Charlotte Aïssé

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Mademoiselle Aïssé
Aïssé, oil on canvas (around 1720)

Charlotte Aïssé , also Charlotte-Élisabeth Aïcha and Charlotte Haïdé (* 1694 in Circassia , † March 13, 1733 in Paris ) was a French writer of the Enlightenment .

Life

Charlotte-Élisabeth Aïcha or, according to other sources, Haïdé, called Mademoiselle Aïssé, was born around 1694 as the daughter of a Circassian tribal chief in the Caucasus . After her father's castle was captured and looted, she was enslaved and offered as a Circassian princess on the Constantinople slave market in 1698 . The Comte Charles de Ferriol (1652–1722), France's ambassador to the Sublime Porte , acquired the 4½-year-old girl for 1500 livres and brought her to France in 1699 with the intention of raising her to be his lover. He was considered corruptand pleasure addict. Charlotte was accepted into the Ferriols family with the Frenchized surname Aïssé. The two sons of Ferriol's sister of about the same age, with whom she had become friends, are said to have helped her to reject the sexual claims of Ferriol, who lived in France again from 1711. Ferriol, who insisted on addressing Charlotte "Aga" , never changed her legal status. After his death in 1722 he bequeathed 4,000 livres and a small pension to her in his will.

Introduced into Parisian society, Charlotte Aïssé became a well-known figure in the 1720s, particularly noticing for her beauty and self-confidence. Contrary to the social code of the time, it resisted the advertisements of regent Philippe II. De Bourbon, duc d'Orléans . Their self-denying love affair with the on became known celibacy committed Chevalier Blaise-Pascal d'Aydie (1692-1761), who failed, from the Order of Malta exit. On April 26, 1721, about nine months after the beginning of the relationship, their daughter Célinie Leblond was born. The child, whose birth was kept secret, grew up under the name of Miss Black, allegedly niece of Lord Bolingbroke, in Sens Abbey and was later adopted by d'Aydie. In 1733 Charlotte Aïssé died after suffering from tuberculosis for a long time .

Literary afterlife

Charlotte Aïssé became known through her letters to Madame Calandrini, published in 1787, with comments from Voltaire . Voltaire had already met Charlotte Aïssé in the literary salon of Madame Tencin, who is related to the Ferriols, in the early 1720s. In a later letter to Charlotte Aïssé, he stated that he was also in love with her. Voltaire received Charlotte Aïssé's letters around 1757 from Madame Calandrini, who lived in Geneva, and commented on them. But he did not publish it. The correspondence saw several editions from 1787 and was re - edited in 1846 by J. Ravanel and Sainte-Beuve . The relationship of Charlotte Aïssé with the Comte de Ferriol was processed by the Abbé Antoine-François Prévost in his novel L'Histoire d'une Grecque modern . According to Manuel Couvreur, the story of Aïssé-Ferriol formed the basis for Voltaire's tragedy Zaïre (1732). Her life was used literarily in further dramatic works by Alexandre de Lavergne (1854), Louis Bouilhet (1872) and Dejoux (1898).

Editions of the correspondence

  • Lettres de Mlle Aïssé à Mme C ........., qui contiennent plusieurs anecdotes de l´histoire du tems, depuis l´année 1726, précédées d´un narré très court de l´histoire de Mlle Aïssé, pour Servir à l'intelligence de ses lettre, avec des notes. dont quelques-unes sont de M. de Voltaire edited with notes by Voltaire , La Grange, Paris 1787. (digitized version )
  • Lettres de Mlle Aïssé à Mme C ........., Nouvelle édition corrigée et augmenté du portrait de l`auteur edited with notes by Voltaire , with your portrait by F. Wexelberg, Mourer and La Grange, Lausanne / Paris 1787.
  • Lettres de Mesdames de Villars, de Coulanges, et de LaFayette, de Ninon de L'Enclos, et de Mlle Aïssé edited by Marie Gigault de Villars, Léopold Collin, Paris 1805.
  • Lettres de Mademoiselle Aisse a Madame Calandrini. Avec une notice par M. Sainte-Beuve Gerdes and Lecou, ​​Paris 1846.
  • Lettres de Mademoiselle Aïssé précédées d'une étude de Sainte-Beuve edited with comments by Marcel Arland. Édition Stock, Paris 1943.
  • Lettres de Mademoiselle Aïssé: précédées d'une étude de Sainte-Beuve Athènes: Editions Edkoseis, Hatier, Paris 1975

literature

  • August von Kotzebue : The little slave , in Die Biene 2/1, Königsberg 1809, pp. 129–180.
  • E.et J. Goncourt: La Femme au XVIIIéme. P. Didot, 1887.
  • Edmund Gosse : Mademoiselle Aïssé, in: French Profiles , Heinemann, London 1905, pp. 33–62.
  • Émile Couvreu: Lettres et portraits de Mlle Aïssé. In: Mercure de France. LXXX, 1909, pp. 458-468.
  • M. Arland: Mademoiselle Aïssé et le chevalier d'Aydie. In: Le Promeneur. Ed. du Pavois, Paris 1944.
  • E Saman: Mlle Aïssé. You marché d'esclaves de Constantinople aux Salons littéraires parisiens de la Régence. In: Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences et arts de Marseille. années 1983–1984, Marseille 1989.
  • Anne Soprani: Mademoiselle Aïssé ou la nymphe de Circassie. Fayard, Paris 1991, ISBN 2-213-02570-3 .
  • Valerie Lastinger: Charlotte Elisabeth Aïssé in: Writings by pre-revolutionary French women. By Anne R. Larsen, Colette H. Winn, Volume 2, Routledge, 1999, pp. 543-558.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Valerie Lastinger: Charlotte Elisabeth Aisse. In: Writings by pre-revolutionary French Women, Routledge, 2017, p. 543.
  2. ↑ Aïssé - from slave to socialite , Swiss National Museum
personal data
SURNAME Aïssé, Charlotte
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aïcha, Charlotte-Elisabeth; Haidé, Charlotte
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French literary figure of the Enlightenment
DATE OF BIRTH 1694
PLACE OF BIRTH Circassia
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 1733
Place of death Paris