Jules Supervielle

Jules Supervielle (born Jan. 16, 1884, Montevideo, Uruguay—died May 17, 1960, Paris, France) was a poet, dramatist, and short-story writer of Basque descent who wrote in the French language but in the Spanish tradition.

Supervielle’s themes are the love of a lonely but fraternal man for the pampas and for the open spaces of his South American childhood and his nostalgia for a cosmic brotherhood of men. His poems (Gravitations, 1925; Les Amis inconnus, 1934 [“The Unknown Friends”]; La Fable du monde, 1938 [“Fable of the World”]) are sensitive, sometimes humorous, sometimes precious. In his novels Le Voleur d’enfants (1926; “The Kidnapper”) and L’Enfant de la haute mer (1931; “The Child of the High Seas”), he allies fantasy and simplicity. His plays La Belle au bois (1932; “The Beauty of the Wood”) and Robinson (1949) constitute an escape into a land of fantasy.