Nicolas Gilbert

Biography

Nicolas-Joseph-Florent Gilbert is born on December 15th 1750 with Fontenoy-the-Castle in the the Vosges. His/her father, mayor of Fontenoy-the-Coast, owner of two small farms, exerts there the trade of merchant of grains. Its education is entrusted to the priest of the village, a Jesuit who, seeing in him a spirit ready to be educated, teaches him the Latin , then it leaves for the college the Arc to Dole to make its Humanités there. In 1768, to died of his father, it goes up to Nancy, where it côtoie some time the literary circles; it made its beginnings there, with a “Persan” novel, the Families of Darius and Éridame or Statira and Amestris (1770) and some poetic parts, of which its poetic beginning, composed of three héroïdes and, between several odes, the last Judgment (1773).

After 1770, it leaves for Paris, with out of pocket its first towards, as well as a letter, signed Mrs. of Verpillière, woman of the provost of the merchants of Lyon and patron. This letter recommends the young poet to of Alembert. It seems that with Alembert, having promised to him a place of tutor, does not honor this hope, and receives it besides rather coldly. Gilbert thus finds himself like so many others, recluse in an attic, to try to live of his feather, misérablement all in all. He makes publish his first pieces of poetry in 1771; volume is in hillock with the general indifference. Grimm writes in its literary Correspondance : " Mr. Gilbert gave, some time ago, a poetic Début which was not read of personne."

He presents successively in 1772, then in 1773, two parts with the contest of the French Academy. Its work the unhappy Poet , filled up elegiac accents, not stripped of a certain talent or in any case, from a certain sensitivity, does not obtain even a mention; it is Jean-François of the Toothing-stone, director of the Mercure de France , which receives the price. Its second part, the Ode of the Last Judgment , undergoes the same fate. Gilbert will then conceive of it an unquestionable hatred for the Toothing-stone in particular, like for the encyclopedists, even the philosophers in general, who hold all the French literary Parnassus: thus at this time the elite of the writers is named. On its side, the Toothing-stone will not have of cease to hold in contempt all that Gilbert will produce.

Probably in 1774, via Baculard d' Arnaud, Gilbert meets Élie-Catherine Fréron, which directs the literary Year , during Mercure de France . Gilbert probably attends dinners organized by Fréron and engages at his sides, undoubtedly by rancour towards the Parisian literary circle initially. Thanks to the recommendation of Fréron, Gilbert obtained the favors of the archbishop's palace and several pensions, of which one of the king.

In 1775 its first major piece appears, which marks its time. It is a satire in worms, the Eighteenth century , which gives the wild caricature of its time; philosophy is there the principle of the “fall of arts”, of the “loss of manners”. All is matter with load there - we are well in a satire -: middle-class, the nobility, the clergy libertine; the literature of the moment passed there to the fine comb. At the end of the satire, the name honni appears finally: Voltaire. The Eighteenth century is truly with its publication, and to take again an expression of Huysmans, “ a meteor in the literary field ” of the time; it is not indeed really of good tone to make fun of those which are at the origin of Progress, and pensioned by the largest crowned heads of Europe. Criticism breaks out, but Grimm will see all the same the mark of a certain talent at Gilbert. Highly criticized or applauded, it is undeniable that as from 1775, the young poet is a recognized figure of the literature in this end of Ancien Mode.

It is in the satirical kind that Gilbert will make with the remainder fortune, during the little of years that it remains to him to live. In 1776 - year of died of Fréron and resumption of the literary Year by his/her son -, a Diatribe appears on the academic prices . The poet did indeed not forget his cuisants failures at the prices of the Academy a few years before, and fustigates in this part in prose the insipid content of the works preceded with the contest. Then it makes publish in 1778 a defense of the satire, My apology , dialog in worms between a philosopher named Psaphon, and Gilbert himself put in scene; it is its second success of the kind.

Little before its death, it writes a Ode inspired several psalms , more generally known under the name of Adieu with the life , a poem whose set of themes pre romantic will be taken again by Alfred de Vigny in Stello and Chatterton .

November 16th, 1780, after a fall of horse and following the operation of the trepan, Gilbert dies in the Hôtel-Dieu, at only 29 years, after - it is in any case what would like the legend to have swallowed, in a crisis of is delirious, a key, anecdote which, charged for much a very rich symbolic system, will be worth for example with Toulet it towards: “ To die like Gilbert by swallowing his key ”

He leaves, according to Van Bever, “ the memory of a faultfinder and an unhappy genius ”.

The emergence of a myth

However, the death of Gilbert does not sign the final lapse of memory of its name. There are several thresholds to pass to ensure the posterity of a work; death is one of these thresholds, and it is well in spite of him the Toothing-stone which goes in one way or another, to make it possible in the name of Gilbert to survive, and to know a certain literary fortune during all the century which will follow. The Toothing-stone, trying once more to ridicule the poet, indeed will write an obituary which will appear in the Mercure de France in 1780, then that he will integrate later in his literary Correspondance , note in which he reports in his least details, the supposed death of the poet:

“ Gilbert had been placed in Charenton, in the vicinity of the country house of Mr. de Beaumont, archbishop of Paris, because, in its capacity as apostle of the religion, he believed himself obliged to make his court with the prelate, who had it, indeed, recommended to Mr. de Vergennes, and had obtained for him one of the pensions which the Foreign Minister can take on the privilege that he grants to political papers. He had gone in the archbishop, who did not accept it with all the distinction that he expected some, and who made it eat with his secretaries and his manservants. Gilbert, already badly laid out, was turned sour so much of this reception, qu it returned at his place the absolutely turned head. The fever took it during the night, and the morning it went, out of shirt and frock coat, to ask the sacraments to the priest of Charenton, which vainly exhorted it to return at his place. It ran from there in the archbishop, and the majority of the people in service not being raised yet, it arrived to the room of this prelate, was rolled by ground like one had, while shouting that him the sacraments were given, that it was going to die, and that the philosophers had gained the priest of Charenton to refuse the sacraments to him. The archbishop, frightened his cries and of his convulsions, made it carry to the Hospital, in the room where the insane ones are treated. There, its madness did nothing but increase; it made its confession aloud; and, as another insane had the mania to shout the stops of the Parliament, Gilbert shouted on his side that it was him whom one was going to hang. In one of these accesses, it swallowed the key of its cassette, which remained to him in the esophagus. He died twenty-four hours afterwards, not being able to be helped, and always showing itself, without it being necessary however anything of it to conclude against him, because the cry of the madness is not always that of the conscience. ”

This text, one sees it, us introduces Gilbert failing in the pangs of the madness. It is not all; the detractors of the poet will show the party anti-philosopher to have let die of hunger presumedly to them protected. These legends which run on the death of Gilbert are however false. Far from to have failed on a grabat of hospital, unhappy, poor and famished as one then tries to make it accroire, the poet, in the last years of his life, receives several pensions of the court: 800 books of the king, 600 pounds of Mesdames, 100 ecus on Mercure de France, 500 pounds of the archbishop's palace. It is at least a reasonable ease, attested ease, at the time of its death, by various characteristic indices: a horse which it had, the fine linen of which it was covered, the testamentary provisions that one found at his place, the legacies that it made (it leaves, inter alia, ten louis with a young soldier, who is not other than Bernadotte).

This series of fables running on the death of the poet, far from serving it, enable him to pass to the posterity under the sign of the cursed poet, with the example of Adhesive tape, or Malfilâtre.

Posterity

So Gilbert passes the test of dead with a certain success, under the image of the poet unhappy, cursed, rejected by his century. Though the poet knew an unquestionable literary fame during its life, thanks to its satirical work, these are the more personal works which will ensure him of what to live in the memories of the following centuries, namely, the unhappy Poet , and the Good-byes with the life . Since 1819, indeed, the Romanticism, in guardian search of figure, takes again on its account the elegiac share of Gilbert, as well as the dimension of revolt present in the work of Chénier: the two names are very often associated in the thought of the Romantic ones. Of Musset to Flaubert - which is unquestionably Romantique by its origins (cf its Correspondance ), while passing by Vigny (it is one of the three emblematic figures of the Stello , with Chatterton and Chénier), or Charles Nodier (Nodier publishes the complete Œuvres of Gilbert in 1826), all recognize the influence certainly minor, but well presents, of the poet in their inspiration, and the heart of the movement.

The name of Gilbert falls definitively into the lapse of memory only at dawn the 20th century, where the Romanticism itself completes to fall in disuse.

Works

Families of Darius and Éridame ($the Hague and Paris, 2 vol., 1770)
poetic Beginning (Paris, 1771)
the unhappy poet, or Genius with the catches with fortune (Paris, 1772)
the last Judgment (Paris, 1773)
the Carnival of the authors or masks recognized and punished (Paris, 1773)
the Century (Paris, 1774)
Praise of Léopold, duke of Lorraine (1774)
the Eighteenth century (Paris, 1775)
the Jubilee (Paris, 1775)
Diatribe on the academic prices (Paris, 1776)
My Apology (Amsterdam, 1778)
Ode on the war present, or the Combat of Ushant (Paris, 1778)
imitated Ode several psalms , said Good-byes to the life (1780)

Sources

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