Louis-Sébastien Mercier

Louis -Sébastien Mercier ( born June 6 1740 in Paris, † April 25, 1814 ) was a French writer.

Life

Born in Paris, Mercier has enriched the cultural life of the capital early on with enlightened novels, philosophical essays and dramas like Jennval (1769 ), Natalie (1775 ) or La Destruction de la ligue ( 1782 ).

His famous novel L'an deux mille quatre cent quarante. Rêve s'il en fût jamais (1771 ) marked the turning point in the utopian genre of the distance into the future. It describes the journey of a man from the Paris of the year 1769 in the Paris of 2440 and thus laid the ideal community in the future of an existing space. With his novel the temporality of Utopia ( Reinhart Koselleck ) begins. The work was published anonymously witnessed countless reissues and is considered a landmark in the development of science fiction literature. Also for the development of the philosophy of history it is important.

In his Tableau de Paris ( 1781) he put together Impressions from the everyday life of the city. This he founded a new form of city description and set new accents for the perception of urban life. The total of 1049 chapters follow a uniform in structure and style of language structure reminiscent at first glance at an encyclopedia. On closer inspection, however, shows that the content of chapter contradicts the statements objectified an encyclopedia. The factual description continued Mercier in his Tableau one experienced by himself and explored urban reality contrary. In order to describe their seething and contrasting fragments, he developed four techniques with which he emphatically presence and gave the experienced phenomena of him, his readers made ​​curious or disturbed. In this way, the perception and traditional knowledge should be " free and clear from the dross of errors and the haze of centuries of ignorance."

The French Revolution he experienced as a journalist. Since 1789 he was co-editor of the Annales politiques, Civil and littéraires.

In October 1792 Mercier became a deputy of the National Convention. Since he was close to the Girondins, he was arrested in early October 1793 but escaped an execution during the Reign of Terror. With great joy he pursued the execution of Robespierre on 10 Thermidor (July 28 ), but was only released in December 1794 from prison.

In his Le Nouveau Paris (1799 ) Mercier described both the political events as well as the everyday experiences of the revolutionary years.

Writings (selection )

• The year 2440: a dream of all dreams. German by Christian Felix Weisse. Ed, provided with explanations and an afterword by Herbert Jaumann, Frankfurt am Main 1982 ( Fantastic Library, Vol 50).
• L'an deux mille quatre cent quarante. Rêve s'il en fut jamais, Londres [ recte: Neuchâtel ?] M.DCC.LXXVI. ( = 1776).
• L'An 2440th Rêve s'il en fut jamais. Introduction et notes par Christophe Cave et Christine Marc Andier - Colard, Paris 1999 ( = La Découverte poche 76).
• The year 2440 ( Mercier ). London ( Schwickert in Leipzig); 2nd edition, 1782. Catalog since 17.Jahrhunderte published up to the latest time under false company fonts. EO Weller, Leipzig, 1849. S. 9 ( 1st edition 1776)
• Le tableau de Paris [ 1781/88 ]. Édition establish itself sous la direction de Jean -Claude Bonnet, 2 vols, Paris 1994.
• Mon bonnet de nuit, 2 vols, of Neuchâtel M.DCC.LXXXIV. ( = 1784).
• Paris close-ups. Tableau de Paris. Selected, translated and with an afterword by Wolfgang Tschöke, Frankfurt am Main 2000 ( = The other library, Vol 182).
• Books, writers and readers on the eve of the Revolution, excerpts from the " Tableaux de Paris ", selected and translated by Wulf D. von Lucius. Wallenstein Verlag, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-2293-6.