Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac
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Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (31 May 1597[1] - 18 February 1654) was a French author.
[edit] Biography
Guez de Balzac was born at Angoulême. Originally thought to have been born in 1595, the date was revised in 1848 upon the discovery of a baptismal certificate dated June 1st, 1597.[2]
In 1612[3] at the age of fifteen[4] he met Théophile de Viau, also in Angoulême.[5] The two became lovers and traveled together around 1613 in the United Provinces, eventually ending up at the Leiden University, where they enrolled as students in May of 1615. Balzac, not yet eighteen years old, gives his age as "twenty."[6] In Holland, Balzac is beaten with a stick, affront avenged by Viau with the sword. However Balzac is debauched and ungrateful and they later exchanged bitter recriminations.[7] Prefiguring the relationship between Verlaine and Rimbaud, they brawl upon their return, an event which marks the end of their affair.[8][9]
His letters to his acquaintances and to important courtiers gained him a great reputation. Compliments were showered on him, and he became an habitué of the Hotel de Rambouillet. In 1624 a collection of his Lettres was published, and was received with great favour. From Chateau de Balzac, where he had retired, he continued to correspond with Jean Chapelain, Valentin Conrart and others.
In 1634 Balzac was elected to the Académie française. He died at Angoulême twenty years later.
Guez de Balzac's fame rests chiefly upon the Lettres, a second collection of which appeared in 1636. Recueil de nouvelles lettres was printed in the next year. His letters, though empty and affected in matter, show a real mastery of style, introducing a new clearness and precision into French prose and encouraging the development of the language on national lines by emphasizing its most idiomatic elements. Balzac has thus the credit of executing in French prose a reform parallel to Francois de Malherbe's in verse. In 1631 he published an eulogy of King Louis XIII of France entitled Le Prince; in 1652 the Socrate chrétien, and Aristippe ou de la Cour in 1658.
[edit] Notes
- ^ L'Amateur d'autographes edited by Étienne Charavay; p.33
- ^ GUEZ DE BALZAC ET LE GENIE ROMAIN 1597-1654 By JEAN JEHASSE; p.82 N34
- ^ An Outline History of French Literature By H. Stanley Schwarz; p.43
- ^ "Balzac aurait eu quatorze ou quinze ans. S'il part sans l'aveu de son père, il s'agit bien d'une fugue." Jean Jehasse, Guez de Balzac et le génie romain: 1597-1654 - Page 82 N34
- ^ Powerful connections By Peter William Shoemaker; p.59
- ^ Eugene Ritter, Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France Société d'histoire littéraire de la France; p.131[1]
- ^ Études sur l'Espagne et sur les influences de la littérature espagnole en ... By Philarète Chasles; p.396
- ^ Who's who in gay and lesbian history By Robert Aldrich, Garry Wotherspoon; p.544
- ^ "Ils se brouillent au retour, et leurs mutuelles accusations nous instruisent de leurs fredaines." Les victimes de Boileau, Philarète Chasles, Revue des Deux Mondes T.18, 1839
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