ANDRÉ CHÉNIER AND JOSEPH CHÉNIER. SKETCH OF THEIR LIFE AND WORKS. ANDRÉ DE CHÉNIER was born in 1762 at Constantinople, where his father was French consul and died on the scaffold at Paris, in 1794, only three days before the fall of Robespierre. He had welcomed the outbreak of the Revolution with enthusiasm, but disgusted with its excesses, he was bold enough to blame them openly in some letters, which he inserted in the Journal de Paris. His lyric poems which were not published till 1819 are characterized by a return to classical simplicity, by great delicacy of sentiment and beauty of expression. His brother MARIE-JOSEPH DE CHÉNIER was born in 1764, also at Constantinople, and died at Paris in 1811. He attempted several branches of literature, but wrote more particularly for the stage. Being an enthusiastic admirer of republican ideas, it was to them he owed most of his poetical inspirations. He successively put on the stage the tragedies Charles IX, Henri VIII, la Mort de Calas, Gracchus, Fénelon, Timoléon, which where marvellously successful, owing principally to their being in unison with the democratic spirit of the times. Marie-Joseph de Chénier was a member of all the representative assemblies which succeeded each other between 1792 and 1802. On the reestablishment of public instruction he became inspector-general of schools, but he was deprived of his appointment under the empire. He has been falsely accused of having done nothing to save his brother's life, an accusation he has eloquently repudiated in his Épître sur la Calomnie, which we reprint. LA JEUNE CAPTIVE, PAR ANDRÉ CHÉNIER. L'épi naissant mûrit de la faux respecté, Et moi, comme lui belle et jeune comme lui, This melancholy ode was written for Mlle de Coigny, who was imprisoned at the same time as the poet, but recovered her liberty after the fall of Robespierre, on the ninth Thermidor. 2 Dew-drops. 3 I. e. malheur, chagrin, peine. 1 Qu'un stoïque aux yeux secs vole embrasser la mort, S'il est des jours amers, il en est de si doux! L'illusion féconde habite dans mon sein; Est-ce à moi de mourir! Tranquille je m'endors, Ma bienvenue au jour me rit dans tous les yeux, Mon beau voyage encore est si loin de sa fin! Au banquet de la vie à peine commencé Je ne suis qu'au printemps, je veux voir la moisson; Je vais achever mon année. Brillante sur ma tige et l'honneur du jardin, O Mort! tu peux attendre; éloigne, éloigne-toi; Pour moi Palès encore a des asiles verts; Ainsi, triste et captif, ma lyre, toutefois, Et, secouant le joug de mes jours languissants, A goddess of the old Italian mythology, the tutelary deity of the flocks and fields; in honour of her the Romans celebrated the Palila, on April 21st, the supposed anniversary of the foundation of the city. Ces chants, de ma prison témoins harmonieux, La grâce décorait son front et ses discours, LA CALOMNIE, PAR JOSEPH CHÉNIER. Ceux que la France a vus ivres de tyrannie, Hélas! pour arracher la victime aux supplices, Mais ils vous ressemblaient, ils étaient sans pitié. O mon frère, je veux, relisant tes écrits Chanter l'hymne funèbre à tes mânes proscrits; Tes frères gémissants, ta mère désolée, Quelques amis des arts, un peu d'ombre et des fleurs, Another brother, who was set free after Robespierre's death. 2 André Dumont, commissary of the Convention in the department of the Somme. The ninth day of Thermidor (July 27th) 1794 was the date of the fall of Robespierre. MME DE STAËL. SKETCH OF HER LIFE AND WORKS.1 ANNE-LOUISE-GERMAINE NECKER, BARONNE DE STAËL-HOL STEIN was born at Paris in 1766. Her father was the famous banker who was minister on two occasions under Louis XVI, but who was far from holding so exalted a position then. At an early age the girl showed herself gifted with a precocious intellect; her liveliness and wit were the delight of the distinguished literary circle which met at her father's house. She was twenty years old when she married the baron de Staël-Holstein, Swedish ambassador at Paris, who resided in that city till 1799 and died there in 1802. The execution of the king and the monstrous excesses which followed upon it filled Mme de Staël with horror and dismay; yet she was bold enough to send in to the revolutionary government a written defence of the unhappy queen, Marie-Antoinette. Mme After having found a refuge in England for a short time, de Staël on returning to France after the fall of Robespierre, joined the moderate party. Under the Directory (1795-1799) Necker's daughter exercised great political influence by means of her social gatherings. After the coup d'Etat of the 18th Brumaire she became in a manner the centre of an intellectual opposition to the increasingly despotic tendencies of the consular government. She fell a victim to its despotism in 1802, when she was banished to a distance of forty leagues from Paris. This sentence was the cause of her first visit to Germany; she went to Weimar, where she studied the German language and literature and made the acquaintance of Goethe, Schiller and Wieland. On her return to her house at Coppet, near Geneva, which belonged to her family, she devoted herself to literary work and the entertainment of her friends. Her retreat at Coppet was at this time the gathering-place of a number of distinguished men of wit and culture. She published her two celebrated novels, first Delphine, and after a visit to Italy, Corinne (1807), both of which were universally and warmly admired. The heroïne in each of these two novels is a superior woman, who rebels against the trammels generally imposed on her sex by public opinion, and who pays by a bitter experience for her independent spirit. Corinne contains a brilliant description of Italy. The authoress displays in these works great elevation of mind and a rare degree of learning joined with a clever appreciation of the world; but her style, though frequently brilliant, is at times ponderous and artificial. After another visit to Germany, Mme de Staël was permitted to reside in France. But in 1810 the Imperial police found a fresh pretext for persecuting her in her book De l'Allemagne, which had just appeared. The whole edition was seized and converted into wastepaper and the authoress was ordered to choose between exile to America and an enforced residence on her estate at Coppet. And We have followed the Biographie Universelle. yet the work, which drew upon her these severities was a purely literary one. In spite of numerous errors of detail, it has had the great merit of introducing the knowledge and study of German literature into France and thus throwing open a new field to French men of letters. The book De l'Allemagne may in fact be looked upon as one of the fore-runners of the Romantic school. Though living retired at Coppet, on the territory of the Helvetian republic, Mme de Staël found herself exposed to so many daily vexations from the all-powerful Imperial police, that at last she determined to escape. This she did in 1812, and to go from Geneva to England, she had to pass through the Tyrol, Austria, Hungary, Poland and Russia and finally take ship at St.-Petersburg. This journey proves more clearly than anything the almost universal dominion of the French conqueror. She has herself given an attractive description of it in her work, Dix Années d'exil, which was published after her death. In England she at last managed to publish her book De l'Allemagne, the manuscript of which the Imperial police had in vain attempted to seize. After the fall of Napoleon, Mme de Staël returned to Paris. She obtained from Louis XVIII two million francs as a compensation for the sums owing to her father. She died at Paris in 1817. I. CORINNE, OU L'ITALIE. (1807.) LA FIN DU CARNAVAL A ROME. La course des chevaux se préparait. Lord Nelvil s'attendait à voir une course semblable à celles d'Angleterre; mais il fut étonné d'apprendre que de petits chevaux barbes1 devaient courir tout seuls, sans cavaliers, les uns contre les autres. Ce spectacle attire singulièrement l'attention des Romains. Au moment où il va commencer, toute la foule se range des deux côtés de la rue. La place du Peuple, qui était couverte de monde, est vide en un moment. Chacun monte sur les amphithéâtres qui entourent les obélisques, et des multitudes innombrables de têtes et d'yeux noirs sont tournées vers la barrière d'où les chevaux doivent s'élancer. Ils arrivent sans bride et sans selle, seulement le dos couvert d'une étoffe brillante, et conduits par des palefreniers très-bien vêtus, qui mettent à leurs succès un intérêt passionné. On place les chevaux derrière la barrière, et leur ardeur pour la franchir est excessive. A chaque instant on les retient: ils se cabrent, ils hennissent, ils trépignent, comme s'ils étaient impatients d'une gloire qu'ils vont obtenir à eux seuls, sans que l'homme les dirige. Cette impatience des chevaux, ces cris des palefreniers font, du moment où la barrière tombe, un vrai coup de théâtre. Les chevaux partent, les palefreniers crient place, place, avec un transport inexprimable. Ils accompagnent leurs chevaux du geste et de la voix, aussi longtemps qu'ils peuvent les apercevoir. Les chevaux sont jaloux l'un de l'autre comme des hommes. Le pavé étincelle sous leurs pas, leur crinière vole, et leur désir de gagner le prix, ainsi abandonnés à eux-mêmes, est tel, qu'il en est 1 Horses from the North-African coast, which is called Barbarie. |