Gabriel Faure

• Name — Gabriel Faure • Born — 15 May 1877 • Birthplace — Tournon-sur-Rhône, Ardèche, France • Died — 5 August 1962 • Occupation — Poet, novelist, essayist • Awards — Grand Prix de Littérature, Académie française, 1941

Gabriel Faure was born on 15 May 1877 in Tournon-sur-Rhône, in the department of Ardèche, France, where his father held the dual positions of lawyer and mayor. Although he owed his love of literature to his grandfather, who introduced him to Latin and Romantic poets, it was at the Tournon high school that bears his name that a literature teacher, Joseph Parnin, revealed to him beauty, art, and poetry. His law studies, begun in Lyon and completed in Paris, led to his doctorate in 1900, but his travels in Italy, and Florence in particular, determined his literary future.

Faure was the author of many poems, novels and essays. An Italophile, he wrote many books about Italy, including Venice, Ventimiglia and Rome. In 1929, he edited an illustrated anthology, Le Visage de l'Italie, prefaced by Benito Mussolini. A review in The Journal of Roman Studies noted that "the Introduction bv the Duce makes clear, what comes now and again to the surface in the text itself, that the book is not concerned only with the beauties of Italian scenery and the wonders of Italian architecture, but also with the great political past—and present—of Italy. Nevertheless, there is little to disturb those who prefer to keep their politics and their aesthetic appreciations apart." He wrote some of his works in Italy, and stayed several times in Breganze as the guest of Marie Jsoard Savardo at Villa Savardo. Extant are some postcards he sent in 1924 and 1928 from Breganze to France. In 1926, Faure founded the Comité France-Italie, intended to enhance and celebrate French-Italian cultural relations. The group was reorganized in 1929 by the pro-Fascist French writer Jean Rivain, and gained popularity and prestige in the early 1930s under the leadership of Pierre de Nolhac. Faure also wrote several books about French authors including François-René de Chateaubriand, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Stendhal, Paul Valéry and Louis Le Cardonnel. He co-authored a book about Napoleon with Marcel Deléon.

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Works by Gabriel Faure translated into English include Wanderings in Italy (1919), Pilgrimages in Italy (1920), The Banks of the Rhône from Lyons to Arles (1922), The Gardens of Rome (1924), The Italian Lakes: Maggiore, Como, Orta, Varese, Lugano, Iseo, Garda (1925), The Land of St. Francis of Assisi: Assisi and Perugia (1925), The Dolomites (1925), Rome (1926), and Sicily (1932).