Paris, 1919, the artistic millieu.

Paris, 1919, Par Amour

Irene Hillel-Erlanger; (1878-1920) Poet, literary innovator, film script writer and patron in the creative revolution of early twentieth century literature and film remains all but unknown to the English speaking world and not much more so in France.

Born into the wealthy Parisian banking family Camondo, she entered Parisian society as the bride of Camille Erlanger, a popular composer at the Opéra-Comique. She became a well regarded poet published under the pseudonym Claude Lorry. Their only son Philippe Erlanger grew up to become a cultural force in France who also founded the Cannes Film Festival.

Her husband’s affair with his lead soprano, superstar diva Marthe Chenal. who roused patriotic fever in support of France’s fighting forces with “La Marseilliaise”, resulted in a scandalous divorce. The proceedings were resolved in 1912 in Irène’s favour, an exceptional outcome for the day. She then, according to son Philippe, secretly took him back as her lover until his death seven years later of a heart attack at her apartment.

She frequented the avant-garde and esoteric circles of the day, providing a salon and financial backing for such innovative and epoch-defining enterprises as André Gide’s “Nouvelle Revue Francaise” and André Breton and Louis Aragon’s dadaist journal “Littérature” from which the surrealist movement was launched. In 1915 she became the script writer and business partner in H-D Films with the pioneering film maker Germaine Dulac, ("La Belle Dame sans Merci" 1920) producing films that signaled the arrival of the avant-garde and feminism in film. Her veiled and multi-layered Dadaist work "Voyages en Kaleidescope" was published under her real name in Paris by Georges Crès, 1919. In November of 1919, Louis Aragon wrote a commentary of it in Littérature.

“Par Amour” appeared in the following (December) issue along with contributors Tristan Tzara (Dada founder), André Breton (Surrealism founder) and Igor Stravinsky (musical revolutionary). During this time with the Versailles treaty talks in progress she also hosted salons for numerous diplomats advocating politically liberal stances.

On March 21, 1920, Irène Hillel-Erlanger died after several days of illness. Her death is said by some to have resulted from typhoid fever, caused by oysters Irène had with a friend. Since the oysters did not make her friend ill, the hypothesis of poisoning appeared plausible to others ... as soon after her death unsold copies of “Voyages en Kaleidoscope” disappeared from bookstore shelves. Her own letters, notes, journals, scripts written for film and biographical accounts by contemporaries of her personal life and work similarly vanished.

What survives is work especially in her last year at once contemporary, radically innovative and deeply faithful to esoteric tradition.