Louis-Xavier de Ricard (January 25, 1843 – July 2, 1911) was a French poet, author, and journalist of the 19th century.[1][2] He was founder and editor of La Revue du progrès (La Revue du Progrès moral, littéraire, scientifique et artistique) which was the first to publish a poem by Paul Verlaine in August 1863. He and Catulle Mendès edited the first volume of Le Parnasse contemporain, published by Alphonse Lemerre in 1866. He was a member of the Commune de Paris (1871) and Félibrige, a group founded by Frédéric Mistral to promote and defend Provençal literature and the Provençal language (a Langue d'oc language).
Louis-Xavier de Ricard | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 25 January 1843 Fontenay-sous-Bois |
| Died | July 2, 1911 Marseille |
| Occupation | Poet, author, journalist |
| Genre | Parnassianism, Romanticism |
Life
editHis father was general and marquis Joseph-Barthélemy de Ricard (who successively served Napoléon I, then the Bourbons and finally was premier aide-de-camp of Jérôme Bonaparte in 1852).
Ricard's first collection of poetry, Les chants de l'aube (Songs of Dawn) was published in 1862 by Poulet-Malassis. In March 1863, after receiving an inheritance from an aunt, he founded La Revue du progrès. Among the contributors to the Revue were Charles Longuet and a young Paul Verlaine (his first published poem). The Revue lasted one year; the atheist sentiments of the Revue lead to a Monseigneur Dupanloup taking legal action against the Revue on the grounds that it was an outrage to public morals and good mores. Ricard was defended by a talented young attorney, Léon Gambetta, and was sentenced to eight months in prison, reduced to three, at Sainte Pélagie, and had to pay a fine of 1,200 francs. After serving his sentence, his friends manifested an active support, and this small group of supporters was the origin of the politico-literary salon that met every Friday at the home of Ricard's mother, 10 Boulevard des Batignolles. Ricard was happy to entertain these boisterous republican and anti-clerical youths. Many great French poets and writers of the future attended: Anatole France, Sully Prudhomme, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Paul Verlaine, François Coppée; and Raoul Rigault, the future attorney of the Commune de Paris (1871).
In March 1866, Ricard and Catulle Mendès were appointed by editor Alphonse Lemerre to be directors of a now famous and pivotal collection of poetry called Le Parnasse contemporain, a collection that gave the name Parnassian to a group of poets that came to be known as Parnassians. Ricard also contributed 8 poems to that first collection. In 1867 Verlaine, a friend of Ricard (whom he called "an excellent Langue d'Ocian poet"), dedicated his Les Vaincus to Ricard, a poem on the vanquished of 1848.
Works
edit- Histoire mondaine du Second Empire : en attendant l'Impératrice, 1852-1853; Paris : Librairie Universelle, 1904. OCLC 10515481
- Madame de la Valette, Paris, Société d'éditions littéraires et artistiques, 1901. OCLC 10610896
- Les Sept péchés capitaux : la colère, Paris : E. Bernard, 1901. OCLC 12095932
- Officier de fortune ! : aventures de Marie-Armand de Guerry de Maubreuil, Paris, Montgredien, 1899. OCLC 77622550
- L'esprit politique de la Réforme., Paris, Fischbacher, 1893. OCLC 47194338
- Un poète national : Auguste Fourès, Paris, 1888. OCLC 66947569
- Le fédéralisme,, Paris, Sandoz & Fischbacher, 1877. OCLC 11707407
- Ciel, rue et foyer,, Paris, Lemerre, 1866. OCLC 44540708
- La résurrection de la Pologne, Paris, Marpon, 1863. OCLC 47114061
- Petits mémoires d'un Parnassien, coll. Avant-siècle, Paris, Lettres modernes - Minard, 1967. Ce livre contient également Les Parnassiens, d'Adolphe Racot. Introductions et commentaires de Michael Pakenham OCLC 1409870
References
edit- ^ Wright, Julian (2003). The Regionalist Movement in France, 1890-1914: Jean Charles-Brun and French Political Thought. Clarendon. pp. 49–50. ISBN 978-0-19-926488-9.
- ^ The Gentleman's Magazine. A. Dodd and A. Smith. 1879. pp. 48–49.
External links
edit
Media related to Louis-Xavier de Ricard at Wikimedia Commons
French Wikisource has original text related to this article: Louis-Xavier de Ricard
