Simon of Loubère

Simon of Loubère (April 21st 1642 with Toulouse - March 26th 1729 with Montesquieu-Volvestre) is a French diplomatic poet and, extraordinary envoy of Louis XIV with the Siam and “second founder” of the Académie of the floral Plays.

Its life and its work

Born from a father enthusiast from the humanities and officer of the Présidial of Toulouse, it composes at the sixteen years age a tragedy in Latin worms which it will throw later to fire. It goes to Paris, written gallant poetries which one puts in songs, then the right studies and becomes secretary of the ambassador of Switzerland. In 1687, it is sent to the Siam by Louis XIV, who, following the first contacts between the two kingdoms in 1662, dream to convert the king of Siam to the Catholic religion. Forwarding is composed of five ships, on board of which thousand three hundred people took seat to accompany back the two Siamese ambassadors in their country. The company turns to the fiasco, but Simon of Loubère reports of it traditional literature of the voyage which it makes appear in 1691. He is sent then in Spain for a secret mission which also finishes it by a failure. Of return in France after a short imprisonment, it attracts itself the protection of the count de Pontchartrain, which entrusts to him the education of sound wire. He is elected member of the French Academy in 1693 and of the royal Académie of the inscriptions and medals in 1694.

“But the new elected official felt soon irresistible attacks of the evil of the country. He started by requesting the re-establishment of the Académie of the floral Plays, formerly so famous, then degenerated. He showed so well the utility of it that one charged it drawing up of them new statutes, the letters patent, and indicating itself with it the members, which he did by forgetting only him; but the new Academy, which looked it with reason like its second founder, rewarded it for its modest omission by submitting the first vacancy unanimously to him. One did not have any more to attract it in Toulouse; it coloured its departure of the pretext of thank its new fellow-members. The love of the native soil brought back it; the charms of a pleasant relationship retained it. He married it, though sixty years old, and did not reappear any more in Paris but with rare intervals, and only on business. ” Simon of Loubère will compose for the Academy of new poems, which will not be preserved, as well as a treaty of mathematics, which will appear on a purely posthumous basis.

Its Royaume of Siam , which is translated into English as of 1693, remains a reference book today on the culture and the age of the only country of the Southeast Asia which was never colonized by a European power. That it is about the art of the boxes or of the Massage, of the costumes and manners of the tradesmen or the ladies of the court, of the Parasol, the Marionnette S or the Jacquier, nothing seems him to have escaped. He is the first Westerner to make state of the Pâli, the language of the Bouddhisme theravāda, of which he is also the first to expose the bases without deforming them coarsely. Into this book which includes/understands an important section on mathematics, Simon of Loubère also introduces for the first time into the French language the magic term “square”.

Reference

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