Catulle Mendès
Catulle Mendès (22 May 1841 – 8 February 1909) was a French poet and man of letters. Early life and career. Of Portuguese Jewish extraction, Mendès was born in Bordeaux. After childhood and adolescence in Toulouse, he arrived in Paris in 1859 and quickly became one of the protégés of the poet Théophile Gautier. He promptly attained notoriety with the publication in the "La Revue fantaisiste" (1861) of his "Roman d'une nuit", for which he was condemned to a month's imprisonment and a fine of 500 francs. He was allied with Parnassianism from the beginning of the movement  and displayed extraordinary metrical skill in his first volume of poems, "Philoméla" (1863). His critics have noted that the elegant verse of his later volumes is distinguished rather by dexterous imitation of different writers than by any marked originality. The versatility and fecundity of Mendès' talent is shown in his critical and dramatic writings, including several libretti, and in his novels and short stories. His short stories continue the French tradition of the licentious "conte". Personal life. In 1866, Mendès married Judith Gautier, the younger daughter of his mentor Théophile. They soon separated, and in 1869 he began cohabiting with  the composer Augusta Holmès with whom he had five children, including: The couple parted in 1886, and he later married the poet Jeanne Nette, who was to be his last companion. Death. Early on the morning of 8 February 1909, the body of Mendès was discovered in the railway tunnel of Saint Germain. He had left Paris by the midnight train on the 7th, and it is supposed that, thinking he had arrived at the station, he had opened the door of his compartment while still in the tunnel, although some biographers have suggested suicide. His body was interred at  the Montparnasse Cemetery. In the same year, Catulle Mendes wrote in Le Figaro that it was after reading the book of Gobineau "Les Religions et les Philosophies dans d´Asie centrale" that he had the idea to write a drama about the first woman disciple of the Báb: the persan erudite and illustrious poet Tahéreh (Táhirih)