Auguste Lacaussade

Auguste Lacaussade , Poet French, was born the February 8th 1815 with Saint-Denis, on the island Bourbon. It is deceased the July 31st 1897 with Paris, and is buried the August 2nd same year with the Cimetière of Montparnasse.

It is the fruit of the free union between Pierre-Augustin Cazenave de Lacaussade, lawyer of big family of Bordeaux and mongrel free Fanny-Lucile known as Desjardins. It is thus, which one calls at the time a Quarteron, i.e. with a quarter of blood of color in blood. This statute will mark it deeply and will influence all its life. At ten years already, the entry of the Royal College is prohibited to him because of its interbreeding. It from there thus will be made its studies with Nantes. Charles Leconte de Lisle will join it later a few years and their life will be dependant until the death of Charles.

It will on the occasion to return twice on its native island but its integration in the slave company of the time will appear very difficult.

It will thus return to France in 1839. He will marry with Laure-Lucile Déniau of which he will have a girl and two other dead children in low age.

Starting from 1844, he becomes the secretary of the Holy-Beuve writer . In 1848, it joined the camp of the abolitionists grouped around Schoelcher.

Extremely shining, it publishes articles in the Revue of the Two Worlds and in the Revue of Paris , official body of the romantic ones. He speaks several languages (English, Italian, Greek old, Latin, Polish, etc). He will make the translation of foreign works and in particular those of James Macpherson.

He obtained the Bordin price for Poèmes and landscapes . But in the same time Charles Leconte de Lisle the Ancient Poèmes publishes and meets an enormous success, succeeding Victor Hugo with the French Academy. The competition between them will not then cease growing.

It becomes widowed in June 1859 and remarie in 1865.

Under the Second Empire, the poet is named director of the review of the Government, then in 1872, it is promoted librarian of the Sénat. Chevalier of the Legion of Honor , Officer of the State education, Knight of the Orders of Maurice Saints and Lazare .

Its remainders will be transferred from Paris to the Réunion at the beginning of the month of February 2006. They were buried in the landscape cemetery of Hell-Borough at the sides of those of his/her friend the Scottish Poète William Falconer and to which it dedicated a Poème. The exauça transfer a wish expressed in another poem called the sea :

“I do not want to sleep on the foreign ground,

On the ground of north I do not want to die!

I would be cold under a ground without flame and without light,

My eyes want to be closed where God made them open! ”

Collections of poems

Salaziennes (1839), dedicated with Victor Hugo
Poems and landscapes (1852)
the wrecks (1861)

External bonds

Litterature-reunionnaise.org

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