Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian
Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (
March 6,
1755 château of Florian, near
Sauve –
September 13,
1794) was a
French poet and romance
writer.
His mother, a Spanish lady named Gilette de Salgues, died when he was a child. His uncle and guardian, the
Marquis of Florian, who had married a niece of
Voltaire, introduced him at
Ferney and in
1768 he became page at
Anet in the household of the
Duc de Penthièvre, who remained his friend throughout his life. Having studied for some time at the
artillery school at
Bapaume he obtained from his patron a captains commission in a dragoon regiment. On the outbreak of the
French Revolution he retired to
Sceaux, but he was soon discovered and imprisoned; and though his imprisonment was short he died a few months later.
Florian's first literary efforts were comedies; his verse epistle
Voltaire et le serf du Mont Jura and an eclogue
Ruth were crowned by the
French Academy in
1782 and
1784 respectively. In 1782 also he produced a one-act prose comedy,
Le Bon Ménage, and in the next year
Galatie, a romantic tale in imitation of the
Galatea of
Cervantes. Other short tales and comedies followed, and in
1786 appeared
Numa Pompilius, an undisguised imitation of
Fénelon's
Telémaque.
In
1788 he became a member of the
French Academy, and published
Estelle, a pastoral of the same class as
Galatie. Another romance,
Gonzalve de Cordoue, preceded by an historical notice of the Moors, appeared in
1791, and his famous collection of
Fables in 1802. Among his posthumous works are
La Jeunesse de Florian, ou Mémoires d'un Jeune Espagnol (
1807), and an abridgment (1809) of
Don Quixote, which, though far from being a correct representation of the original, had great and merited success.
Florian imitated
Salomon Gessner, the Swiss idyllist, and his style has all the artificial delicacy and sentimentality of the Gessnerian school. Perhaps the nearest example of the class in English literature is afforded by John Wilson's (
Christopher North's)
Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life. Among the best of his fables are reckoned
The Monkey showing the Magic Lantern,
The Blind Man and the Paralytic, and
The Monkeys and the Leopard.
