Conrad Ferdinand Meyer , (1825-1898), is a poet, short story writer and Swiss novelist of German language born and died in Zurich.

Intended like his/her father for an administrative career, its intellectual curiosity and its creative imagination remove any desire to him for learning a " métier". His/her father dies in 1840. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer is neat early for central nervous system disorders, that hardly the suicide of his/her mother arranges, depressive, in 1856. In spite of the disappearance of his/her parents, Meyer is comforted by his/her Betsy sister, with whom it has a true complicity. In addition, it is impassioned for the history, the literature and translated various historical and literary works French. Indeed, the few years that it passed to Lausanne, in its youth, allowed him to have a perfect command of French. Voyages to Paris and Rome make him discover Article the Rebirth, the Reform and the 17th century exert on him a true fascination, of which many of its accounts will feel.

Conrad Ferdinand Meyer is initially the most important German-speaking poet his time, which will influence Rainer Maria Rilke and Stefan George. It publishes in 1864 Twenty ballades of Switzerland (Zwanzig Balladen von einem Schweitzer), others Ballades in 1867, the last days of Hutten (Huttens letzte Tage) in 1871 and one collection of Poésies (Gedichte) in 1882.

Short story writer, Meyer is impregnated of history, which gives him a sharp source of inspiration: medieval England of Plantagenets, in the Saint (1879), Italy of the Rebirth in the temptation of Pescara (1887) and Angela Borgia (1891), the Reform in the amulet (1873) or traditional Sweden in the page of Gustave-Adolphe (1882). It handles with elegance the art of description and its accounts have the direction of the rate/rhythm. Its novel in worms Engelberg (1872) does not reach its main work in prose, the novel Georges Jenatsch (1876), which reports an episode of the Thirty year old War. The opening of Meyer on the history of Europe gives him an originality, that do not have Gottfried Keller and Jeremias Gotthelf, of very Swiss inspiration. Beyond its country, of which he assumes the double Latin and Germanic heritage, he belongs well to the European literature.

In German, his integral work is accessible near varied editors of which Reclam . In French, only some of his news appeared with the editions the age of Man , in the Swiss collection Poche ; poems are readable in the Anthology of the German poetry , published in the collection Pleiade of Gallimard, into bilingual.

Sources

P-O. Walzer (to dir.): Dictionary of the Swiss literatures , Editions of the Surface, Lausanne, 1991.