Paul Léon

Paul Léon

Born in tsarist Russia where he studied and then taught sociology and philosophy. After the revolution he fled, first to England and then to Paris where he moved in émigré circles that in the thirties included Vladimir Nabokov. He married Lucie who would support the family as a fashion journalist for the New York Herald Tribune, while her husband published translations of letters by the last tsar and his mother, an edition of the letters of Madame de Staël to Benjamin Constant and in 1930 a short biography of Benjamin Constant in "Maîtres des littératures", a popular series published by Rieder.

Léon met JJ in 1928 and he quickly became the writer's secretary for the work on Finnegans Wake and his unpaid legal representative when JJ was engaged in one of his frequent campaigns against presumed enemies or former friends. In the thirties, most of JJ's business administration is in the hand of Léon, and especially in the second half of the decade, Léon functioned as JJ's bulldog. As a result, JJ himself could disappear above and behind his handiwork, while by passing on the writer's not always friendly messages, Léon made enemies, among them T. S. Eliot.

After the German invasion, Léon helped JJ and his family escape Paris for Vichy, in the "free" sector of France, but the family returned to the capital because their son had to pass his baccalauréat exams. There they saved JJ's papers and brought them to the Irish embassy, so they ended up in the National Library of Ireland. When JJ's possessions were sold to pay unpaid rent, Léon bought most of them. In August 1941 and despite having been warned by Samuel Beckett and others, Léon was arrested by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz where he was killed. Geert Lernout