Edgar Quinet

Edgar Quinet , born with Certines the February 17th 1803 with Paris, and dead the March 27th 1875, is a writer and Historien French.

Childhood and parents

He is native of Certines close to Borough-in-Bresse, in the department of the Ain. His/her father, Jerome Quinet, had been republican police chief of the army and . The Napoleonean epopee had deeply nauseated it. He resigned and devoted himself to the advance of sciences and mathematics. Edgar, which was only sons, knew a solitary childhood, but his/her mother Eugenie Rozat Lagis exerted a great influence on him. Although calvinist, it let it baptize in the Catholicisme. It was sent to the school with Bourg then with Lyon. His/her father wanted that it quickly leaves the school to go in the army, even in the businesses. However, the Quinet young person was attracted by the literature, and ends up having win.

Literary career

Its first publication, the Shelves of the Jew wandering , appeared in 1823. Struck by the Philosophy der Geschichte of Herder, he undertook to translate it and started by learning the German . He published his translation in 1827, and obtained a fast recognition. In parallel it was presented to Cousin, and Michelet. He had visited Germany and England before the publication of his work. Cousin obtained a station to him to take part in the scientific mission of exploration in Greece, which accompanied the Expédition by Morée in 1829. On its return it published modern Greece .

Its hopes of permanent station after the revolution of 1830 were swept by its reputation of republican. He was also freemason, member of the Grand the East of France. But it joined the Revue of the two worlds , and contributed during several years with publications of which: French Epopees of the 12th century and Chansons de geste . Ahasverus , its first work important was published in 1833. It is a Poème in prose.

A station of the Métro of Paris bears its name. Certain colleges (of which one of Borough in Bresse) also bear its name.

Its ideas

Edgar Quinet is known many schoolboys for a dictation: that of its text No machine will exempt to you to be a man where it warns against the naive belief in a progress of mechanical transport and communications until we would not have any more but to wait to see the paradise on Earth arriving under our eyes without effort. It warns on the contrary against the fact that more this progress develops, and with them the capacities, plus the men will have to be vigilant so that these capacities are not turned against them by unpatriotique or malevolent people . It quotes the example of Caligula and of splendid the Roman ways which covered all the Empire and was not but used any more to convey with its four corners the orders of a demented person .

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