Les Pélopides
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| Title: | Les Pélopides |
| Genus: | tragedy |
| Original language: | French |
| Author: | Voltaire |
| Publishing year: | 1771 |
| Premiere: | not listed |
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Les Pélopides is a tragedy in five acts by Voltaire . The Pelopids , composed in 1771–72 , were not performed.
action
The action takes place on the forecourt of a temple. The sons of Pélops ( Pelops ) Atrée ( Atreus ), king in Argos , and Thieste ( Thyestes ), king in Mycenae, quarrel with hatred over the inheritance. Érope ( Aërope ), wife of the Atrée, loves Thieste, with whom she has a son. When Atrée learns the truth, he has his son killed and imprisoned his brother Thieste. He kills himself. Atrée realizes the cruel destiny of his family, the tantalids .
Literary source and biographical references
Voltaire worked on material from Greek mythology that has been handed down several times. The later censor Prosper Jolyot Crébillon had already processed the material into a tragedy Atrée et Thieste in 1707 . Voltaire wrote in his letter to d'Argental of December 19, 1770 that the first version was completed in eleven days. Voltaire reworked the first four acts a few months before his death in 1778.
Performances and contemporary reception
Voltaire hoped in vain for a performance in Paris on the occasion of the wedding of the Count of Provence in 1771. Frederick II, who did not represent contemporary tastes in literary matters, wrote to Voltaire:
“... I am amazed that it (Les Pélopides) is not played in Paris. Your fellow citizens, or rather the modern Welsh, have lost their taste for good things ... You don't deserve to be born in their homeland. Only posterity will recognize all of your merit. "
Going to press
The unaccepted piece was given for printing in December 1771 (according to Grimm not until January 1772) and in early 1772 by Voltaire in the twelfth volume of the Nouveaux Mélanges , a continuation of Cramer's octave editions of the works from 1756–1764. Several single editions by the Paris publishers Valadé and Didot followed in 1772.
Addition
The separate editions by Valadé and the subsequent editions up to the imprint of the Pelopids in Volume 6 of the Kehler Werkausgabe are preceded by the Fragment d'une Lettre , in which Voltaire described the myth of the Tantalids as the workshop of the Melpomene .
First printing and first individual issues
- Les Pélopides, ou Atrée et Thièste, Tragédie , Nouveaux melanges philosophiques, historiques, critiques, & c., Cramer, Geneva, Volume 12, pp. 115-184. [1]
- Les Pélopides, ou Atrée et Thièste, Tragédie , Valadé, Paris, 1772, 8 °, 64 p. [2]
- Les Pélopides, ou Atrée et Thièste, Tragédie , Valadé, Paris, 1772, 8 °, 68 p. [3]
- Les Pélopides ou Atrée et Thieste Tragédie par M. de Voltaire, Nouvelle édition , Didot, Paris, 1772, 8 °, 43 pp. [4]
literature
- Theodore Besterman : Eine Schöpferische Pause (1769–1751), in: Voltaire, Winkler, Munich, 1971, p. 431.
- Éric van der Schueren: Pélopides (Les), in: Dictionnaire Voltaire, Hachette Livre, 1994, p. 157.
- Siegfried Detemple: Voltaire: Die Werke, catalog for the 300th birthday, Berlin, 1994, p. 222f.
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. Siegfried Detemple: Voltaire: Die Werke, catalog for his 300th birthday, Berlin, 1994, p. 222.
- ↑ Éric van der Schueren: Les Pélopides, in: Dictionnaire Voltaire, Hachette Livre, 1994, p. 157.
- ↑ Éric van der Schueren: Les Pélopides, in: Dictionnaire Voltaire, Hachette Livre, 1994, p. 157.
- ^ Siegfried Detemple: Voltaire: Die Werke, catalog for the 300th birthday, Berlin, 1994, p. 238.