André Chénier

André Marie Chénier (October 30, 1762 - July 25, 1794) was a French poet, associated with the events of the French Revolution.

Life

He was born at Istanbul, in today's Turkey. His father, Louis Chénier, a native of Languedoc, after twenty years in the Levant as a cloth-merchant, was appointed to a position equivalent to that of French consul at Istanbul. His mother, Elisabeth Santi-Lomaca, whose sister was grandmother of Adolphe Thiers, was a Greek. When André was three years old, his father returned to France, and from 1768 to 1775 served as consul-general of France in Morocco. The family, of which André was the third son, and Marie-Joseph (see below) the fourth, remained in France; and after a few years, during which André ran wild with an aunt in Carcassonne, he distinguished himself as a verse-translator from the classics at the Collège de Navarre (the school in former days of Jean Gerson and Bossuet) in Paris.

Related Topics:
Istanbul - Turkey - Languedoc - Levant - Consul - Adolphe Thiers - Greek - 1768 - 1775 - Morocco - Carcassonne - Collège de Navarre - Jean Gerson - Bossuet - Paris

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In 1783 he obtained a cadetship in a French regiment at Strasbourg, but the novelty soon wore off. He returned to Paris before the end of the year, was well received by his family, and mixed in the cultivated circle which frequented the salon of his mother, among them Lebrun-Pindare, Lavoisier, Lesueur, Dorat, Parmy, and a little later the painter Jacques-Louis David.

Related Topics:
1783 - Strasbourg - Salon - Lebrun-Pindare - Lavoisier - Lesueur - Dorat - Parmy - Jacques-Louis David

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He had already chosen his vocation as a poet, and was steeped in the classical archaism of the time, when, in 1784, his taste for the antique was confirmed by a visit to Rome in the company of two school friends, the brothers Trudaine. From Naples, after visiting Pompeii, he returned to Paris, his mind fermenting with poetical images and projects, few of which he was destined to realize. For nearly three years, however, he was enabled to study and to experiment in verse without any active pressure or interruption from his family — three precious years in which the first phase of his art as a writer of idylls and bucolics, imitated to a large extent from Theocritus, Bion and the Greek anthologists, was elaborated.

Related Topics:
Rome - Brothers Trudaine - Naples - Pompeii - Idyll - Bucolic - Theocritus - Bion

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Among the poems written or at least sketched during this period were L'Oaristys, L'Aveugle, La Jeune Malode, Bacchus, Euphrosine and La Jeune Tarentine, the last a synthesis of his purest manner, mosaic though it is of reminiscences of at least a dozen classical poets. As in glyptic so in poetic art, the Hellenism of the time was decadent and Alexandrine rather than Attic of the best period. But Chénier is always far more than animitator. La Jeune Tarentine is a work of personal emotion and inspiration. The colouring is that of classic mythology, but the spiritual element is as individual as that of any classical poem by Milton, Gray, Keats or Tennyson.

Related Topics:
Hellenism - Alexandrine - Milton - Gray - Keats - Tennyson

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Apart from his idylls and his elegies, Chénier also experimented from early youth in didactic and philosophic verse, and when he commenced his Hermes in 1783 his ambition was to condense the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot into a poem somewhat after the manner of Lucretius. This poem was to treat of man's position in the Universe, first in an isolated state, and then in society. It remains fragmentary, and though some of the fragments are fine, its attempt at scientific exposition approximates too closely to the manner of Erasmus Darwin to suit a modern ear. Another fragment called L'Invention sums Chénier's Ars Poetica in the verse "Sur des pensers nouveaux, faisons des vers antiques." Suzanne represents the torso of a Biblical poem on a very large scale, in six cantos.

Related Topics:
Encyclopédie - Denis Diderot - Lucretius - Universe - Erasmus Darwin - Canto

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In the meantime, André had published nothing, and some of these last pieces were in fact not yet written, when in November 1787 an opportunity of a fresh career presented itself. The new ambassador at the Court of St. James's, M. de la Luzerne, was connected in some way with the Chénier family, and he offered to take André with him as his secretary. The offer was too good to be refused, but the poet hated himself on the banks of the fière Tamise, and wrote in bitter ridicule of "Ces Anglais. Nation toute à vendre à qui peut la payer. De contrée en contrée allant au monde entier, Offrir sa joie ignoble et son faste grossier." He seems to have been interested in the poetic diction of John Milton and James Thomson, and a few of his verses are remotely inspired by Shakespeare and Thomas Gray. To say, however, that he studied English literature would be an exaggeration.

Related Topics:
Court of St. James's - M. de la Luzerne - John Milton - James Thomson - Shakespeare

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The events of 1789 and the startling success of his younger brother, Marie-Joseph, as political playwright and pamphleteer, concentrated all his thoughts upon France. In April 1790 he could stand London no longer, and once more joined his parents at Paris in the rue de Cléry. The France that he plunged into with such impetuosity was upon the verge of anarchy. A strong constitutionalist, Chénier took the view that the Revolution was already complete and that all that remained to be done was the inauguration of the reign of law. Moderate as were his views and disinterested as were his motives, his tactics were passionately and dangerously aggressive. From an idyllist and elegist we find him suddenly transformed into an unsparing master of poetical satire. His prose Avis au peuple Iran Qais (August 24, 1790) was followed by the rhetorical Jeu de paume, a somewhat declamatory moral ode addressed to the painter David.

Related Topics:
1789 - Playwright - Pamphleteer - Anarchy - Constitutionalist - Revolution - Satire - August 24 - 1790

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In the meantime he orated at the Feuillants Club, and contributed frequently to the Journal de Paris from November 1791 to July 1792, when he wrote his scorching iambes to Collot d'Herbois, Sur les Suisses révoltés du regiment de Châteauvieux. The insurrection of August 10, 1792 uprooted his party, his paper and his friends, and the management of relatives who kept him out of the way in Normandy alone saved him from the September Massacres. In the month following these events his democratic brother, Marie-Joseph, had entered the Convention. André's sombre rage against the course of events found vent in the line on the Maenads who mutilated the king's Swiss Guard, and in the Ode a Charlotte Corday congratulating France that "Un scélérat de moins rampe dans cette fange." At the express request of Malesherbes he provided some arguments to the materials collected for the defence of the king.

Related Topics:
Feuillant - Iambe - Collot d'Herbois - Insurrection - August 10 - 1792 - Normandy - September Massacres - Convention - Maenads - Charlotte Corday - Malesherbes

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After the king's execution he sought a secluded retreat on the Plateau de Satory at Versailles and only went out after nightfall. There he wrote the poems inspired by Fanny (Mme Laurent Lecoulteux), including the exquisite Ode à Versailles, one of his freshest, noblest and most varied poems. His solitary life at Versailles lasted nearly a year. On March 7 1794 he was arrested at the house of Mme Piscatory at Passy. Two obscure agents of the Committee of Public Safety were in search of a marquise who had flown, but an unknown stranger was found in the house and arrested on suspicion. This was André, who had come on a visit of sympathy.

Related Topics:
Plateau de Satory - Versailles - March 7 - 1794 - Passy - Committee of Public Safety

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He was taken to the Luxembourg and afterwards to Saint-Lazare. During the 140 days of his imprisonment there he wrote the marvellous iambes (in alternate lines of 12 and 8 syllables), which hiss and stab like poisoned bullets, and which were transmitted to his family by a venal gaoler. There he wrote the best known of all his verses, the pathetic Jeune captive, a poem at once of enchantment and of despair. Suffocating in an atmosphere of cruelty and baseness, Chénier's agony found expression almost to the last in these murderous iambes which he launched against the Convention. Ten days before the end, the painter Joseph-Benoît Suvée completed the well-known portrait. He might have been overlooked but for the well-meant, indignant officiousness of his father. Marie-Joseph had done his best to prevent this, but he could do nothing more. Robespierre, who was himself on the brink of the volcano, remembered the venomous sallies in the Journal de Paris. At sundown on the very day of his condemnation on a bogus charge of conspiracy, André Chénier was guillotined. The record of his last moments by La Touche is rather melodramatic and is certainly not above suspicion. He was interred in the Cimetière de Picpus.

Related Topics:
Luxembourg - Joseph-Benoît Suvée - Robespierre - Guillotine - La Touche - Cimetière de Picpus

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