Poet Paul-Jean Toulet was the son of a wealthy man living in
Mauritius. He was most famous for his opus describing La vie parisienne.
In France, he is mostly famous for a book of verse, Les
Contrerimes (Counterrimes). The book was published posthumously but many pieces
had been incorporated in his novels or published in literary magazines from
1910 to 1914. Toulet became a model to the fantasist poetic
movement from 1911 until the Great War. This explains the following comment
made on the reception of his works: "When two men who have read Paul-Jean
Toulet meet (usually in a bar), they immediately imagine it's a certain form of
aristocracy".
In 1897, Toulet received a copy of The Great God Pan by
Arthur Machen from a friend and he translated it the following year. It was
finally published in Le Plume in 1901 and then went unnoticed, except for
Maeterlinck's reaction "...combining the traditional and scientific
fantastic genres, it hits both our memories and hopes". Toulet engaged a
correspondence with Machen and visited him in London.
Toulet's own novel Pan du Paur was inspired by Machen.
Published in 1898 by Simonis Empris, it wasn't successful either. In 1918,
however, it was published again by the Éditions du Divan. This publishing
company was owned by Toulet's admirer Henri Martineau, who also led a
correspondence with the author.
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