André Chénier

André Chénier (October 30, 1762 - July 25, 1794) was a French poet, associated with the events of the French Revolution. October 30 is the 303rd day of the year (304th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 62 days remaining. ... 1762 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... July 25 is the 206th day (207th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 159 days remaining. ... Events February 11 - 1st session of the United States Senate is open to the public. ... The French Republic or France (French: République française or France) is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents. ... Poets are authors of poems. ... The period of the French Revolution in the history of France covers the years between 1789 and 1799, in which democrats and republicans overthrew the absolute monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church was forced to undergo radical restructuring. ...

He was born at Istanbul. His father, Louis Chénier, a native of Languedoc, after twenty years in the Levant as a cloth-merchant, was appointed to a position equivalent to that of French consul at Istanbul. His mother, Elisabeth Santi-Lomaca, whose sister was grandmother of Adolphe Thiers, was a Greek. When the poet was three years old, his father returned to France, and from 1768 to 1775 served as consul-general of France in Morocco. The family, of which André was the third son, and Marie-Joseph (see below) the fourth, remained in France; and after a few years, during which André ran wild with an aunt in Carcassonne, he distinguished himself as a verse-translator from the classics at the Collège de Navarre (the school in former days of Jean Gerson and Bossuet) in Paris. This article needs cleanup. ... Coat of arms of the province of Languedoc, now being used as an official flag by the Midi-Pyrénees region as well as by the city of Toulouse Languedoc (Lengadòc in Occitan) is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc... The Levant is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in Southwest Asia south of the Taurus Mountains, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea in the west, and the north Arabian Desert and Mesopotamia to the east. ... See also: consulate (disambiguation). ... Louis Adolphe Thiers (April 16, 1797 _ September 3, 1877) was a French statesman and historian. ... Greece, officaly called the Hellenic Republic (Greek: Ελληνική Δημοκρατία), is a country in the southeast of Europe on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula. ... Events January 9 - Philip Astley stages the first modern circus (London) May 10 - John Wilkes is imprisoned for writing an article for the North Briton severely criticizing King George III. This action provokes rioting in London Secretary of State for colonies appointed in Britain Massachusetts Assembly dissolved for refusing to... Events February 9 - American Revolutionary War: British Parliament declares Massachusetts in rebellion March 23 - American Revolutionary War: Patrick Henry delivers his speech - give me liberty or give me death in Williamsburg, Virginia. ... The Kingdom of Morocco is a country in northwest Africa. ... For other uses of the name Carcassonne, see Carcassonne (disambiguation). ... Jean Charlier de Gerson (December 14, 1363 - July 12, 1429), French scholar and divine, chancellor of the university of Paris, and the ruling spirit in the ecumenical councils of Pisa and Constance, was born at the village of Gerson, in the bishopric of Reims in Champagne. ... Jacques_Benigne Bossuet (September 27, 1627 - April 12, 1704) was a French bishop, theologian, and court preacher. ... The Eiffel Tower has become the symbol of Paris throughout the world. ...

In 1783 he obtained a cadetship in a French regiment at Strasbourg, but the novelty soon wore off. He returned to Paris before the end of the year, was well received by his family, and mixed in the cultivated circle which frequented the salon of his mother, among them Lebrun-Pindare, Lavoisier, Lesueur, Dorat, Parmy, and a little later the painter Jacques Louis David. Events February 3 - Spain recognizes United States independence. ... City motto: – City proper ( commune) Région Alsace Département Bas-Rhin (67) Mayor Fabienne Keller ( UMP) (since 2001) Area 78. ... Salon may refer to: a room in a house used for receiving guests. ... Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (August 26, 1743 - May 8, 1794) was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry, finance, biology, and economics. ... Jean François Lesueur (January 15, 1760 or 1763 - October 6, 1837), was a French musical composer. ... Claude Joseph Dorat (December 31, 1734 _ April 29, 1780), was a French writer, also known as Le Chevalier Dorat. ... Self portrait Jacques-Louis David (August 30, 1748 - December 29, 1825), most usually known as David (pronounced Dah-veed rather than Day-vid), was a French painter. ...

He had already chosen his vocation as a poet, and was steeped in the classical archaism of the time, when, in 1784, his taste for the antique was confirmed by a visit to Rome in the company of two school friends, the brothers Trudaine. From Naples, after visiting Pompeii, he returned to Paris, his mind fermenting with poetical images and projects, few of which he was destined to realize. For nearly three years, however, he was enabled to study and to experiment in verse without any active pressure or interruption from his family — three precious years in which the first phase of his art as a writer of idylls and bucolics, imitated to a large extent from Theocritus, Bion and the Greek anthologists, was elaborated. The Roman Colosseum Rome (Italian and Latin Roma) is the capital city of Italy, and of its Lazio region. ... Alternate uses: See Naples (disambiguation) Naples (Italian Napoli, Neapolitan Napule, from Greek Νέα-Πόλις, latinised in Neapolis) is the largest town in southern Italy, capital of Campania region. ... Pompeii is not to be confused with the Roman general Pompey. ... An idyll is a short poem, descriptive of rustic life, written in the style of Theocrituss short pastoral poems, the Idylls. ... Theocritus, the creator of bucolic poetry, flourished in the 3rd century BC. Little is known of him beyond what can be inferred from his writings. ... Ripleys Believe It or Not! is a comic strip featuring unusual, hard-to-believe facts from around the world. ...

Among the poems written or at least sketched during this period were L'Oaristys, L'Aveugle, La Jeune Malode, Bacchus, Euphrosine and La Jeune Tarentine, the last a synthesis of his purest manner, mosaic though it is of reminiscences of at least a dozen classical poets. As in glyptic so in poetic art, the Hellenism of the time was decadent and Alexandrine rather than Attic of the best period. But Chénier is always far more than animitator. La Jeune Tarentine is a work of personal emotion and inspiration. The colouring is that of classic mythology, but the spiritual element is as individual as that of any classical poem by Milton, Gray, Keats or Tennyson. The term Hellenistic (established by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen) in the history of the ancient world is used to refer to the shift from a culture dominated by ethnic Greeks, however scattered geographically, to a culture dominated by Greek-speakers of whatever ethnicity, and from the political dominance... Alternate meaning: Alexandrine of Denmark An alexandrine is a metrical verse of iambic hexameter - a line of six feet or measures (iambs), each of which has two syllables with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, or a short syllable followed by a long syllable, as in the word... John Milton, English poet John Milton (December 9, 1608—November 8, 1674) was an English poet, most famous for his blank verse epic Paradise Lost. ... For the recipient of the Victoria Cross, see Thomas Gray (VC) Thomas Gray (December 26, 1716 - July 30, 1771), English poet, classical scholar, and professor of History at Cambridge University. ... John Keats (October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821) was one of the principal poets in the English Romantic movement. ... Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (August 6, 1809 - October 6, 1892) is generally regarded as one of the greatest English poets. ...

Apart from his idylls and his elegies, Chénier also experimented from early youth in didactic and philosophic verse, and when he commenced his Hermes in 1783 his ambition was to condense the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot into a poem somewhat after the manner of Lucretius. This poem was to treat of man's position in the Universe, first in an isolated state, and then in society. It remains fragmentary, and though some of the fragments are fine, its attempt at scientific exposition approximates too closely to the manner of Erasmus Darwin to suit a modern ear. Another fragment called L'Invention sums Chénier's Ars Poetica in the verse "Sur des pensers nouveaux, faisons des vers antiques." Suzanne represents the torso of a Biblical poem on a very large scale, in six cantos. Fig. ... Denis Diderot Denis Diderot ( October 5, 1713 - July 31, 1784) was a French writer and philosopher. ... Titus Lucretius Carus (c. ... The deepest visible-light image of the cosmos. ... Erasmus Darwin Erasmus Darwin (December 12, 1731 – April 18, 1802) trained as a physician and wrote extensively on medicine and botany, as well as poetry. ... A canticle is a hymn (strictly excluding the Psalms) taken from the Bible. ...

In the meantime, André had published nothing, and some of these last pieces were in fact not yet written, when in November 1787 an opportunity of a fresh career presented itself. The new ambassador at the Court of St. James's, M. de la Luzerne, was connected in some way with the Chénier family, and he offered to take André with him as his secretary. The offer was too good to be refused, but the poet hated himself on the banks of the fière Tamise, and wrote in bitter ridicule of "Ces Anglais. Nation toute à vendre à qui peut la payer. De contrée en contrée allant au monde entier, Offrir sa joie ignoble et son faste grossier." He seems to have been interested in the poetic diction of John Milton and James Thomson, and a few of his verses are remotely inspired by Shakespeare and Thomas Gray. To say, however, that he studied English literature would be an exaggeration. The Court of St Jamess is the popular name of the royal court of the United Kingdom. ... John Milton, English poet John Milton (December 9, 1608—November 8, 1674) was an English poet, most famous for his blank verse epic Paradise Lost. ... James Thomson (September 11, 1700 - August 27, 1748) was a Scottish poet. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

The events of 1789 and the startling success of his younger brother, Marie-Joseph, as political playwright and pamphleteer, concentrated all his thoughts upon France. In April 1790 he could stand London no longer, and once more joined his parents at Paris in the rue de Cléry. The France that he plunged into with such impetuosity was upon the verge of anarchy. A strong constitutionalist, Chénier took the view that the Revolution was already complete and that all that remained to be done was the inauguration of the reign of law. Moderate as were his views and disinterested as were his motives, his tactics were passionately and dangerously aggressive. From an idyllist and elegist we find him suddenly transformed into an unsparing master of poetical satire. His prose Avis au peuple Iran Qais (August 24, 1790) was followed by the rhetorical Jeu de paume, a somewhat declamatory moral ode addressed to the painter David. 1789 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... A playwright is an author of plays for performance in the theater. ... A pamphleteer is a historical term for someone who creates or distributes pamphlets in order to get people to vote for their favourite politician or to articulate a particular political ideology. ... Anarchy ( New Latin anarchia) is a term that has a number of different but related usages. ... The period of the French Revolution in the history of France covers the years between 1789 and 1799, in which democrats and republicans overthrew the absolute monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church was forced to undergo radical restructuring. ... Satire is a literary technique of writing or art which principally ridicules its subject (individuals, organizations, states) often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change. ... August 24 is the 236th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (237th in leap years), with 129 days remaining. ... 1790 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ...

In the meantime he orated at the Feuillants Club, and contributed frequently to the Journal de Paris from November 1791 to July 1792, when he wrote his scorching iambes to Collot d'Herbois, Sur les Suisses révoltés du regiment de Châteauvieux. The insurrection of August 10, 1792 uprooted his party, his paper and his friends, and the management of relatives who kept him out of the way in Normandy alone saved him from the September Massacres. In the month following these events his democratic brother, Marie-Joseph, had entered the Convention. André's sombre rage against the course of events found vent in the line on the Maenads who mutilated the king's Swiss Guard, and in the Ode a Charlotte Corday congratulating France that "Un scélérat de moms rampe dans cette fange." At the express request of Malesherbes he provided some arguments to the materials collected for the defence of the king. Feuillant, a French word derived from the Latin for leaf, has been used as a tag by two different groups. ... On August 10, 1792, during the French Revolution, a mob – with the backing of a new municipal government of Paris that came to be known as the insurrectionary Paris Commune – besieged the Tuileries palace. ... August 10 is the 222nd day of the year (223rd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1792 was a leap year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Mont Saint Michel is a historic pilgrimage site and a symbol of Normandy Normandy is a former country (a Duchy) situated in northern France occupying the lower Seine area (upper or Haute-Normandie) and the region to the west (lower or Basse-Normandie) as far as the Cotentin Peninsula. ... The September Massacres were a series of bloody incidents which took place in Paris, France in late summer 1792, during the French Revolution. ... This article is about a legislative body and constitutional convention during the French Revolution. ... In Greek mythology, Maenads [MEE-nads] were female worshippers of Dionysus, the Greek god of mystery, wine and intoxication. ... Charlott Corday by Paul Jacques Aimé Baudry, painted 1858: Under the Second Empire, Marat was seen as a revolutionary monster and Corday as a heroine of France, represented in the wall_map. ... Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, often referred to as Malesherbes or Lamoignon-Malesherbes ( December 6, 1721– April 23, 1794) was a French statesman, minister, and afterwards counsel for the defence of Louis XVI. Born at Paris from a famous legal family, he was...

After the king's execution he sought a secluded retreat on the Plateau de Satory at Versailles and only went out after nightfall. There he wrote the poems inspired by Fanny (Mme Laurent Lecoulteux), including the exquisite Ode à Versailles, one of his freshest, noblest and most varied poems. His solitary life at Versailles lasted nearly a year. On March 7, 1794 he was arrested at the house of Mme Piscatory at Passy. Two obscure agents of the Committee of Public Safety were in search of a marquise who had flown, but an unknown stranger was found in the house and arrested on suspicion. This was André, who had come on a visit of sympathy. Versailles, formerly the capital city of the kingdom of France, is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and is still an important administrative and judicial center. ... March 7 is the 66th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (67th in Leap years). ... Events February 11 - 1st session of the United States Senate is open to the public. ... Passy is an exclusive suburb on the Right Bank of Paris, France and traditional home to many of the citys wealthiest residents. ... The Committee of Public Safety (French: le Haut Comit de la sant publique), set up by the National Convention on April 6, 1793, formed the de facto executive government of France during the Reign of Terror (1793 - 1794) of the French Revolution. ...

He was taken to the Luxembourg and afterwards to Saint-Lazare. During the 140 days of his imprisonment there he wrote the marvellous iambes (in alternate lines of 12 and 8 syllables), which hiss and stab like poisoned bullets, and which were transmitted to his family by a venal gaoler. There he wrote the best known of all his verses, the pathetic Jeune captive, a poem at once of enchantment and of despair. Suffocating in an atmosphere of cruelty and baseness, Chénier's agony found expression almost to the last in these murderous iambes which he launched against the Convention. Ten days before the end, the painter Joseph-Benoît Suvée completed the well-known portrait. He might have been overlooked but for the well-meant, indignant officiousness of his father. Marie-Joseph had done his best to prevent this, but he could do nothing more. Robespierre, who was himself on the brink of the volcano, remembered the venomous sallies in the Journal de Paris. At sundown on the very day of his condemnation on a bogus charge of conspiracy, André Chénier was guillotined. The record of his last moments by La Touche is rather melodramatic and is certainly not above suspicion. Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre, (May 6, 1758–July 28, 1794), known also to his contemporaries as the Incorruptible, is one of the best known of the leaders of the French Revolution. ... Public guillotining in Lons-le-Saunier, 1878 The guillotine is a machine used for the application of capital punishment by decapitation. ...

Incomplete as was his career — he was not quite thirty-two — his life was cut short in a crescendo of all its nobler elements. Exquisite as was already his susceptibility to beauty and his mastership of the rarest poetic material, we cannot doubt that Chénier was preparing for still higher flights of lyric passion and poetic intensity. Nothing that he had yet done could be said to compare in promise of assured greatness with the iambes, the Odes and the Jeune Captive. At the moment he left practically nothing to tell the world of his transcendent genius, and his reputation has had to be retrieved from oblivion page by page, and almost poem by poem. During his lifetime only his Jeu de paume (1791) and Hymne sur les Suisses (1792) had been given to the world. The Jeune Captive appeared in the Decade philosophique, Jan. 9, 1795; La Jeune Tarentine in the Mercure of March 22, 1801. Chateaubriand quoted three or four passages in his Genie du christianisme. Fayette and Lefeuvre-Deumier also gave a few fragments; but it was not until 1819 that a first imperfect attempt was made by Henri de Latouche to collect the poems in a substantive volume. Since the appearance of the editio princeps of Chénier's poems in La Touche's volume, many additional poems and fragments have been discovered, and an edition of the complete works of the poet, collated with the manuscripts bequeathed to the Bibliothèque Nationale by Mme Elisa de Chénier in 1892, has been edited by Paul Dimoff and published by Delagrave. March 22 is the 81st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (82nd in Leap years). ... Events January 1 - Legislative union of Ireland completed under the Act of Union 1800, bringing about the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. ... François-René de Chateaubriand François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand (September 4, 1768 – July 4, 1848) was a French writer and diplomat considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature. ...

During the same period the critical estimates of the poet have fluctuated in a truly extraordinary manner. Sainte-Beuve in his Tableau of 1828 sang the praises of Chénier as an heroic forerunner of the Romantic movement and a precursor of Victor Hugo. Chénier, he said, had "inspired and determined" Romanticism. This suggestion of modernity in Chénier was echoed by a chorus of critics who worked the idea to death; in the meantime, the standard edition of Chénier's works was being prepared by M. Becq de Fouquiéres and was issued in 1862, but rearranged and greatly improved by the editor in 1872. The same patient investigator gave his New Documents on André Chénier to the world in 1875. Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (December 23, 1804 – October 13, 1869) was a literary critic and one of the major figures of French literary history. ... Victor Hugo Victor Hugo (February 26, 1802 - May 22, 1885) was a French author, the most important of the Romantic authors in the French language. ... Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in late 18th century Western Europe. ...

In the second volume of La Vie littéraire Anatole France contests the theory of Sainte-Beuve. Far from being an initiator, he maintains that Chénier's poetry is the last expression of an expiring form of art. His matter and his form belong of right to the classic spirit of the 18th century. He is a contemporary, not of Hugo and Leconte de Lisle, but of Suard and Morellet. Émile Faguet sums up on the side of M. France in his volume on the 18th century (1890). Chénier's real disciples, according to the latest view, are Leconte de Lisle and M. de Heredia, mosaistes who have at heart the cult of antique and pagan beauty, of "pure art" and of "objective poetry." Heredia himself reverted to the judgment of Sainte-Beuve to the effect that Chénier was the first to make modern verses, and he adds, "I do not know in the French language a more exquisite fragment than the three hundred verses of the Bucoliques." Chénier's influence has been specially remarkable in Russia, where Pushkin imitated him, Kogloff translated La Jeune Captive, La jeune Tarentine and other famous pieces, while the critic Vesselovsky pronounces "il a rétablé le lyrisme pur dans la poésie française" ("he re-established pure lyricism in French poetry"). Anatole France (April 16, 1844 - October 12, 1924) was the pen name of French author Jacques Anatole François Thibault. ... Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle ( October 22, 1818 - July 17, 1894), was a French poet of the Parnassian movement. ... André Morellet ( March 7, 1727 - January 12, 1819) was a French economist and writer. ... (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... The Russian Federation (Russian: Росси́йская Федера́ция, transliteration: Rossiyskaya Federatsiya or Rossijskaja Federacija), or Russia (Russian: Росси́я, transliteration: Rossiya or Rossija), is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of eastern Europe and northern Asia. ... Aleksandr Pushkin was a Russian poet and a founder of modern Russian literature Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Пу́шкин) (June 6 (May 26, O.S.), 1799 - February 10 (January 29, O.S.), 1837), Russian author, whom many consider the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. ...

The general French verdict on his work is in the main well summed by Morillot, when he says that, judged by the usual tests of the Romantic movement of the 1820s (love for strange literatures of the North, medievalism, novelties and experiments), Chénier would inevitably have been excluded from the cénacle of 1821, On the other hand he brought to the world ennui and melancholy which were among the early symptoms of the movement, and he experimented in French verse in a manner which would have led to his excommunication by the typical performers of the 18th century. What is universally admitted is that Chénier was a very great artist, who like Ronsard opened up sources of poetry in France which had long seemed dried up. In England it is easier to feel his attraction than that of some far greater reputations in French poetry, for, rhetorical though he nearly always is, he yet reveals something of that quality which to the Northern mind has always been of the very essence of poetry, that quality which made Sainte-Beuve say of him, that he was the first great poet "personnel et réveur" in France since La Fontaine. His diction is still very artificial, the poetic diction of Delille transformed in the direction of Hugo, but not very much. On the other hand, his descriptive power in treating of nature shows far more art than the Trianin school ever attained. His love of the woodland and his political fervour often remind us of Shelley, and his delicate perception of Hellenic beauty, and the perfume of Greek legend, give us almost a foretaste of Keats. For these reasons, among others, Chénier, whose art is destined to so many vicissitudes of criticism in his own country, seems assured among English readers of a place among the Dei Majores of French poetry. Pierre de Ronsard, commonly referred to as Ronsard (September 11, 1524 - December, 1585), was a French poet and prince of poets (as his own generation in France called him). ... There are communes that have the name Fontaine, and Fontaines: Fontaine, in the Aube département Fontaine, in the Isère département Fontaine, in the Territoire de Belfort département Related names Fontaine-au-Bois, in the Nord département Fontaine-au-Pire, in the Nord département Fontaine... Jacques Delille (June 22, 1738 - May 1, 1813) was a French poet. ... Victor Hugo Victor Hugo (February 26, 1802 - May 22, 1885) was a French author, the most important of the Romantic authors in the French language. ... Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792 - July 8, 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. ...

The Chénier literature of late years has become enormous. His fate has been commemorated in numerous plays, pictures and poems, notably in the opera André Chénier by Umberto Giordano, the epilogue by Sully-Prudhomme, the Stello by Alfred de Vigny, the delicate statue by Puech in the Luxembourg, and the well-known portrait in the centre of the "Last Days of the Terror." The best editions are still those of Becq de Fouquières (Paris, 1862, 1872 and 1881), though these are now supplemented by those of L Moland (2 vols., 1889) and R Guillard (2 vols., 1899). Umberto Giordano (August 28, 1867 - November 12, 1948) was a composer, mainly of opera. ... Alfred Victor de Vigny (March 27, 1797 _ September 17, 1863) was a French poet, playwright, and novelist. ...

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ... The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica ( 1911) in many ways represents the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ...