Nicolas Dieterlé was born on August 28th, 1963. He spent the major part of his childhood in Africa, in Ghana, then Cameroon, in a hospital where his father worked as a surgeon. In 1973, he came back to France and started high school in Grenoble. In 1981, he began studying art history in the Ecole du Louvre. He eventually renounced and entered the Institute of Political Science of Paris, which he graduated from in 1986, aiming then to become a journalist. He secretly hoped as well to grow as a literary or art critic someday. In 1989, he initiated his career as a freelance journalist. Drafting articles for various types of publications (economical, environmental, academic...), it however turned out to be quite difficult financially-wise. Meanwhile, from 1989 to 1992, he participated to painting and engraving's Paris city's evening classes. In 1991, he exhibited some of his artworks twice, the first time at the student centre of the Vaugirard street where he lived, the second one in the Bretagne region with other young painters. These are the only exhibitions he initiated himself, perhaps because of his considerable discipline and rigour towards his work he often considered as unfinished. Before 1995, he actually destroyed a great portion of it. In 1994 and 1997, he returned to Africa for short stays, in Benin and in Cameroon, where he grew up as a child. In march 2000, he settled in south-eastern France. He started to prepare a biography about Novalis in tribute to the bicentenary of his death (2001). The synopsys got entirely written down. He committed suicide in September 25th, 2000, following a depressive illness. For months now, he had been suffering from multiple anxiety attacks he could not explain the source. He left behind him Diaries and Notebooks (1994-2000) recounting his daily remarks, texts on writing and poetry and many others witnessing his spiritual research, of great literary value. He also left many other texts, written in poetic prose, as well as more than eight hundred pictorial works.