Alexis Piron
| Alexis Piron | |
 | |
Portrait by Nicolas-Bernard Lepicie , engraved by Le Mire Christmas in 1773 | |
| Birth name | Alexis Piron |
|---|---|
| Birth | 9 July 1689 Dijon |
| Deaths | 21 January 1773 (84 years) Paris |
| Nationality |  France |
| Occupation (s) | poet , playwright |
Alexis Piron, born in Dijon on 9 July 1689 and died in Paris on 21 January 1773 , is a poet , songwriter , goguettier and French playwright.
Sainte-Beuve , we said that Piron was "... even the gay, gay talker, a man of wit and mimicry." He left a reputation for madness, luronnerie, illumination jovial as his writings does not justify supporting and imperfectly.
Summary |
"The Piron, Sainte-Beuve wrote, were a strain of songwriters, from malignant cronies and satirical." Alexis was especially marked by his father, Aim Piron , master apothecary by profession, who was the friend and rival of the Monnoye in Burgundian carols. Alexis Piron long hesitated about choosing a profession. After studying at the Jesuit college in Dijon Godrans and studied law at Besancon , he was employed briefly at a financier then tried, unsuccessfully, the bar in his hometown.
Around the age of twenty, he wrote his Ode to Priapus, whose immorality was notorious, and which announced a real talent. This Ode pursued throughout his life: she was both a title of a somewhat sulphurous glory, along with a ball he had to drag him and eventually close the doors of the French Academy in spite of Fontenelle , who said: "If Piron has done the famous ode, we must scold him, but admit it: if he has not made him shut the door." As soon as the book began to circulate, Piron was threatened with prosecution in his native town of Dijon. President Bouhier stopped them by inviting the author to disavow his play and adding: "If the Crown insists, I authorize you to declare that I am the author and the case will remain in there."
Piron Burgundy remained until about 1719 , riddling epigrams of the people of Dijon, and especially those of his rival, Beaune. The words of the Beaunois Piron cons are innumerable and often ferocious. He baptized them "donkeys de Beaune" and he committed many variations on this theme. So one day he was cutting thistles in the campaign by telling anyone who would listen: "At War with Beaune, I cut them off," and another time at the Theatre de Beaune, while a spectator complained of hearing nothing, he said: "This is not for lack of enough long ears."
Around thirty years, he came to Paris. It was also said Sainte-Beuve, "a big kid, nice drill five feet eight inches, good-looking without any elegance, while robust, and with it, myopic, giving him a strange look." To survive, he entered as a copyist at the Chevalier de Belle-Isle, grand-son of the Superintendent Fouquet , who paid irregularly. At the Marquise de Mimeure he met Voltaire , with whom he fell out once, and made friends with the reader of the Marchesa, Miss Quenaudon, called the Bar, whom he married in 1741.
He began to break into writing comic operas. The Comedie French had obtained to enforce the full extent of a decision of the Council of 1718 which limited the performances of the show to a single speaking role and, consequently, a monologue. This absurd law threatened to sentence him to ruin the Opera-Comique , whose director, Francisco , is desperate to find an author able to write a good monologue. Piron, who was then living in poverty, accepted the challenge to ECU 100. On the appointed day for the delivery room, he told Francisco: "Here is your room and your money: whether the book is good, you'll always be time to pay me. If it is bad, throw it into fire. ", Which does not lack elegance from a starving writer. The play, Arlequin Deucalion ( 1722 ), in three acts, was a huge success: Piron is a Harlequin imagined only survivor of the Flood and, naturally, soliloquy. Therefore, Piron, alone or in collaboration with Alain-Ren Lesage , produced until 1732 twenty-one pieces fairground, often parodies of tragedies or great operas. He became famous, albeit in a minor genre and reported that little money.
Piron survived with the help of some guards, Ms. Tencin including and especially the Marquis de Livry first steward of the King, brigadier and lieutenant-general, who gave him a pension of one thousand pounds and put an apartment at his disposal in his castle , where he wrote The Mtromanie. He attended meetings of the regiment of the cap , which met in Livry, and belonged to the company's Cellar , founded by Crebillon son.
With the support of fellow Crebillon , sources say (but this seems unlikely because, at that time, he lived completely withdrawn from the world), or with that of Miss Quinault, according to Piron himself, he could play the French Comedie in 1728 , a comedy in five acts and in verse which was poorly received as the ungrateful and the Son was, strangely, success in the School of fathers. He then turned to tragedy with the vain hope of competing with Voltaire and gave poor parts: Callisthenes ( 1730 ), won in the Court, but fell to the city, however, Gustavus was a great success at the Comedie French ( 1733 ), it was followed by Fernand Cortez ( 1744 ). These last two pieces announce the attempts of the eighteenth century to renew the framework of classical tragedy, without actually introducing elements of the picturesque.
In 1738 , Piron gave the piece remains as his masterpiece, The Mtromanie , a comedy in five acts and in verse written in 1736 , which Grimm said she would live as long as there is a theater and taste France. He took great pains to make it receivable by Comedians-French because she attacked Voltaire, Piron archrival, and was not created until the intervention of Maurepas. She succeeded brilliantly, with 23 performances in the city and to the Court, but was revived ten years later.
In 1753 he was elected to the French Academy but opponents exhumed the famous Ode to Priapus and Louis XV refused to ratify the election. As compensation, the supporters of Piron he obtained a pension of Madame de Pompadour equal treatment of Academician. He was elected to the Academy of Dijon in 1762.
His wife, whom he married in 1741 , sank slowly into madness. Piron treated her with devotion. In his old age he became a bit misanthropic but retained some loyal friends. Jean-Jacques Rousseau visited him for 80 years and he received him in a powerful voice singing the Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine which sent word to Rousseau, retiring: "It's the Pythia on her tripod He died in poverty at the age of eighty-four in 1773.
Works
Piron's talent has flourished primarily in the epigram. He dazzled his contemporaries with his wit and his spread the abbot of Voisenon described him as a "machine for projections in epigrams, line." Grimm , who said that he was "unquestionably the man nation with the highest projections, the more imagination, "but added" and less taste. " There was much to his reputation for geniality, claiming he could no more refrain from making an epigram that sneeze, but "without malice, without laughing and wanting to harm otherwise." He was not devoid of mordacity and Duclos , the Cardinal de Bernis , Moncrif , the abbot Desfontaines , Elijah Freron and Voltaire had in turn take the matter Iconography Works
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