The Poet Who Governed France
The Many Sides of Leon Blum
Three times Prime Minister of France, Leon Blum was an unusual and unlikely politician. An article in The Atlantic, written in 1937, declared that:
Leon Blum is an idealist and a logician, a poet and a critic, a diplomat and a revolutionary, a politician and a gentleman. He is a Frenchman and a Jew. Complex, subtle, eclectic, he presents a problem which baffles his admirers as much as it irritates his enemies. It is difficult to place him in any category of men. He is an intellectual, but he is also a man of action. He is exceedingly sensitive, and so sincere that some of his speeches sound like public confessions; yet he is not a blind fanatic. He is thoroughly faithful to the doctrine which he defends, but remains critical of himself as of others. He is a discreet messiah.
As a young man Blum had no intention of entering politics. Born in 1872, he studied philosophy and law, practising as a government lawyer for the Council of State, the highest court in France, and working simultaneously as a drama critic for several Parisian newspapers. Prominent on the Paris intellectual scene he was seen around town, in the theatres and ballrooms, as a slight, delicate, Bohemian figure, often clutching a volume of poetry or engaged in literary conversation. His biographer, Pierre Birnbaum, describes him as a ‘languid, effeminate dandy preoccupied with the elegance of his attire, his hat, his monocle and his gloves as well as with the grace of his movements and pose.’ He stirred up controversy with an essay he published arguing that people should enjoy free love before marriage, that a life of adventure should precede one of stability.