Charles Hubert Millevoye
Charles Hubert Millevoye is a French poet born with Abbeville (Somme) in 1782 and died in Paris in 1816.
Biography
Its childhood was weak and of early infirmities developed in him this morbid melancholy which was the character of its talent. It was tested with the poesy on the benches of the college, had even some pieces of poetry printed in local collections, and came to Paris to complete its studies with the central École, which then replaced the Collège of the Four-Nations (1798). After having begun its right, then to be entered in the capacity as clerk in a bookseller, it turned definitely to the literature. In eighteen years, it published a small collection of worms: Poetries (1800, in-8o), whose best parts are: the Pleasures of the poëte and the Passage of the Saint-Bernard . Its taste and the nature even of its talent carried it towards the academic contests; the Académie of Lyon crowned its epistle on the Danger of the novels (1804) and the French Academy a series of poëmes: the Independence of the man of letters (1806), the Embellishments of Paris , the Traveller (1807), the Died of Rotrou (1811), Goffin or the Hero inhabitant of Li2ege (1812); the poetic Invention was crowned by the Académie of Angers and Belzunce or the Peste of Marseilles was indicated for one of the décenneaux prices. This kind was however not the true poetic inspiration of Millevoye; it makes a success of much better in the reduced . Its second collection, which contained the Maternal love , the abandoned Demeure , the Bois destroyed , the Promesse , the Souvenir , the dying Poëte and the Chute of the sheets , is the most complete expression of its talent. Millevoye had sensitivity; he liked nature, enjoyed to express the simple emotions, to compose of the touching tables. The cords melancholic persons of the human heart were touched since by more powerful hands; however, some of its parts deserve to remain. The Chute of the sheets would be a small masterpiece without this fatal oracle of called upon Epidaure well badly by the way. Millevoye stripped mythological tinsels its best inspirations. This poëte, if to tend and who appears, in its worms, if detached from the things of ici-bas, did not scorn either enough the official encouragements. Its Passage of the Saint-Bernard and a poëme on the Bataille of Austerlitz were worth a pension and rather rich gifts to him. Millevoye, which had by itself some ease, liked the elegant life and even a little sumptuous. Jean-Baptiste Sanson de Pongerville says that he hastened to convert into horses of luxury, the cars, sumptuous furnishings, the effects of the imperial munificence. Its staggering health became exhausted in the swirl of the world and the emotions which he asked loves of smuggling. In the middle of the brilliant company where he lived, he met a serious attachment; but the hand of that which was the object was refused to him, the father declaring that he “liked better to see his dead daughter that woman of a man of letters. ” The young girl died of languor and Millevoye, in prey with darkest sadness, went to be confined with City-with Avray where it composed, under the titles of Huitaines and Dizaines , two collections of elegies.
In 1807, Napoleon ordered a poëme to him on its campaigns of Italy and made him propose to go, with the expenses of the State, to collect its inspirations on the same spot. Millevoye refused, not feeling enough breath to write an epopee; it was satisfied to compose small a poëme with allusions, Charlemagne in Pavia (1808). With the remainder, the inferiority of Millevoye is sensitive as soon as it approaches the great poesy; this poëme is poor; the Peste of Marseilles is hardly worth better; Alfred, king d' Angleterre , poëme in four songs, and the Rançon of Egild , where he wants to fight with the Scandinavian epopees, are below the poor one. A small composition in the kind of the French tale in verse, Emma and Eginard , very-was tasted under the Empire; it is a sentimental model of the genre and Troubadour, completely last of mode currently. The poëte is more with its ease in the Sulamite , imitated erotic Ode famous Cantique of the canticles and in some imitated elegies of the Greeks, where one sees like a reflection of André Chénier. It also translated with talent some fragments of the Eglogues of Virgile, various pieces of the Iliade , and even it had fun to put in worms some Dialogs of dead the of Lucien. One found in his papers the manuscripts of three tragedies, Antigone , Saül and Ugolin ; but Millevoye did not have anything of what constitutes the tragic poëte.
The imperial pensioner did not believe to have to keep silent itself when the Restauration came; he composed a poëme, the Fête of the martyrs (1815, in-8o), intended to cry Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. It was its last production. The doctors had ordered the stay of the countryside to him; with Vincennes, where it had been withdrawn, it Maria; little time afterwards, it made a violent fall of horse and luxated the thigh. Hardly given of this serious wound, it fell completely blind and a few days from there it died while his wife made him the reading. It had only thirty-four years. Its Works , made up of selected pieces improved carefully, was collected by itself (1814-1816, 5 vol. in-8o).
(Pierre Larousse)
---- Source
- Larousse, Pierre, Large universal Dictionary of the 19th century , Nimes (Gard), 1990, reprinting.