He began writing poems and, in 1933, to work for journals including Les Cahiers du Sud.

He came in 1939 to Paris, but returned in 1940 in Limousin, studying at the Faculty of Arts at Poitiers and Toulouse, and met Joe Bousquet in Carcassonne.

He wrote articles and made extensive comments on the radio, of the work of Maurice Boitel, who came to paint in the region.

In 1956 he published Le Pain noir, a series of novels in which he told, until 1961, the story of his family, and his maternal grandmother, an illiterate shepherd.

In 1980 he was vice-president of the French Commission for UNESCO, in 1987 Vice President of International PEN, and chairman of the House of Writers which was founded in 1986 to 1990.