Jean-Jacques Lefranc de Pompignan

Biography

Jean-Jacques Lefranc was born in a family from dress which held of wire father since the 17th century the load of president of the Cour of the assistances of Montauban. After studies with Paris with the Louis-the-Large College, he was prosecuting attorney close this court before succeeding his/her father in the president's functions. He carried out the smear campaign against the Intendant of Montauban, Lescalopier, shown budgetary irregularities and of which he ends up obtaining displacement. In 1745, it was named to advise of honor to the Parlement of Toulouse, but, being attracted the reprimands of the royal capacity for a harangue against the abuses, it resigned shortly after to be devoted exclusively to the literature. It frequently remains in the Batch, with the Château of Caïx, today property of the queen of Denmark and her husband.

Its first tragedy, Didon (1734) - that one says inspired by the abandoned Didon (1724) of Métastase - was played Comédie-Française and was a success that did not confirm the Adieux of Mars (1735) and some booklets of opera which followed.

Lefranc de Pompignan was made above all know like lyric poet. Its Ode on the death of Jean-Baptiste Rousseau is a work of a large nobility of inspiration (see below). Very devout, he sought the inspiration in the crowned texts, like his friend Louis Racine, publishing in 1751 and 1755 two volumes of his crowned Poésies , inspired by the Psalms and the Prophets.

He also composed of the lighter parts like his Voyage in Languedoc and Provence , interfered with prose and worms with the manner of that of Vault and Bachaumont.

The September 6th 1759, it was elected with the French Academy. In its speech of reception, marked on March 10th, 1760, it was the wrong to make display of an extreme vanity and to tackle the philosophical party highly - attacks all the more ill-considered as, in the assistance, several of its members had voted for him. The Philosophers made him undergo violent reprisals, in particular Voltaire, which made its Turkish head of it in a long battle of Libelle S and Pamphlet S. Lefranc de Pompignan, cover of ridiculous, did not dare more to reappear with the Academy and withdrew in 1763 in its Château of Caïx, close to Montauban, which it made rebuild and where it was in particular occupied to translate traditional Greeks like Eschyle.

It could be the author of a historical and political treaty anonymously published in 1780: Test on the last revolution of the civil order in France , which relates to the legal reform carried out in January 1771 under the impulse of the Maupeou chancellor.

Elected official member of the Academy of Cortone, in Italy, it addressed a Latin essay to him on antiquities of the town of Cahors , where it gives an account of his archaeological research. He had also been elected member of the Académie of the floral Plays of Toulouse in 1740.

Large bibliophile, it made acquire for his collection some 26 000 volumes including 1500 musical partitions: this funds is preserved today at the Library of Toulouse.

Jean-Jacques Lefranc de Pompignan is the brother of Jean-Georges Lefranc de Pompignan, which was archbishop of Vienna and president of the National Assembly in 1789. The feminist Olympe de Gouges affirms that he was his natural father.

Literary posterity of Lefranc de Pompignan

The near total of the work of Lefranc de Pompignan is forgotten today. The crowned Poèmes contain some beautiful movements, but generally dull or are risen. One finds there that and there some passages which do not miss a glare, like this stanza of the Éloge of Clemence Isaure (1741):

Thus when the Torch of the World

Far from us traverses other Skies

And that a major darkness

Cache stars in our eyes,

Souvent a light vapor

Forme a momentary star

Of which the glare one moment us shone;

But it returns within the shade

And by its escape darker

the immense veil of the night makes.

But today, Lefranc de Pompignan remains essentially the author of a precisely famous ode, and especially one of the victims of Voltaire.

The author of the Ode on the death of Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

The chief of work of Lefranc de Pompignan is the Ode on the death of Jean-Baptiste Rousseau , whose several stanzas are precisely famous. The beginning, said the Toothing-stone, is “ beautiful like the antique, beautiful like Horace and Pindare ”. The image of the crying lion which concludes the first stanza caused a very great admiration at the 19th century and the last two worms were extremely known a long time:

When the first cantor of the world

Expired on the frozen edges

Where frightened Èbre, in its wave,

Reçut its dispersed members,

Thrace, wandering on the mountains,

Remplit wood and the campaigns

Of the cry boring of its pains;

the fields of the air resounded about it,

And in the caves which groaned

the lion spread tears.

France lost its Orphée!

Muses, in these moments of mourning,

Raise the pompeux trophy

Which his coffin requires of you:

Leave by new wonders,

Of bright and worthy vestiges

one day marked by your regrets.

Ainsi the tomb of Virgile

is covered with the fertile bay-tree

Which by your care never dies. ''

The ninth stanza is also inspired and was a long time among the most famous worms of the French language; is alliteration in “R” of the last two worms worthy of the famous example drawn from the Andromaque from Racine (“For which is these snakes which whistle on your heads? ”):

the Nile saw, on its shores,

Of blacks inhabitants of the deserts

Insulter by their wild cries

the star bursting of the universe.

impotent Cries! odd furies!

While these cruel monsters

Pushed insolentes clamors,

the god, continuing his career,

Versait floods of light

On its obscure blasphemers.

This ode is one of the great poems of the 18th century, with such sign that Holy-Beuve could say with mischievousness that the best ode of Jean-Baptiste Rousseau is that of Lefranc de Pompignan on its death. At the time of its publication, it passed completely unperceived and was announced to the posterity only by the Toothing-stone in its Cours of literature , some twenty years later (it is him which, for the fifth towards, substituted the formula “cries impotent” for that of “impotent crime”, which appears in the original).

A victim of Voltaire

Unfortunately for its memory, the name of Lefranc de Pompignan was especially preserved until our days by the sarcastic remarks of Voltaire. After his unhappy speech of reception to the French Academy, Voltaire produced a series of more or less spiritual lampoons, but all extremely hard, two satires in worms - Vanity and the poor devil - and many epigrams. Some of these features remained precisely famous:

César does not have asylum where its shade rests,

And the friend Pompignan thinks of being something. (“Vanity”)

He made fun of the crowned Cantiques while exclaiming:

Sacrés they are because nobody touches there!

Works of Lefranc de Pompignan

Didon (1734), tragedy created with the Comédie-Française on June 21st, 1734
Good-byes of Mars (1735), comedy in free verse created on the theater of the Italian Actors ordinary of the king on June 30th, 1735
Triumph of the harmony (1737), heroic Ballet created with the royal Academy of music on May 9th, 1737
the universal Prayer , translated from English of Mr. Pope (1740)
critical Test on the state present of the Republic of the letters (1744)
Voyage from Languedoc and of Provence (1745)
De Antiquitatibus Cadurcorum AD Academiam Cortonensem epistola (1746)
Amphion (1748), act of ballet created with the royal Academy of music on December 26th, 1748
Léandre and Héro (1759), lyric tragedy created with the royal Academy of music on April 21st, 1750
crowned Poésies (1751 and 1754)
Dissertation on the noble goods (1758)
Réponses to the ″ when ″, the ″ if ″, and the ″ why ″ (1760)
historical Praise of Mgr the duke of Burgundy (1761)
Tragedies of Eschyle (1770)
philosophical Speeches drawn from the holy books, with Christian and philosophical odes (1771)
Mixture of translations of various Greek, Latin works and anglois on matters of policy, literature and history (1779)

References

External bond

Its scenic works and their representations on site CÉSAR

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