Jacques Rochette de La Morlière

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Jacques Rochette Chevalier de La Morlière

Charles-Jacques-Louis-Auguste Rochette de La Morlière , called Le Chevalier (born April 22, 1719 in Grenoble , †  February 9, 1785 in Paris ), was a French libertine , literary figure, playwright, journalist, pamphlet writer and cheater.

Life

Origin and youth

Jacques Rochette de La Morlière was born in Grenoble in 1719 as the son of the conseiller du roi and head of the tax court of the Dauphiné, Joseph Rochette de La Morlière, and his wife Anne Bûcher. Both parents came from respected Grenoble legal families and both families had belonged to the official nobility of the Ancien Régime since the 16th century . La Morlière also received a legal education and a position at the Grenoble Court of Justice at the age of 18. He soon had to leave the city because of various scandals in which he was involved.

Literary career

La Morlière went to Paris, joined the king's musketeers, and was soon expelled from the troops for dishonorable behavior. After this short military career he devoted himself to writing with more success.

In 1746 his erotic novel Angola, histoire indienne, Ouvrages sans ressemblance came out, which was provided with corresponding copperplate engravings and in which he was a satirical moral picture of the Parisian society of the time of Louis XV. drew. The book was already printed two years later in a poor German translation in Agra (i. E. Hamburg ), in which the satirical content was "not completely lost".

In 1748 the book Les Lauriers ecclésiastiques ou Campagnes de l'abbé TM *** appeared in an edition of 500 copies, which developed into a bestseller of the time and was updated in nine editions by 1797. The book, written in the style of the erotic novels Crébillon , was read in the salons as a roman clef. The protagonist of the book is believed to be the Abbé Joseph-Marie de Terray, royal financial advisor and favorite of Madame de Pompadour . The book caused a scandal and brought its author to an exile in Rouen .

In 1748, after another scandal in Rouen, where he had seduced a girl, he was back in Paris, published the Très humbles remontrances à la cohue (1748) in which he put down Marmontel's new play "Denys le Tyran".

Scandals and bans

After another scandal - it was about a deceived wife and stolen money - he was exiled to his native town, but returned shortly thereafter illegally returned to Paris, where he promptly for violation of the official designation of September 17, 1748 Saint Lazare was imprisoned . After sending petitions and defenses and after his father intervened, he was released and exiled to Grenoble once more. In 1755 he was imprisoned in the For-l'Évêque prison in Paris because he lacked the necessary respect for the Minister Malesherbes .

In March 1758 he was embroiled in a new scandal in Paris. He had kidnapped a married woman and a lawsuit ensued in which the wife cited her husband's impotence as a reason for exculpation in vain. In 1761 he was forced into exile again in Grenoble, returned to Paris the following year and faced the next charge, this time of theft. His reputation as a crook and fraud was well established.

Intrigue and extortion

Society in Café Procope, 1743

In Paris he was a regular guest at the Salonnière Marie Anne Doublet . He often visited the Café Procope , the favorite hangout for chess players, and the Café de la Régence , where chess was also played. Theater people, journalists, authors and members of the philosopher clique ( Coterie holbachique ) around the Baron d'Holbach , which also included Diderot , met here.

In the intrigues of the actors and other actors of the Comédie-Française and Comédie Italienne, he was right in the middle of it as a thread puller and intriguer. His claque of around 150 mostly unsuccessful writers dominated the Parisian theater scene between 1744 and 1758 and was able to let every piece fail, although this could be prevented by appropriate means. A prominent victim of his blackmail was Voltaire at the premiere of the Sémiramis in 1748 .

On the other hand, the philosopher clique also made use of his services in the case of Charles Palissot . Palissot was an opponent of the encyclopedists , especially Diderots, whose mutual polemics culminated in the comedy Les Philosophes . The play premiered on May 2, 1760 at the Comédie-Française, but was a great success, despite the efforts of La Morlière and his claqueurs and bad reviews even from journalists who did not sympathize with the Encyclopédie . La Morlière then also made his appearance in Diderot's dialogue Rameau's nephew .

In the period between 1746 and 1755, La Morlière wrote reviews of the latest plays a. a. on Racine , Voltaire, Crébillon and Fréron , which are formulated as pamphlets. His three-act comedy Le Gouverneur (1751), the one-act La Créole (1754) and the two-act L'Amant déguisé (1758) were apparently never printed during his lifetime. The Comédie-Française brought La Créole in July 1754 .

He was also involved in the Anti-feuilles of Bénigne Dujardin (* 1689; † around 1770) together with Gottfried Sellius .

La Morlière's financial situation was always tense and the pension his parents paid him was not enough. As Jean Fabre writes, he made his way as a journalist, crook and con artist, cardsharps and singing master and parasite of Parisian civil and aristocratic society. He traded in pictures, embezzled money from good believers that he was supposed to invest and approached his friends for loans.

Towards the end of his life he was utterly impoverished and died in a Paris slum.

Works (selection)

  • Angola, histoire indienne . 2 volumes. Paris 1746 ( digitized volume 1 , volume 2 ).
    • Angola, an Indian story, where you can find what you don't look for. Originally translated from Arabic. 1. 2. Part . Agra [d. i. Hamburg] 1748
    • Angola . German by Gustav von Joanelli. With illustrations by Coeurdame. Modern library, Hynek Prague, (around 1900) ( entry at ÖNB )
  • Les Lauriers ecclésiastiques ou Campagnes de l'abbé de T… Paris 1748.
  • Observations sur la tragédie du duc de Faix, de M. de Voltaire . 1752.
  • Le Contrepoison des feuilles ou Lettres sur Fréron . 1754.
  • Le Fatalisme ou Collection d'anecdotes pour prouver l'influence du sort sur l'histoire du cœur humain, ouvrage dédié à M me Du Barry . 2 volumes. 1769.
    • The Influence of Fate on the History of the Human Heart . In a collection of anecdotes from the French of Mr. Chevalier de la Morlière. Leipzig by Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius 1770.
  • Master novels of the eighteenth century . German Book Association, Hamburg 1968

literature

  • Norbert Crochet (Ed.): Le Chevalier de la Morlière. Angola, histoire indienne (1746) . 2009, ISBN 978-1-4452-3259-1 .
  • Jean Louis Fabier: Critique d'Angola (1746) . Texts intégral, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4452-3259-1 . (With a detailed biographical foreword)
  • Thomas M. Kavanagh: Mirroring Pleasure. La Morlières Angola . In: Enlightenment Pleasures: 18th century France and the New Epicureanism. Yale University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-300-14094-1 , pp. 52-70.
  • Octave Uzanne: Notices sur la vie et de les œuvres de La Morlière . Foreword to: Contes du Chevalier de La Morlière: Angola. Quantin, Paris 1879.
  • Charles Monselet: Les aveux d'un pamphlétaire . V. Lecou, ​​Paris, 1854.
  • Yong-Mi Quester: Frivolous import: the reception of revealing French novels in Germany (1730 to 1800); with an annotated translation bibliography . Tübingen: Niemeyer 2006. Zugl .: Freiburg (Breisgau), Univ., Diss., 2005

Web links

Commons : Jacques Rochette de La Morlière  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ All documents on Rochette de la Morlière from: Jean Sgard, Patricia Clancy: Jacques Rochette de La Morlière [1] accessed on April 16, 2018
  2. ↑ Yong-Mi Quester: Frivoler Import , 2006, p. 153
  3. ↑ Miscellanées, February 15, 2009: Jacques Rochette de La Morlière (1719-1785).
  4. ↑ Miscellanées, February 15, 2009: Jacques Rochette de La Morlière (1719-1785)
  5. ↑ Jochen Schlobach : (Ed.) Pierre Rousseau et auteur (s) anonyme (s), Correspondance littéraire de Mannheim 1754 - 1756 , Paris / Genève 1992, p. 327
  6. ↑ Kavanagh 2012, p. 32.
  7. ↑ Kavanagh 2012, p. 9.
  8. ↑ Le gouverneur: comédie en 3 actes en prose; représentée pour la 1st fois par les comédiens italiens le 11th dec. 1751 . par de La Morlière. Paris: Quillau, fils, 1752.
  9. ↑ Jochen Schlobach (ed.): Pierre Rousseau et auteur (s) anonyme (s), Correspondance littéraire de Mannheim 1754–1756 , Paris / Geneva 1992; Contents on page 169, presentation dates on p. 139, p. 149, p. 162
  10. ↑ Denis Diderot: Le Neveu de Rameau . Ed. critique avec notes et lexique par Jean Fabre. Geneva: Droz 1977; P. 190.


personal data
SURNAME La Morlière, Jacques Rochette de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES La Morlière, Charles-Jacques-Louis-Auguste Rochette de (full name); Chevalier, Le
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French libertine, writer, playwright, journalist and pamphlet writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1719
PLACE OF BIRTH Grenoble
DATE OF DEATH February 9, 1785
Place of death Paris