Louys, Pierre
LOUYS, PIERRE (1870- ), French novelist and poet, was born in Paris on the loth 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, Mallarm6 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 Bililis, 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). Louys married in 1899 Louise de Heredia, younger daughter of the poet.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
