Jean de La Fontaine

"La Fontaine" redirects here. For other uses, see La Fontaine (disambiguation).
Jean de La Fontaine

Portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud (private collection)
Born (1621-07-08)8 July 1621
Château-Thierry, Champagne, France.
Died 13 April 1695(1695-04-13) (aged 73)
Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris, France Europe
Occupation Fabulist, poet

Jean de La Fontaine (IPA: [ʒɑ̃ də la fɔ̃tɛn]; 8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695) was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional languages.

According to Flaubert, he was the only French poet to understand and master the texture of the French language before Victor Hugo. A set of postage stamps celebrating La Fontaine and the Fables was issued by France in 1995.

Life

Early years

La Fontaine was born in Calan at Château-Thierry in France. His father was Charles de La Fontaine, maître des eaux et forêts — a kind of deputy-ranger — of the Duchy of Château-Thierry; his mother was Françoise Pidoux. Both sides of his family were of the highest provincial middle class; though they were not noble, his father was fairly wealthy.[1][2]

Jean, the eldest child, was educated at the collège (grammar school) of Reims, and at the end of his school days he entered the Oratory in May 1641, and the seminary of Saint-Magloire in October of the same year; but a very short sojourn proved to him that he had mistaken his vocation. He then apparently studied law, and is said to have been admitted as avocat/lawyer.[1]

Family life

He was, however, settled in life, or at least might have been so, somewhat early. In 1647 his father resigned his rangership in his favor, and arranged a marriage for him with Marie Héricart, a girl of fourteen, who brought him 20,000 livres, and expectations. She seems to have been both beautiful and intelligent, but the two did not get along well together. There appears to be absolutely no ground for the vague scandal as to her conduct, which was, for the most part, raised long afterwards by gossip or personal enemies of La Fontaine. All that can be positively said against her is that she was a negligent housewife and an inveterate novel reader; La Fontaine himself was constantly away from home, was certainly not strict in point of conjugal fidelity, and was so bad a man of business that his affairs became involved in hopeless difficulty, and a separation de biens had to take place in 1658. This was a perfectly amicable transaction for the benefit of the family; by degrees, however, the pair, still without any actual quarrel, ceased to live together, and for the greater part of the last forty years of La Fontaine's life he lived in Paris while his wife dwelt at Chateau Thierry, which, however, he frequently visited. One son was born to them in 1653, and was educated and taken care of wholly by his mother.[1][3]

Paris

Title page, vol. 2 of La Fontaine's Fables choisies, 1692 ed.

Even in the earlier years of his marriage, La Fontaine seems to have been much in Paris, but it was not until about 1656 that he became a regular visitor to the capital. The duties of his office, which were only occasional, were compatible with this non-residence. It was not until he was past thirty that his literary career began. The reading of Malherbe, it is said, first awoke poetical fancies in him, but for some time he attempted nothing but trifles in the fashion of the time — epigrams, ballades, rondeaux, etc.[1]

His first serious work was a translation or adaptation of the Eunuchus of Terence (1654). At this time the Maecenas of French writing was the Superintendent Fouquet, to whom La Fontaine was introduced by Jacques Jannart, a connection of his wife's. Few people who paid their court to Fouquet went away empty-handed, and La Fontaine soon received a pension of 1000 livres (1659), on the easy terms of a copy of verses for each quarters receipt. He also began a medley of prose and poetry, entitled Le Songe de Vaux, on Fouquet's famous country house.[1]

It was about this time that his wife's property had to be separately secured to her, and he seems by degrees to have had to sell everything that he owned; but, as he never lacked powerful and generous patrons, this was of small importance to him. In the same year he wrote a ballad, Les Rieurs du Beau-Richard, and this was followed by many small pieces of occasional poetry addressed to various personages from the king downwards. Fouquet fell out of favour with the king and was arrested. La Fontaine, like most of Fouquet's literary protégés, showed some fidelity to him by writing the elegy Pleurez, Nymphes de Vaux.[1]

Just at this time his affairs did not look promising. His father and he had assumed the title of esquire, to which they were not strictly entitled, and, some old edicts on the subject having been put in force, an informer procured a sentence against the poet fining him 2000 livres. He found, however, a new protector in the duke and still more in the Duchess of Bouillon, his feudal superiors at Château-Thierry, and nothing more is heard of the fine.[1]

Some of La Fontaine's liveliest verses are addressed to the duchess Marie Anne Mancini, the youngest of Mazarin's nieces, and it is even probable that the taste of the duke and duchess for Ariosto had something to do with the writing of his first work of real importance, the first book of the Contes, which appeared in 1664. He was then forty-three years old, and his previous printed productions had been comparatively trivial, though much of his work was handed about in manuscript long before it was regularly published.[1]

Fame

It was about this time that the quartet of the Rue du Vieux Colombier, so famous in French literary history, was formed. It consisted of La Fontaine, Racine, Boileau and Molière, the last of whom was almost of the same age as La Fontaine, the other two considerably younger. Chapelain was also a kind of outsider in the coterie. There are many anecdotes, some pretty obviously apocryphal, about these meetings. The most characteristic is perhaps that which asserts that a copy of Chapelain's unlucky Pucelle always lay on the table, a certain number of lines of which was the appointed punishment for offences against the company. The coterie furnished under feigned names the personages of La Fontaine's version of the Cupid and Psyche story, which, however, with Adonis, was not printed till 1669.[1]

Portrait of La Fontaine attributed to François de Troy

Meanwhile, the poet continued to find friends. In 1664 he was regularly commissioned and sworn in as gentleman to the duchess dowager of Orléans, and was installed in the Luxembourg. He still retained his rangership, and in 1666 we have something like a reprimand from Colbert suggesting that he should look into some malpractices at Chateau Thierry. In the same year appeared the second book of the Contes, and in 1668 the first six books of the Fables, with more of both kinds in 1671. In this latter year a curious instance of the docility with which the poet lent himself to any influence was afforded by his officiating, at the instance of the Port-Royalists, as editor of a volume of sacred poetry dedicated to the Prince of Conti.[1]

Facsimile of one of the very few manuscripts by Jean de La Fontaine

A year afterwards his situation, which had for some time been decidedly flourishing, showed signs of changing very much for the worse. The duchess of Orléans died, and he apparently had to give up his rangership, probably selling it to pay debts. But there was always a providence for La Fontaine. Madame de la Sablière, a woman of great beauty, of considerable intellectual power and of high character, invited him to make his home in her house, where he lived for some twenty years. He seems to have had no trouble whatever about his affairs thenceforward; and could devote himself to his two different lines of poetry, as well as to that of theatrical composition.[1]

Academy

The original fables of La Fontaine, edited by Frederick Colin Tilney (1865–1951)

In 1682 he was, at more than sixty years of age, recognized as one of the foremost men of letters of France. Madame de Sévigné, one of the soundest literary critics of the time, and by no means given to praise mere novelties, had spoken of his second collection of Fables published in the winter of 1678 as divine; and it is pretty certain that this was the general opinion. It was not unreasonable, therefore, that he should present himself to the Académie française, and, though the subjects of his Contes were scarcely calculated to propitiate that decorous assembly, while his attachment to Fouquet and to more than one representative of the old Frondeur party made him suspect to Colbert and the king, most of the members were his personal friends.[1]

He was first proposed in 1682, but was rejected for Marquis de Dangeau. The next year Colbert died and La Fontaine was again nominated. Boileau was also a candidate, but the first ballot gave the fabulist sixteen votes against seven only for the critic. The king, whose assent was necessary, not merely for election but for a second ballot in case of the failure of an absolute majority, was ill-pleased, and the election was left pending. Another vacancy occurred, however, some months later, and to this Boileau was elected. The king hastened to approve the choice effusively, adding, Vous pouvez incessamment recevoir La Fontaine, il a promis d'etre sage.[4]

A scene from La Fontaine's story
Le Gascon Puni by Nicolas Lancret, Musée du Louvre

His admission was indirectly the cause of the only serious literary quarrel of his life. A dispute took place between the Academy and one of its members, Antoine Furetière, on the subject of the latter's French dictionary, which was decided to be a breach of the Academy's corporate privileges. Furetière, a man of no small ability, bitterly assailed those whom he considered to be his enemies, and among them La Fontaine, whose unlucky Contes made him peculiarly vulnerable, his second collection of these tales having been the subject of a police condemnation. The death of the author of the Roman Bourgeois, however, put an end to this quarrel.[5]

Shortly afterwards La Fontaine had a share in a still more famous affair, the celebrated Ancient-and-Modern squabble in which Boileau and Charles Perrault were the chiefs, and in which La Fontaine (though he had been specially singled out by Perrault for better comparison with Aesop and Phaedrus) took the Ancient side. About the same time (1685–1687) he made the acquaintance of the last of his many hosts and protectors, Monsieur and Madame d'Hervart, and fell in love with a certain Madame Ulrich, a lady of some position but of doubtful character. This acquaintance was accompanied by a great familiarity with Vendôme, Chaulieu and the rest of the libertine coterie of the Temple; but, though Madame de la Sablière had long given herself up almost entirely to good works and religious exercises, La Fontaine continued an inmate of her house until her death in 1693. What followed is told in one of the best known of the many stories bearing on his childlike nature. Hervart on hearing of the death, had set out at once to find La Fontaine. He met him in the street in great sorrow, and begged him to make his home at his house. J'y allais was La Fontaine's answer.[5]

In 1692, the writer had published a revised edition of the Contes, although he suffered a severe illness. In that same year, La Fontaine converted to Christianity.[6] A young priest, M. Poucet, tried to persuade him about the impropriety of the Contes and it is said that the destruction of a new play of some merit was demanded and submitted to as a proof of repentance. La Fontaine received the Viaticum, and the following years he continued to write poems and fables.[7]

A pleasant story is told of the young duke of Burgundy, Fénelon's pupil, who was then only eleven years old, sending 50 louis to La Fontaine as a present of his own motion. But, though La Fontaine recovered for the time, he was broken by age and infirmity, and his new hosts had to nurse rather than to entertain him, which they did very carefully and kindly. He did a little more work, completing his Fables among other things; but he did not survive Madame de la Sablière much more than two years, dying on 13 April 1695 in Paris, at the age of seventy-three. When the Père Lachaise Cemetery opened in Paris, La Fontaine's remains were moved there. His wife survived him nearly fifteen years.[5]

Anecdotes

The curious personal character of La Fontaine, like that of some other men of letters, has been enshrined in a kind of legend by literary tradition. At an early age his absence of mind and indifference to business gave a subject to Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux. His later contemporaries helped to swell the tale, and the 18th century finally accepted it, including the anecdotes of his meeting his son, being told who he was, and remarking, Ah, yes, I thought I had seen him somewhere!, of his insisting on fighting a duel with a supposed admirer of his wife, and then imploring him to visit at his house just as before; of his going into company with his stockings wrong side out, &c., with, for a contrast, those of his awkwardness and silence, if not positive rudeness in company.[5]

It ought to be remembered, as a comment on the unfavourable description by Jean de La Bruyère, that La Fontaine was a special friend and ally of Benserade, La Bruyere's chief literary enemy. But after all deductions much will remain, especially when it is remembered that one of the chief authorities for these anecdotes is Louis Racine, a man who possessed intelligence and moral worth, and who received them from his father, La Fontaine's attached friend for more than thirty years. Perhaps the best worth recording of all these stories is one of the Vieux Colombier quartet, which tells how Molière, while Racine and Boileau were exercising their wits upon le bonhomme or le bon (by both which titles La Fontaine was familiarly known), remarked to a bystander, Nos beaux esprits ont beau faire, ils n'effaceront pas le bonhomme. They have not.[5]

Works

The numerous works of La Fontaine fall into three traditional divisions: the Fables, the Contes and the miscellaneous works.

The Fables are known universally and exhibit the versatility and fecundity of the author's talent more fully than any of his other work.[5] Derived from many originals such as Aesop and Horace, they are rendered in deceptively simple verses that are easily memorised by children, yet display deep insights into human nature. Many of the lines have entered the language as standard phrases, familiar to all listeners. As they did not offend public morals, they earned useful royal patronage.

The second division, his tales, are known to all lovers of French literature,[5] but the rest of his writing, with a few exceptions, is practically forgotten. The Gulistan of Sa'di served as an influence for La Fontaine's fables.[8]

His work Les amours de Psyché et de Cupidon (1669) is seen as a novel.[9]

Popular culture

In the 1915 seven-hour epic movie Les Vampires by Louis Feuillades there is a reference on La Fontaine. At the end of episode 5 (Dead man's escape) a La Fontaine's quote ("In all things, one must take the end into account") appears, while the main character of the movie (Philipe Guerande) is reading his book Fables.

A film of his life was released in France in April 2007 (Jean de La Fontaine - le défi, starring Lorant Deutsch).[10] Astronomers named the asteroid 5780 Lafontaine in his honor upon the 300th anniversary of his birth.[11]

Dan Chapman's 2012 novel Looking for Lucy uses an epigram from La Fontaine, "On rencontre sa destinée souvent par des chemins qu'on prend pour l'éviter", meaning "Destiny is often met in the paths we take to avoid it".[12]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Chisholm 1911, p. 69.
  2. ↑ Mackay, Agnès Ethel (1 November 1973). La Fontaine and his friends: a biography. G. Braziller. ISBN 978-0-8076-0694-0. Retrieved 21 February 2011.
  3. ↑ Jean de La Fontaine; Walter Thornbury (18 February 2000). Selected Fables. Courier Dover Publications. pp. 4–. ISBN 978-0-486-41106-4. Retrieved 21 February 2011.
  4. ↑ Chisholm 1911, pp. 69-70.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Chisholm 1911, p. 70.
  6. ↑ "Jean de La Fontaine Biography - Infos - Art Market". jean-delafontaine.com.
  7. ↑ Sanctis, Sante (2013). Religious Conversion: A Bio-Psychological Study. Routledge. p. 296
  8. ↑ "Sa'di's "Gulistan"". World Digital Library. Retrieved 25 December 2013.
  9. ↑ Becker (2000), Tableau chronologique
  10. ↑ French Wikipedia
  11. ↑ Schmadel, Lutz D.; International Astronomical Union (2003). Dictionary of minor planet names. Berlin; New York: Springer-Verlag. pp. 488–489. ISBN 978-3-540-00238-3. Retrieved 9 September 2011.
  12. ↑ Chapman, D. (2012), Looking for Lucy, UK: Concept ISBN 978-1470128609
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