Olivier Messiean (satire)

***This is a satirical article. Little of the information here is factually correct.***

This article was written primarily by Dreamily

**Olivier François Édouard Philippe Joseph Georges Marie Messiean** (10 December 1908 - 9 December 1994) was a French activist, writer and author. He is not to be confused with Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen, a French organist and composer.

## Biography

Olivier François Édouard Philippe Joseph Georges Marie Messiean was born at 11:01 on 10 December 1908 in Montpellier, France, into a literary family. He was the elder of two sons of Anne Marie-Antoinette Sauvage, a poet, and Léon Joseph Messiean, a scholar and teacher of English from a farm near Wervicq-Sud who translated the plays of William Shakespeare into French. He had two sons from a previous marriage. Messiean's mother published a sequence of poems, L'âme en bourgeon ("The Budding Soul"), the last chapter of Tandis que la terre tourne ("As the Earth Turns"), which address her unborn son. Messiean later said this sequence of poems influenced him deeply and he cited it as prophetic of his future artistic career. His younger brother Alain André Prosper Messiean was also a poet.

Messiean described how he had grown up reading poetry and how his father encouraged him to do so. Olivier attended the local public school with his older brothers, Etienne and Jacques Messiean. He excelled at both languages, English and mathematics.

In 1913 he joined the Royal Academy of Arts, where he studied for three years, finishing in 1914 as a third year student. He then became active in the Paris Conservatoire and participated in many events. He was elected a member of the board of artists during his first term in 1926 and continued that association until 1924 when he was forced to resign after a dispute over an exhibition he had organized. When asked why he left the conservatoire, Messiean replied that the conditions of membership were too strict and that he wanted more freedom from those restrictions. It is said that Messiean became involved with the Socialist movement and that he supported various political causes in his youth. Messiean attended the Socialist Club meetings throughout 1920 and helped establish a working group which was responsible for helping students in the city prepare for the new elections.

In March 1932 Messiean wrote to a friend, Jean Langlais, saying that he hoped that his time would soon come, but he didn't know what that meant. Shortly thereafter, he received word from his brother Jacques that there would be a party conference in Paris that would mark his thirtieth birthday. The event took place at the house of Chinese immigrant Charles Liu-Zheng, who invited the entirety of the academy. Messiean was one of several guests who spoke to members of Parliament.

Messiean's mother's cousin, Eugénie Sauvage, married Robert Guénaut Messiean in July 1936. She was twenty years old. Their relationship lasted until Robert died. Cécile gave birth to another daughter in September 1935. Cécile was forty years old. She and her husband lived in a cottage close to their home in the village of Saint Denis, on the southern edge of Avignon in the Ardennes, south of Villefranche.

In February 1938 Messiean was offered an opening position in the editorial staff of the journal L'Art Poetry in Paris which he accepted. He spent most of his free time writing short stories and short pieces of poetry, sometimes for the newspaper as well.

He also wrote for his own journals and contributed to the press. A year later he was appointed president of the magazine, and the following spring brought out an anthology of Poetry edited by A. N. Sallistine and published in 1939. In January 1940 he went back to work editing articles for the newspaper. As late as May 1940 Messiean began working closely on the book he titled Poet's Guide, which he would publish in 1939. It would not have appeared until 1941, however. In January of 1942, he was sacked from the position due to writing a comic mocking the death of former president Maurice Ravel, which happened a few days earlier.

Messiean's first book, Tandis que la terre toujours tourne "The Spring", was dedicated to his beloved wife, Yvonne Loriod, who passed away early in 1942, in a car crash.

In 1943 Messiean met and fell in love with Claire Delbos. They shared an apartment in a nearby neighbourhood near the university campus. During this time she gave birth to four children between 1941 and 1947. Two daughters, Françoise and Louise (or Margit) and two sons, Alain and Joseph were born.

Messiean remained friends with Jacques Messiean from 1942 to 1944. When his brother Etienne retired from the army in 1946, Messiean moved to Paris to live with Jacques. After Jacques returned to France from Spain in 1948, he and Messiean visited France frequently together. In 1954 Jacques returned to Spain to study medicine at Madrid's Universidad de Salamanca.

Messiean visited Spain again for a short trip in 1957, and for a second visit in 1958 before leaving for America in 1961.