Victor Barrucand

French poet, musician, writer, journalist, anarchist and later supporter of French colonialism, born. A musician, he played the flute and oboe in Parisian cafés and frequent bohemian Paris. His meeting and subsequent friendship with Felix Fénéon is critical for his new commitment to art (especially his interest in the theatre) but also his anarchism, working on Zo Axa's newspaper 'L'Endehors' at the time. In 1893, he participated in the conference group l'Idée Nouvelle and is involved in the trial of Émile Henry. He also wrote Jean Grave's newspaper 'Les Temps Nouveaux' and launched in 1895, a national campaign for free bread for all measures deemed by some anarchists to be reformist (the idea was taken up in 1906 by Charles Dhooghe) . In 1897, he moved towards a socialist federalist position and in 1899 was one of the delegates of the Socialist Congress in Paris, as well as working at 'La Revue Blanche'. An ardent supporter of Dreyfus, he was sent to Algeria by the League of Human Rights to counter anti-Semitism.

In 1902 he became editor of 'L'Akhbar' (The News) and a columnist for literary and artistic newspaper 'La Depeche Algerian'. His rightward shift sees him supporting a "colonialisme plus humain" (more humane colonialism), write for the right-wing newspaper 'Défense Algérienne' and be elected to the Algiers city council, leading to his denunciation in the pages of 'Revue Anarchiste' (November 1923) by the anti‐colonialist journalist, novelist and anarcho-individualist Paul Vigné d'Octon as "a repentant anarchist, turned bourgeois journalist in the pay of 'Défense Algérienne', organ of the North African plutocracy". Controversy also blew up around his "reconstruction" of the manuscripts of the Swiss-Russian writer and explorer Isabelle Eberhardt (daughter of the Armenian anarchist Alexandre Trophimowsky, a close associate of Mikhail Bakunin), who died in a flash flood in Algeria in October 1904. Damaged in the flood, her manuscripts were sent to Barrucand and in 1906 he published the first reconstructed story 'Dans l'ombre chaude de l'Islam' (In the Warm Shadow of Islam), listing himself as co-author but not specifying which parts of the text were his and which were Eberhardt's original. 'Dans l'ombre chaude de l'Islam' proved to be a literary success and further texts.

His poetry works include: 'Rythmes et Rimes à Mettre en Musique' (Rhythms and Rhymes Set to Music; 1886); 'Amour Idéal, Poème en Vingt-Quatre Sonnets' (Ideal Love, Poem in Twenty-Four Sonnets; 1889)
'Une Partie d'Échecs, Poème Scénique' (A chess game, scenic poem; 1889); a novel - 'Avec le Feu' (With Fire; 1900, reissued in 2005); plays - 'Pour le Roi' (1897); 'Le Chariot de Terre Cuite, 5 Actes d'Après la Pièce du Théâtre Indien Attribuée au Roi Soudraka' (The Chariot of terracotta; 1895) - an adaptation of Sanskrit Theatre; and journalism, etc.: 'D'un Pays Plus Beau : Afrique, Espagne, Italie, heures de France, Variations sur des Thèmes Étrangers...' (In a country more beautiful...; 1910) and 'L'Algérie et les Peintres Orientalistes' (Algeria and Orientalist Painters; 1930).

Victor Barrucand died on March 13, 1934 in El-Biar, Algeria.