Lemierre Antoine-sailor

Antoine-Sailor Lemierre is a poet and Dramatic author French, born with Paris the January 12th 1733 and died in Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer the July 4th 1793.

Biography

Wire of a craftsman, Lemierre was placed to the Jésuites, with the Louis-the-Large Collège, thanks to charitable guards. It made excellent studies, gaining the price of Latin poetry in particular, and was placed as assistance-sexton with the church Saint-Paul, providing sermons to certain abbots and component of the worms which gained many academic prices (twice prize winner of the academy of Pau in particular for the Utility of the discoveries made in arts and sciences under the reign of Louis XIV ; four times prize winner of the French Academy in the years 1753 - 1757 for: the tenderness of Louis XIV for his family, Empire of the mode, Men linked by the talents and the Trade ). The choice of the subjects showed a certain skill to combine traditional subjects with others more with the last style.

Thanks to the protection of Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d' Olivet, which had entrusted to him the correction of the tests of its edition of Cicéron, it was recruited as under-Master of rhetoric to the college of Harcourt, before entering as secretary in the farmer general Dupin, great-grandfather of George Sand.

At 35 years, it made represent its first tragedy, Hypermnestre (1758), which gained a great success. Two of its other parts, Guillaume Tell (1768) and the Widow of the Hefty fellow (1770), initially accommodated coldly, made then beautiful theatrical careers. They today are well forgotten.

In its time, Lemierre was especially recognized like a Master of the didactic Poésie. Its poetic works are composed of odes, epistles, various poetries and two great descriptive poems: Painting (3 songs, 1769), free imitation of the Latin poem of the abbot of Marsy, and Records, or uses of the year (16 songs, 1779), inspired of the poem of Ovide.

This last work opened with its author the doors of with the French Academy, where Lemierre was elected in 1781. Very affected by the French revolution, it fell into a kind of prostration and died under Terror, in 1793.

Works

Chronological list

Hypermnestre , tragedy, 1758
Térée , tragedy, 1761
Idoménée , tragedy, 1764
Artaxerce , tragedy, 1766
Guillaume Tell , tragedy, 1768; resumption in 1786
Painting , poem in three songs, 1769
the Widow of the Hefty fellow , tragedy, July 30th, 1770; resumption in 1780
Records, or Uses of the year , poem in sixteen songs, 1779
Céramis , tragedy, 1785
Barnevelt , tragedy, 1790

Critical posterity

The tragedies of Lemierre are built around dramatic turns of events which precede the romantic theater. Thus, in Hypermnestre , heroin is saved of accuracy of the blows of the tyrant who will stab it. The use of new scenic devices - to rough-hew in which the Widow of the Hefty fellow will throw, the apple that Guillaume Tell transpierces of a square of crossbow - raised the enthusiasm of the public when the parts concerned had gone back to the theater (after first productions whose sobriety conformed for the use of the traditional tragedy).

The subjects are well in the last style: denunciation, in the vein of the Test on manners of Voltaire, of the fanaticism of certain habits (in the Widow of the Hefty fellow , that which wants that the widow throws herself on roughing-hew it of her husband), of the charlatanism and the cupidity of the priests, or of tyranny (in Guillaume Tell ).

Famous quotations

“ the three-pronged fork of Neptune is the sceptre of the world. ”

( the Trade ) It worms was extremely famous. Its admirors called so much it “the worms of the century”, while the detractors of the poet called it “the worms recluse”, the poem in which it is poor.

“ Croire any overdraft is a major error

is to take the horizon for the terminals of the world. ”

( Utility of the discoveries made in arts and sciences under the reign of Louis XIV )

“ I like the depth of the antiques forests ”

( the Records , song IX)

External bonds

Biographical note of the French Academy
Its tragedies and their representations on site CÉSAR

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