Marguerite Hessein de La Sablière

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Marguerite Hessein, Madame de La Sablière

Marguerite Hessein de La Sablière (* 1636 in Paris ; † January 8, 1693 ibid), actually Marguerite Hessein, was a patroness of artists, writers and scientists. She ran a literary salon in Paris and embodied the “scientific woman” in France on the eve of the Enlightenment . She was the long-time patron and loyal friend of the fabulous poet Jean de la Fontaine .

Life

Marguerite Hessein was the oldest child of Gilbert Hessein and Marguerite Menjot Hessein. Her father was a successful financier who had made his fortune by trading and starting his own bank. Her mother was the daughter of tax officer Jean Menjot and Anne Mallard, the widow of Guillaume Le Just, a military officer. Both parents were devout Protestants and belonged to the Huguenot - aristocracy of Paris.

At fourteen Marguerite Hessein was married to the financier Antoine de Rambouillet de La Sablière (1624–1679) and later had three children with him. At twenty-eight, she was separated from her unpredictable husband and moved to rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs , where she opened her home to a large number of friends from 1669 to 1680. She is said to have been handsome, amiable, and well educated. Joseph Sauveur and Gilles Persone de Roberval - two members of the French Academy of Sciences - taught them mathematics, physics and astronomy. The poet Boileau , angry about the intellectual demands of the women from La Sablière's circle, caricatured her in his satire contre les femmes, and called Sablière a blue stocking , although she was a successful hostess. Charles Perrault defended them against Boileau's attacks; in his L'apologie des femmes he claimed that Sablière was not only very talented, but also humble enough not to flaunt their skills.

The poet Jean de La Fontaine taught them natural history and philosophy. La Sablière housed La Fontaine in her hotel for over two decades - he dedicated one of his most beautiful fables to her ( The Raven, the Gazelle, the Tortoise and the Rat ) and two longer verses, including the Discours à Madame de La Sablière . In these works he never mentioned her directly, but gave her the name of the goddess Iris. He did not publish anything that was not first presented to her eye and wholeheartedly entered into their affairs and friendships.

The death of her estranged husband in 1679 enabled Sablière to reconcile with their children. Towards the end of the 1670s, La Sablière's career as a Salonnière declined visibly: The affair (1676–1680) with the military officer and poet Charles de la Fare had embittered La Sablière when his multiple infidelity became known. She experienced a religious crisis that led to her conversion to Catholicism . She left her home on rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs in 1680 to move to a more modest residence on rue Saint-Honoré. Again she brought Jean de La Fontaine into her home. She is said to have said once: Je n'ai gardé avec moi que mes trois bêtes, mon chat, mon chien et mon La Fontaine (German: I only have my three animals, my cat, my dog ​​and my La Fontaine with me keep me).

Sablière's conversion to Catholicism meant more than a change in religious affiliation for the Paris salons. Intellectually, it indicated a reversal of the philosophical belief of a woman who was previously allied with the disciples of Descartes and Gassendi . Morally it was a public renunciation of the rampant life she had previously led.

Alongside the well-known portrait of Sablière as the benefactress of La Fontaine, her own contribution to moral philosophy is being lost. In two works, Sablière criticizes moral values ​​from the standpoint of an Augustinian theology of sin and redemption. Her writings reflect the classical culture and the Cartesianism that made her known in philosophical circles of the time. Her meditations are formally sober, apocalyptic in tone and sketch a strict monastic moral code.

Web links

Commons : Marguerite Hessein de La Sablière  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Généalogie de Marguerite HESSEIN. Retrieved March 9, 2020 (French).
  2. ^ John J. Conley: The Suspicion of Virtue: Women Philosophers in Neoclassical France . Cornell University Press, 2018, ISBN 978-1-5017-2265-3 , pp. 75 ff . ( google.de [accessed on March 7, 2020]).
  3. ^ JS Spink: French Free-Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire . Ed .: The Athlone Press - University of London. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013, ISBN 978-1-4725-0501-9 , pp. 162 ff . ( google.de [accessed on March 7, 2020]).
  4. ↑ Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie , Joy Dorothy Harvey: The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: LZ . Taylor & Francis , 2000, ISBN 978-0-415-92040-7 , pp. 747, 1142 ( google.de [accessed March 7, 2020]).
  5. ^ Wilhelm Reuter: History of French literature: based on the work of Alfred Bougeault: "Précis historique de la littérature française" . Herder, 1876, p. 65 ( google.de [accessed March 7, 2020]).
  6. ^ Jürgen Grimm : French Classical: Textbook Romance Studies . Springer-Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-05030-4 , pp. 124 ( google.de [accessed on March 8, 2020]).
  7. ↑ Jean de LA FONTAINE: The Fables of La Fontaine. Translated from the French, by Elizur Wright . 1842 ( google.de [accessed on March 8, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME La Sablière, Marguerite Hessein de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hessein, Marguerite (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Patroness of artists, writers and scientists
DATE OF BIRTH 1636
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH January 8, 1693
Place of death Paris