Alexandre Soumet

Louis Alexandre Soumet is a poet and French playwright born with Castelnaudary (Aude) the February 8th 1788 and dead the March 30th 1845 with Paris.

Biography

Alexandre Soumet prepared, but without success, the examination entrance to the Polytechnic school and came to settle in Paris in 1808. Endowed poet, it wrote worms in the honor of Napoleon i which were worth to him to be named listener with the Council of State in 1810. He became popular in 1814 thanks to a touching elegy, the Poor Girl . Then, in 1815, the French Academy crowned two of its poems: the Discovery of vaccinates and the Last moments of Bayard . He was elected maintenor of the Académie of the floral Plays in 1819.

Subjects celebrated the Restauration and was named librarian of the king with Saint-Cloud. In 1822, it gave successfully two tragedies, Clytemnestre and Saul . Extremely of these successes, he was elected with the French Academy on July 29th 1824 to replace Etienne Aignan against Alphonse of Lamartine and Casimir Delavigne. Cléopâtre (1824) and Jeanne d' Arc (1825) was also well accommodated. Elisabeth de France (1828), freely adapted Gift Carlos of Schiller, contributed to make known the German poet in France. Besides he reproached Madam de Staël for having devoted to him only one too discrete place in his Of Germany .

After the Revolution of 1830, Soumet adopted the Monarchie of July. It was named librarian of the king Louis-Philippe Ier with the Château of Compiegne. In 1831, its part Normalized or the child murder triumphed with the Odéon, partly thanks to the interpretation of Miss George; she was used then basic with the booklet of the famous opera as Vincenzo Bellini.

Works

Literary posterity

In 1823, Soumet joined the group of writers and artists which was made call “the Coterie”, where the best partisans of romantic esthetics gathered, in particular Honore de Balzac, Eugene Delacroix, Alfred de Vigny, Alexandre Dumas father, Alfred de Musset, Casimir Delavigne, Charles Augustin Holy-Beuve, Abel-François Villemain and Prosper Mérimée. It published poems in the MUSE Frenchwoman , official body of Romantic, but abstained from taking part in the noisy polemics of time.

Its tragedies are held halfway of traditional esthetics and the romanticism. The subjects are borrowed by it either from Antiquity, or with the modern history, in the parts which were then with the mode. The dramatic form remains extremely traditional, but it is magnifiée by a style which does not miss a glare and of color, even if it is sometimes emphatic.

Subjects was extremely famous. Victor Hugo professed for him, at least at its beginnings, a sharp admiration. He is almost completely forgotten today.

Chronological list

Dramatic works

  • Clytemnestre , tragedy, represented with the Comédie-Française on November 7th 1822
  • Saül , tragedy, represented with the Theater of Odéon on November 9th 1822
  • Cléopâtre , 1824
  • Jeanne d' Arc , 1825
  • Pharamond , opera in 3 acts, collaboration with Jacques Ancelot and Alexandre Guiraud, music of François-Adrien Boieldieu, represented with the Opera of Paris on June 10th 1825
  • the Seat of Corinth , lyric tragedy in 3 acts, collaboration with Luigi Balocchi, music of Gioacchino Rossini, 1826
  • Emilia , drama, 1827: inspired of the novel Kenilworth of Walter Scott
  • Elisabeth de France (initial title: the Seal of confession ), tragedy
, 1828
  • a festival of Néron , with Louis Belmontet, 1829: left continuation romantic the Britannicus of Jean Racine
  • Norma or the child murder , tragedy in 5 acts, worms, represented with the Théâtre of Odéon on April 16th 1831 (text in the Gallica base of the National library of France)
  • the Gladiator , tragedy, in collaboration with his/her daughter Gabrielle Soumet, represented to the Comédie-Française on April 24th 1841
  • the Oak of the king , comedy, in collaboration with his/her daughter, represented with the Comédie-Française on April 24th 1841
  • Jane Grey , tragedy, in collaboration with his/her daughter, 1844
  • David , opera, 1846
  • * Monseigneur Marie , comedy

Poetic works

  • Fanaticism , 1808
  • Incredulity , 1810
  • Embellishments of Paris , 1812
  • the Divine epopee , poem in 12 songs, 1841: The subject of this poem, which wants to be in the vein of the Divine comedy of Dante, is the redemption of the Hell by Christ. “ It is only one dream, prudently said the author, I of prostrate step less in front of the authority of the dogma. ” the unit has size and breath, at least at first sight, but the quality of the style often masks the vacuum of the thought and the inspiration.
  • Jeanne d' Arc , epopee in 3 parts, 1845

Various works

  • literary Scruples of Mrs. de Staël, or Reflections on the book Of Germany , 1814
  • Funeral oration of Louis XVI , 1817

External bonds

  • biographical Card on the site of the French Academy
  • Alexandre Soumet and His Three Muses, Opéra World, 1003 (article on Normalized )

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