Guillaume Victor Emile Augier

Guillaume Victor Emile Augier Poems

Guillaume Victor Emile Augier Biography

Guillaume Victor Émile Augier (17 September 1820 – 25 October 1889) was a French dramatist. He was the thirteenth member to occupy seat 1 of the Académie française on 31 March 1857. Biography Augier was born at Valence, Drôme, the grandson of Pigault Lebrun, and belonged to the well-to-do bourgeoisie in spirit as well as by birth. After a good education and legal training, he wrote a play in two acts and in verse, La Ciguë (1844), which was refused at the Théâtre Français, but produced with as considerable success at the Odéon. This settled his career. From then on, at fairly regular intervals, either alone or in collaboration with other writers—Jules Sandeau, Eugène Marin Labiche, Édouard Foussier—he produced plays such as Le Fils de Giboyer (1862) - which was regarded as an attack on the clerical party in France, and was surely brought out by the direct intervention of the emperor. His last comedy, Les Fourchambault, belongs to the year 1879. After that date he wrote no more, restrained by the fear of producing inferior work, and died at his home at Croissy-sur-Seine. Career Augier described his own life as "without incident". L'Aventurière (1848), the first of his important works, already shows a deviation from romantic ideals; and in the Mariage d'Olympe (1855) the courtesan is shown as she is, not glorified as in Dumas's Dame aux Camélias. In Gabrielle (1849), the husband, not the lover, is the sympathetic character. In the libretto Augier provided the first opera composed by Charles Gounod, "Sapho" (1851) the courtesan is the perfidious villainess (and the self-sacrificing title character is wholly heterosexual, not a "sapphist."). In the Lionnes pauvres (1858) the wife who ls her favours comes under the lash. Greed of gold, social moralization, ultramontanism, lust of power, these are satirized Les Effrontés (1861), Le Fils de Giboyer (1862), La Contagion announced under the title of Le Baron d'Estrigaud (1866), Lions et renards (1869) - which, with Le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier (354), written in collaboration with Jules Sandeau, reach the high water mark of Augier's art; in Philiberte (1853) he produced a graceful and delicate drawing-room comedy; and in Jean de Thommeray, acted in 1873 after the great reverses of 1870, the regenerating note of patriotism rings high and clear. His last two dramas, Madame Caverlet (1876) and Les Fourchambault (1879), are problem plays. But it would be unfair to suggest that Augier was a mere preacher. He was a moralist in the same sense in which the term can be applied to Molière and the great dramatists. Nor does the interest of dramas depend on elaborate plot. It springs from character. His men and women are real, several of them typical. Augier's first drama, La Ciguë, belongs to a time (1844) when romantic drama was on the wane; and his almost elusively domestic range of subject scarcely lends itself to lyric bursts of pure poetry. His verse, if not that of a great poet, has excellent dramatic qualities, while the prose of his prose dramas is admirable for directness, alertness, sinew and a large and effective wit.)

The Best Poem Of Guillaume Victor Emile Augier

A Une Bourse

De doigts mignons œuvre mignonne,
Petit filet de soie et d'or,
Charmant toi-même et plus encor
Charmant par la main qui te donne,
Ah ! ne crains pas que je t'ordonne
D'enfermer un pauvre trésor.

D'argent, les rimeurs n'en ont guère;
Mais en eussent-ils par monceau,
Il salirait ton frais réseau.
Ton destin sera moins vulgaire,
Et tu seras le reliquaire
De mon cœur et de mon cerveau.

J'emplirai tes mailles de soie,
De mes vers les plus parfumés,
De ces confidents bien-aimés
Que nous ne voulons pas qu'on voie,
Car dans leurs plis sont notre joie
Et nos désespoirs enfermés.

Et quand l'âge, glaçant la source
De la joie et de la douleur,
Laissera languir sans chaleur
Mon âme à la fin de ma course,
Je t'ouvrirai, petite bourse
Qui tiens l'épargne de mon cœur.


English translation:

Tiny work of tiny fingers,
little thread of silk and gold,
charming in thyself and still more
charming by the hand which gave thee,
oh ! do not fear that I command
thee to hold a poor treasure.

Money, rhymers have little of it;
but even if they possessed heaps,
it would soil thy fresh net.
Thy lot will be less vulgar,
and thou shalt be the reliquary
of my heart and of my brain.

I will fill thy silken meshes
with my most scented verse,
with those well-beloved confidants
which we refuse to show,
because our joy and griefs
are shut up in their folds.

And when age, freezing the source
of joy and pain,
shall cause my soul to languish without heat,
towards the end of my life,
then I will open thee,
little purse that holdest
the savings of my heart.

Guillaume Victor Emile Augier Comments