Jacques Rivière

Jacques Rivière (born July 15, 1886, Bordeaux, France—died Feb. 14, 1925, Paris) was a writer, critic, and editor who was a major force in the intellectual life of France in the period immediately following World War I. His most important works were his thoughtful and finely written essays on the arts. In 1912 a collection of these essays was published as Études; a second such collection, entitled Nouvelles études (“Further Essays”), was published posthumously in 1947.

From 1914 to 1918 Rivière was a prisoner of war in Germany; L’Allemand (1918; “The German”) was based on that experience. He was a cofounder and, from 1919 to 1925, editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française, a leading magazine of the arts. He was influential in winning a general public acceptance of Marcel Proust as an important writer. Rivière wrote two psychological novels, Aimée (1922) and the unfinished Florence (1935).

Brought up as a Roman Catholic, he left the church as a young man; religion continued to be a major force in his life, however, and he struggled unsuccessfully to accept the doctrines of the church. His personal anxiety and aspirations are best reflected in his letters to his brother-in-law, Alain-Fournier; in his correspondence with the poet and playwright Paul Claudel; and in his book À la trace de Dieu (1925; “On the Track of God”).