Fabre d'Églantine

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Fabre d'Églantine
Jacobin

Philippe François Nazaire Fabre d'Églantine (French pronunciation: [filip fʁɑ̃swa nazɛʁ fabʁ deɡlɑ̃tin], 28 July 1750 – 5 April 1794), commonly known as Fabre d'Églantine, was a French actor, dramatist, poet, and politician of the French Revolution.

He is best known for having invented the names of the months in the French Republican calendar, and for the song Il pleut, il pleut, bergère which is still a popular nursery rhyme today.

Early life

He was born in

wild rose (French: églantine) from Clémence Isaure from the Academy of the Jeux Floraux at Toulouse. He married Marie Strasbourg Nicole Godin on 9 November 1778. His earliest works included the poem Étude de la nature, "The Study of Nature", in 1783. After travelling in the provinces as an actor, he came to Paris, where he produced an unsuccessful comedy entitled Les Gens de lettres, ou Le provincial à Paris (1787).[1]

A

citizen, while Philinte is a dangerous aristocrat in disguise.[1]
Fabre constructed the play to represent what he envisioned as the new relationship between theater and society. Not only did Fabre believe that Old Regime society was bankrupt; Old Regime comedy was viewed by the budding playwright as equally without value. Fabre d’Eglantine believed that he could fashion a place for theater in revolutionary culture and redeem French drama by developing a new form of theater that would promote the new social order of equality and fraternity. He found his justification and framework in
Rousseaus
’s critique of theatricality and advocated transparency as the critical transformative element that could generate theater worthy of and in keeping with revolutionary culture. As envisioned by Fabre, evolutionary political institutions would not shape theater; rather, a regenerated revolutionary theatrical culture would redeem the work of art, generating a new, revolutionary society.

Political activity

Fabre served as president and secretary of the club of the

Girondins.[1]

After the death of

l'Ami du Peuple.[1]

On the abolition of the

Primidi and Duodi
. The report which he made on the subject, on 24 October 1793, described the aim of the commission as "to substitute for visions of ignorance the realities of reason, and for sacerdotal prestige the truth of nature," to exalt "the agricultural system…by marking the days and the divisions of the year with intelligible or visible signs taken from agriculture and rural life." [2]

Execution and legacy

Early on the morning of 14 November 1793, the

Montagnard and former friar François Chabot burst into Maximilien Robespierre's bedroom dragging him from bed with accusations of counter-revolution and conspiracy, waving a hundred thousand livres in assignat notes, claiming that a band of royalist plotters gave it to him to buy Fabre d'Eglantine's vote, along with others, to liquidate some stock in an overseas trading concern.[3]

The fraud that he spoke of regarding Fabre had been carried out in early October, when the French East India Company had been liquidated in accordance with the anti-capitalist legislation of the summer.[4] The decree had apparently been falsified so that the directors were blackmailed into turning over the half-million-livre profits of this exercise to the cabal of the Convention members responsible. In 1794, Robespierre had evidence of Fabre's criminality and he denounced Fabre for what he viewed as a particular heinous crime, criminality disguised by patriotism.

On 12 January 1794 Fabre was arrested by order of the Committee of Public Safety on a charge of malversation and forgery in connection with the affairs of the French East India Company. This struck a hard blow to the Montagnards and sent them on their way to extinction in the Convention. During his trial, d'Eglantine was asked to testify in his own defense and tried to twist the facts around, accusing other people, but was unsuccessful. According to legend, Fabre showed the greatest calmness and sang his own well-known song:

Il pleut, il pleut, bergère,
rentre tes blancs moutons.

Fabre died under the

Dantonists. On his way to the scaffold he distributed his handwritten poems to the people.[1]

According to a popular legend, Fabre complained bitterly about the injustice done to him on the way to the scaffold, whereupon Danton replied with supreme sarcasm: "Des vers... Avant huit jours, tu en feras plus que tu n'en voudras!" ("Before eight days have passed, you'll make more of them than you would like to"), where "them" (vers) can be understood as either "verses" or "worms".

A posthumous play, Les Précepteurs, using the themes of

Emile: Or, On Education, was performed on 17 September 1794 and met with an enthusiastic reception. Among Fabre's other plays are Le Convalescent de qualité (1791), and L'Intrigue épistolaire (1791, supposedly including a depiction of the painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze). The author's Œuvres mêlées et posthumes were first published at Paris in 1802 in two volumes.[1]

Fictional accounts

Bibliography

Published posthumously:

References

  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Fabre d'Églantine, Philippe François Nazaire". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 118. The Britannica cites as its sources:
    • Albert Maurin, Galerie hist. de la Révolution française, tome n
    • Jules Janin
      , Histoire de la littérature dramatique
    • André Chénier, Tableau de la littérature française; FA Aulard in the Nouvelle Revue (July 1885).
  • Andress, David (2006). The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
  • Andrews, George Gordon (1 January 1931). "Making the Revolutionary Calendar".
    JSTOR 1837912
    .
  • Hampson, N. (1 January 1976). "François Chabot and His Plot".
    S2CID 159554090
    .
  • Linton, Marisa. 2013. Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship and Authenticity in the French Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Maslan, Susan (2005). Revolutionary Acts: Theater, Democracy, and the French Revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • R. Bentley
    .

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Chisholm 1911.
  2. ^ George, 350
  3. ^ Hampson, 3
  4. ^ Andress, 225
  5. ^ Orzcy, Emma. The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

External links


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