JEAN-CLAUDE DIAMANT-BERGER (1920-1944)
par
Biography
Born on March 7, 1920 in Paris, he studied at the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-Le Grand (bachelor's degree and graduate of the School of Photography). Very young, he was inhabited by what he himself would call "verbal passion attacks, René-like despairs and febrile admirations." But always these dreams and these deliriums, he describes them, he writes them—for his most devouring passion is writing.
He was completely imbued with LAUTREAMONT, GERARD DE NERVAL, RIMBAUD. He meets a group of young followers of ANDRE BRETON. He is dazzled by it, retaining from surrealism the definition "of a poetry that would change dream into action."
A leftist man, pacifist, on May 25, 1940, he is arrested by the French police for distributing pacifist leaflets and for his membership in the Fourth International. On June 10, at the time of the evacuation of the Santé prison, he escapes and manages to reach the free zone on September 15—Arrived in the south, mobilizable, he is assigned to the Youth Worksites. He is demobilized in January 1941 and manages to leave France in September 1941. On July 21, 1942, he arrives in London where he is sent to the Free France Cadet School (equivalent of St Cyr). In 1943, upon leaving the Free France Cadet School, he becomes a paratrooper aspirant (Fezzan Tunisia promotion) and does [ missing text ]. In 1944, he arrives in Bayeux, where he is assigned to the photo-press-cinema service and photographs for the July 14 celebration in Caen.
On July 18 or July 24, 1944 (uncertain date), it is on a mission on the banks of the Orne that he is killed.
He is buried in the British cemetery of Ranville.—He has his name at the Panthéon on the plaque dedicated to poets who died in the field of honor and a stele in the Garden of Poets Porte d'Auteuil Paris.
In his capacity as a paratrooper, 3rd SAS Battalion-3rd R.C.P, his name appears on the SAS memorial in Sennecey Le Grand near Chalons sur Saone since September 2002.
A surrealist poet, he is a member of several journals: "Réverbères' (1938-1939), of "FIARI" ↑, of "La Main à plume" (1941-1944).
Bibliography
poems, booklet prefaced by Raymond Aron, published in London, 1944
Poems, L'Eternelle revue - Eluard, 1945 (collective intervention)
The Resistance and its Poets France 1940-1945 Pierre Seghers Editions
Poems of Éverlor, Pierre Seghers, 1951
Coloring in honor of Federico Garcia Lorca dead, GLM, 1971 -Collective intervention
Journals:
Les Réverbères (1938-1939), Clé ↑.
Collective exhibitions: Les Réverbères (cat., 1938)
Book: Forgotten Poet, Unknown Friend, Glyphe & Biotem Edition, April 2004
Extract:
FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF HISTORY
Here I am, emerged from childhood still dazzled by baptism
and knowing nothing but by memory and I look at myself weeping
Naked before my life and in my hands a few prayers
and alone my riches where are they? I remember my
parents
my country, my friends, the old songs of my soul
they wander over there on the other side of history
and I am alone and I look at the ocean near me the wind like
a mount
sighs and grows impatient and gently I caress it
and the sun opposite rises thread by thread
like a spider in the walls and its yellow belly breathes.
I will sing all at once about the century
and pour out to them in one great stroke these words that burn me
and that writhe in my chest like the trees of
autumn
that the wind lifts it pulls them head back
and slits their throat; in the rivers heavy as
chrysanthemums
their blood falls in drops of iron
How to hold back these poems and who will lend me the hands of
Phoebus
who holds back the drunken horses of the sun and who twists them on
themselves and makes them return to their lair
while the mother trembles like a woman and the
autumn birds
shudder in the leaves like the honey of bees
in the wax.
......................