Charles Leconte de Lisle
Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle (actually Charles Marie Leconte ; born October 22, 1818 in Saint-Paul , Réunion ; † July 18, 1894 in Voisins / Louveciennes ) was a French writer.
Life and work
He was born on the Île Bourbon - today La Réunion - in the Indian Ocean, where his father, a former Napoleonic field doctor, took over a sugar cane plantation after 1815. He spent his childhood in Nantes from the age of four and his youth on La Réunion again. After a listless law degree in Rennes and his first attempts as a journalist (1837–1843), he lived again briefly on the island. From 1845 he stayed permanently in France, mostly in Paris , and struggled to find his way through as a journalist and writer. During his student days he had already come into contact with the socialisme évangélique of Félicité de Lamennais , one of the founders of Catholic social teaching ; In the time of the strong politicization and polarization of French society towards the end of the July monarchy, he joined the more radical Fourierism . During the February Revolution of 1848 he was an active left Republican.
After the bloody suppression of the revolt of the Parisian workers in June 1848 and completely after the coup d'état Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in December 1851, he was, like many left-wing writers of the time, disillusioned. He became apolitical and lived only in literature, especially poetry. Here he put himself on the stage name Leconte de Lisle (which he used without a first name), a homonym of le comte de l'île , d. H. "The count of the island".
Leconte de Lisle's ideal was a poésie objective . This should not put romantic emotional outgrowths of a lyrical self in verse, but present largely descriptively aesthetically beautiful, animate and inanimate subjects from the present and the past, but also encompass old and new mythological and cosmological ideas. As usual, he published his poems in magazines and from time to time in anthologies. So appeared in 1852 Poèmes antiques , 1862 Poèmes barbares , 1873 Les Erinnyes , 1884 tragiques Poèmes . His perfectly chiseled, intentionally cool poems ultimately earned him admiration from literary critics and connoisseurs, and his modest Paris apartment became the center of the “ Parnassian ” poetry school .
In the 1860s, Leconte de Lisle made his peace with the regime of Napoleon Bonaparte , the Second Empire , and received a small state pension from 1864. The Third Republic, which began in 1871, gave him a pro forma librarian position in 1873, i. H. the corresponding salary. In 1886 he received a seat in the Académie française .
Although his poems were compulsory school reading for many decades, Leconte de Lisle is hardly known today. Of special interest to German readers is his poem Le Rêve du jaguar ( German “The Jaguar's Dream”), which Rainer Maria Rilke could have inspired to create his panther .
Settings
In 1877, César Franck set the poem Les Éolides from the Poèmes antiques collection to music for a symphonic poem .
Benjamin Godard set the poem Les Élephants from the Poèmes barbare collection to music in the first movement of his Symphonie orientale, op.84
Klaus Miehling has recently set several works by Leconte de Lisle to music : Five Choral Songs after Baghavat for eight-part choir, string quartet (or string orchestra) and harp, op. 91 (2002); Two choral songs based on Leconte de Lisle for five-part choir and piano, op. 93 (2002); Trois Chansons Écossaises , op.114 (2005); Ekhidna for alto and piano / alto and orchestra, op.170 / 170a (2009/2013).
literature
- Christophe Carrère: Leconte de Lisle ou la passion du beau. Fayard, Paris 2009, ISBN 978-2-213-63451-7 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Charles Leconte de Lisle in the catalog of the German National Library
- Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
- Article in "Names, titles and dates of French literature" (source)
Individual evidence
- ↑ German translation The Aeolids
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Leconte de Lisle, Charles |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Leconte de Lisle, Charles Marie René |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 22, 1818 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Reunion Island |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 18, 1894 |
| Place of death | Voisins / Louveciennes |