Leconte de Lisle
Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle (actually Charles Marie Leconte; born October 22, 1818 in Saint -Paul, Reunion, † July 18, 1894 in Voisins / Louveciennes ) was a French writer.
Life and work
He was on the Île Bourbon - Today Reunion - born in the Indian Ocean, where his father, a former Napoleonic army doctor, had taken on a sugar cane plantation after 1815. He spent his childhood from the age of four years in Nantes, his youth back on Reunion Island. After loss Wi- law studies in Rennes and first attempts as a journalist (1837-1843) he lived briefly again on the island. From 1845, he remained permanently in France, mostly in Paris, and cutting himself with difficulty by a journalist and writer. Already during his studies he had come with the " socialisme évangélique " Félicité de Lamennais of, one of the founders of the Catholic social teaching, in contact; in time to the strong politicization and polarization of French society at the end of the July Monarchy, he joined the radical Fourierism. During the February Revolution of 1848 he was an active Republican left.
After the bloody crackdown on the uprising of the Paris workers in June 1848 and completely after the coup Louis- Napoléon Bonaparte in December 1851, he was, like many left-wing literati of the time, disillusioned. He was apolitical and lived only of literature, especially poetry. Here he lay down his stage name Leconte de Lisle to ( he used no first name ), a homonym of " le comte de l' île ", ie " The Earl of the Island".
Leconte de Lisle's ideal was a " poésie objective ". This should be no romantic outpouring of lyrical self in verses grasp, but present largely descriptive aesthetically beautiful, animate and inanimate subjects, past and present, but also old and new mythological and cosmological ideas bedichten. His poems he published, as usual, in magazines, and from time to time in edited volumes. Thus, published 1852, the Poèmes antiques, 1862, the Poèmes barbares, 1873 Les Erinnyes, 1884 Poèmes Tragiques. His perfectly shaped chiselled, wanted rather cool poems eventually taught him how literary critics and connoisseurs admiration, and his modest apartment in Paris became the center of the school of poetry " Parnassian ".
In the 1860s, Leconte de Lisle made his peace with the regime of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Second Empire, and received a small state pension since 1864. The 1871 starting Third Republic gave him in 1873 with a pro forma librarian position, ie the corresponding content. In 1886 he was awarded a seat in the Académie française.
Although his poems were for many decades the compulsory school curriculum, Leconte de Lisle is hardly known today. For German readers of special interest his poem Le Rêve du jaguar is (Eng. "The Dream of the Jaguar "), which Rainer Maria Rilke could have inspired his panther.
Musical settings
1877 César Franck set to music the poem Les Éolides from the Poèmes antiques collection to a symphonic poem.
Recently, Klaus Miehling set to music several works of Leconte de Lisle: Five Choral Songs on Baghavat for eight -part choir, string quartet (or string orchestra) and Harp, Op 91 (2002); Two choral songs by Leconte de Lisle for five -part choir and piano, Op 93 (2002); Trois Chansons écossaises, op 114 (2005); Ekhidna for alto and piano / alto and orchestra, op 170/ 170 a (2009/ 2013).