Jean-Antoine Roucher

Jean-Antoine Roucher , born the February 22nd 1745 with Montpellier and dead the July 25th 1794 with Paris, is a Poète French.

Biography

Jean-Antoine Roucher is resulting from a family of middle-class craftsmen of Montpellier, amateurs of the humanities. He is very early initiated by his father with the Greek and Latin classic authors (see the dedication of the Mois ).

During its studies with the small seminar of its birthplace, it is pointed out as raises shining and the Jesuits suggest to him embracing the ecclesiastical state. After hesitation, it joined with Versailles his uncle, the Gros abbot of Besplas, chaplain of Sir, brother of the King. Its poem written at the time of the marriage of the Dolphin and Marie Antoinette, France and Austria with the temple of the hymen , meets a certain success and allows him to obtain thanks to Turgot the load of Receiver of the gabelles ones, whom it makes exert by his brother Roucher d' Aubanel in order to devote itself to poetry.

It also acquires a great fame with its monumental pastoral poem in twelve songs, the Months (1779), followed the long ones and interesting notes. It belongs to both or three French poets who call into question the rigidity of the traditional Alexandrin, by taking freedoms with the Hémistiche to give him lightness. The living rooms sails about it tear off the poet, requested to make the reading of each new section of its work in progress.

He is opposed hard to the Toothing-stone and refuses compromisings that the critic proposes to him to make it enter to the French Academy, which this one will never forgive him. Turgot and will remain to him a long time in relation, being found regularly to comment on the political events of the time. It publishes and publishes the universal collection of the memories private individuals relating to the French history (Paris, 1790).

He attends the living rooms of Julie de Lespinasse and Anne-Catherine Helvétius with Auteuil. The latter is caught affection for his/her Eulalie daughter. It is there that it binds friendship with Benjamin Franklin. He studies English assiduously.

Under the Revolution, after one short period of enthusiasm for the novel ideas, a certain admiration for Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (it was first has to publish the four Lettres with Mr. de Malesherbes ), it quickly takes conscience of the abuses which this insurrection carries in it and writes of the articles counter-revolutionaries. Its enmity for Robespierre which it reproaches its excesses is worth him to be stopped under the Terreur. Antoine Roucher is the author of a famous sentence which passed to the posterity under formed summarized: " Robespierre, called incorruptible the by people who are not to it pas" . He is imprisoned with Holy-Pelagie then with Saint-Lazare, where he has as companions of captivity Andre-Marie Chénier, Aimée de Coigny, duchess of Fleury (the Young prisoner) and Hubert Robert, which represents it ten time (by of which on a drawing moving with his/her son Pierre-Angelica, said Emile, “the Archangel”, behind the bars of the prison in company of Aimee de Coigny). Into prison, it translates Richesse of the Nations of Adam Smith and introduced the liberal ideas into France.

Andre Chénier and Jean-Antoine Roucher are victims of repression against the Conspiration of the prisons. Transferred to the Caretaker's lodge, they are judged for “plot monarchist”, are condemned to died and guillotines on Thermidor 7 An II (July 25th 1794). The bill of indictment of Roucher, signed Fouquier-Tinville, indicates: “puant aristocrat, paid civil list, stipendié writer of the tyrant, founder of the club of the Holy Vault, conspirator at the prison of Saint-Lazare, for Roucher, enemy of the people: death. ” In the cart which takes along Chénier and Roucher towards the guillotine, they exchange worms drawn from Andromaque : “Yes, since I lose a so faithful friend…” (see engraving the last cart ). Roucher is buried with the Cimetière of Picpus.

A table of Hubert Robert represents it in his cell a few days before its execution (table preserved at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum off Art with Hartford in Connecticut). A last portrait, today with the Museum Carnavalet, was made right before its death. It composes then to decorate it these last four towards, that it addresses to its family, and who are known today under the name of Quatrain of Roucher :

With my wife, my children, my friends:

You do not astonish, crowned and soft objects,
If some air of sadness darkens my visage.
When a scientist pencil drew this image
I awaited the scaffold and I thought of you.

Part of beautiful and moving correspondence which it had exchanged since the prison with its family and his/her friends (mainly with his Eulalie daughter to which it lavished its councils) was gathered after his death and was published under the name of Consolations of my captivity (at Agasse, printer, 1797), enthralling testimony on the life in the revolutionary prisons.

Andre Chénier, less known at the time, and Antoine Roucher, deceased too young, can be regarded as precursors of the poetic expansion of genius which will know it.

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One can announce that a monumental table painted at the beginning of the 19th century by Charles-Louis Muller, the call of the last victims of Terror , represents it with a certain number of condemned, of which André Chénier, Aimée de Coigny…, to the Caretaker's lodge. This table is exposed to the national museum of the French revolution, in Vizille; the preparatory table is at one of its descendants.

There exists a “Company of the Friends of Roucher and André Chénier”, whose seat is located at the town hall of the sixteenth district of Paris and who organizes each year a conference on or around the poetry of the 18th century.

Its currency, which he liked to say, was: “To look at itself passing” ( the Consolations , Letters in Eulalie ).

The weapons of the Roucher family are “of azure to a feather and a hatchet of gold passed in saltire”.

Sources

A. Guillois, the Poet Roucher , Paris, Calmann Levy, 1890
F. Kermina, Last Carts of Terror , Paris, Perrin, 1988
A.C. Dauban, Prisons of Paris under the Revolution , Paris, Plon, 1870
J. Refined, Faces of formerly: Antoine Roucher , Paris, Hatchet
J. - F. the Toothing-stone, Course of literature
the Pleiad, Anthology of the poetry of the
the collection of the 27 Books Roucher Andre Chénier (: 4300 pages)
Jules Michelet, French revolution
Encyclopædia Britannica
G. Lenotre, Old papers, old houses

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