Georges Schehade
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Georges Schehade in Paris, 1987
Born	1905 Alexandria , Egypt
Died	1989 Paris , France
Burial place	Montparnasse Cemetery
Nationality	Lebanese
Occupation(s)	Poet, writer, screenwriter
Awards	Grand prix de la francophonie (1986)

Georges Schehade ( Arabic : ???? ????? ; 2 November 1905 ? 17 January 1989) was a Lebanese playwright and poet writing in French .

Life and career [ edit ]

Georges Schehade was born in Alexandria , Egypt , into an aristocratic Lebanese Greek Orthodox family that originated in the Hauran region of Syria. ^[1] He spent most of his life in Beirut , Lebanon . His sister was the novelist, Laurice Schehade . He studied law at the American University of Beirut and became a general secretary at the Ecole Superieure de Lettres in 1945.

In 1930, Saint-John Perse published Schehade's first poems in the literary magazine Commerce . During his first travel to Europe in 1933 he met Max Jacob and Jules Supervielle . After World War II , he frequently stayed in Paris where he sympathized with the Surrealists , especially with Andre Breton and Benjamin Peret .

Between 1938 and 1951, Georges Schehade wrote four small books of poetry that Gallimard published in 1952 under the title Les Poesies .

The year before Georges Vitaly produced Schehade's first play, Monsieur Bob'le , at the Theatre de la Huchette , and it got very controversial reviews. Most critics didn't like it at all but several poets and actors ? amongst them Andre Breton, Rene Char , Georges Limbour , Benjamin Peret, Henri Pichette and Gerard Philipe ? were very fond of it and wrote a couple of articles in Le Figaro Litteraire .

In 1954, Jean-Louis Barrault produced his second play, La Soiree des proverbes , that hadn't any success either. Only in 1956, with his third play, Histoire de Vasco (world premiered at Schauspielhaus Zurich ), Schehade wrote a work that was staged all over the world and translated into more than 25 languages. In 1974, the British composer Gordon Crosse (translation and libretto by Ted Hughes ) made an opera out of this play: The Story of Vasco , premiered by Sadler's Wells Opera at the Coliseum Theatre in London .

From 1960 to 1965, Schehade wrote three other plays, Les Violettes (1960), Le Voyage (1961) and L'Emigre de Brisbane (1965) that entered the repertoire of the Comedie-Francaise in 1967. It was his last play.

In 1985, after a long period of silence, Georges Schehade published his last book of poetry, Le Nageur d'un seul amour , a collection of poems he had written between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. He died on 17 January 1989 in Paris and was buried in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse . His wife Brigitte died in 1998. ^{[ citation needed ]}

Georges Schehade was mentioned to have influenced Nassim Nicholas Taleb in Taleb's youth, mentioned the postface of The Bed of Procrustes .

Works [ edit ]

Poetry [ edit ]

• Etincelles , Edition de la Pensee latine, Paris 1928
• Poesies I , GLM, Paris 1938
• Poesies II , GLM, Paris 1948
• Poesies III , GLM, Paris 1949
• Poesies Zero ou L'Ecolier Sultan (written in 1928/29), GLM, Paris 1950
• Si tu rencontres un ramier (later called Poesies IV ), GLM, Paris 1951
• Les Poesies (Poesie I?IV), Gallimard, Paris 1952, reprinted in paperback edition Poesie/Gallimard 1969, 2001 and 2009
• Poesies V (1972)
• Le Nageur d'un seul amour (= Poesies VI ), Gallimard, Paris 1985
• Poesies VII (last poems), Editions Dar An-Nahar, Beyrouth 1998

Plays [ edit ]

• Monsieur Bob'le , Gallimard, Paris 1951
• La Soiree des proverbes , Gallimard, Paris 1954
• Histoire de Vasco , Gallimard, Paris 1956
• Les Violettes , Gallimard, Paris 1960
• Le Voyage , Gallimard, Paris 1961
• L'Emigre de Brisbane , Gallimard, Paris 1965
• L'Habit fait le prince (written in 1957), pantomime, Gallimard, Paris 1973

Other works [ edit ]

• Rodogune Sinne ("novel", published in 1942, 1947; written in 1929)
• Goha (screenplay), 1958
• Anthologie du vers unique , Ramsay, Paris 1977

References [ edit ]

External links [ edit ]

• Georges Schehade in IMEC (Institut Memoires de l'Edition Contemporaine)
• The Story of Vasco, latest production in UK