Adolphe van Bever

Adolphe van Bever (25 December 1871, 12th arrondissement of Paris[1] – 7 January 1927, Paris) was a 19th–20th-century French bibliographer and erudite.

Adolphe van Bever (1900).

Biography

Born in a poor family, he nevertheless one day discovered a passion for science and the rigorous methods of the Chartists. At eighteen, he became secretary of the Théâtre de l'Œuvre, and afterwards held the same position at the Mercure de France between 1897 and 1912. Thus, he devoted himself to his scholarly work. He also shared with his friend Paul Léautaud a passion for poetry that would lead them to the joint publication of their famous anthology Poètes d’aujourd'hui (1880–1900), first published in 1900 and reprinted many times.

Suffering from a painful disease of syphilitic origin, the tabes dorsalis, he overcame his physical miseries to concentrate on his work. Van Bever was primarily engaged in the critical edition of the satiric, libertine and gallant poets and writers, but also addressed, through a series of regional anthologies, the oral folklore of the French provinces, in collaboration with Arnold van Gennep. He also played an important role in the collection "Maîtres du livre" by the publisher Georges Crès in which he published critical editions of Verlaine, Baudelaire, Ronsard and Rousseau. He helped Léon Bloy publish Le Désespéré ("Despairing").[2]

When his name began to be well-known, however, the tabes he suffered from worsened and turned his life into martyrdom.

He died prematurely at the age of fifty-five in his Paris home of rue de Tournon after having published nearly one hundred books. His eulogy holds entirely in the words spoken by Maurice Renard on his grave in the cemetery of Grosrouvre: "Be good and suffer. Work and suffer"[3]

Works

Sources

Bibliography

  • Edmond Rocher, Adolphe van Bever, G. Crès, Paris, 1911.
  • Paul Léautaud, Adolphe van Bever, Impr. F. Paillart, Abbeville, 1927.
  • Ch. Bosse, Catalogue de la bibliothèque : livres anciens et modernes, éditions originales d'auteurs contemporains, la plupart avec dédicace autographe, réimpressions d'auteurs classiques, livres illustrés, poétes du terroir, epistoliers, histoire littéraire, beaux-arts, mémoires, bibliographie de M. Ad. van Bever, L. Giraud-Badin, Paris, 1927.
  • Valentina Gosetti, "Poetry Anthologists as Translingual Mediators: The Example of Adolphe van Bever's Les poètes du terroir", L'Esprit Créateur 59, no. 4 (2019): 40-53.

References

  1. Archives numérisées de l'état civil de Paris, birth certificate number 12/1141/1871 (accessdate 2 January 2013).
  2. Éric Walbecq, « Les envois de Léon Bloy sur le Désespéré », Histoires Littéraires, #1, 2000, (p. 40–53).
  3. Léon Deffoux, obituary, in L'Ami du lettré. Année littéraire & artistique pour 1928, Grasset, 1928, (p. 170–171).
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