Pierre Klossowski

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Pierre Klossowski. Photo: Jean-Regis Rouston.

Pierre Klossowski (9 August 1905, Paris – 12 August 2001, Paris) was a novelist, visual artist, translator, philosopher, critic, and actor. He was born in Paris to parents of noble Polish origin; his younger brother, the painter Balthus, arrived three years later. Rainer Maria Rilke, his mother's lover, introduced the young Klossowski to André Gide, for whom he worked as a secre­ tary during the period of the composition of The Counterfeiters. Klossowski translated Holderlin in collaboration with the author Pierre Jean Jouve, joined Georges Bataille in both the review and secret society Acéphale, and flirted with entering a monastery during the years of World War II--an experience recounted and satirized in his first novel, The Suspended Vocation. In 1947, Klossowski married the Resistance member Marie-Roberte Morin-Sinclaire, who, lightly fictionalized, became the central figure in his trilogy of erotic-philosophical novels known under the collective title The Laws of Hospitality'.

Klossowski appeared in Robert Bresson's film Au hasard Balthazar, collaborated with the Chilean expatriate Raúl Ruiz on two films for television--including an adap­tation of The Suspended Vocation--and starred as his own character Octave in Pierre Zucca's film Roberte, which adapts scenes from the Laws of Hospitality novels.

Klossowski died at the age of ninety-six. (Source)

Works[edit]

Books[edit]

Sade mon prochain, 1947, PDF.
  • La Vocation suspendue, Paris: Gallimard, 1950. Novel. Excerpt.
    • La vocacion suspendida, trans. Michele Alban and Juan Garcia Ponce, Mexico: Era, 1975. (Spanish)
    • The Suspended Vocation, trans. Jeremy M. Davies and Anna Fitzgerald, intro. Brian Evenson, Small Press, 2020, 75 pp. (English)
  • Le Bain de Diane, Paris: Pauvert, 1956.
  • La Révocation de l'Édit de Nantes, Paris: Minuit, 1959; new ed. in Klossowski, Les Lois de l'hospitalité, Paris: Gallimard, 1965.
  • Le Souffleur ou Un théâtre de société, Paris: Pauvert, 1960; new ed. in Klossowski, Les Lois de l'hospitalité, Paris: Gallimard, 1965.
  • Un si funeste désir, Paris: Gallimard, 1963. Collection of essays.
  • Les Lois de l'hospitalité, Paris: Gallimard, 1965. Contains augmented versions of trilogy of the 'Roberte' novels: La Révocation de l'Édit de Nantes; Roberte, ce soir; and Le Souffleur.
  • Le Baphomet, Paris: Mercure de France, 1965.
    • The Baphomet, trans. Sophie Hawkes and Stephen Sartarelli, forew. Michel Foucault, Hygiene, CO: Eridanos Press, 1988. (English)
  • Origines cultuelles et mythiques d'un certain comportement des Dames Romaines, Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1968; new ed., 2010.
  • La monnaie vivante, Paris: Joëlle Losfield, 1970; repr., 1994, 79 pp; new ed., Paris: Gallimard, 2003. With photographs by Pierre Zucca.
  • L'adolescent immortel, Paris: Gallimard, 2001.
    • The Immortal Adolescent, trans. Catherine Petit and Paul Buck, London: Vauxhall&Company, 2014. (English)

Selected essays[edit]

  • "Anthologie des écrits de Pierre Klossowski sur l'art", in Pierre Klossowski, Paris: Fondation nationale des arts graphiques et plastiques, 1990, 162-199. Section in exhibition catalogue.
  • Écrits d'un monomane: essais 1933-1939, Paris: Gallimard, 2001.
  • Tableaux vivants: essais critiques, 1936-1983, Paris: Gallimard, 2001.

Book chapters, papers, statements[edit]

  • "Lettre sur Walter Benjamin", Mercure de France 315, 1952, pp 456-457; repr. in Klossowski, Tableaux vivants: essais critiques, 1936-1983, Paris: Gallimard, 2001.

Literature[edit]

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