Maxime Du Camp
Maxime Du Camp ( born February 8, 1822 in Paris, † February 8, 1894 in Germany ) was a French writer, journalist and photographer.
Life and work
Maxime Du Camp was and is a kind of shadow figure in French history. He was born on February 8, 1822 in Paris into a wealthy, native of Spain family. Du Camp traveled as a young man the Orient. Politically active, he was involved in the February Revolution of 1848, fought in June of the same year against the insurrection and was honored and praised for it. First you work camp primarily as a writer and journalist, he began to travel to Brittany and in the East and wrote about it. In addition, he was also interested in the new technology of photography, which then led him again to the area around the Nile.
Since the end of the 18th century exoticism played an important role. The French government commissioned Du Camp in 1849 with a large-scale expedition along the Nile. After the expedition of Jean -François Champollion practiced particularly Egypt, as an important source of culture, a strong stimulus to French scholars and artists. They were followed by the first photographers to systematically served the images of hunger science. Before he set off on his trip to Egypt, you took the camp with the eminent photographer Gustave Le Gray lessons. Du Camp and his companion Gustave Flaubert returned in 1851 to France. They brought their photographic excursions over 220 paper negatives with. Du Camp settled as a freelance writer in Paris. In addition to poetry and novels emerged - as an evaluation of the expedition - more photographic works on Africa and the Middle East; eg " Égypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie " (1852 ) and " Le Nil, Égypte et Nubie " (1854 ).
After his return from North Africa in 1851, he served as co-founder of the Revue de Paris. Over the next six years he worked actively with the Revue, which young writers offered the opportunity to be first published. Mainly known from mainly led by Du Camp Revue de Paris are the products of Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Poe and the publication of Flaubert's Madame Bovary.
He was easily influenced as a writer in his political views and very fickle. As a revolutionary of 1848, he joined the Expedition of the Thousand in 1860 and marched under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi to Sicily. Back in France, he began his work Les convulsions de Paris, in which he described his vision of the uprising of the Commune. Although this story was based on official ( police ) sources, but was still far from neutral. With the publication of the first volume in 1875, a controversial discussion was sparked, which - very emotionally out - you ended only with the death camps. He also campaigned for a secular and compulsory education for better living conditions in prisons.
He also published several "politically acceptable " works, such as books of poetry and Les Chants modern Convictions and the novels Mémoires d'un suicide and Les aventures six ( 1857). At the beginning of his journalistic career, he wrote regularly for the Journal des Débats, later moving to the Revue des Deux Mondes, where he was one of the main authors. In 1880 he was admitted to the Académie française. His work was Les convulsions de Paris as his most famous, Paris, ses organes, ses fonctions et sa vie his most important book. This Du Camp described the material and spiritual life of the metropolis in his century.
He died on day of his 72nd birthday, on 8 February 1894 in Germany.
Publications
- Égypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie (1852 )
- Le Nil, Égypte et Nubie (1877 )
- Souvenirs et paysage d' Orient (1848 )
- Les convulsions de Paris (1875 /79, in 4 vols )
- Chants modern. Poems (1860 )
- Les convictions. Poems (1858 )
- Chants de la matière. Poems (1860 )
- Mémoires d'un suicide. Roman ( 1853)
- Les aventures six. Roman ( 1857)
- L' homme au bracelet d'or. Roman ( 1862)
- Les buveurs de cendré. Roman ( 1866)
- L' eunuque, moeurs Musulmanes. Roman ( 1856)
- Orient et Italie (1868, travel memories )
- Les ANCÊTRES de la commune. L' assassination Fieschi (1877 )
- Histoire et critique. Études sur la révolution française (1877 )
- Souvenirs littéraires ( 1882-83, 2 vols )
- La Charité privée à Paris (1884; German, Hannoverian 1884. ).