Louÿs, Pierre

Louÿs, Pierre (1870-  ), French novelist and poet, was born in Paris on the 10th of December 1870. When he was nineteen he founded a review, La Conque, which brought him into contact with the leaders of the Parnassians, and counted Swinburne, Maeterlinck, Mallarmé and others among its contributors. He won notoriety by his novel Aphrodite (1896), which gave a vivid picture of Alexandrian morals at the beginning of the Christian era. His Chansons de Bilitis, roman lyrique (1894), which purported to be a translation from the Greek, is a glorification of Sapphic love, which in subject-matter is objectionable in the highest degree; but its delicate decadent prose is typical of a modern French literary school, and some of the “songs” were set to music by Debussy and others. Later books are: La Femme et le pantin (1898); Les Aventures du roi Pausole (1900); Sanguines (1903); Archipel (1906). Louÿs married in 1899 Louise de Heredia, younger daughter of the poet.