Jean Moréas

pseudonym of Yánnis Papadiamantópoulos
born April 15, 1856, Athens, Greece
died March 31, 1910, Paris, France
Greek-born poet who played a leading part in
the French Symbolist movement.
Early inspired by a French governess who
instilled in him a passion for French
poetry, Moréas moved to Paris in 1879,
becoming a familiar figure in the literary
circles frequenting the cafés and in the
literary pages of newspapers and reviews. He
published two manifestos, one in XIXe Siècle
(Aug. 11, 1885) and one in the literary
supplement of Le Figaro (Sept. 18, 1886),
that helped establish the name Symbolism for
the movement that was growing out of and
replacing Decadence. In 1886, with Gustave
Kahn and Paul Adam, he founded the
periodical Le Symboliste.
Before Moréas immigrated to France, he
published one volume of verse, Tourterelles
et vipères (1878; “Turtledoves and Vipers”),
in Greek and French. His first wholly French
volumes, Les Syrtes (1884) and Les
Cantilènes (1886), were firmly embedded in
the Decadent and Symbolist aesthetics. In
the preface to Le Pèlerin passioné (1891;
“The Passionate Pilgrim”), however, Moréas
began to forsake Symbolism; there he called
for a return to the spirit of classicism.
Moréas founded the école romane (“Roman
school”) and, with his disciples Raymond de
la Tailhède, Maurice du Plessys, Ernest
Raynaud, and Charles Maurras, reverted to
classical forms and subject matter; free
verse was abandoned and classical sources of
inspiration were used. Énone au clair visage
(1893) and Eriphyle (1894) are
representative of Moréas’ work during this
period; along with other poems, they were
later collected as Poèmes et sylves,
1886–1896 (1907; “Poems and Forests”).
Moréas wrote a verse play, Iphigénie à
Aulide (1903), which was closely inspired by
Euripides and which met with considerable
success when presented in the théâtre
antique of Orange and subsequently on the
stage of the Odéon in Paris. In Moréas’ last
work, Les Stances (1899–1920; “The
Stanzas”), his intellectual development is
chronicled with a vigorous yet melancholy
classicism.