Alfred de Vigny
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Alfred de Vigny (born March 27, 1797 in Loches , † September 17, 1863 in Paris ) was a French writer . Vigny is hardly read today, but it is one of the more important French romantics .
Life
Alfred de Vigny came from a noble family damaged by the revolution . He spent his childhood and adolescence in Paris from 1798 , partly in what is now the Elysée Palace , which was then an apartment building. He attended the Lycée Bonaparte (now Lycée Condorcet ) and dreamed of a military career.
In 1814 he entered the service of Louis XVIII as a young ensign . , who had just returned to the French throne from exile in England and fled with him to Brussels when Napoleon regained power for the famous reign of the Hundred Days (March to June 1815). After Napoleon's final defeat, Vigny continued his military career in various garrisons , but spent a lot of time in Paris, because being a noble officer was not a very absorbing profession at the time.
From 1817 Alfred de Vigny published poems; In 1822 his first collection of poems appeared: Poèmes . In 1825 he married a well-to-do Englishwoman and was able to take leave of absence from military service in order to fully pursue his literary interests, before finally quitting active service in 1827.
A year earlier he had published the volume Poèmes antiques et modern ; this contained the famous poem Le Cor , which depicts the heroic end of Roland and his legendary bugle Olifant and which is typical of the romanticism's enthusiasm for the Middle Ages.
Also in 1826 he had published the successful novel Cinq-Mars . This story of the noble conspirator against Richelieu , beheaded in 1642, is the first French historical novel in the new fashion of Walter Scott .
In the years between 1827 and 1829 Vigny tried to make Shakespeare, considered exemplary by the Romantics, at home in France with adaptations of Romeo and Juliet , Othello and The Merchant of Venice . In 1831 his first own piece was performed, La Maréchale d'Ancre . Here he met the actress Marie Dorval, with whom he then had a long-term relationship.
In 1832 his short book Stello was published . From one of the three stories, Vigny made the successful drama Chatterton in 1834 , which in the form of the title hero created a type who would populate romantic and post-romantic literature for decades: the artist who was problematic for himself and his environment and had a hard time in one increasingly bourgeois, profit-oriented society to find the place that corresponds to his high image of himself.
Three years later, Vigny published Servitude et grandeur militaires (“Servitude and Greatness of the Military”) - stories about the conflict between conscience and military duty from the point of view of an ex-officer who was mostly frustrated in his career ambitions and who, like so many intellectuals at the time, was dissatisfied with the new regime of the "bourgeois king" Louis-Philippe I , which was ruled by bankers and manufacturers.
In the years between 1838 and 1853, Alfred de Vigny spent a lot of time at his country estate (Manoir du Maine-Giraud) in Charente , where he wrote La Mort du Loup and other poems. His late work, however, was unsuccessful and later received little recognition. Accordingly, between 1843 and 1845 he needed five attempts to be elected to the Académie française . After the February Revolution (1848) he tried to go into politics as a member of parliament, but failed. In 1852 he sided with the new emperor Napoleon III. and thereafter administered his fame.
Alfred de Vigny was one of the first to recognize the talent and importance of the Poète maudit Charles Baudelaire .
Selected Works
- Le Bal (1820)
- Poèmes (1822)
- Éloa, ou La sœur des Anges (1824)
- Poèmes antiques et modern (1826)
- Cinq-Mars (1826)
- La maréchale d'Ancre (1831)
- Stello (1832)
- Quince pour la peur (1833)
- Servitude et grandeur militaires (1835)
- Chatterton (1835)
- Les Destinées (1864)
- Journal d'un poète (1867)
- Œuvres complètes (1883–1885)
- Daphné (1912)
literature
- Pierre-Maurice Masson: Alfred de Vigny. Bloud, Paris, 1908
- Jean-Pierre Lassalle: Alfred de Vigny. Fayard, 2010
- André Jarry: Alfred de Vigny, Poète, dramaturge, romancier. Classiques Garnier, Paris 2010
Web links
- Literature by and about Alfred de Vigny in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Alfred de Vigny in the German Digital Library
- Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
- Works by Alfred de Vigny in the Gutenberg-DE project
- Article in name, title and dates of the French Literature (source)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Vigny, Alfred de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 27, 1797 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Loches |
| DATE OF DEATH | 17th September 1863 |
| Place of death | Paris |