Jammes, Francis (1868-1938). The poet of the south-west of France, where he spent his life, Jammes celebrated the beauty and authenticity of the experience of nature. His first volume, De l'Angélus de l'aube à l'Angélus du soir (1898), made him the most admired poet of the ‘naturist’ anti- Symbolist movement and a major representative of the tradition of provincial literature established during the 19th c. The apparent spontaneity of his poetic language, which included the full resources of the vers libre, does not disguise the mastery with which he created a naïve, lyrical, occasionally melancholic vision of the countryside. Encouraged by Claudel, he returned to Catholicism. His subsequent work, notably L'Église habillée de feuilles (1906) and Géorgiques chrétiennes (1911-12), celebrate this rediscovered faith.
[James Kearns]
