Alexandre Guiraud

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alexandre Guiraud (born December 24, 1788 in Limoux , † February 24, 1847 in Paris ) was a French writer and member of the Académie française .

life and work

Youth in the South of France

Alexandre Guiraud was the son of a wealthy cloth manufacturer. He grew up in Limoux near Carcassonne and had a tutor. He went to Toulouse to study law, but, like his friend Alexandre Soumet , devoted himself primarily to poetry and was honored by the Académie des Jeux Floraux . From 1806 to 1813 he ran the company left behind by his late father, then moved to Paris to pursue his poetic inclinations.

The early romantic in Paris

Together with Soumet he joined the first romantic Cénacle (circle of friends), which also included Émile Deschamps , Victor Hugo and Alfred de Vigny . In 1824 he was among the founders of the romantic magazine La Muse française . He became known for his elegies, above all Le petit Savoyard , where the fate of a little boy from the Alps who was sent to Paris by his mother to survive is described, then in 1824 by philhellenic poems and finally by his plays.

Stage success and election to the Académie française

After a first play on Pelagius failed due to censorship in 1820 (and did not appear until 1938), Les Machabées, ou le Martyre (with Marguerite-Joséphine Georges ) and Le Comte Julien, ou l'Expiation were performed in 1822 and 1823 . In 1825 the opera Pharamond about the first Merovingian King Faramund , whose music came from François-Adrien Boieldieu , Henri Montan Berton and Rodolphe Kreutzer and to which Guiraud wrote the text (in verse) with Soumet and Jacques-François Ancelot , had particular success. had written. The subject was introduced in 1803 through the play Isule et Orovèse by Népomucène Lemercier . For his achievement, Guiraud was given the title of baron by King Charles X in 1827 . As early as 1826 he was elected to the Académie française (seat no. 37), to which his friend Soumet already belonged.

Return home and death in Paris

After 1830, Guiraud and his family (founded in 1826) settled on the estates (with a castle) in Villemartin near Limoux and for the next 10 years (in addition to the Christian novel Flavien ) worked on a Catholic philosophy of history, which in 1840 was divided into three Volumes appeared. In July 1846 he returned to Paris, fell ill and died there in 1847 at the age of 58. At the funeral ceremony in the Abbaye-aux-Bois , Victor Hugo held a tassel of the towel.

Honors

Guiraud had been a Knight of the Legion of Honor since 1824 . In Limoux, the Rue Alexandre Guiraud commemorates him. His bust is in the Ile de Sournies city ​​park .

Works

Stage works

  • Les Machabées, ou le Martyre, tragédie en 5 acts . Paris, théâtre de l'Odéon, 14 juin 1822.
  • Le Comte Julien, ou l'Expiation, tragédie en 5 acts . Paris, théâtre de l'Odéon, 12 avril 1823.
  • (with others) Pharamond. Tragédie lyrique . Paris June 10th 1825.
  • Virginie, tragédie en 5 actes et en vers . Paris, Théâtre-Français, 28 avril 1827. Besançon 1843.
  • Pélage. Tragedy inédite d'Alexandre Guiraud . Edited by Frédéric Ségu. Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1938.

poetry

  • Élégies savoyardes . 1823. (therein: Le petit Savoyard)
    • (Italian) Il piccolo savojardo. Poemetto in tre canti . Rome 1878.
  • Chants hellènes. Byron. Ipsara . Ladvocat, Paris 1824.
  • Poëmes et chants élégiaques . Ladvocat, Paris 1824. (several editions)
  • Poésies dédiées à la jeunesse . Paris 1837.
  • Le Cloître de Villemartin . Furne, Paris 1843. (above the cloister built by himself)

prose

  • Césaire. Révélation . 2 vols. Paris 1830. (Christian novel)
  • Flavien ou De Rome au désert . 3 vols. Paris 1835. (Christian novel)
    • (Italian) Flaviano ovvero paganesimo e cristianesimo . Milan 1856.
  • Philosophy catholique de l'histoire ou l'Histoire expliquée . Introduction renfermant l'histoire de la création universelle. 3 vols. Debécourt, Paris 1839; 2 vol. 1841. (Catholic philosophy of history)

Collected Works

  • Œuvres complètes . 4 vols. Amyot, Paris 1845. (I.-II. Flavien, ou De Rome au désert . III. Césaire et Mélanges . IV. Théâtre et poésies )

literature

  • René Bray : Chronologie du romantisme 1804-1830 . Paris 1932, 1971.
  • Gabrielle Castel-Çagarriga: Alexandre Guiraud, poète audois . Carcassonne 1953.
  • Eugène Lerminier: "Philosophy catholique de l'histoire, ou l'histoire expliquée, par M. Alex. Guiraud". In: Revue des Deux Mondes 27, 1841, pp. 410–432. [1]
  • Daniel Madelénat: "Alexandre Guiraud". In: Dictionnaire des écrivains de langue française . Edited by Jean-Pierre Beaumarchais, Daniel Couty and Alain Rey. Larousse, Paris 2001, p. 803.
  • Ann Rowe Hill: The transitional romanticism of Alexandre Guiraud . Charlottesville, Va., Univ., Diss., 1980.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Guiraud, Alexandre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and member of the Académie française
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1788
PLACE OF BIRTH Limoux
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 1847
Place of death Paris