Profession: writer

Robert Southey

writer, poet

1774 (Bristol, England) – 1843 (Keswick)

Southey and Coleridge met as young poets with shared ideals. They married two sisters, wrote a play together and dreamed about a utopian community in America (or else Wales), where the men would be tended by ‘mild and lovely’ women. The Wordsworths and de Quincey were their neighbours in the Lake District; Shelley also visited, but soon moved on. Southey took laughing-gas with his friend Davy and corresponded with Scott. He met Telford through a mutual friend, and accompanied him for several weeks on a tour of engineering works in the Scottish Highlands, writing a poem about the Caledonian Canal.

Robert Southey knew…

Robert Motherwell

artist, writer

1915 (Aberdeen, Wash.) – 1991 (Provincetown, Mass.)

Whitehead (unofficially), Schapiro and Seligmann taught him. Matta accompanied him to Mexico and taught him the technique of psychic automatism, Shahn and Breton argued with him, Frankenthaler married him. Pollock, Krasner, Baziotes, Newman, Rothko and Still were all friends and colleagues; Duchamp, Ernst (like him, intellectuals as well as artists) and David Smith were particularly close. Reinhardt co-authored a book with him, Huelsenbeck delivered a lecture with him. De Kooning and Ozenfant were fellow-tutors at Black Mountain, where Rauschenberg and Twombly were among his students.

Robert Motherwell knew…

Richard Wagner

composer, writer

1813 (Leipzig, Germany) – 1883 (Venice)

The older Spontini was an early collaborator; Wagner was impressed by his conductor’s baton. Meyerbeer tried but failed to get Wagner’s operatic work staged in Paris, despite Wagner’s personal hostility. Baudelaire admired and wrote about his music; Gautier was a correspondent. Schumann thought Wagner talked too much, while he thought Schumann had nothing to say. Nietzsche, a regular visitor, was much influenced by Wagner, and dedicated his first book to him. Liszt helped him get a fake passport, and get his operas performed; they stayed professional friends despite Liszt’s displeasure at becoming his father-in-law.

Richard Wagner knew…

René Crevel

writer

1900 (Paris) – 1935 (Paris)

Crevel met Vitrac and Limbour while they were doing part-time military service (mornings only). Breton, Aragon, Éluard and Man Ray were all surrealist-circle friends of Crevel’s. He regularly visited and corresponded with Stein. Breton, Char, Éluard and Crevel formed a revolutionary writers’ and artists’ association in 1932. He met Wells in the South of France. Money troubles forced him to sell his paintings by his friends Picasso, Arp, Tanguy, Ernst and Laurencin. Both Dalí and Buñuel went to Spain with him.

René Crevel knew…

Raymond Roussel

writer

1877 (Paris) – 1933 (Palermo, Sicily)

Roussel had few close friendships. Leiris’ father worked for Roussel, who visited weekly to play music: Leiris became a significant supporter of his work. Proust (who praised his work, but may not have met him) and Cocteau were neighbours; Cocteau later met him at a clinic for patients with drug habits. Desnos was a correspondent and present at the turbulent première of one of his works. He visited Flammarion several times, and may have based a character on him. Duchamp (who acknowledged his influence) met him at a chess-players’ café; Le Lionnais got to know him about the same time. Janet treated him.

Raymond Roussel knew…

Raymond Queneau

writer, editor

1903 (Le Havre, France) – 1976 (Paris)

Kojève taught Queneau, who published Kojève’s lectures on Hegel. Queneau visited Masson’s studio regularly, as well as the surrealist group at 54 rue du Château — Duhamel, Prévert, Tanguy, Péret, and often Breton. Bataille and Leiris were close friends; Queneau worked on Bataille’s ‘Documents’, and went to Spain with Leiris (they had to be repatriated). Limbour was a childhood friend, Vian a fellow-Pataphysician, and Miller and Hélion regular correspondents. Perec, Le Lionnais, Mathews, Arnaud, Bénabou and Calvino were all friends and colleagues in Oulipo. Paulhan (especially), Duhamel, Camus, Sartre and Malraux were among Queneau’s colleagues at Gallimard’s publishing house. Murdoch adored him.

Raymond Queneau knew…

Raoul Vaneigem

writer, situationist

1934 (Lessines, Belgium) –

Vaneigem and Debord were introduced to one another by Lefebvre, and subsequently became two poles of Situationism. They traced Malcolm Lowry’s steps outside Paris, high on mescalin, and conducted psychogeographic dérives in Antwerp, Barcelona and Brussels as well as Paris. Vaneigem described his friendship with Debord as “founded on ether exuberance and rigorous thought.” Lefebvre’s work directly inspired Vaneigem and Debord’s thought: they had both attended lectures by him, and he subsequestly interested himself in their ideas.

Raoul Vaneigem knew…

Raoul Hausmann

artist, writer

1886 (Vienna) – 1971 (Limoges)

Huelsenbeck helped introduce Hausmann to Dada, but they went on to feud for forty years. Heartfield, Grosz and Baader were fellow-members of the Berlin Dada scene, Richter then arriving from Zürich and Schwitters from Hanover. Schwitters remained a correspondent until his death; Moholy-Nagy and Richter were also lifelong friends to Hausmann. Höch was his lover. He had what Richter described as “a remarkable, cold-blooded relationship” with Jung. As a latter-day recluse in France, among his correspondents from a younger generation of artists were Maciunas, Chopin, Spoerri, Johns, Houédard and Themerson.

Raoul Hausmann knew…

R. D. Laing

Ronald David Laing

psychiatrist, writer

1927 (Glasgow) – 1989 (St Tropez)

As a psychiatrist associated with the anti-psychiatry movement, Laing remains controversial. Winnicott and Bowlby were senior colleagues at the Tavistock Clinic in London; Winnicott was his supervisor, and responded warmly to Laing’s ‘The Divided Self’. Trocchi, a fellow-Glaswegian and counter-cultural icon, counted Laing among his associates; Laing gave Leary his first shot of heroin in Trocchi’s house. He met Bateson, another important collaborator who also acquired counter-cultural status, in the U.S.

R. D. Laing knew…

Prosper Mérimée

writer, translator, architectural conservationist

1803 (Paris) – 1870 (Cannes)

Mérimée met Viollet-le-Duc (later a significant architectural collaborator) as a teenager. Humboldt and Stendhal (a literary influence) were among his friends in Paris bohemian circles. He had a brief and unsatisfactory affair with Sand, proposed to Shelley, translated Turgenev, and met Sainte-Beuve, Ingres and Delacroix in the salons he habituated. Requien met him in his job as Inspector of Monuments, du Camp returned to him the letters he’d written to a past lover, and he himself wrote of a visit to a brothel with Delacroix, Musset and Stendhal. Hugo (whose friendship didn’t last) described a landscape as ‘flat as Mérimée.’

Prosper Mérimée knew…