2011 sees the celebration of the centenary of his birth Guerne Armel, who died in 1980. Originally from Switzerland, he grew up in the buddy Munir Hafiz, a Sufi mystic of primary importance, close to Henry Corbin. (Cioran wrote a text on their friendship, reprinted in "The Book of Herne Cioran.") In his youth, he attended the Surrealists (Breton, Eluard, Bataille) and the painter André Masson. He published his first translations of Novalis to GLM Publishing, the publisher of Desnos, René Char, etc. - in 1938. During World War II, he entered into resistance. He was the second of the Prosper network. Arrested, tortured, deported by the Nazis, he managed to escape and reach London. After the War, Armel Guerne began a double career: writer and translator. We owe him the famous translations - Gallimard, Albin Michel and Seuil - Novalis, Hölderlin, but also Shakespeare or Churchill or Martin Buber Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Kawabata, he was the translator, said he owed his Nobel Prize to French translations Armel Guerne. (Kawabata has also sold part of his own rights to repay them Guerne, he knew the precarious living conditions.) Guerne was recognized as a great writer by his peers: André Breton, Georges Bernanos, Maurice Blanchot Albert Beguin, Yves Bonnefoy, Cioran but also with whom he exchanged a very important match. Michel Le Bris did very largely inspired, as Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Indeed, Guerne lived alone, retired to a mill in an agreed poverty. It was emphasized at the very end of his life by Editions Phebus that republished his poems and translations. Thus the book "The German Romantics" in Libretto. In a sense, "The Soul insurgent" remains his best book. We find his texts on Novalis, Hölderlin, Kleist, Melville, Nerval, Stevenson. Inspired and powerful texts, which have not aged and are all meditations on the resistance, the ability to say no, to seek the essential.
