Jacques Delille

Jacques Delille , often called the abbot Delille , born with Clermont-Ferrand (Puy-de-Dôme) the June 22nd 1738 and died in Paris in the night of the 1 {{er}} with the May 2nd 1813, is a French poet.

The place of its birth is prone to controversy: certain biographers give birth to it with Sardon or Canière, others with Pontgibaud, Aigueperse (Puy-de-Dôme) (where his/her parents resided) or finally with Clermont-Ferrand, which is most probable, street of Chaussetiers or street of the Ecu (today which occurred of the United States). Delille carried some time the title of abbot because it had the Abbaye of Saint-Severin; but it did not follow the ecclesiastical career and obtained even an exemption to marry.

Biography

Jacques, natural child, conceived in a garden of Aigueperse (Puy-de-Dôme), under a starry sky of September, were born in an obstetrician, street of Chaussetiers, with Clermont-Ferrand, on June 22nd 1738 of Marie-Hiéronyme Bérard, of the family of the chancellor Michel of Hospital. He was recognized by Antoine Montanier, lawyer at the Parliament of Clermont-Ferrand, which died little of time after by leaving him a modest pension for life of one hundred ecus. His/her mother, as discrete as beautiful, transmitted pre, located to him to Pontgibaud, which enabled him to associate with its first name Delille family name.

Up to twelve or thirteen years, it was placed in a nurse with Chanonat and accepted its first lessons of the priest of the village. Sent to Paris, it made brilliant studies with the Collège of Lisieux and became Master of district to the college of Beauvais then professor, initially with the college of Amiens then to the college of Walk in Paris. It had been already announced by a remarkable talent of versifier, in particular by an exceptional aptitude for didactic poetry.

Its glory was ensured of a blow by its verse translation of the Géorgiques of Virgile, which it published in 1770. Louis Racine had tried to dissuade it from this company, which he considered bold, but Delille had persisted in its intention and Louis Racine, convinced by his first tests, had encouraged there. Its poem was accommodated by a chorus of praises, only disturbed by the discordant voice of Jean-Marie-Bernard Clément of Dijon. “ Filled of the reading of the Géorgiques of Mr. Delille, wrote Voltaire with the French Academy in March 1772, I feel all the price of the difficulty so fortunately overcome, and I think that one could not make any more honor with Virgile and the nation. The poem of the Seasons [[Jean-François of Saint-Lambert]] and the translation of the Géorgiques appear the two best poems to me which honoured France, after the poetic Art. ”

Delille was elected with the French Academy in 1772, but the marshal-duke of Richelieu made block its election by the King with the reason which it was too young. He was again elected in 1774 and, this time, he was accepted by famous Compagnie. Jean-François of the Toothing-stone having remarked in the Mercure de France which it was unworthy that such an exceptional talent is tiny room to dictate Latin proses with schoolboys, Delille moreover was named with the pulpit of Latin poetry of the Collège de France.

The rise of Delille still accelerated after the death of Voltaire, who could pass for his only rival. Such an amount of the court which the world of the letters recognized unanimously the superiority of its talent. It was at the same time protected from Mrs Geoffrin and that of Marie-Antoinette and the count d' Artois. This last made him allot the benefit of the abbey of Saint-Severin, who reported 30.000 francs while allowing to limit to the minor orders, that Delille had received in Amiens in 1762.

In 1782, the publication of the poem of the Gardens , undoubtedly the most famous work of Delille, was a new triumph, amplified by the talent with which the author could read his worms with the Academy, the Collège de France or in the living rooms. The count de Choiseul-Gouffier managed nevertheless to persuade it to tear off itself with such an amount of adulation to follow it in its embassy of Constantinople. In 1786, it was put in household with its controlling, Marie-Jeanne Vaudechamps, which it married in 1799.

Under the French revolution, Delille lost the benefit which was its only source of revenue and was worried but preserved freedom, sacrificing to the ideas of the hour while composing, the request of Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, a Dithyrambe on the supreme Being and the immortality of the heart . Under the Directory, it was withdrawn with Saint-Dié, country of his wife, then left France after Thermidor 9, at the time when others returned there, and passed in Suisse, Germany and England. During this exile, pushed by his wife, who had taken much ascending on him, he worked enormously. He composed the Man of the fields and undertook the Three reigns of nature in Switzerland, composed Pity in Germany and translated Paradise Lost ( the Paradise lost ) of John Milton with London.

He returned to France in 1802 and took again his pulpit with the Collège de France and his armchair with the Academy. He accomplished long stays in the country cottage of the baron Micout d' Umont with Clamart, where he would have written in 1808 the Three Reigns of Nature . At the end of its life, it became blind, like Homère, and this infirmity still added to admiration close to the idolatry which was dedicated to him. He died of an attack of Apoplexie in the night of 1st at May 2nd 1813. Its body was exposed during three days on a bed of parade to the Collège de France, the face girds of a laurel wreath and, regarded as the largest French poet, it accepted imposing funeral, followed by an huge crowd. It is buried with the Cimetière of the Father-Lachaise.

Work

Literary posterity

One generally refuses in Delille the genius and the invention, but one puts it in the forefront for the art of versification and the descriptive talent.

Delille was almost exclusively devoted to descriptive poetry. It is an art very of ingeniousness, where the major concern of the versifier is to find periphrases elegant and circumvented to describe commonplace things whose proper name did not have its place in the poetic language of time, with the risk, often, of the assignment, even of the ridiculous one.

There is, in the poetry of Delille, no emotion, nor even a true feeling of the beauty of nature. When worms resounds of already romantic accents, its insulation betrays the chance more than the inspiration, like celebrates it:

I like to mix my mourning with mourning with nature

the Gardens , Chant IV

The descriptive poetry of Delille démoda quickly after its death. The Romantic ones highly reproached him its fear of the word right: Balzac, in the Peasants , makes fun of a follower of Delille, author of a Bilboquéide , while Stendhal fustigates “ the lovers sanctimonious hypocrites of nature, like the abbot Delille ”.

Chronological list

Géorgiques de Virgile , 1770: It is the principal work of Delille. “ It is a charming work, known as Jean François Joseph Dussault, of a rare correction, an admirable facility and a flexibility, which supposes the most delicate taste and finest, a thorough knowledge of our poetic style. But also, is this a true translation? There does one recognize the genius of Virgile? The French imitator substituted for the male, imposing and pure beauties of the original, of a little maniérées graces, a species of affetery, of coquettery, more appropriate undoubtedly to the turning of his talent, and perhaps in conformity with the taste of his contemporaries. EC translation was said that it is a original translation ; and that is very true; but that proves that it is a translation where one finds Delille and not Virgile. ” more concise, Chateaubriand said: “ It is a table of Raphaël marvelously copied by Mignard ”.
gardens or art to embellish the landscapes , poem in 8 songs, 1782: This poem had even more success than the translation of the Géorgiques . However, if versification is quite as clever, if not more, he sins seriously by the absence of plan, and even of ideas. It is a succession of tables of which each one is only one pretext to make worms, loosely bent between them by awkward transitions.
Trifles thrown to the wind , 1799
the man of the fields, or Géorgiques Frenchwomen , 1800
Panegyric on the immortality of the heart , 1802
fugitive Poetries , 1802
Pity , poem in 4 songs, 1803: Delille condemns in very energetic terms excesses of the French revolution and is devoted to it to considerations on slavery with the colonies in which he sympathizes especially with the fate of the colonists. This poem is regarded as one of its weakest works.
the lost paradise of Milton , 1805: Imitation in worms rather than translation strictly speaking.
Énéide de Virgile , 1804: This verse translation is lower than the Géorgiques , and even less faithful to the original.
imagination , poem in 8 songs, 1806: This poem sins, like all those of Delille, by its composition but comprises many passages which do not miss interest, for example those on Jean-Jacques Rousseau or the catacombs, or the anthem with the beauty. The worms there are found famous because engraved with the pediment of the Catacombes of Paris: “ Residence! It is the empire of death here. ”
Three reigns of nature , 1809: It is about a kind of treaty of physics in worms, where the ingeniousness of the descriptive poet reaches his roof. “ This poem , known as Pierre-François Tissot, looked like the triumph of the descriptive kind, has it decredity forever among us All the defects in his manner, the Concetti, the Antithèse S, the Symétrie of the worms with two compartments, the abuse the spirit, the transitions without art pullulate there at the point to make them unbearable. ”
the conversation , poem, 1812: Delille wanted to give the portraits of the short story writer, the tedious scholar, the beautiful middle-class spirit, the scandalmonger, of the draft, etc But the composition is monotonous and the style often not very neat.

Its works were published by Joseph-François Michaud, 1824, 16 vol. in-8, and were published by Lefèvre, with notes, 1833,1 vol. large in-8. One joined together them in only one compact vol. in the the literary Pantheon.

Quotation

Towards 1770, it returns in Auvergne in its village, expensive in its heart, and later it writes:

But what makes places the surest power,

Ah! we all test it, it is the recognition;

It is the tender regret, of which flattering charms

Font places our friends, make our benefactors of them:

Similar with these spirits, to these light shades,

Which, as soon as that the night extends its dark veils,

Visitent, says us one, their antique stay;

Thus the memories, the regrets and the love,

And the melancholic person and soft daydream,

Return towards the places expensive to the tenderized heart,

Where we were children, lovers, liked, happy;

After the native ground, always expensive with our eyes,

If they do not have all the attraction of the ground not cherished

Where, began for us the dawn of the life,

They point out this age, where our heart and our directions

Per degrees tested their incipient bodies.

I tested it myself. After twenty years of absence,

Of return to the hamlet which my childhood lived,

Gods! with what a transport I recognized his tower,

Its mill, its cascade, and close to surrounding!

This brook whose my plays tyrannized the waves

Rebelles like me, like me wandering;

This garden, this orchard, whose my furtive hand

Gathered the bitter, softer fruits by the larceny,

And the humble presbytery, and the church without ostentation;

And this narrow tiny room which I had believed so vast,

Where, fleeing the blind man's stick to the long arm,

I slipped without noise, and did not breathe;

And until this niche, where my secret fright

With the eye of the enemy concealed my retirement,

Where on the center of Églé, which shared my fear,

an early pleasure made beat my heart!

O charming village! O laughing residences,

Where, like your brook, my soft hours ran!

Of which wood and meadows, and the touching aspects,

Peut-être made ego the poet of the fields!

Good-bye, soft Chanonat, good-bye, fresh landscapes!

It seems that another air scents your shores;

It seems that their sight revived my directions,

gave again Me the joy, and returned my spring.

… This fence even where captive childhood,

Lends to the sad lessons an apprehensive ear,

Which us can see it without some emotion?

Ah! it is there that the study outlined my reason;

There, I tasted arts the first delights;

There, my body was formed by soft exercises.

don't I see space where, in the springing air,

rose, fell down the leaping balloon?

Here, unceasingly going, returning on my trace,

I murmured the worms of Virgile and Horace.

There, our voices to request came to meet;

Further… Ah! my heart beats with this only memory!

imagination , Song IV, “Impression of the places”

Note

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