be known of Joselia, apart from the fact that Mirèio Doryan and Joseph Maurelle paid 'eloquent' homages to him.

Cimetière de Montrouge #8: Henri Queffélec

'Henri Queffélec

1910–1992'

The son of Yann Queffélec who won the Goncourt in 1985 with Les Noces barbares, Henri was born in Brest and is seen as a great French writer of sea novels. He wrote over eighty books, many inspired by his native Brittany and the sea. His  Un recteur de l'Île de Sein was filmed as Dieu a besoin des hommes.

Cimetière de Montrouge #7: Coluche

This is by far the most visited grave in the Cimetière de Montrouge. The comedian Coluche (1944–86) – born Michel Colucci – was the son of a man born in a small Italian village, and adopted the name at the beginning of his career.

He delighted in attacking taboos, politics, and used risqué language. France is a country that seems to be proud of the many anarchists it has had, and Coluche was certainly an anarchist.

Anarchists loved Coluche, and some even agreed with his running in the 1981 election, although of course he was never a serious contender, and (after death threats) withdrew from a course he no doubt never intended to pursue.

In 1985 Coluche founded Les Restaurants du cœur, a charity designed mainly to feed the poor, and which is better known as Les Restos du cœur. Unfortunately, Coluche died in a motorcycle accident the following year.

Cimetière de Montrouge #6: Mirèio Doryan

Mirèio Doryan (1901–89) was a poet and essayist born Germaine Drilhe. Very little biographical information seems readily available on her, although Jean-Jacques Rabaud wrote a biography La Vie intense d'une femme-poète about her in 1987. Her first (assumed) name inevitably leads me to think of Frédéric Mistral's famous book of the same name, and I doubt if this is coincidental. She wrote a homage to the poet Joselia (real name Joseph Blanchard), also buried here in Montrouge.

'Ici repose un poète authentique

que l'on nomma

Mirèio Doryan

et qui vécut un grand rêve lyrique'

'Il est vrai qu'il faut bien recouvrir notre écorce

Et ne jamis trembler de faiblesse et de peur,

Pour qu'extérieurement, le reflet du bonheur

Soit pour tous un exemple et pour nous une force.

            Extrait de "Le Pretexte de Psyché"

                           (poème: "La Vie")'

Cimetière de Montrouge #5: Gustave Geffroy

The currently rather hidden grave of Gustave Geffroy (1855–1926), who was a writer (novelist, journalist, art critic, etc) and one of the founder members of the Académie Goncourt. His L'Enfermé (1897) was about the revolutionary socialist Auguste Blanqui, and was originally published in serial form by Félix Juven, who also published Alphonse Allais, Willy, Tristan Bernard, and so on. Cézanne did a portrait of Geffroy in 1895.

Cimetière de Montrouge #4: Ernest La Jeunesse

'ERNEST LA JEUNESSE

HOMMES DE LETTRES

CHEVALIER DE LA LÉGION D'HONNEUR

1874 – 1917'

La jeunesse was a novelist, caricaturist and literary critic. He wrote and drew for a number of newspapers and magazines, and was appreciated by Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Léautaud and Jules Renard.

He was unkindly criticised for his high-pitched voice and his eccentric clothes, but supported by Octave Mirbeau, a defender of outsiders.

In Le Forçat honoraire, roman immoral (1907), La Jeunesse attacked the popular crime litterature of the time.

Cimetière de Montrouge #3: Carlo Bourlet

'CI-GÎT PARMI LES SIENS

CARLO BOURLET

1866–1913

MATHÉMATICIEN D'EXCEPTION

ET PIONNIER DE L'ESPERANTO

––––––––––––––

KORPO POLVIĜAS SED PLUVIAS

TIES IDEARO'

Along with writing several works in Mathematics and having a great interest in Esperanto, Bourlet wrote several publications on bicycles, including Traité des bicycles et des bicyclettes, suivi d'une application à la construction des vélodromes (1895).

Cimetière de Montrouge #2: Albert Simonin

'ALBERT SIMONIN

ÉCRIVAIN

1905 – 1980'

Crime novelist Albert Simonin published a dictionary of slang in 1957 and used such expressions meticulously in his novels, paving the way for writers such as Frédéric Dard and Jean Vautrin.

He was imprisoned for five years for collaborationist activities.

Simonin's greatest success was Touchez pas au grisbi (1953), the first of a trilogy about the old criminal Max le Menteur. His autobiography was Confessions d'un enfant de la Chapelle (1977).

Cimetière de Montrouge #1: René Crevel

'RENÉ

CREVEL

1900 – 1935'

René Crevel's father killed himself when his son was fourteen. He went to the lycée Janson-de-Sailly and then the Sorbonne, where he skipped his classes in law to read or to talk with artists. He met André Breton and joined the surrealists when he was twenty-one, initially creating a very strong impression, but later joined Tristan Tzara and the dadaists.

Suffering from tuberculosis, he gassed himself in 1935. Klaus Mann, son of Thomas Mann and a close friend of Crevel's, wrote that he had killed himself because he feared madness, because he thought the world was mad.