John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester

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John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester , from Jacob Huysmans, private collection

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (born April 1, 1647 in Ditchley , Oxfordshire , † July 26, 1680 in Woodstock , Oxfordshire) was an English poet and confidante of King Charles II and Samuel Pepys .

Life

John Wilmot's mother, Anne St. John, Countess of Rochester , was a royalist and devout Anglican. His father, Henry Wilmot, was of Anglo-Irish descent and received the title of Earl of Rochester from Charles II in 1652 during his exile under the Commonwealth of England for his military merits: he was General of the Royal Cavalier Forces during the Civil War and died in exile in 1658 , two years before the restoration.

The young Rochester enjoyed his education, first at a private tutor, then went to the Burford Grammar School and enrolled in 1659 at Wadham College at the University of Oxford , which he two years later with an MA in Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon , left , an uncle from Rochester and then chancellor of the university. After studies in France and Italy, the befitting Grand Tour , Rochester was introduced to the English court. Because of his bravery in a battle against the Dutch, he was suddenly known and highly praised: Rochester served in the meantime in the Second Sea War against Holland (1665–1667) in the royal fleet from 1665 to 1666 and survived heavy battles, among other things. a. on board the Revenge . Thanks to his outward appearance and his eloquence, he quickly belonged to the closest circle around the king after the Restoration (1660).

In 1667 he married Elizabeth Malet , a wealthy heiress who had turned down previous marriage offers from Rochester, but now complied with the wedding wish - apparently under pressure from the king.

As a member of the Merry Gang (merry gang), Rochester became notorious for its excessive alcohol consumption and rough abuses and jokes. At the same time he was known for his brilliant way of discussing. The Merry Gang included nobles, including those from the upper nobility, and men of letters, the heyday was between 1665 and 1680. Although Wilmot was the youngest courtier among the Court Wits (the circle included Sir Charles Sedley , Lord Buckhurst, George Etherege and the Duke von Buckingham ), he quickly became a feared and admired enfant terrible .

Rochester was an avid theater-goer. At the theater he also met Elizabeth Barry , one of the most famous actresses of her time and later lover of Wilmot. More than any other representative of the literary ambitious court elite, there are countless reports, anecdotes and diary entries about Rochester (cf. The Diary of Samuel Pepys ) that shed light on his alcoholism and dissolute life. He was named Gentleman of the Bedchamber and received a substantial pension of £ 1,000 a year. From 1667 on, Wilmot sat in the House of Lords and was appointed Gamekeeper for Oxford County in February 1668 .

In 1674 he wrote a satire on Charles II (known as A Satyr on Charles II ). He criticizes the king for his sexual obsessions at the expense of the state. Thereupon Charles II banished him from the royal court. After seven months, however, he was able to resume his seat in the House of Lords .

A few years later Rochester fell out of favor again: in 1676 he and other companions got into a nocturnal argument with the royal guards. One of Rochester's companions was killed in the scuffle, and Rochester himself fled the scene. He then went into hiding and pretended to be Doctor Bembo, selling medicine and medicinal products based on mercury.

Rochester believed to have died of syphilis and the consequences of his alcohol addiction . Under the influence of his mother, Rochester became preoccupied with religion and spirituality in his final weeks before death. A pamphlet was published posthumously under his name in which he expresses his renunciation of atheism. The authorship of the work is, however, controversial. Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, made his confession on his deathbed and claims to have converted him to a believing Christian, as he describes it in his work Some passages on the life and death of John Earl of Rochester (1680). Wilmot is in the church of Spelsbury ( Oxfordshire buried).

He left a son and three daughters. His only minor son Charles (born April 1, 1671 in Ditchley , Oxfordshire ) inherited his title of nobility . With his death on July 26, 1681 in Woodstock , Oxfordshire, the titles expired.

plant

As an autodidact and not financially dependent occasional writer, Rochester could not be defined both formally and in terms of content. In addition to parodies and imitations of contemporary poets such as Malherbe , Ronsard or Boileau , he also translated or imitated classical authors such as Petronius , Lucretius , Ovid , Anacreon , Horace and Seneca . He wrote satires, essays and love poetry, only narrative forms are not known. The ideal of taste of the court wits and their critical judgment were of immense importance for other authors of the time, as the criticism of the influential court literary figures could particularly influence the reception of plays. Rochester was a patron and promoter of many playwrights ( John Dryden , Thomas Shadwell , Thomas Otway and others) throughout his life , but his literary talent did not produce any plays.

Rochester's satires were notorious for their sharp and clairvoyant social criticism and at the same time for their extremely obscene language. In addition to poems and traditional songs , he wrote epistles and satires based on Horace ( An Allusion to Horace ). In the field of poetry, court literary figures were rooted in the tradition of courtly classical poetry; Many poems of the Restoration period imitated the refined style of the Renaissance poets and took the form of the pastoral love poetry or the sonnet poetry of the Elizabethan poets in the style of Petrarkas. The poets of the Restoration period, not least the Court Wits , not only imitated the older styles, but also created their own variations of poetry with satirical-parodistic reflection. So the bucolic tradition was only used as an external form to express either court life, the positions on love and the attitude towards women in a skeptical and satirical-cynical way.

Rochester in particular knew how to parody traditional genres. So you come across elegant poems with obscene or pornographic content that surprise the reader with shock effects. Rochester embodies the most progressive and aggressive poetry of its time. His satirical verses turned against the utopia of gallantry and critically questioned the court circle, hypocrisy and a degenerate conception of love (for example in A Letter from Artemisia in Town to Chloe in the Country ).

In his paradoxical work A Satyr against Mankind , he contrasts the moral depravity of man and the erroneous belief that he has superiority through reason with the “sincerity” of the instinctive animal.

Traditionally, it is as a writer of Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery ( Sodom or the quintessence of debauchery accepted), a pornographic theater with numerous allusions to the court of Charles II. - a testament to his authorship was never rendered.

Most of his works were published anonymously and mostly only circulated as manuscripts, which is why it is believed that many of Rochester's works are lost.

Works

  • Poems on several occasions (1680)
  • A Letter from Artemisia in Town to Chloe in the Country (1679)
  • A satyr against mankind (1679)
  • Upon Nothing (1679)
  • The damaged libertine. Satires, songs and letters. Ed., Trans. and introduced by Christine Wunnicke . dtv, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-423-13637-2

literature

  • DH Griffin: Satires against man. The Poems of Rochester. Cambridge 1973.
  • Marianne Thormählen: Rochester: The Poems in Context. Cambridge 1993.
  • The Works of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Ed. Harold Love. Oxford 1999.
  • Graham Greene : Lord Rochester's Monkey. Being the Life of John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester. Bodley Head, London 1974.
    • German edition: Lord Rochester's monkey. The dissolute life of the ingenious drunkard and whore house poet. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1974.

effect

The 2004 film The Libertine is based on a play and deals with Wilmot's life.

Web links

Commons : John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.bridica.com/EBchecked/topic/505948/John-Wilmot-2nd-earl-of-Rochester
predecessor Office successor
Henry Wilmot Earl of Rochester
1658-1680 		Charles Wilmot
personal data
SURNAME Wilmot, John, 2nd Earl of Rochester
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rochester, 2nd Earl of
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English poet and confidante of King Charles II and Samuel Pepys'
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1647
PLACE OF BIRTH Ditchley , Oxfordshire
DATE OF DEATH July 26, 1680
Place of death Woodstock (Oxfordshire)