Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian

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Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian

Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (born March 6, 1755 in Sauve , Gard département , † September 13, 1794 in Sceaux ) was a French poet. He achieved particular fame with his fables .

Life

Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian, whose mother came from Spain, was born in 1755 in Florian Castle near Sauve. He had a childhood in touch with nature, came to Ferney at the age of ten with his paternal uncle, a relative of Voltaire , and appealed to the philosopher with his clever answers and lively temperament. In Versailles , at the age of 13, he entered the service of the Duke of Penthièvre as a page , who a few years later sent him to the royal artillery school in Bapaume . In 1772 he became a Sous-lieutenant in the Dragoon Regiment of the Duke of Penthièvre. He then retired from the military career of writing, lived partly in Paris and partly to the castles of the Duke as the center of a lively, witty sociability, was already on 6 March 1788 at the age of 33 years into the French Academy .aufgenommen and lived a happy life.

After the outbreak of the French Revolution , de Florian fled from Paris to Sceaux, where he was in command of the National Guard from August 1789 to September 1792 . In this city he had received a house from Penthièvre. He wanted to win over the Jacobins with a historical work he intended, and in the French capital he sought contact with the sans-culottes . At that time he also started translating Don Quixote by Cervantes . When the welfare committee tracked down an understanding dedication of de Florian's novel Numa Pompilius to Marie Antoinette , the author was arrested in Sceaux in 1793. After Robespierre's fall on Thermidor 9 (July 27, 1794), he was released again, but his health had suffered greatly during the arrest and he died shortly afterwards on September 13, 1794 at the age of only 39.

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In the late 1770s, de Florian made his debut as a writer. He wrote plays in the style of the harlequinads, not without sensitive admixtures, such as Les deux billets (1779), Les jumeaux de Bergame (1782), Le bon ménage (1782), Le bon père (1783), La bonne mère (1785) and Le bon fils (1785). His poetic epistle Voltaire et le serf du mont Jura was crowned in 1782, his eclogue Ruth received a prize from the Académie française in 1783, but he established his fame with the pastoral novels Galatée, roman pastoral, imité de Cervantès (1783) and Estelle et Némorin (1788 ), which are inspired by Gessner and expressed the sensitive love for nature of the age. He also wrote poetic novels such as Numa Pompilius (1786), a dull imitation of Télémaque , and Gonzalve de Cordoue (2 vols., Paris 1791).

De Florian is particularly known for his Fables ( Fables , 1792), which were created as a follow-up to Jean de La Fontaine . In them his talent shows at its height: they are simple, well-invented poems in graceful, witty language, with amiable mischief, spiced with apt mockery and fine malice. His Guillaume Tell (posthumously ed. 1800), which he wrote in prison, is probably his weakest work. Other works that should be mentioned are: Jeannot et Colin (1780), Blanche et Vermeille , Mélanges de poésie et de littérature , Eliézer et Nephthali (posthumously ed. 1803) and Jeunesse de Florian, ou mémoires d'un jeune Espagnol (posthumously ed . 1807), in which de Florian tells his own youthful impressions and first adventures. A poem from his novella Célestine (1784) served Jean-Paul-Égide Martinis as a text for the song Plaisir d'amour .

His works have been published many times and translated into most European languages. The oeuvres complètes de Florian Renouard issued (16 vols, 1820;.. German LG Förster, 1827 ff), the inédites oeuvres Pixérécourt (4 vols 1824.). The editions by Briand (13 vols., 1823–1824) and by Jauffret (12 vols., 1837–38) are also known.

See also: List of members of the Académie française

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personal data
SURNAME Florian, Jean-Pierre Claris de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French poet
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1755
PLACE OF BIRTH Sauve , France
DATE OF DEATH September 13, 1794
Place of death Sceaux