Louise Colet
Louise Colet (* 15. August 1810 in Aix-en-Provence as Louise Révoil , † 8. March 1876 in Paris ) was French poet of romance .
Life
Louise was born in Aix as the seventh child of the postman Antoine Révoil and his wife Henriette Leblanc, but later claimed that she grew up in a castle. Her brother Pierre Révoil (1776–1842) became a painter. At the age of fifteen she herself began to make poetic attempts. After her father's death, she moved with her mother to Mouriès , where she owned an estate. There Louise married the musician Hippolyte Colet on December 5, 1834 , in order to get to Paris from the provinces. There she presented her first volume of poetry, but at first did not find a gracious audience.
Through numerous advocates and patrons she earned a reputation in the Parisian literary scene. Her breakthrough was helped by her close acquaintance and philosopher Victor Cousin , who was education minister for a short time. In the re-evaluation of her work she received admiration and monetary awards from the Académie française . In Paris she continued to write numerous novels, travelogues, dramas and poetry collections. She received her funding thanks to friendships up to the high nobility and royal court over several regime changes. Victor Hugo also frequented her literary salon . She has received several literary prizes and awards from the Académie. Their daughter Henriette was born in 1840; neither Hippolyte Colet nor Victor Cousin recognized paternity.
Colet was the lover of the younger writer Gustave Flaubert between 1846 and 1854 ; his correspondence with her has largely been preserved. Flaubert became famous for his realistic works and saw inadequacies in Colet's late Romantic poetry. He spent a lot of time mending the spots until he finally turned away from her. The ultimate break was triggered by Flaubert's Madame Bovary , in whose title character Colet was portrayed and vilified. Her novel Lui represented a biographical counterattack on Flaubert. After Flaubert, Colet turned to Alfred de Musset , whom she also described after the end of the affair in the novel Une histoire de soldat . Other lovers were Abel-François Villemain and Alfred de Vigny . All these lovers also frequented her salon.
After the death of her husband in 1853, Colet earned her livelihood and that of her daughter through her literary writing, as well as through letters of petition to various agencies, which opened up new scholarships for her into old age. From 1859 to 1861 she traveled to Italy for two years, visiting Genoa , Turin , Milan , Naples and Rome , among others . She made close acquaintance with Belgiojoso and Garibaldi .
reception
The contemporary Meyers-Lexikon praised her poetry as “not without grace, the verses flow easily and freely; but sometimes all too masculine accents and a certain affectation of heroic feelings disturb.
Later critics of her work suggested that Colet impressed her contemporaries less with the quality of her poems than with her "unparalleled beauty" with which she is said to have "bewitched literary Paris for decades". She is said to have obtained prices through friends; her husband is said to have been appointed professor of music only at her instigation.
Works
- Les fleurs du midi (1836)
- Penserosa (1840)
- Le poème de la femme (1853)
- Cequ'on rève en aimant (1854),
- La jeunesse de Goethe (1839).
- Les derniers abbés, mœurs religieuses d'Italie (1868)
- Les dévotes du grand monde; type it you second empire (1873)
- Lettres de Béranger et details sur sa vie (1857)
- Novels
- Deux mois d'émotion (1843)
- Folles Staintes (1844)
- Hélène (1854)
- Lui, roman contemporain (1859)
- Travel reports and ethnographic studies
- Promenade en Hollande (1859)
- Deux mois dans les Pyrénées (1866)
- Naples sous Garibaldi (1861)
- L'Italie des Italiens (1862–64, 4 volumes)
literature
-
Francine du Plessix Gray : What we dream when we love: The life of Louise Colet - writer, feminist, mistress of Flaubert. Kindler 1995, ISBN 978-3463402567
- Originally: Rage and Fire: Life of Louise Colet - Pioneer Feminist, Literary Star, Flaubert's Muse. Simon & Schuster 1994, ISBN 978-0671742386
- Gustave Flaubert - The letters to Louise Colet. Haffmans 1995, ISBN 978-3251201877
- Lettres à Louise Colet. Magnard 2003, ISBN 978-2-210-75462-1
Web links
- Your bust of James Pradier
- Literature by and about Louise Colet in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ Biography of Hippolyte Colet (French)
- ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon; 4th edition from 1888–1890.
- ^ Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 113.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Colet, Louise |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Révoil, Louise (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 15, 1810 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Aix-en-Provence |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 8, 1876 |
| Place of death | Paris |