Petrus Borel

 

Petrus Borel was a co-founder and leader of the Jeunes-France / Bouzingo group, a key theorist of the first-generation avant-garde, one of the most prominent and politically outspoken Romanticist organizers and agitators of his generation, and the standard-bearer for the revolutionary-gothic subculture known as Frenetic Romanticism. Despite--or perhaps because of--all this, his presence even within the avant-garde has been almost occult since his death, only a few years after the beginning of the Third Empire, under which any public celebration of this flamboyantly transgressive figure would have been politically dangerous--and indeed his memory was kept alive during this time primarily among Leftist-Romanticist communities (the first biography of Borel was written by Jules Claretie, a historian of revolutionary movements and a member of the Paris Commune (see below). Nonetheless, Borel has been read by and exercised a strong influence upon a small but active element of the avant-garde ever since, including Baudelaire, Lautréamont, Claretie, Jarry, Tzara, and Breton. Full biography and numerous translated texts can be found under the respective tabs.