Corbière, Tristan

Corbière, Tristan (trēstäN` kôrbyĕr`), 1845–75, French poet, born Édouard Joachim Corbière. He spent most of his life on the coast of Brittany, living a Bohemian existence and suffering chronic illness. His passion for the sea is expressed in his early poems Gens de mer [men of the sea], which were collected in Les Amours jaunes (1873, tr. 1954). Corbière's style combines vernacular elements with complex, intimate emotion and constantly reflects his internal pain. Verlaine brought his work to the attention of the literary world, and, in the 20th cent., the surrealist writers claimed him as an ancestor.