Joseph Autran (June 20, 1813 – March 6, 1877) was a French poet.
Biography
Autran was born in Marseille . In 1832 he addressed an ode to Alphonse de Lamartine , who was then at Marseilles on his way to the East. Lamartine persuaded the young man’s father to allow him to follow his poetic instinct, and Autran became Lamartine’s faithful disciple from then on.
His best known work is The Sea (1835), remodeled in 1852 as The Poems of the Sea . Ludibria ventis (1838) followed, and the success of these two volumes gained for Austria the librarianship of his native town.
In 1844/5 Franz Liszt , who puts Autran in Marseilles in 1844, set four of his poems, The earth , The aquilons , The waves and the stars , to fall as a cycle, The four elements .
Autran’s other important work is his Rural Life (1856), a series of pictures of peasant life. The Algerian campaigns inspired him in the honor of the common soldier. Milianah (1842) describes the heroic defense of that town, and in the same vein is his laborers and soldiers (1854).
Among his other works are Solomon’s Words (1868), Rustic Epistles (1861), Fanciful Sonnets , and a tragedy played with great success at the Odeon in 1848, Aeschylus’ Daughter . A definitive edition of his works was brought out between 1875 and 1881.
He became a member of the French Academy in 1868, and died at Marseilles nine years later.
Works
- The Departure for the Orient: ode to M. Alphonse de Lamartine (1832)
- The sea: poems (1835)
- Ludibria ventis: new poems (1838)
- Year 40: ballads and musical poems, followed by Marseille (1840)
- Milianah: poem (1841)
- Italy and Holy Week in Rome (1841)
- Aeschylus’ Daughter: an ancient study in 5 acts, in verse , Paris, Theater of the Odeon , March 9, 1848
- The Poems of the Sea (1852)
- Farmers and Soldiers (1854)
- Rural Life: Pictures and Stories (1856)
- Stephen and Clementine (1858)
- Rustic Epistles (1861)
- The Poem of the beautiful days (1862)
- The Cyclops, after Euripides (1863)
- Words of Solomon (1869)
- Whimsical Sonnets (1873)
- The Legend of Paladins (1875)
- Complete works (1875-82)
References
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). ” Autran, Joseph “. Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.