Pierre de Marivaux
Pierre Carlet de Marivaux, and Pierre de Marivaux de Chamblain ( born February 4, 1688 in Paris, † February 12, 1763 ) was a French writer.
This primarily known as a novelist and playwright author is one of the most important French writers of the 1720s and 1730s, ie the period of the early Enlightenment and Rococo.
Life and work
The origin of the well- used by him until 1716 the name " de Marivaux ' is unknown; in the literary histories or encyclopaedias also to be found " de Chamblain " was actually the name of his older cousin, the architect J.-B. Bullet de Chamblain, and was possibly used by him occasionally.
Marivaux (as in the history of literature simply called) was born in Paris of Pierre Carlet, the son of a noble middle officials, a little later the office of Controller of the coin in Riom received, then the capital of the Auvergne. His mother Marie Anne was sister of the successful Parisian architect Pierre Bullet and initially remained with the children in Paris. The youth aged 12 spent Marivaux but then in Riom, where he completed his education at a college of the Oratory, and where he might have his first play, Le Père prudent et équitable ( the wise and equitable father) wrote and also a first novel began, Les effets de la surprenants sympathy ( the surprising effects of sympathy ).
At the latest in 1710 he was back in Paris; at any rate he wrote this year for a law degree a. But apparently he hardly studied, but acted as an author. In 1712 the first three volumes of the Effets were published and performed prudent in Limoges and Paris in the Père. He had also, at the same time found in the censor of Effets, an important early reconnaissance Fontenelle a protector, who introduced him to Parisian literary circles. In 1713 he wrote another novel, Pharsamon, ou les folies romanesques ( or Ph. The novelistic follies ), which he gave in 1737 but only in print. In 1714 he wrote the longer narrative La Voiture embourbée ( the stuck car), and finished with band 4 and 5, the Effets. In 1715 he gave a Télémaque travesti ( the disguised / masked T. ) in pressure, a parody of Fenelon's Les aventures de vielgelesenem Bildungsroman Télémaque (1699 ). In 1716 he left the Iliad parody L' Iliad travesti follow. He interfered in the dispute over Homer, who had in 1714 broken out between Antoine Houdar de la Motte and Anne Dacier, a Homer - translator who still defended the thesis of the superiority of the ancient literature of the modern that the since the Querelle Anciens et Modernes was the subject of critical debate.
First, do not seem incapable of Marivaux invested by 1719 his own money and that of his 1717 geehelichten woman in shares, which was founded in 1718 Compagnie de l' Occident, a bank and trading company, which in the spirit of optimism during the reign ( 1715-1723 ) of Duke Philip of Orléans had been created by Scottish banker John Law in 1718 after the model of the great Dutch and English overseas trading companies. As 1720, the speculative overvalued shares of the Company went into the cellar and the " Lawsche system " collapsed, and Marivaux, his wife and his little daughter (* 1719) were overnight poor people.
He now seemed apparently still a law exam in, then was active but not as a lawyer or something similar, but wrote plays, especially comedies which he wrote virtually the troops of Comédiens italy and their stars on the body. His breakthrough was the same in 1720 Arlequin poli par l' amour ( the educated from the love of Harlequin ). His specialty was surprising, but then and prove the representation of the non- reserved and unwanted falling in love between two partners, in particular those that first appear to be separated by large differences of rank pari passu therewith as to be socially appropriate. This issue process, for example, La Surprise de l' amour, 1722 ( the surprise of love); La double inconstance, 1723 ( the mutual inconsistency ); Le Prince travesti, 1723 ( the disguised prince); Le Jeu de l' amour et du hasard, 1730 ( The Game of Love and Chance ). In addition, Marivaux treated genuinely enlightening topics, such as L' Ile des esclaves, 1725 (the island of slaves ), where he shows how random and unfair in the caste society of the time, the servant and the master roles are assigned; or in L' Ile de la Raison, 1727 ( the island of sanity ), where he very reasonable " Wilde " with Europeans faced, which prove to be very unreasonable and prejudiced. The remarkable success of his plays gave him access to the most prestigious salons of the capital.
Well the end of 1726 (since he was a widower ) Marivaux began the novel La Vie de Marianne ( Life Marianne ), in which a foundling, is married to a nobleman only because of his qualities, namely beauty, mind, emotion, and virtue, and so in the should ascend nobility. However, the author was far from reach until then, when he in 1742 after hundreds of pages already printed and ten volumes broke off his work, probably because he realized his conception of the utopian Marianne ( and perhaps also because he just realized that he his own daughter for lack of a proper dowry only nun could make what happened in 1745 also ).
1734/35 he wrote five volumes of another novel, Le Paysan parvenu ( the villagers established names ) that should tell the story of the rise of a capable, but also righteous young province coupler to the rich banker. Although he also remained stuck half way, counts the Paysan with the Marianne of the best novels of the time.
In addition to plays and novels Marivaux wrote repeatedly and journal-like feature series along the lines of, founded by Joseph Addison in London 1711 Spectator. These were: Lettres sur les habitants de Paris ( letters about the inhabitants of Paris, 1717/18 ), Le Spectateur français ( French Spectator, 1721-24 ), L' Indigent philosophe ( the indigent philosopher, 1726) and Le Cabinet du philosophe ( the Cabinet of the philosopher, 1734).
1742 Marivaux member of the Académie française, and shortly thereafter her Secrétaire was perpétuel. This office, with the official residence, nobility similar privileges and prestige pleasing opportunities were linked, made up to his death, in life.
The particular power of the playwright Marivaux was the transfer of playful and elegant language of the Parisian salons of his time in his pieces, which are written accordingly not in verse, but in prose. After the language had survived the latest with the Revolution of 1789, appeared Marivaux's style already in the late 18th century and certainly the Romantics " Marivaudage " only as a mannered. End of the 19th century, however, this negative view has been revised, and Le Jeu de l' amour et du hasard counts since then the most performed French comedies. Even the novels La Vie de Marianne and Le Paysan parvenu apply, even though they are both left unfinished, as two of the best and most readable French narrative works of the 18th century