Marie-Joseph-Blaise Chenier

Marie-Joseph-Blaise Chenier Poems

Marie-Joseph-Blaise Chenier Biography

Marie-Joseph Blaise de Chénier (11 February 1764 – 10 January 1811) was a French poet, dramatist and politician. The younger brother of André Chénier, he was born at Constantinople, but brought up at Carcassonne. He was educated in Paris at the Collège de Navarre. Entering the army at seventeen, he left it two years afterwards; and at nineteen he produced Azémire, a two-act drama (acted in 1786), and Edgar, ou le page supposé, a comedy (acted in 1785), which both failed. His Charles IX was kept back for nearly two years by the censor. Chénier attacked the censorship in three pamphlets, and the commotion aroused by the controversy raised keen interest in the piece. When it was at last produced on November 4, 1789, it was an immense success, due in part to its political suggestion, and in part to François Joseph Talma's magnificent portrayal of King Charles IX of France. Camille Desmoulins said that the piece had done more for the French Revolution than the days of October, and a contemporary memoir-writer, the marquis de Ferrire, says that the audience came away ivre de vengeance et du tourment d'un soir de sang ("drunk with the vengeance and torment of an evening of blood"). The performance was the occasion of a split among the actors of the Comédie-Française, and the new theatre in the Palais Royal, established by the dissidents, was inaugurated with Henri VIII (1791), generally recognized as Chénier's masterpiece; Jean Calas, ou l'école des juges ("Jean Calas, or the judges' school") followed in the same year. In 1792 he produced his Caïus Gracchus, which was even more revolutionary in tone than its predecessors. It was nevertheless proscribed in the next year at the instance of the Montagnard deputy Albitte, for the anti-anarchical hemistich Des lois et non du sang ("Laws, and not blood") ; Fénelon (1793) was suspended after a few representations; and in 1794 Timoléon, set to Etienne Méhul's music, was also proscribed. This piece was played after the Reign of Terror, but the fratricide of Timoléon became the text for insinuations to the effect that by his silence Joseph Chénier had connived at the judicial murder of his brother, André, whom Joseph's enemies alluded to as Abel. In fact, after some fruitless attempts to save his brother, variously related by his biographers, Joseph became aware that André's only chance of safety lay in being forgotten by the authorities, and that ill-advised intervention would only hasten the end. Joseph Chénier had been a member of the Convention and of the Council of Five Hundred, and had voted for the death of Louis XVI; he had a seat in the tribunate; he belonged to the committees of public instruction, of general security, and of public safety. He was, nevertheless, suspected of moderate sentiments, and before the end of the Terror had become a marked man. His political career ended in 1802, when he was eliminated with others from the tribunate for his opposition to Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1801 he was one of the educational jury for the Seine département; from 1803 to 1806 he was inspector-general of public instruction. He had allowed himself to be reconciled with Napoleon's government, and Cyrus, represented in 1804, was written in his honour, but he was temporarily disgraced in. 1806 for his Épître à Voltaire. In 1806 and 1807 he delivered a course of lectures at the Athéne on the language and literature of France from the earliest years; and in 1808 at the emperor's request, he prepared his Tableau historique de l'état et du progrés de la littérature française depuis 1789 jusqu'à 1808 ("Historical view of the state and progress of French literature from 1789 to 1808"), a book containing some good criticism, though marred by the violent prejudices of its author. The list of his works includes hymns and national songs among others, the famous Chant du départ; odes, Sur la mort de Mirabeau, Sur l'oligarchie de Robespierre, etc.; tragedies which never reached the stage, Brutus et Cassius, Philippe deux, Tibre; translations from Sophocles and Lessing, from Thomas Gray and Horace, from Tacitus and Aristotle; with elegies, dithyrambics and Ossianic rhapsodies. As a satirist he possessed great merit, though he sins from an excess of severity, and is sometimes malignant and unjust. He is the chief tragic poet of the revolutionary period, and as Camille Desmoulins expressed it, he decorated Melpomene with the tricolour cockade.)

The Best Poem Of Marie-Joseph-Blaise Chenier

Chant Du 14 Juillet

Dieu du peuple et des rois, des cités, des campagnes,
De Luther, de Calvin, des enfants d'Israël,
Dieu que le Guèbre adore au pied de ses montagnes,
En invoquant l'astre du ciel !

Ici sont rassemblés sous ton regard immense
De l'empire français les fils et les soutiens,
Célébrant devant toi leur bonheur qui commence,
Égaux à leurs yeux comme aux tiens.

Rappelons-nous les temps où des tyrans sinistres
Des Français asservis foulaient aux pieds les droits ;
Le temps, si près de nous, où d'infâmes ministres
Trompaient les peuples et les rois.

Des brigands féodaux les rejetons gothiques
Alors à nos vertus opposaient leurs aïeux ;
Et, le glaive à la main, des prêtres fanatiques
Versaient le sang au nom des cieux.

Princes, nobles, prélats, nageaient dans l'opulence ;
Le peuple gémissait de leurs prospérités ;
Du sang des opprimés, des pleurs de l'indigence,
Leurs palais étaient cimentés.

En de pieux cachots l'oisiveté stupide,
Afin de plaire à Dieu, détestait les mortels ;
Des martyrs, périssant par un long homicide,
Blasphémaient an pied des autels.

Ils n'existeront plus, ces abus innombrables
La sainte liberté les a tous effacés ;
Ils n'existeront plus, ces monuments coupables :
Son bras les a tous renversés.

Dix ans sont écoulés ; nos vaisseaux, rois de l'onde,
À sa voix souveraine ont traversé les mers :
Elle vient aujourd'hui des bords d'un nouveau monde
Régner sur l'antique univers.

Soleil, qui, parcourant ta route accoutumée,
Donnes, ravis le jour, et règles les saisons ;
Qui, versant des torrents de lumière enflammée,
Mûris nos fertiles moissons ;

Feu pur, oeil éternel, âme et ressort du monde,
Puisses-tu des Français admirer la splendeur !
Puisses-tu ne rien voir dans ta course féconde
Qui soit égal à leur grandeur !

Que les fers soient brisés ! Que la terre respire !
Que la raison des lois, parlant aux nations,
Dans l'univers charmé fonde un nouvel empire,
Qui dure autant que tes rayons !

Que des siècles trompés le long crime s'expie !
Le ciel pour être libre a fait l'humanité :
Ainsi que le tyran, l'esclave est un impie,
Rebelle à la Divinité.

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