Pozzi, Catherine (1882-1934). French poet and diarist whose reputation will surely grow. Her formative influences were a reaction against religion and disunited parents. A marriage to the playwright Édouard Bourdet in 1909 led to divorce. Their only son, Claude Bourdet, became a noted left-wing journalist. In 1920 she began a stormy affair with Paul Valéry, on whose intellectual plane she easily manœuvred and to whose Cahiers she made a considerable editorial contribution. Her short story ‘Agnès’ appeared in 1927. From 1926 to 1934 she wrote six remarkable poems, ‘Vale’, ‘Ave’, ‘Nova’, ‘Scopolamine’, ‘Maya’, and ‘Nyx’. A philosophical essay, Peau d'Âme, appeared posthumously in 1935. Her important Journal 1913-1934 was published in 1987. Striking a sharp and occasionally caustic note from highly strung syntax, she frankly records in it her often anguished struggle for female selfhood, spiritual authenticity, and intellectual communion in the glitzy world of Parisian haute société and within the framework of her disintegrating health.
[David Steel]
