Francis Jammes

Francis Jammes (1868 – 1938) was a French poet who also wrote novels and plays. He spent most of his life in Béarn and the French Basque Country, and those rural landscapes were the main source of his inspiration. His work is known for its lyricism and for celebrating humble country life, with donkeys, young girls and simple daily tasks at its centre. He is remembered as one of the poets who moved away from symbolism toward a plainer, more direct tone.

His youth was academically unremarkable. After studying in Pau and Bordeaux, he failed his final examinations and began writing poems, which he sent to magazines and which his mother paid to have printed. He worked as a clerk in a notary's office in his home town. Around 1895 he committed fully to poetry, and his early verses drew the attention of Mallarmé and André Gide, with whom he travelled to Algeria in 1896. His first major collection, De l'Angélus de l'aube à l'Angélus du soir, appeared in 1897 or 1898 depending on the source, and Le Deuil des Primevères followed soon after.

Around 1905 he returned to a demanding Catholic practice, and religious themes grew stronger and his voice more austere. He married in 1907 and settled in northern France with a large family. He kept writing steadily, but his later work never regained the audience he had enjoyed early on. In Paris he was regarded as a remote provincial poet, though he corresponded with leading writers and visited literary salons. He was proposed for membership of the Académie française several times but was never elected.

His legacy is that of a poet of simplicity and faith whose rural tone influenced later writers. His work also inspired music: Darius Milhaud wrote an opera based on La Brebis égarée, and Georges Brassens adapted one of his poems for his song La Prière.