L’amitié particulière entre Joseph Zobel et Armand Guibert, et les manifestations culturelles francophones à Paris, Knokke-le-Zoute et Dakar (1947-1966)

Abstract

The correspondence of the years 1957-1966 between Joseph Zobel and Armand Guibert, kept in the Mediterranean archival fund of the University of Montpellier, reveals a particular relationship between two writers whose complicity developped around a common taste for poetry and homosexuality. They had initially met briefly in Paris at a literary event centered on Senghor in 1947, but their relationship –mostly of an epistolary nature– became rapidly more intimate when Zobel decided to leave Paris and settle with his family in Senegal in 1957. This move was favored by Senghor, to whose poetry Guibert was going to dedicate a monography as early as 1961. Starting from this common point of interest, the letters between Zobel and Guibert show how both writers were to share the texts of other francophone poets (or translated into French, like those of Pessoa by Guibert) to feed literary events (often poetry readings that were shared through the network of francophone radios), in which they participated from Paris to Dakar, via festivals such as the famous Biennale internationale de poésie held every other Summer in the Belgian sea-resort of Knokke-le-Zoute.

Keywords

• Radio
• Poetry
• Francophonie
• Networks
• Festivals
• Friendship