- Bazin, Herve
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▪ 1997(JEAN-PIERRE-MARIE HERVÉ-BAZIN), French writer (b. April 17, 1911, Angers, France—d. Feb. 17, 1996, near Angers), scandalized the French public with his denunciation of motherhood, the family, and the Roman Catholic Church in his first novel, Vipère au poing (1948; Viper in the Fist, 1951; U.K. trans., Grasping the Viper, 1950). Born into a wealthy bourgeois family, Bazin was consigned to the care of a grandmother, who died when he was 11. He was a difficult child, and when his mother took up her parental duties, neither was happy. Expelled from several schools, Bazin disregarded his parents' expectations and determined to be a writer, eventually taking a degree in literature from the Sorbonne. He had published some slight poetry while in his 20s, but not until the publication of the autobiographical Vipère au poing—with its trenchant portrayal of a monstrous woman, based on his own mother—did his name become a household word. He followed this first novel of the Rezeau family with La Mort du petit cheval (1950; "The Death of the Little Horse") and Le Cri de la chouette (1972; "Screech of the Barn Owl"). His acerbic perceptions also surfaced in Le Tête contre les murs (1949; Head Against the Wall, 1952), a novel about mental institutions, and in such works as Qui j'ose aimer (1956; A Tribe of Women, 1958) and Le Matrimoine (1967; "The Matrimonk"). For roughly the last two decades, he was president of the Académie Goncourt.
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▪ French authorpseudonym of Jean-Pierre-Marie Hervé-Bazinborn April 17, 1911, Angers, Francedied Feb. 17, 1996, AngersFrench author whose witty and satirical novels often focus on the problems within families and marriages.Hervé was the great-nephew of the Roman Catholic traditionalist novelist René Bazin. After solid academic training, years of family conflict, and financial and professional failure, Hervé, a rebel and bohemian approaching middle age, finally achieved literary fame in 1948 with the autobiographical novel Vipère au poing (Viper in the Fist). In this book he portrays his unhappy childhood as an unrelenting battle with his mother, a monstrous figure who assumes near-mythic proportions through the concentrated energy of her own virulence. Bazin's relentless attacks upon the institutions of family, church, and motherhood seemed to many Frenchmen to verge on blasphemy. The revolt continued in La Tête contre les murs (1949; Head Against the Wall), a novel about penal institutions and the judicial system that supports them, and in a second autobiographical novel, La Mort du petit cheval (1950; “The Death of a Small Horse”).Having exorcised the demons of his youth in his writings, Bazin underwent a spiritual metamorphosis, from which he emerged a moralist. He discovered paternal love (Au nom du fils, 1960; In the Name of the Son), spiritual fortitude (Lève-toi et marche, 1952; Constance, 1955), and conjugal responsibility (Le Matrimoine, 1967). He departed from his mellower mood to exorcise a few remaining monsters in his world—a pyromaniac fireman in L'Huile sur le feu (1954; “The Oil on the Fire”) and a country Phaedra in Qui j'ose aimer (1956; A Tribe of Women). His later works include the novels Madam Ex (1975; “Madam X”) and Un Feu devore un autre feu (1978; “A Fire Devours Another Fire”) and the books of verse Traits (1976) and Ce que je crois (1977; “What I Believe”). First elected to the Académie Goncourt in 1958, he became its president in 1973.* * *
Universalium. 2010.
