Born in Prague on December 3, 1875, Rainer Maria Rilke led a wandering and solitary existence despite his encounters with Lou Andreas-Salomé in 1896 and Clara Westhoff, a student of Rodin whom he married in 1901. Secretary to Rodin, then translator of Gide, he died in Switzerland on December 29, 1926.
Pierre Klossowski was a novelist and essayist born in 1905 and died in 2001. The older brother of the painter Balthus, himself a painter, both having been raised in a milieu of artists and writers, Pierre Klossowski was also a philosopher, translator and screenwriter.
Grand national prize for Literature in 1981.