Hervé Bazin
Hervé Bazin (lang; 17 April 191117 February 1996) was a French writer, whose best-known novels covered semi-autobiographical topics of teenage rebellion and dysfunctional families.
Also recorded as Herve Bazin
Hervé Bazin

Philippe Nédélec · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Name
- Hervé Bazin
- Born
- 17 April 1911
- Birthplace
- Angers, Francis
- Died
- 17 February 1996
- Place of death
- Angers, France
- Education
- University of Paris
- Occupation
- writer
- Full name
- Jean Pierre Marie Hervé-Bazin.
- Nationality
- France
- Honours
- Prix Guillaume Apollinaire · Prince Pierre Award · Lenin Peace Prize · Prix de l'Humour noir · Paulée de Meursault Prize · Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour
- Languages
- French
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Hervé Bazin (lang; 17 April 191117 February 1996) was a French writer, whose best-known novels covered semi-autobiographical topics of teenage rebellion and dysfunctional families.
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Authority files
wikidata · Q358479 · wikipedia · Hervé Bazin
In this article
Biography
Biography
Hervé Bazin studied at Faculty of Arts of Paris. The recorded working language is French. Residence is recorded at Chelles and Angers. Positions recorded include president. Distinctions recorded are Prix Guillaume Apollinaire, Prince Pierre Award, Lenin Peace Prize and Prix de l'Humour noir.
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Hervé Bazin • Born — 17 April 1911 • Birthplace — Angers, Francis • Died — 17 February 1996 • Place of death — Angers, France • Education — University of Paris • Occupation — writer
Biography
Biography
Bazin, born Jean-Pierre Hervé-Bazin in Angers, Maine-et-Loire, France came from a high-bourgeois Catholic family. He was the great-nephew of the writer René Bazin. His father was a magistrate who with his wife had been sent to China to take up a diplomatic post. Hervé and his brother were brought up in the ancestral home, the chateau of Le Patys, by their grandmother. When she died, his mother returned from Hanoi with reluctance. She sent Bazin to a variety of clerical establishments and then to the military academy, the Prytanée de la Fleche, from which he was expelled as incompetent. He opposed his authoritarian mother, ran away several times during his teens, and refused Catholic teachings. At the age of 20 he broke up with his family. Leaving his home for Paris, he took a degree in literature at the Sorbonne. During fifteen years of writing poetry with little success, Bazin worked in many small jobs. Notable work of this period included founding a poetic review, la Coquille (The Shell, only eight volumes), named after the medieval poet-beggars, the coquillards of Villon's days, and "À la poursuite d'Iris" in 1948. He won the 1947 Prix Apollinaire for Jour, his first book of poetry. Following the advice of Paul Valéry, he left poetry to focus on prose. Childhood conflicts with his mother inspired the novel Viper in the Fist in 1948. The novel portrays the hatred between a mother nicknamed Folcoche (from the French "folle" (crazy) and "cochonne" (pig) and her children, including the narrator Jean Rezeau, called "Brasse-bouillon". The book was immensely successful in postwar France, and was followed by La Mort du Petit Cheval and Le Cri de la Chouette to create a trilogy. In other works, Bazin returned to the theme of the family. In addition to novels, he also wrote short stories and essays. Bazin became a member of the Académie Goncourt in 1958, replacing Francis Carco. He became its president in 1973, and was replaced, after his death, by Jorge Semprún, while the presidency was given to François Nourissier. Politically, Bazin belonged to the Mouvement de la Paix, in relation with the communist party of which he was a sympathizer. He obtained the Lenin Peace Prize in 1979. This made Roger Peyrefitte say jokingly: "Hervé Bazin had two prizes which fitted each other: the Lenin Peace Prize and the black humour prize." In 1995, he gave his manuscripts and letters to the record office of the town of Nancy, which already owned the archives of the Goncourt brothers, who originated from the town. Bazin died in Angers. Due to a juridical imbroglio, the six children of his first marriages obtained, against the will of his last spouse and last son, the auction of the archive at the Hôtel Drouot on 29 October 2004. With help from the district's authorities, the university library of Angers managed to preempt almost the whole of the estate, meaning 22 manuscripts and about 9000 letters which were made available to the research community, as the author wished.
Orthography and punctuation
Orthography and punctuation
In his 1966 essay Plumons l’Oiseau ("Let's pluck the bird"): Bazin proposed a nearly phonemic orthography for the French language called "l’ortografiǝ lojikǝ" (logical orthography).: • Letter — Name — Name (IPA) — Note • a — a (wvèr) — • (á) — a fèrmé — optional • e — e • é — é • è — è • œ — œ (wvèr) — • (œ́) — œ fèrmé — optional • o — ɔ (wvèr) — • ó — ó (fèrmé) — — required • i — i • u — u • w — w — ou vowel • ã — ã • ẽ — ẽ • õ — õ • œ̃ — œ̃ • b — bé • k — ké • d — dé • f — fé • g — gé — always hard • h — hé — soft ch • j — jé • l — lé • m — mé • n — né • ñ — ñé —, • p — pé • r — ré • s — sé — never voiced • t — té • v — vé • z — zé • y — yé • u͐ — u͐e • w͐ — w͐e • ɔ — le siñə dur — /h/ where necessary • ə — le siñə mw — sometimes-silent /e/ • × — le siñə du pluryèl ɛ̃sonor — sometimes-silent plural (e.g. femmes → fam×) • ◌̇ — le point de différenciation — marker of homophones (e.g. ça → ṡa, whereas sa → sa)
Punctuation marks
Punctuation marks
He also proposed six new "points d’intonation" (punctuation marks): Example: • Standard orthography — Ortografiǝ lojikǝ • J’aime, dit l’amant, Je parle, dit le député, J’enseigne, dit le professeur, Je règne, dit le roi, Je crois, dit le moine, Je pense, dit le philosophe, Je trouve, dit le savant... — J’èmǝ di l’amã, Je parlǝ, di le député, J’ãsèñǝ, di le profèsœr, Je rèñǝ di le rw͐a, Je krw͐a di le mw͐anǝ, Je pãsǝ, di le filozofǝ, Je trwvǝ, di le savã...
Identity and origins
Identity and origins
Hervé Bazin was recorded at birth as Jean Pierre Marie Hervé-Bazin. He also worked under the names Hervé Bazin and Jean Marbolivien. The authorities additionally record the heading Herve Bazin.
Identity
Identity
Rat hybridomas and rat monoclonal antibodies / editor, Hervé Bazin. Recorded as poet, writer and essayist.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
Explore 1911–1996
The full dated record · 3 entries
1911
Hervé Bazin born at Lille.
1990
Rat hybridomas and rat monoclonal antibodies / editor, Hervé Bazin. is dated [1990] and held by Wellcome Collection.
1996
Hervé Bazin died at Angers.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Chelles, Angers and Mont-Saint-Aignan
Residences
Lille.
Birth place
Angers.
Death place
Published works
• Jour, poems, 1947 • A la poursuite d'Iris, poems, 1948 • Vipère au poing (Viper in the Fist), autobiographical novel, 1948 • La Tête contre les murs, novel, publié en 1949 • La Mort du petit cheval, autobiographical novel, 1950 • Le bureau des mariages, short stories, 1951 • Lève-toi et marche, novel, 1952 • Humeurs, poems, 1953 • Contre vents et marées, 1953 • L'Huile sur le feu, novel, 1954 • Qui j'ose aimer, novel, 1956 • La fin des asiles, essay, 1959 • Au nom du fils, novel, 1960 • Chapeau bas, short stories, 1963: Chapeau bas, Bouc émissaire, La hotte, M. le conseiller du coeur, Souvenirs d'un amnésique, Mansarde à louer, La Clope • Plumons l'oiseau, essay, 1966 • Le Matrimoine, novel, 1967 • Les bienheureux de La Désolation, account, 1970 • Le Cri de la chouette, autobiographical novel, 1972 • Madame Ex, novel, 1975 • Traits, 1976 • Ce que je crois, 1977 • Un feu dévore un autre feu, 1978 • L'Église verte, novel, 1981 • Qui est le prince?, 1981 • Abécédaire, 1984 • Le Démon de minuit, 1988 • L'École des pères, novel, 1991 • Le grand méchant doux, 1992 • Le Neuvième jour, 1994
Primary material
Documents and archives
Institutional database
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q358479: Hervé Bazin
Scholarly · Wikimedia Foundation
reference work
- “Hervé Bazin”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
Literature
Literature
Hervé Bazin: impressions de séduction à la lumière de la stylistique
Bazin, Hervé, Kindlers Literatur Lexikon (KLL), 2020
Bazin, Hervé: Vipère au poing, Kindlers Literatur Lexikon (KLL), 2020
Hervé Bazin et le baptême de l’air – gratification du dieu Éther, Cahiers ERTA, 2018
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Encyclopædia Britannica. Hervé Bazin.
- 2.Kirkup, James. Obituary: Herve Bazin. The Independent. 23 February 1996.
- 3.Peyrefitte, Roger. L'illustre écrivain : roman. Éditions Albin Michel. 434. 1982. 978-2-226-01482-5.
- 4.Bazin, Hervé. Plumons l'oiseau. Éditions Bernard Grasset. 142. 1966.
- 5.Yevstifeyev, Mykyta. Revised preliminary proposal to encode six punctuation characters introduced by Hervé Bazin in the UCS. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2. February 28, 2012.
- 6.Crezo, Adrienne. 13 Little-Known Punctuation Marks We Should Be Using. Mental Floss. October 5, 2012.
- 7.Bazin, Hervé. Plumons l'oiseau. Éditions Bernard Grasset. 192/190. 1966.
- 8.Sequel to "Vipère au poing"
- 9.The story of the total population evacuation of the island of Tristan da Cunha (also known as "La Désolation") following the 1961 volcanic eruption, their refusal of the consumerist society of England, where they had been resettled, and their iron will to come back to their island and repopulate one of the hardest places to live in the world, and live according to their own ideal. Published in English as Tristan: A Novel.
- 10.A sequel to "Vipère au poing" and "La mort du petit cheval"
Bibliography printed in the source article · 1
- Jean-Louis de Rambures, "Comment travaillent les écrivains", Paris 1978 (interview with Hervé Bazin, in French)
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
Institutional database
Wikidata, structured authority record Q358479: Hervé BazinWikimedia Foundation
Verifiedreference work
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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