Valery Larbaud

Valery Larbaud

French writer and poet. Larbaud became a friend and admirer of Joyce after they met in 1920, and he loaned the Joyce family a Paris apartment during the summer of 1921. On 7 December 1921, Larbaud famously gave a séance on Ulysses in Adrienne Monnier's Paris bookshop, La Maison des Amis des Livres. Published as an article entitled "James Joyce" in the Nouvelle revue française 18, no. 103 (1 April 1922): 385-409, it was one of the earliest enthusiastic French responses to Joyce's work. Larbaud later supervised the French translation of Ulysses, published in 1929. Joyce's contact with Larbaud diminished in the 1930s, though he remained in touch after Larbaud suffered a stroke in 1935, which resulted in aphasia and partial paralysis. Dirk Van Hulle and William Brockman