Armand Robin


Armand Robin was a French poet, translator, and journalist.

Life

Robin was born in Plouguernével by Rostrenen and his mother tongue was Breton. He learnt French when attending his first school years. He was unable to settle down for all his life. He traveled to the USSR in 1934, and returned shocked by the reality of communism. During the German occupation of France during World War II he worked in radio broadcasting foreign news.
Robin continued his language studies so that he understood twenty-six languages. He translated works from English, Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Italian, Chinese, Flemish, Finnish, German, Arabic, Spanish, Kalmyk, etc.
He joined the French Anarchist Federation in 1945, which published his Poèmes indésirables. He authored "La fausse parole", which dissected the mechanisms of propaganda in the totalitarian countries.
On March 27, 1961, Robin was arrested because he had no identity document, and died three days later under mysterious circumstances in a Parisian hospital.

Works

Own poetry with translations