Pierre Klossowski

Pierre Klossowski (/kləˈsaʊski/; French: [klɔsɔfski]; 9 August 1905 – 12 August 2001) was a French writer, translator and artist. He was the eldest son of the artists Erich Klossowski and Baladine Klossowska, and his younger brother was the painter Balthus.

Born in Paris, Pierre Klossowski was the older brother of the artist Balthazar Klossowski, better known as Balthus. Their parents were the art historian Erich Klossowski and the painter Baladine Klossowska. His German-educated father came from a family supposedly belonging to the former Polish petty nobility (drobna szlachta) and bearing the Rola coat of arms. His mother, Baladine Klossowska, was born as Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro in Breslau, Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland). When he was 18, Pierre was André Gide's secretary and worked on the drafts of Les faux-monnayeurs for him. Klossowski was responsible for a new publication of The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings by the Marquis de Sade in 1964.

Klossowski wrote full-length volumes on de Sade and Friedrich Nietzsche, a number of essays on literary and philosophical figures, and five novels. His 1953 short novel Roberte Ce Soir (Roberte in the Evening) provoked controversy due to its graphic depiction of sexuality. He translated several important texts (by Virgil, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Hölderlin, Franz Kafka, Nietzsche, and Walter Benjamin) into French, worked on films and was also an artist, illustrating many of the scenes from his novels. Klossowski participated in most issues of Georges Bataille's review Acéphale in the late 1930s.

His 1969 book-length philosophical study Nietzsche et le cercle vicieux (Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle) greatly influenced French philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Jean-François Lyotard.

Klossowski also appeared in Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar as the avaricious miller who desires Marie, a character played by Anne Wiazemsky.

He was involved in:

• Raoul Ruiz's La vocation suspendue, 1977, 90';
• Raoul Ruiz's L'hypothèse du tableau volé, 1979, 66';
• Pierre Zucca's Roberte, 1979, 100';
• Alain Fleischer's Pierre Klossowski ou l'éternel détour, 1996, 106'.

His text on de Sade is mentioned in the bibliography at the beginning of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, and quoted several times through the film.

An exhibition of Klossowski's drawings and life size sculptures made after them with sculptor Jean-Paul Réti ran from 20 September to 19 October 2006, at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne and the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris along with a film retrospective.