Paul Pellisson

Paul Pellisson; Painting from 1652

Paul Pellisson (actually Paul Pellisson-Fontanier; born October 30, 1624 in Béziers , † February 7, 1693 in Paris ) was a French man of letters .

Life and work

Though not too important as an author himself, Pellisson (as he is called in literary history) was an important figure in the Parisian literary scene in the 1650s.

He came from a wealthy Protestant family and grew up in Castres (Dép. Tarn), where his father was a judge. After attending school in Castres and Montauban , a center of Protestantism in the south of France, he studied law in Toulouse . In 1645 he was admitted to the bar and went to Paris, where he made contact with the Protestant writer Valentin Conrart , founding member of the young Académie Française and its secretary for life. Through him he gained access to the aesthetic salon of the Marquise de Rambouillet , where he a. a. met the authors Gilles Ménage and Madeleine de Scudéry .

He spent the most turbulent phases of the Fronde unrest, which began in 1648, in his native Castres.

Back in Paris, in 1652 he bought the noble but not very absorbing office of royal secretary (secrétaire du roi) and had the idea of ​​making himself the historiographer of the Académie. In 1653 he published the Histoire de l'Académie française depuis son établissement jusqu'en 1652 , a well-informed and well-documented history of the institution's founding phase thanks to his close contact with Conrart. The grateful “Académiciens” reserved the next vacant chair for him (which he got the following year) and granted him the right, never before and never after, to take part in their meetings by then.

Pellisson also resumed his glamorous activities after 1652. He was one of the loyal followers of the aesthetic salon of the Mlle de Scudéry, which had succeeded the Hôtel de Rambouillet. Undoubtedly platonic, he swarmed around the hard-working novelist, who in turn let him appear encoded in the form of "Acante" in Artamène, ou le grand Cyrus (10 vols., 1649–1653) and "Herminius" in Clélie, histoire romaine (10 vols. , 1654-1660).

From that time, d. H. the 1650s, a number of Pellisson's scattered printed poems in the gallant style of the salons and other smaller writings date from. Of particular interest today is his long afterword to an edition of the poems of the late Jean-François Sarrasin from 1656, where he drafts a theory of gallant poetry as a poetry in a simultaneously cultivated and natural “middle” style, such as the “honnêtes gens ”in the salons.

In 1657 Pellisson joined the circle of writers and artists around the powerful finance minister and great patron Nicolas Fouquet and became his confidante. B. managed the sponsorship funds and u. a. recognized and promoted the talent of Jean de La Fontaine .

After he could not prevent Gilles Boileau (an older brother of Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux ), who satirically attacked his friends Ménage and Scudéry, from being elected to the Académie in 1659 , Pellisson stayed away from the sessions and only reappeared after the early Death of G. Boileau in 1669.

Also in 1659 (after the secretary's office was sold and with the help of Fouquet?) He acquired a higher office in the financial administration in Montpellier and in 1660 the office of "Council of State" (Conseiller d'État).

The year 1661 brought a deep turning point. Pellisson, along with other loyal followers, got caught up in the vortex that arose around Fouquet when he was arrested and imprisoned on charges of enrichment in office. The brave attempt to defend his patron and justify by the writings Discours au roi, par un de ses fidèles sujets sur le procès de M. de Fouquet and Seconde défense de M. Fouquet paid Pellisson with his own establishment in the Bastille , from which he was only released in 1666.

After that, he obviously found people who stood up for him, pointing to his abilities as a historian, because in 1668 he was appointed royal chronicler (historiographe du Roi).

As the latter, he considered it opportune in October 1670 to convert to Catholicism and, a little later, even to have the (lower?) Ordinations granted, after which King Louis XIV had some lucrative ecclesiastical benefices assigned to him without being required to be present.

Pellisson thanked Ludwig with a poem in praise of Ludwig (1671), which was supposedly translated into several languages. In 1676 he gave an eulogy on behalf of the Académie, who had just achieved some success in the war against the Netherlands.

In the same year he handed over his post as chronicler to Jean Racine and Boileau-Despréaux. In the last years of his life he participated with several writings in the religious and confessional disputes of his time.

From Voltaire 's dictum comes, Pellisson was a "poète médiocre à la vérité, mais homme très savant et eloquent" (a really mediocre poet, but a very learned and eloquent man).

Works

• Histoire de l'Académie française depuis son établissement jusqu'en 1652 . Paris 1653. (Reprint: Slatkine Reprints, Paris 1989.)
• Panégyrique du Roy Louis Quatorzième, prononcé dans l'Académie françoise . Paris 1671.
• Reflections on the différends de la religion . Paris 1686
• De la tolérance des religions, lettres de M. de Leibniz et reponses de M. Pellisson . Jean Anisson, Paris 1692.
• Le Siège de Dôle en 1668: relation écrite pour Louis XIV . Dole 1873.
• Œuvres diverse, 1624-1693 . Slatkine reprints, Geneva 1971.
• Lettres historiques, 1624-1693 . Slatkine reprints, Geneva 1971.

literature

• Alain Niderst: Madeleine de Scudéry, Paul Pellisson et leur monde. Presses universitaires de France, Paris 1976.

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Pellisson in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by and about Paul Pellisson in VD 17 .
• Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
• Article in "Names, Titles and Dates of French Literature, Part I" (main source)