Michel Leiris (1901–90) was a French writer. He was a pioneer in modern confessional literature and was a noted anthropologist, poet, and art critic.
Born in Paris, Leiris studied at the Sorbonne (University of Paris) and the School for Advanced Scientific and Religious Studies. After an early involvement with the Surrealist movement (1925–29,) he joined the trans-African Dakar-Djibouti expedition of 1931–33. He took up anthropology as a profession and traveled in Africa and the Caribbean.
Leiris’s writings, many of them autobiographical, like L’Age d’homme (1939; Manhood, 1966) and La Règle du jeu (4 voles, 1948–76, ‘The Rules of the Game,’) are marked by a consuming interest in poetry. He combined anthropology with a distinguished career as a literary and art critic.
Leiris’s major works include L’Afrique fantôme (1934; Phantom Africa, 2018) and Afrique noire: La création plastique (1967; with Jacqueline Delange; African Art, 1968.)
Leiris served as director of research at the National Centre for Scientific Research 1935–70. His Journal 1922–89 was published in 1992.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Michel Leiris
Nothing seems more like a whorehouse to me than a museum. In it you find the same equivocal aspect, the same frozen quality.
—Michel Leiris
Topics: Museums
Dream is not a revelation. If a dream affords the dreamer some light on himself, it is not the person with closed eyes who makes the discovery but the person with open eyes lucid enough to fit thoughts together. Dream—a scintillating mirage surrounded by shadows—is essentially poetry.
—Michel Leiris
Topics: Dreams
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