Remy de Gourmont was a French poet and critic, known as the master of the Symbolist movement. The critic Louis Laloy said that there were three great poets in France between 1890 and 1900: Mallarme, Verlaine and Remy de Gourmont. In his early years, he was a feuilleton writer for Le Temps and Le Parnasse contemporain, contributing to magazines such as Revue blanche, La Plume and La Nouvelle Revue française. He met Mallarmé in 1898, a period when their relationship developed a passionate physical tone
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In 1902 he met Mallarme again in Cadaques, where they stayed at the same hotel as Flaubert and Nietzsche had previously done. At the end of that year he bought a house in Cadaques from Mallarme's brother-in-law. In 1905 he published an anthology of his earlier poems titled Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) with illustrations by Villiers de L’Isle-Adam.
He abandoned Symbolism during his stay at Cadaques and published his first collection of Symbolist poetry: Les Métamorphoses (The Metamorphoses) in 1906. From then on he was committed to Modernism and became one of its most ardent practitioners. He wrote several collections of poems before abandoning poetry altogether to devote himself entirely to writing prose works.
His work reflects an individual vision that is original and intensely personal.
