Born in Tours (Indre-et-Loire) on June 24 1923. Died on July1 2016.
His parents, originally from the Lot and Aveyron regions, were both railway workers and teachers. After studying mathematics in preparatory classes at the Lycée Descartes in Tours and at the University of Poitiers, he decided in 1943 to settle in Paris and devote himself to poetry. He studied philosophy and the history of science at the Sorbonne, with Jean Wahl and Gaston Bachelard. Despite a period of closeness to Surrealism, he soon distanced himself from it, refusing in 1947 to sign the manifesto for the Exposition internationale du surréalisme. In the 1950s, he took part in several trips to Italy - - thanks to grants, which led him to attend André Chastel's seminar at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. He then spent three years as a research associate at the CNRS, studying critical methodology in the United States.
In 1953, Douve's collection Du mouvement et de l'immobilité, published by Mercure de France, who would remain his publisher, established his reputation as a poet. This was followed by Hier régnant désert, Pierre écrite, Dans le leurre du seuil, now collected with Douve under the title Poèmes (Poésie/Gallimard); then Ce qui fut sans lumière (1987), Début et fin de la neige (1991), La Vie errante (1993), Les Planches courbes (2003), La Longue Chaîne de l'ancre (2008). His poetic prose, one of the first of which is L'Arrière-pays (1972), an autobiography that examines his relationship with the work of art, has developed since Récits en rêve (1987).
