Maurice Chappaz

Maurice Chappaz (21 December 1916, in Lausanne – 15 January 2009, in Martigny) was a French-language Swiss poet and writer. He published more than 40 books and won several literary awards, including his country's most notable award, the Grand Prix Schiller, in 1997. Born in Lausanne, Maurice Chappaz spent his childhood between Martigny and the abbey of Le Châble, in the Swiss canton of Valais. Born of a family of lawyers and solicitors, nephew of Valaisian secretary of State Maurice Troillet, he studied at Saint-Maurice Abbey High School, then he registered first in Law School at the University of Lausanne, but quickly left it to study littérature in the University of Geneva, which he also left a few months later. A poet above all, Maurice Chappaz published his first text, Un homme qui vivait couché sur un banc, in December 1939. On that occasion, he was encouraged by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz and Gustave Roud. But as of the summer of 1940, World War II put an end to his availability. He thus had to patrol the Swiss borders and published several texts in the review Lettres which were collected in 1944 into Les Grandes Journées de Printemps hailed by Paul Eluard. In 1942, he met S. Corinna Bille, painter Edmond Bille's daughter, whom he married in 1947 and with whom he had three children, Blaise, Achille and Marie-Noëlle. After Corinna's death in 1979, he remarried in 1992, with Michène Caussignac, widow of the travel-writer Lorenzo Pestelli. After the end of World War II, Maurice Chappaz travelled in Europe. Without any regular occupation and yearning to devote his time to writing, he became an occasional press correspondent while managing his uncle's vineyard in Valais. As he went through serious personal turmoil, he tried new experiences after another and his hand at different jobs while at the same time still more questions cropped up in his mind. In 1953, the publishing of the Testament du Haut-Rhône crowned a ten-year poetic quest.