Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux
Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux (born October 2, 1619 in La Rochelle , † November 10, 1692 in Paris ) was a French writer.
Life
Gédéon Tallemant was the son of Pierre Tallemant and his second wife Marie Rambouillet. The Protestant family from Tournai in Flanders had lived in La Rochelle since 1561 and became very wealthy through banking and insurance business.
After a stay in Bordeaux, the family moved to Paris in 1634. In contrast to the rest of the family, the young Gédéon was not interested in commercial activities and devoted himself to literature. In 1638 he made a trip to Rome. On January 14, 1646 he married the twelve-year-old Elisabeth Rambouillet, the daughter of his cousin. He became a member of the famous literary salon of the Marquise de Rambouillet .
In 1661 the Tallemant family went bankrupt. Shortly thereafter, his wife separated from him, converted to Catholicism and retired to a monastery.
The financial situation slowly improved again, even if the wealth of earlier years was never reached. His wife also returned to him.
With the change in the political climate under Louis XIV , life became increasingly difficult for Protestants. On October 18, 1685, the Edict of Fontainebleau repealed the Edict of Nantes , which had granted Protestants freedom of religion. Tallemant des Réaux converted to Catholicism three months earlier. One of his daughters, Charlotte, refused to renounce and was arrested and expelled from France.
He died in Paris on November 10, 1692.
plant
None of his works were printed during his lifetime. He wrote a tragedy, epigrams, rondeaus and numerous occasional poems. However, he is best known as the author of the Historiettes , a collection of anecdotes about his contemporaries. In the foreword he states his goal of truthfully reporting on everything that he was able to find out and that cannot be found in printed works. A history book is dedicated to numerous personalities from the aristocracy, society, literature and science : Heinrich IV. , Ludwig XIII. , Cardinal Richelieu , François de Malherbe , Paul Scarron , François Viète , Étienne Pascal and therein his children Blaise Pascal , Jacqueline Pascal and many others.
The work remained largely unknown for centuries until the owner of the original manuscript published the first edition in 1834/1835. This caused a scandal because the historiettes , which were often unflattering, contradicted the idealized image of France's “Grand Siècle”. Tallemant des Réaux was dismissed as a slanderer who tried to blacken them with invented stories about the private lives of the great.
In the 20th century he was largely rehabilitated, mainly through the work of Émile Magne and Antoine Adam , who prepared the edition of the Historiettes for the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade . By comparison with numerous other contemporary sources, the veracity of many Historiettes could be proven.
Despite some prejudices, one-sided views of the author and despite factual errors, the Historiettes are a source of inestimable value for the history of the 17th century in France.
literature
Editions of works and translations
- Gédéon Tallemant of Réaux: Historiettes I . Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard, Paris 1960, ISBN 2-07-010547-4
- Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux: Historiettes II . Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard, Paris 1961, ISBN 2-07-010548-2
- Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux: Salon stories historiettes . Translated and edited by Wolfgang Tschöke, Manesse Verlag, Zurich, 1996, ISBN 3717582186
- Les historiettes de Tallemant Des Réaux: mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du XVIIe siècle, publiés sur le manuscrit inédit et autographs; avec des éclaircissements et des notes par MM. Monmerqué, Membre de l'Institut, de Chateaugiron et Taschereau. 6 volumes, Levavasseur, Paris 1834–35. Online at Gallica :
Secondary literature
- Émile Magne: La joyeuse jeunesse de Tallemant des Réaux . Émile-Paul Frères, Paris 1921, online at archive.org
- Émile Magne: The fin troublée de Tallemant des Réaux . Émile-Paul Frères, Paris 1922, online at archive.org
Web links
- Literature by and about Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux in the catalog of the German National Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Réaux, Gédéon Tallemant des |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 2, 1619 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | La Rochelle |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 10, 1692 |
| Place of death | Paris |