Catherine Pozzi

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Vocation

Traits

French poet and woman of letters, known for six withering poems, published in 1935 ("Mesures"), an anonymous autobiography ("Agnès," 1927), and an unfinished philosophical essay ("Peau d’Ame"). She was the daughter of Samuel Pozzi, surgeon and gynecologist, and Thérèse Loth-Cazalis. Her well-educated family was friends with artists and writers, including José-Maria de Heredia and Paul Bourget. From a young age she was interested in music, and at age 11 started keeping a journal. She studied for a year in Oxford. At the age of 19, she read the published diary of Marie Bashkirtseff, and it had a profound effect upon her, spurring her to write intensely in her own journal. On 25 January 1909, at age 26, she married the popular dramatist Édouard Bourdet in Paris. In October that year, their son Claude (later a member of the French Resistance) was born. She began studying history, philosophy and religion, math and sciences as the student of Marie Jaëll. In 1918, at the age of 37, she passed her baccalaureate. In that year, her father was assassinated by one of his former patients who was suffering from a paranoid delusion. Her friends included Rainer Maria Rilke, Anna de Noailles, Jean Paulhan (editor of La Nouvelle Revue française), Colette, Henri de Régnier, and Pierre Jean Jouve. In 1920, she began a tumultuous relationship with Paul Valéry, which lasted eight years and gave rise to important correspondence. The rift between them distanced her from the Paris salons and caused her to have a terrible feeling of isolation. She died in Paris on 3 December 1934 from tuberculosis as well as morphine and laudanum abuse. Link to Wikipedia biography