- Vincent Voiture
Vincent Voiture (
24 February 1597 -26 May 1648 ), Frenchpoet , was the son of a rich merchant ofAmiens . He was introduced by a schoolfellow, the countClaude d'Avaux , toGaston, Duke of Orleans , and accompanied him toBrussels and Lorraine on diplomatic missions.Although a follower of Gaston, he won the favour of
Cardinal Richelieu , and was one of the earliest members of the Académie Française. He also received appointments and pensions from Louis XIII andAnne of Austria .He published nothing in book form, but his verses and his prose letters were the delight of the coteries, and were copied, handed about and admired more perhaps than the work of any contemporary. He had been early introduced to the
Hôtel de Rambouillet , where he was the especial friend ofJulie d'Angennes , who called him her "dwarf king." His ingenuity in providing amusement for the younger members of the circle ensured his popularity, which was never seriously threatened except byAntoine Godeau , and this rivalry ceased when Richelieu appointed Godeaubishop of Grasse .When at the desire of the duc de Montausier nineteen poets contributed to the "
Guirlande de Julie ", which was to decide the much-fêted Julie in favour of his suit, Voiture refused to take part. The quarrel between the Uranistes and the Jobelins arose over the respective merits of a sonnet of Voiture addressed to a certain "Uranie", and of another composed byIsaac de Benserade , till then unknown, on the subject of "Job".Another famous piece of his of the same kind, "La Belle Matineuse", is less exquisite, but still admirable, and Voiture stands in the highest rank of writers of
vers de société . His prose letters are full of lively wit, and, in some cases, as in the letter on Richelieu's policy (Letter LXXIV), show considerable political penetration. He ranks with Jean de Balzac as the chief director of the reform in French prose which accompanied that of Malherbe in French verse. Voiture died at the outbreak of theFronde , which killed the society to which he was accustomed, on the 26th of May 1648.References
*1911
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