Nyx by Catherine Pozzi O vous mes nuits, ô noires attendues O pays fier, ô secrets obstinés O longs regards, ô foudroyantes nues O vol permis outre les cieux fermés. O grand désir, ô surprise épandue O beau parcours de l’esprit enchanté O pire mal, ô grâce descendue O porte ouverte où nul n’avait passé Je ne sais pas pourquoi je meurs et noie Avant d’entrer à l’éternel séjour. Je ne sais pas de qui je suis la proie. Je ne sais pas de qui je suis l’amour.

Catherine Pozzi Despite tortuous bouts of suffering from advanced tuberculosis, Catherine Pozzi became a woman of letters and is now considered one of the great poets of modern France. Her legacy is presently going through a renaissance, attracting legends of new fans across the globe. Though her relationship with her father was often rancorous, there was no doubt that she loved him deeply and mourned him when he died. She is remembered as a diarist and as one of the first women to write about the menarche and the effects of puberty on her body. Though she as coaxed away from Oxford by her mother, she eventually returned to her studies. She completed her baccalaureate at Strasbourg then went on to study biology at the Faculte des Sciences in Paris. She also wrote articles on science for Le Figaro, and translated the poetry of Stefan George. Her journals, articles, her philosophical essay, Peau d'ame, and an autobiographical story, Agnes, are parts of her legacy along with her poetry. She thought only six of her poems worthy of being immortalized in print. "I would like them to be edited as a booklet," she wrote in 1934. "Sappho too has survived time with a few verses." These jewels of verse have been described as “expressive of a timeless and painful spirituality, the true essence of Pozzi's lyrical work” and it is now de rigueur to include her six poems, Ave, Vale, Scopolamine, Nova, Maya, and Nyx in any serious anthology of French poetry. Unfortunately for the world, Catherine was afflicted with tuberculosis and succumbed to her disease in 1935.

Nyx (English translation) by Catherine Pozzi O you, my nights, O long-awaited blackness, O proud country, O obstinate secrets, O long looks, O thundering clouds O flight beyond skies which are closed O great desire, O scattered surprise O beautiful journey of th’ enchanted sprite O worst evil, O grace that flies O open door where we enter night I don’t know why I die today Before th’ eternal rest above. I don’t know for whom I’m prey I don’t know for whom I’m love.

Jean’s disgrace was atoned for by the activity of Claude Bourdet, Catherine Pozzi’s only child, a patriot who as a leader in the French Resistance during W.W. II faced imprisonment by the Gestapo and was forced to flee with his family to Switzerland. During the 1950’s, Bourdet became a leading voice opposing France’s imperialism in Indochina and later, the brutality of French colonialists in Algeria with a treatise that in a tribute to the Dreyfus affair was called J’accuse. Claude also was noted for his efforts in the field of nuclear disarmament. Another Pozzi of note, Samuel Pozzi’s nephew, Henri Pozzi, warned about a potential blood bath between the Croatians and the Serbians in his best selling book book, Black Hand Over Europe. Aside from his achievements in gynecological surgery, Samuel-Jean Pozzi’s legend was largely unknown in the United States until his portrait was displayed at the Armand Hammer Museum in November of 1990. The remarkably contemporary painting of the debonair physician intrigued all who saw it, but the subject remained a mystery man, still as Stanley Olson called him, “the elusive Dr. Pozzi”. In 1992, under the auspices of Claude Bourdet, Dr. Claude Vanderpooten published his biography, Samuel Pozzi - Chirurgien et Ami des Femmes, a volume that has not yet been translated from the original French.

Claude Bourdet, Venice, 1942 - 1943 courtesy of the Musée de l'Ordre de la Libération

Rest in Peace Samuel-Jean Pozzi

A Remembrance from Claude Bourdet:

One day, just before the First World War, I was coming out of the apartment where my grandfather lived and where he had his consulting rooms, on the Avenue d’Iéna. There was a carriage coming down the Avenue and it seemed to me to be an electric carriage because I was, I remember, struck by the fact that I did not see a horse. I was four or five years old, so long ago that I can’t be sure of real impressions at that time. But what I am sure of is that my grandfather, whom we had not found at home, jumped out of the carriage and took me in his arms very tenderly, as he always did. My governess was watching on the footpath. Then my grandfather more or less threw me into the carriage where I disappeared into a mass of silk and feathers that covered me with kisses. My memories of this event are entirely agreeable, but there was more to come. My grandfather retrieved me, and returned me to my governess, and spoke words that I have never forgotten, probably because they have been repeated to me a hundred times since: “You have just been kissed by Madame Sarah Bernhardt!”

At the time, this made no impression upon me but later, when I heard of the relationship between Sarah and my grandfather, and even later, when I read the astonishing letters in which she called him “Doctor God,” I would say to my companions, with a certain satisfaction, that I, too, had known Sarah Bernhardt.

I visited my grandfather relatively often, for he always liked me to come to see him at the Avenue d’Iéna. He was separated from my grandmother, who shared an apartment on the Avenue Hoche with my great-grandmother until the beginning of the War. My father, Edouard Bourdet, and my mother, Catherine Pozzi, lived on the other side of the Arc de Triomphe, on Avenue MacMahon. This meant that I did not have far to go to visit either my grandmother or my grandfather. His apartment was filled with a fantastic collection of antiques, paintings and Persian miniatures. I still have some of these miniatures in my own apartment, where I have lived for fifty years, on the other side of the ground floor where I came to visit him.

I still have very clear memories of him, of occasions outside Paris especially at the family house at La Graulet near Bergerac, where he came from time to time to see us, in particular during the War. I also remember a visit he made to us in the Forest of Arcachon (the Forest of the Abatilles) where my mother rented a house in 1915 or 1916. He was in the uniform of a surgeon-colonel and he wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, something that impressed me enormously. I was very proud of him, I must have been about six years old, and my mother always spoke of him with great admiration. She loved him deeply, but saw herself obliged to take the side of my grandmother after they separated. The relationship between him and Thérèse Pozzi wasn’t bad despite their separation, which explains the visits to La Graulet during the War.

But the most moving memory, heartrending really, is that of his murder in 1918. My grandmother and my mother were at the time at Montpellier (they only returned to Paris after the Armistice.) I remember as if I am there the tremendous upset of the whole family, the whole household, when the telegram brought us the terrible news. A former student of his, the surgeon Dr. Martel, operated on my grandfather. He had several bullets in the abdomen and I remember the word “laparotomy” which I heard for the first time. He died on the operating table and my mother and grandmother did not return to Paris, where my uncles were already organizing the details of the funeral. But I remember the newspaper articles that I read with great attention and amazement: decidedly, Samuel Pozzi had been an important person.

My grandmother lived on until 1932, my mother until 1935. Photos of my grandfather were everywhere in the apartments where they lived together. I believe that my grandmother regretted not having been more tolerant of my grandfather’s numerous indiscretions. As for my mother, she had an enormous admiration for him that shows up clearly in certain parts of her diaries.
He was a difficult man to live with, as they say, but certainly his extraordinary charm and his profession of gynaecologist spread temptations on his path. Dear Samuel, if I were to meet you in another world, I would be happy to talk of many things, including my childhood memories...

Claude Bourdet

Étude sur les fistules de l’espace pelvi-rectal supérieur etc., Doctoral thesis, Paris, 1871; De la valeur de l’hystérotomie dans le traitement des tumeurs fibreuses de l’utérus, Thèse d’agrégation, Paris, 1875: Samuel Pozzi's On the indications for the use of the trephine, derived from cerebral localisation and the relation of the cranium to the brain (The basis for the Gulstonian Lectures on The Localisation of Cerebral Disease in by David Ferrier in 1878) Traité de gynécologie clinique et opératoire, Paris, 1890; 2nd edition, 1891, 4th edition, 1905-190 (This treatise has been translated into German, English, and Russian and won him the title of Laureate of the Institute; L'expression des émotions chez l'homme et les animaux, Paris 1890, Inversion du sens génital chez un pseudo-hermaphrodite feminine: Sarcome de l'ovaire gauche opéré avec success, Paris, 1911; The Garden of Serpents, Butantan, Brazil, Paris,1911, published by the Smithsonian, On the indications for the use of the Trephine, Derived from Cerebral Localization and the Relation of the Cranium to the Brain, translated by Thomas Michael Dolan from Les Archives Générales de Médecine, Paris, date unknown.