Maurice Rollinat - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

MAURICE ROLLINAT (1853-1903), French poet, was born at Chateauroux in 1853. His father represented Indre in the National Assembly of 1848, and was a friend of George Sand, whose influence is very marked in young Rollinat's first volume, Dans les brandes (1877). The volume, however, attracted little attention, and it was with his second publication, very different in manner, that he made his reputation. In Les Nevroses, with the sub-title Les Ames, Les Luxures, Les Refuges, Les Spectres, Les Tenebres, he showed himself as a disciple of Charles Baudelaire. He constantly returns in these poems to the physical horrors of death, and is obsessed by unpleasant images. Less outré in sentiment are L'Abime (1886), La Nature, and a book of children's verse, Le Livre de la Nature (1893). He was musician as well as poet, and set many of his songs to music. He lost his reason in consequence of his wife's death from hydrophobia, and died on the 26th of October 1903.