ABSTRACT
From 1901, when Valery Larbaud (1881–1957) published his translation of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, until 1935, when a stroke ended his writing career, no one brought more news of foreign, and notably English, literature to French ears than this polyglot poet, essayist, and indefatigable traveler who wrote his first major poems and an initial “intimate diary” under the name of “A. O. Barnabooth.” Intellectually during this period, Larbaud dwelled at the heart of European modernism; yet he often physically remained on its periphery, far from London and Paris. This paradox takes shape in the “definitive edition” of his Journal that Paule Moron, following up on her own doctoral detective work and two “missing diaries” first issued by the Éditions Claire Paulhan in 1998 and 1999, has produced for Gallimard. Moron has annotated, revised, and added entire unknown notebooks to the standard two-volume Journal included in Larbaud’s Oeuvres complètes (1950–1955).
