Émile Augier
Guillaume Victor Émile Augier (born September 17, 1820 in Valence , † October 25, 1889 in Croissy-sur-Seine , Yvelines department ) was a French playwright , poet and librettist .
Life
Émile Augier, grandson of Guillaume Pigault-Lebrun on his mother's side , came to Paris at a young age , where he initially studied law and worked for a time in a notary's office. In 1844 his first play, the comedy La Ciguë, which deals with the conversion of an Athenian misanthropist through the selfless love of a beautiful slave and which has remained one of his best works, was performed at the Odéontheater and immediately achieved a resounding success. At the same time, it opened the gates of the Theâtre Français , where he first Un homme de bien , then two of his major works: L'Aventurière (1848) and Gabrielle (1849, crowned by the academy, German: Gabrielle or the lawyer of his honor), brought to the representation.
All these pieces, like the semi-historical drama Diane (1852), which was composed for Rachel and which was less appealing, Philiberte (1853), La jeunesse (1858) and Paul Forestier (1868), are written in verse, but they are have nothing of the metallic sound and the majesty of Victor Hugo's verse, but not forego a certain grace and reveal the eager study of Molière and Corneille .
Criticism, at that time already predominantly in the hands of romantics like Théophile Gautier and Auguste Vacquerie , could not make friends with the measured tone and, according to their terms, the bourgeois morality of Augier's dramas and described the direction he was taking as école de bon sens . In the meantime Augier had turned to very modern subjects and produced a number of pieces written in prose, in which he showed the keenest observation of the ailments of the time and relentlessly scourged them, even if he was therefore also given a more noble treatment than it had been accepted by Dumas , and refused to renounce a more idealistic worldview.
These dramas are: Le Mariage d'Olympe , from his point of view a response to the Dame aux camélias by Dumas ; Le gendre de M. Poirier: comédie en 4 actes (with Jules Sandeau , 1854), a depiction of the opposition between the estates, designed with the most exquisite humor and impartiality, and still a permanent repertoire piece of the Théâtre Français; Les Lionnes pauvres (1858) and Les Effrontés (1861), in which Augier wields the scourge on the greed for money and lust for pleasure, the conscience and shamelessness of his contemporaries; and finally Les Fils de Giboyer (1862), a continuation of the last-named piece, in which a sharply polished mirror is held up to hypocrisy and clerical intrigue. The piece is reminiscent of the Tartuffe and had to overcome the same difficulties on the part of the imperial censors before it could be performed.
Augier then developed the same moral rigor in La contagion (1866), in whose adventurous hero all Paris wanted to recognize the Duke of Morny , and in Les lions et les renards (1869). The later great successes of Augier are called Maitre Guérin, already played in 1869, of a satire on the mischievousness of certain lawyers: Paul Forestier (1868.); Madame Caverlet (1876), a plea for divorce, and finally his masterpiece: Les Fourchambault , in which a natural son rescues his father, who has forgotten him, from shame and ruin and humiliates his legitimate son with his generosity.
Also to be mentioned are:
- Les méprises de l'amour , a comedy in verse never performed (1844);
- Le Joueur de flûte (1850);
- La Pierre de touche (with Sandeau, 1853);
- Ceinture dorée (1855);
- Un beau mariage (with Foussier , 1859);
- Le Post-scriptum (1869);
- Jean de Thommeray (1873) and
- Le Prix Martin (with Eugène Labiche , 1876).
Augier also owns an opera: Sapho: opéra en trois actes (1851), for which Gounod wrote the music, and a volume of Poésies (1856). Augier was accepted into the academy in 1857 and was named commander of the Legion of Honor in 1868 . His dramas were published collectively as Théatre complet (1876–77, 4 vols.).
literature
- Henry Gaillard de Champris: Emile Augier et la comédie sociale . Réimpr. de l'éd. de Paris, 1910. Genève: Slatkine Repr., 1973.
- Pierre Danger: Émile Augier ou le théâtre de l'ambiguïté: éléments pour une archeology morale de la bourgeoisie sous le second empire . Paris [u. a.]: Harmattan, 1998. ISBN 2-7384-6330-4
Web links
- Literature by and about Émile Augier in the catalog of the German National Library
- Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Augier, Émile |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Augier, Guillaume Victor Émile (full name) |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | French poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 17, 1820 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Valence |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 25, 1889 |
| Place of death | Croissy-sur-Seine |