Georges Chennevière


Georges Chennevière was the pen name of Leon Debille a French poet and playwright.

Biography

Georges Chennevière studied at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, where he met Jules Romains with whom he formed a community of artists called the Abbaye de Créteil beginning in 1905. He was one of the leading poets in the "Unanimism movement". He left a body of poetic work and some plays. His Chant de midi inspired Albert Doyen to compose a body of choral work with organ and orchestra, created in 1919 on the occasion of the Fêtes du Peuple. Called to the army in 1914, he served as a soldier then nurse, his experiences at the front fomenting a hatred of war that explained his subsequent commitments. A critic and contributor to magazines such as L'Effort Libre, Les Hommes du Jour, he also participated in the creation of the Clarté movement in 1919 in which he became its secretary. But having closer ties to Romain Rolland than Barbusse, he resigned in June 1919. In July of that year he began writing for L'Humanité where Jules Romains held a literary column. He remained with the paper until the end of 1923, during which he worked as a literary and music critic. Declining to join the French Communist Party, he left the paper for Le Quotidien, a more neutral one.
French critic Christian Senechal noted of him, in the French:
He was the father of the poet André Chennevière, born in 1908, a literary critic for L'Humanité from 1937 to 1939, killed by the Germans during the Liberation of Paris on August 20, 1944.

Selected publications

;Poetry
;Novel
;Theater
;In collaboration with Jules Romains