Jean Jules Verdenal

Jean Jules Verdenal

Jean Jules Verdenal (11 May 1890 - 2 May 1915) was a French medical officer who served during the First World War. Verdenal and his life remain cloaked in obscurity, but we do know that he was born in Pau, France, and that he had a talent for foreign languages; he also possessed copies of Mallarmé's "Poésies" and of Laforgue's "Poésies" and "Moralités légendaires." [http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/exjean.html] It was perhaps Verdenal's literary inclinations that led him to become friends with American poet T.S. Eliot, whom he met in 1910 at the Sorbonne. After they parted ways, Verdenal and Eliot corresponded through letters. None of Eliot's letters to Verdenal survive today, but several letters written by Verdenal to Eliot still exist and can be viewed at Houghton Library, Harvard. [The Letters of T.S. Eliot, 20-25,27-36] Verdenal died on May 2, 1915, during the Gallipolli Campaign, a few days shy of his twenty-fifth birthday.

Influence of Verdenal on Eliot

In 1917, Eliot dedicated a volume of his poetry to Verdenal, "Prufrock and Other Observations", and added the Dante epigraph to the 1925 edition: [Collected Poems 1909-1962, 1]

For Jean Verdenal, 1889-1915 "mort aux Dardanelles"

"Or puoi la quantitate Comprender dell' amor ch'a te mi scalda, Quando dismento nostra vanitate, Trattando l'ombre come cosa salda." [Now can you understand the quality of love that warms me towards you, so that I forget our vanity, and treat the shadows like the solid thing.]

Imagery reminiscent of Verdenal can also be found other works, such as "The Waste Land". Although he died young and his potential as a great poet was unrealized, Verdenal's memory is preserved in the work of his friend.

References