André Chénier | |
|---|---|
 Portrait during his last captivity bySuvée | |
| Born | (1762-10-30)30 October 1762 |
| Died | 25 July 1794(1794-07-25) (aged 31) Paris, France |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | French |
| Genre | Poetry |
André Marie Chénier (French pronunciation:[ɑ̃dʁemaʁiʃenje]; 30 October 1762 – 25 July 1794) was a French poet associated with the events of theFrench Revolution, during which he was sentenced to death. His sensual, emotive poetry marks him as one of the precursors of theRomantic movement. His career was brought to an abrupt end when he wasguillotined for supposed "crimes against the state". Chénier's life has been the subject ofUmberto Giordano's operaAndrea Chénier and other works of art.
Chénier was born in theGalata district of Constantinople. His family home, destroyed in a fire, was located on the site of the presentSaint Pierre Han, in today'sKaraköy neighborhood ofIstanbul. His father, Louis Chénier, a native ofLanguedoc, after twenty years in theLevant as a cloth-merchant, was appointed to a position equivalent to that of Frenchconsul at Constantinople. His mother, Élisabeth Santi-Lomaca, whose sister was grandmother ofAdolphe Thiers, was ofGreek Cypriot origin.[1] When André was three years old, his father returned to France, and from 1768 to 1775 served as consul-general of France inMorocco. The family, of which André was the third son, and Marie-Joseph (see below) the fourth, remained in France and for a few years André was given his youthful freedom while living with an aunt inCarcassonne. A square in Carcassonne is named to commemorate him. He distinguished himself as a verse-translator from the classics at theCollège de Navarre in Paris.[2]
In 1783, Chénier enlisted in a French regiment atStrasbourg, but the novelty soon wore off. He returned to Paris before the end of the year, was well received by his family, and mixed in the cultivated circle which frequented his mother'ssalon, includingLebrun-Pindare,Antoine Lavoisier,Jean François Lesueur,Claude Joseph Dorat, and, a little later, the painterJacques-Louis David.[2]
Chénier had already decided to become a poet, and worked in theneoclassical style of the time. He was especially inspired by a 1784 visit to Rome,Naples, andPompeii. For nearly three years, he studied and experimented in verse without any pressure or interruption from his family. He wrote mostlyidylls andbucolics, imitated to a large extent fromTheocritus,Bion of Smyrna and the Greek anthologists. Among the poems written or at least sketched during this period wereL'Oaristys,L'Aveugle,La Jeune Malode,Bacchus,Euphrosine andLa Jeune Tarentine.[2] He mixed classical mythology with a sense of individual emotion and spirit.[citation needed]
Apart from his idylls and his elegies, Chénier also experimented with didactic and philosophic verse, and when he commenced hisHermès in 1783 his ambition was to condense theEncyclopédie ofDenis Diderot into a long poem somewhat after the manner ofLucretius. Now extant only in fragments, this poem was to treat of man's place in the universe, first in an isolated state, and then in society. Another fragment called "L'Invention" sums up Chénier's thoughts on poetry: "De nouvelles pensées, faisons des vers antiques" ("From new thoughts, let us make antique verses").[2]
Chénier remained unpublished. In November 1787, an opportunity for a fresh career presented itself. TheChevalier de la Luzerne, a friend of the Chénier family, had been appointed ambassador to Britain. When he offered to take André with him as his secretary, André knew the offer was too good to refuse, but was unhappy in England. He bitterly ridiculed "... ces Anglais. Nation toute à vendre à qui peut la payer. De contrée en contrée allant au monde entier, Offrir sa joie ignoble et son faste grossier."[2] Translation: "... these English. A nation for sale to whoever can pay for it. Going from country to country and out to the whole world, offering its ignoble joy and its coarse splendor." AlthoughJohn Milton andJames Thomson seem to have interested him, and a few of his verses show slight inspiration fromShakespeare andThomas Gray, it would be an exaggeration to say Chénier studied English literature.[citation needed]
The events of 1789, and the startling success of his younger brother,Marie-Joseph, as politicalplaywright andpamphleteer, concentrated all his thoughts upon France. In April 1790 he could stand London no longer, and once more joined his parents at Paris in the rue de Cléry. France was on the verge ofanarchy. Amonarchien believing in aconstitutional monarchy for France, Chénier believed that theRevolution was already complete and that all that remained to be done was the inauguration of thereign of law. Though his political viewpoint was moderate, his tactics were dangerously aggressive: he abandoned his gentle idyls to write poeticalsatires. His prose "Avis au peuple français" (24 August 1790) was followed by the rhetorical "Jeu de paume", a somewhat declamatory moral ode occasioned by theTennis court oath[3] addressed to the radical painter Jacques-Louis David.[2]
In the meantime Chénier orated at theFeuillants Club, and contributed frequently to theJournal de Paris from November 1791 to July 1792, when he wrote his scorchingiambs toJean Marie Collot d'Herbois,Sur les Suisses révoltés du regiment de Châteauvieux. Theinsurrection of 10 August 1792 uprooted his party, his paper and his friends, and he only escaped theSeptember Massacres by staying with relatives inNormandy. In the month following these events his brother, Marie-Joseph, had entered the anti-monarchicalNational Convention. André raged against all these events, in such poems asOde àCharlotte Corday congratulating France that "un scélérat de moins rampe dans cette fange", "one scoundrel less creeps in this mire".[2] At the request ofMalesherbes, the defense counsel to KingLouis XVI, Chénier provided some arguments for the king's defense.[citation needed]
After the king's execution, Chénier sought a secluded retreat on thePlateau de Satory atVersailles, and only went out after nightfall. There he wrote the poems inspired by Fanny (Mme Laurent Lecoulteux), including the exquisiteOde à Versailles. His solitary life at Versailles lasted nearly a year. On 7 March 1794 he was arrested at the house of Mme Pastoret atPassy. Two obscure agents of theCommittee of Public Safety (one of them named Nicolas Guénot) were in search of a marquise who had fled, but an unknown stranger was found in the house and arrested on suspicion of being the aristocrat they were searching for. This was Chénier, who had come on a visit of sympathy.[2]
Chénier was taken to theLuxembourg Palace and afterwards to thePrison Saint-Lazare. During the 140 days of his imprisonment he wrote a series of iambs (in alternate lines of 12 and 8 syllables) denouncing the Convention, which "hiss and stab like poisoned bullets",[4] and which were smuggled to his family by a jailer. In prison he also composed his most famous poem, "Jeune captive", a poem at once of enchantment and of despair,[2] inspired by the misfortunes of his fellow captive the duchesse de Fleury, néeAimée de Coigny.[5] Ten days before Chénier's death, the painterJoseph-Benoît Suvée completed the well-known portrait of him, shown in the box above.[6][7] Aimée de Coigny survived the Terror, her freedom being bought byCasimir, Comte de Montrond on the same day that she was to follow Chénier to the guillotine[citation needed].
Chénier might have been overlooked but for the well-meant, indignant officiousness of his father. Marie-Joseph tried, but failed, to prevent his brother's execution.[2] It is possible that the French government remembered Chénier as the author of the venomous verses in theJournal de Paris and had him tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal for that reason.
Chénier was convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal. At sundown, he was taken bytumbrel to theguillotine at what is now thePlace de la Nation. He was executed along withFrançoise-Thérèse de Choiseul-Stainville, Princesse Joseph de Monaco, on a charge of conspiracy. Robespierre was seized by the National Convention only two days later, and executed on July 28. Chénier, aged 31 at his execution, was buried in theCimetière de Picpus.
During Chénier's lifetime only hisJeu de paume (1791) andHymne sur les Suisses (1792) had been published. For the most part, then, his reputation rests on his posthumously published work, retrieved from oblivion page by page.[2]
TheJeune Captive appeared in theDécade philosophique, on 9 January 1795;La Jeune Tarentine in theMercure de France of 22 March 1801.François-René de Chateaubriand quoted three or four passages in hisGénie du Christianisme. Fayolle[8] andJules Lefèvre-Deumier also gave a few fragments; but it was not until 1819 that an attempt was made byHenri de Latouche to collect the poems in a substantive volume,[2] from manuscripts retained by Marie-Joseph Chénier. Many more poems and fragments were discovered after Latouche's publication, and were collected in later editions. Latouche also wrote an account of Chénier's last moments.[citation needed]
Critical opinions of Chénier have varied wildly. He experimented with classical precedents rendered in French verse to a much greater extent than other 18th-century poets; on the other hand, the ennui and melancholy of his poetry recalls Romanticism. In 1828,Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve praised Chénier as a heroic forerunner of theRomantic movement and a precursor ofVictor Hugo. Chénier, he said, had "inspired and determined"Romanticism.[2] Many other critics also wrote about Chénier as modern and proto-Romantic. However,Anatole France contests Sainte-Beuve's theory: he claims that Chénier's poetry is one of the last expressions of 18th-century classicism. His work should not be compared to Hugo and theParnassien poets, but tophilosophes likeAndré Morellet.Albert Camus in 1951'sThe Rebel called Chenier "the only poet of the times".[9]Paul Morillot has argued that judged by the usual test of 1820s Romanticism (love for strange literature of the North, medievalism, novelties and experiments), Chénier would have been excluded from Romantic circles.[citation needed]
The poetJosé María de Heredia held Chénier in great esteem, saying "I do not know in the French language a more exquisite fragment than the three hundred verses of theBucoliques" and agreeing with Sainte-Beuve's judgment that Chénier was a poet ahead of his time. Chénier has been very popular in Russia, whereAlexandr Pushkin wrote a poem about his last hours based on Latouche andIvan Kozlov translatedLa Jeune Captive,La Jeune Tarentine and other famous pieces.[2] Chénier has also found favor with English-speaking critics; for instance, his love of nature and of political freedom has been compared toShelley, and his attraction to Greek art and myth recallsKeats.[citation needed]
Chénier's fate has become the subject of many plays, pictures and poems, notably in the operaAndrea Chénier byUmberto Giordano, the epilogue bySully-Prudhomme, theStello byAlfred de Vigny, a poem byPushkin, the delicate statue byDenys Puech in the Luxembourg, and the well-known portrait in the centre ofCharles Louis Müller'sLast Days of the Terror.[2]
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Seccombe, Thomas (1911). "Chénier, André de". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 78–79.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
