Antoine-Léonard Chézy

Its life

Wire of the engineer and director of the School of the Highways Departments Antoine Chézy, it starts scientific studies, which it gives up to study the Eastern languages. In addition to the Turkish and the Hebrew , it learns the Arab and the Persan near Antoine-Isaac Silvestre from Sacy and Louis-Mathieu Langlès. Invited to join the scientists who accompany the forwarding by Egypt in 1798, it falls ill and must give up it. It finds the following year an employment with the cabinet of the manuscripts of the National library. In 1803, it receives the visit of the philosopher and German sanskritist Friedrich Schlegel. This one is accompanied by a journalist and woman of letters, Wilhelmine Christiane von Klenke, that Chézy marries in 1805. Towards 1810, it leaves it while taking with it them along two wire. It preserves nevertheless the name of Helmina von Chézy, under which it will be made known later like poetess and librettist.

Chézy, which had started to learn the Sanskrit as an autodidact about 1806, by studying original texts taking into consideration their translation in English, publishes in 1814 the translation of an episode of the Râmâyana . The same year, it occupies the first pulpit of Sanskrit in Europe while becoming titular pulpit of language and the literature sanskrites with the Collège de France. The following year, he is elected member of the Académie of the inscriptions and the humanities. In 1822, it is one of the founders with Abel-Rémusat, Lasteyrie of Projecting the and Eugene Burnouf of the Asian Société. In 1827, it succeeds Langlès with the pulpit of Persan of the École of the Eastern languages.

Its work

Noticed first of all for its translation of Majnoun and Leila of the Persan poet Djami, Antoine-Léonard Chézy was especially illustrated by its translations of the Sanskrit, in particular that of the chief of work of Kâlidâsa entitled Abhijñānaśākuntalam or the Recognition of Shakuntalâ , published in 1830. Flaubert, for which Maxime of the Camp had gotten a specimen of it, projected to draw from it a drama, to which he worked during more than one year before forsaking it with the profit of the Temptation of saint Antoine . Théophile Gautier drew there to write the booklet of its ballet, the Ring of Çakountala , appeared in 1858.

Added to that of its erudite and literary publications, the importance of Chézy was to draw up in France the study of the Sanskrit. It has itself largely contributed to this work of teaching by training many pupils, among whom Eugene Burnouf, Alexandre Langlois, Jean Loiseleur-Deslongchamps and Christian Lassen.

Works

Extracted the Book of and the singularity wonders of nature of the things created, Mohammed Ben Mohammed Kazwini (1805). Translated from Arabic.
Medjnoun and Leïla, poem translated of Persan of Djâmy (1807)
Yadjnadatta-badha, or the Death of Yadjnadatta, episode extracted and translated Râmâyana, poem epic Sanskrit (1814)
Analysis of Mégha-Doûtah, poem Sanskrit of Kâlidâsa (1817)
Theory of Sloka, or Measures heroic Sanskrit (1827)
the Recognition of Sacountala, drama Sanskrit and pracrit of Calidasa, published for the first time, in original, on a single manuscript of the Library of the king, accompanied by a French translation (1830)
Amaruśatakasāraḥ. Erotic anthology of Amarou. Text Sanskrit, translation, notes and gloses (1831)

Random links: