Ludovic Massé

Études réunies par Maurice Roelens. (Cahiers de l'Université de Perpignan, 33). Presses universitaires de Perpignan, 2003. 159 pp. Pb €12.00. I am left wondering as to what Ludovic Massé (1900–82) would have made of this volume and all that it represents! For this quite prolific writer from la Catalogne roussillonnaise was in fact something of a rebel and held decidedly anti-authoritarian views. Under the Vichy regime, for instance, he was asked to leave his post as a primary school teacher at Cérét (Pyrénées-Orientales) on account of his ‘esprit néfaste’ (he seems to have been suspected of being overly-sympathetic to Communist ideas) and refusal to succeed was certainly a theme discernible in many of his writings. This volume contains ten short papers selected from a colloquium organized in 2000 by the Centre Régional des Lettres du Languedoc-Roussillon and the University of Perpignan as part of a year-long programme of celebrations to mark the centenary of Massé's birth. The celebrations included events such as film screenings, television broadcasts, a programme in the region's schools to promote awareness of Massé and his work and a round table dedicated to the writer at the Centre d'Études Catalanes of the Sorbonne. The papers in the volume cover many different aspects of Massé's life and work and range from his use of onomastics to create a ‘situated’ imaginaire to the influence exerted on him by Tolstoy, his relationship with contemporary writers and painters and the themes that pervade his work. The volume also contains some previously unpublished correspondence that Massé wrote to Blaise Cendrars (a Swiss poet and novelist who became one of his friends) and to Ernest Hemingway. Massé's work has been in the process of being ‘rediscovered’ since the 1980s but the centenary celebrations, which led to the republication of a number of his major works, will undoubtedly have given this revival considerable impetus. This volume will certainly provide useful material to students and researchers interested in the life of this most intriguing individual

Art · Art history · Humanities · Theme (computing · Medieval European Literature and History