Boris Vian, whose real name is Boris Paul Vian, was born on March 10, 1920 in Ville-d'Avray into a family of four children. French writer, poet, lyricist, singer, critic, jazz musician, more precisely trumpeter, he is also an engineer from the Ecole Centrale, translator, screenwriter, translator, lecturer and even actor and painter.
His childhood
Boris Vian was born into a wealthy family; his father, Paul Vian, and his mother, Yvonne Woldemar-Ravenez, each come from a wealthy family:an annuitant, Paul Vian inherited from his father whose fortune was built by a grandfather in artistic ironwork . The family even has the means to pay for a driver, a gardener, a hairdresser and a home teacher in their villa "Les Fauvette", located rue Pradier. All the children, Lélio, Boris, Alain and Ninon, can read from the age of four. The Vians led a “luxurious” life until the stock market crash of 1929, when they were forced to leave their villa with the children.
At the age of twelve, following infectious angina, Boris Vian suffered from cardiac rheumatism aggravated by other poorly treated illnesses, which led to a fatal heart disease. She will contribute to his death in 1959. His illness will appear in certain works such as L’Herbe rouge , The Heartsnatcher and The Foam of Days .
His studies
Boris Vian began his studies at the Collège de Sèvres, and continued them at the Lycée de Hoche, in Versailles where, at the age of fifteen, although he had typhoid fever, he passed his Latin-Greek baccalaureate with exemption. At the age of seventeen, he obtained the second baccalaureate in philosophy-mathematics-German at Lycée Condorcet. In 1939, he entered the Ecole Centrale des arts et manufactures where he graduated three years later with an engineering degree. During this period of study, Boris Vian is accompanied by jazz and organizes "surprise parties". In 1940, he fled the occupied zone and married Michelle Léglise in 1941, who trained him to translate from Anglo-American. From their union will be born a first child in 1942, Patrick, and a second, Carole, who will be born in 1948. In the same year of the birth of his son, Boris Vian becomes an engineer at AFNOR (French Association for Standardization). A year later, he became a trumpeter in Claude Abadie's amateur jazz orchestra which, after the war, was considered one of the best amateur jazz orchestras of the time. His model trumpeter is Bix Beiderbecke. Henri Salvador even said:“He was a Jazz lover, lived only for Jazz, only heard and expressed himself in Jazz. »
His posts
He published his first texts from 1944 to 1945 under a pseudonym, and met Raymond Queneau who helped him to publish Vercoquin et le Plancton by the Gallimard edition where he works. In 1946, Boris Vian left AFNOR and became an engineer at the Office du Papier. He met Sartre, collaborated with "Modern Times", then wrote I will go spitting on your graves , published under the pseudonym of Vernon Sullivan and which became the best seller of the year 1947. That same year, he would publish L’Ecume des jours . He gave up his job as an engineer and became the trumpet player and host of the “Tabou” orchestra. The trial of I will spit on your graves leads to its prohibition in 1949. A year later, its first two novels signed under the name of Sullivan are condemned. In 1951, he composed The Generals' Snack . He was then appointed first class knacker by the College of Pataphysics in 1952, and later became Satrap. He divorces Michelle the same year, and lives with difficulty in a maid's room by translating texts. Boris Vian married Ursula Kubler in 1954 and this was the start of his singing tour. He became artistic director at Philips, composed many songs as well as scenarios. He played roles in the cinema in 1959 as the cardinal of Paris in "Notre Dame de Paris" by Jean Delannoy, and Prévan in "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" by Roger Vadim. He refused to make the film I will spit on your graves and during the screening in Paris on June 23, 1959, Boris Vian had a heart attack and died on the way to the hospital:he was suffering from acute articular rheumatism which had caused him aortic insufficiency.
Boris Vian will have devoted his life to music, particularly to jazz for which he had a pure love, as well as to writing. In his lifetime, he will have written eleven novels, four collections of poems, several plays, short stories, film scripts and hundreds of songs; the best known remains the Deserter , written just before the Algerian war and which qualified him as an anarchist. His works were very successful between 1960 and 1970. Today, he appeals to a young readership, and he is described as an eternal teenager