Born in New
Zealand, he was the eldest son of Auckland architect Robert Wladislas de
Montalk, grandson of Paris-born Professor Count Joseph Wladislas Edmond Potocki
de Montalk, and great-grandson of Polish-born Count Jozef Franciszek Jan
Potocki, the Insurgent, of Białystok.
In 1926, de
Montalk left his wife and small daughter in New Zealand to be a poet by
"...follow(ing) the golden road to Samarkand". He travelled to
England but moved in 1949 to Draguignan in the south of France where he
obtained land and a ramshackle stone cottage – the Villa Vigoni – deep in the
Provençal countryside.
In 1932 he
was arrested after attempting to publish a manuscript of erotic translations of
works by Rabelais and Verlaine, with three short bawdy verses of his own. He
appeared before Sir Ernest Wild, Recorder of London at the Central Criminal
Court and after a celebrated trial – at which he was supported by Leonard and
Virginia Woolf and many of the leading writers of the day – he was sentenced to
six months in Wormwood Scrubs.
He emerged
from prison bitter and determined to flout English convention. He adopted a
mock-medieval style of dress, wearing sandals and a crimson tunic, and a cloak
made from a length of scarlet curtain he had begun wearing soon after arrival
in London and had worn during his trial. His hair, which had been allowed to
grow in prison, continued to grow until it was waist length. After his release
he travelled to Warsaw, where he was well received and reported on by the
newspapers.
He did not
return to New Zealand until 1983. Between 1984 and 1993, he followed the sun by
spending summers in either New Zealand or France. He died at Brignoles in
France in 1997 and was buried at Draguignan.
Thanks Thomas
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