Francis Viélé-Griffin

Francis Viélé-Griffin (born May 26, 1864, Norfolk, Va., U.S.—died Nov. 12, 1937, Bergerac, Fr.) was an American-born French poet who became an important figure in the French Symbolist movement.

Viélé-Griffin, son of a military governor for the Union in the American Civil War, was sent to France at the age of eight to attend school and remained there for the rest of his life. His first collection of verse, Cueille d’avril (1886; “April’s Harvest”), showed the influence of the Decadent movement, and the next two, Les Cygnes (1887; “The Swans”) and Les Joies (1889; “The Joys”), established his reputation as a preeminent Symbolist.

In 1890 Viélé-Griffin cofounded the review Les Entretiens politiques et littéraires (“Political and Literary Conversations”), in which appeared many of his essays calling for the liberation of verse from the strictures of traditional poetic form. He accomplished such liberation in his own poems through his pioneering use of vers libre (free verse). Viélé-Griffin’s work is marked by a fundamental optimism that is grounded in his delight in nature and his belief in the spiritual dimension of human life. He lived much of the time in Touraine, and many of his works—such as La Clarté de vie (1897; “The Brightness of Life”) and Le Domaine royale (1923; “The Royal Domain”)—celebrate the countryside. Others—such as La Chevauchée d’Yeldis (1893; “The Ride of Yeldis”), Phocas le jardinier (1898; “Phocas the Gardener”), and La Légende ailée de Wieland le forgeron (1900; “The Winged Legend of Wieland the Blacksmith”)—draw on Christian themes and Greek and medieval legends for their inspiration.

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