Segalen, Victor

(1878-1919)

   writer

   A naval doctor, Victor Segalen, who was born in Brest, left for Tahiti (1903) and collected the later works of paul Gauguin (Hommage à Gauguin), while also praising the comfortable and sensual life there in a poetic novel, Les Immémoriaux (1907), in which the author recounts in poetic style the various myths of the islands, already in danger of being forgotten. Returning to France, he composed a drama, Orphée-Roi (posthumous, 1921) for claude debussy, which, however, the composer never set to music. Segalen went to China where he met paul claudel, journeyed to Tibet, took part in an archaeological expedition (discovering the funerary monuments of the Han dynasty), and treated victims of the plague in Manchuria, before being called back to France by world war I. His novel, René Leys (posthumous, 1921), takes its inspiration from China and the Forbidden City of Beijing. After a final mission to Nanjing, he died in Brittany, either by accident or as a suicide. As a poet, Segalen influenced arthur rim-baud and Stéphane Mallarmé. His works, filled with oriental mysticism, present a wide geographic and personal viewpoint (Stèles, 1912; Pientures, 1916). It was only in 1975 that his last novel, Le Fils du ciel, was published.