Émile Masson

Who was Émile Masson?

Émile Masson was a Breton writer and thinker. He also used the pseudonyms Brenn, Ewan Gweznou, and Ion Prigent.

Born in Brest, he was not brought up speaking Breton, but acquired the language in later life. He received two degrees and moved to Paris. He was associated with several radical movements of the period: the dreyfusards, anarchism, collectivism, antimilitarism. At this time he befriended Élisée Reclus, Kropotkin and Romain Rolland. He took part in the universitaire populaires. Returning to Brittany, he became a professor of English at Pontivy High School. He translated many works by Thomas Carlyle into French.

In 1911, he became vice president of the literary section of the Breton Regionalist Union. In the same year he was one of the founders of the Breton Nationalist Party, and an editor of its journal Breiz Dishual. He was the founder in 1913 of the journal Brug, an anarchist magazine in the Breton language. At this time he defined himself as a libertarian socialist. A fierce Internationalist, he tried to reconcile this aspect of his thinking with his Breton nationalism.