Philéas Lebesgue

• Name — Philéas Lebesgue • Birth Name — Philéas Ernest Lebesgue • Born — 26 November 1869 • Birthplace — La Neuville-Vault, Picardy, France • Died — 11 October 1958 • Place of death — La Neuville-Vault, Picardy, France • Occupation — Essayist • translator • poet • novelist • literary critic • Notable Works — Mercure de France (editor) • Illustration — A bust of Philéas Lebesgue in Beauvais

Philéas Lebesgue was born on 26 November 1869 in La Neuville-Vault, Picardy, France, to a family of farmers. He later embarked on a literary career, which included travels to Portugal, Greece, and the former Yugoslavia, the three countries for which he contributed literary chronicles to Mercure de France. After studying Latin, English, and Greek in college, Lebesgue went on to learn additional languages and wrote his first poems. In 1896, he became an editor at Mercure de France, an international journal. He served as the chronicler of "Portuguese Letters," a role he held until 1951. In 1913, he was one of the few critics to discover and appreciate the great Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. Philéas Lebesgue studied at least sixteen foreign languages, including German, English, Danish, Spanish, Galician, Welsh, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, and Czech. He also learned Sanskrit, Old French, and three regional French languages: Breton, Provençal, and Picard. He contributed to various foreign language magazines, including L'Arte (Coimbra, 1895–1896), Atlantida (Lisbon, 1917), O Mundo (Lisbon, 1915), The Panathenaic (Athens, 1910), Periodikon nios (Piraeus, 1900), and The Vos (Madrid, 1923). Starting in 1926, Lebesgue chaired the Academy of the Ten Provinces and the League of Provincial Writers, both of which aimed to unite regional writers from France's foreign and colonial territories. In his early years, Lebesgue was a Symbolist poet, writing both in traditional verse and free verse. His poems often evoked the landscapes of his native region, Bray. In addition to being a novelist, songwriter, playwright, literary critic, columnist, and translator, Lebesgue also served as mayor of La Neuville-Vault from 1908 to 1947. His works were inspired by nature, history, rural life, his travels, and esotericism. Lebesgue died in his hometown of La Neuville-Vault on 11 October 1958, at the age of 88.

The esotericism of Philéas Lebesgue was as poetic as that of his friend Oscar Milosz. In 1911, he joined the French Celtic League, founded by poet Robert Pelletier, to challenge the "misconceptions" about the Latin character of France. He later accepted the position of Grand Druide des Gaules, the spiritual authority of the Collège Bardique des Gaules, which was established in 1933 by poet and music publisher Jacques Heugel. He was already a Breton bard when he received the second prize from L'Hermine in 1892.

The Société des Amis de Philéas Lebesgue, or Association of Friends of Philéas Lebesgue, was founded in 1930 by teachers Camille Belliard and Marius Alphonse Gossez. The purpose of the association is to promote the life and work of the writer.

• Gahisto (P.-M.), Au cœur des provinces - Philéas Lebesgue, Roubaix, Ed. du Beffroi, 1908, 80 p. • Gossez (A.-M.), Les Célébrités d'aujourd'hui - Philéas Lebesgue, Paris, Ed. Sansot, 1924, 32 p. • Striegler (Helmut), "Inaugural-Dissertation": Philéas Lebesgue, ein Dichter der Pikardie, Université de Leipzig, 1934 (Study published in 1935 in Germany). • Roger Berrou, Philéas Lebesgue le Paysan de l'Univers, in volume 1 of Œuvres poétiques, 1950, 131 p., reissued by the Société des Amis de Philéas Lebesgue, 1996. • Pierre Garnier (poet), Philéas Lebesgue, poète de Picardie, coll. Éklitra, imp. Sinet, Grandvilliers, 43 p., 1967 • Gisèle Le Crocq, Philéas Lebesgue et la Grèce, Diploma thesis, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences of Aix-en-Provence, 1967-1968, 163 p. - Reissued in the Bulletin des Amis de Philéas Lebesgue (No. 38 of 2004 to No. 42 of 2008). • André Camus, Jean Dubillet, and Pierre Garnier, Le centenaire de Philéas Lebesgue, Eklitra, Amiens, 1969, 35 p. • François Beauvy, Le Paysage dans l'œuvre poétique de Philéas Lebesgue, DEA thesis, University of Picardy -Jules Verne, 1994, published in 1995 by the Society of Friends of Philéas Lebesgue, 150 pages. • Anton Figueroa, Lecturas alleas - Sobre das relacions con outras literaturas, Santiago de Compostele, Ed. Gotelo blanco, 1996, 155 p. (Published in Spain, deals with the correspondence of Philéas Lebesgue with Galician-speaking writers). • Claudio Veiga, Um Brasilianista francês - Philéas Lebesgue, Rio de Janeiro, Ed. Topbooks, 1998, 185 p. (Published in Brazil). • François Beauvy, section on Philéas Lebesgue, in the Dictionnaire de biographie française, Paris, Ed. Letouzey et Ané, tome XX, booklet 115, 2003. • François Beauvy, Philéas Lebesgue et ses correspondants en France et dans le monde, doctoral thesis, University of Paris X - Nanterre, 2003, published in 2004, Beauvais, Ed. Awen, 674 p. et 16 p. off-text by Philéas Lebesgue and his colleagues. • Illustration — Philéas Lebesgue, at home, December 1949