Aloysius Bertrand
Aloysius Bertrand was a French poet born in 1807 in Ceva, Piedmont, whose literary contributions significantly influenced the Symbolist movement. Raised in Dijon, France, Bertrand's formative years were shaped by the city's medieval atmosphere and a progressive educational environment, fostering his artistic sensibilities. He gained early recognition for his innovative ideas, including a manifesto advocating for prose as the new epic form. After attempting to establish himself in Paris, he faced challenges, including an unsuccessful play and health issues stemming from tuberculosis, which ultimately led to his premature death at age thirty-four in 1841.
Bertrand's most notable work, "Gaspard de la nuit," a collection of prose poems, was published posthumously and initially received a lukewarm response. However, it later captivated a new generation of poets, including Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé, who valued its intricate prose and mystical themes. His legacy was further cemented when composer Maurice Ravel created three tone poems inspired by "Gaspard de la nuit" in 1909, showcasing the enduring impact of Bertrand's work on both literature and music.
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Subject Terms
Aloysius Bertrand
Poet
- Born: April 20, 1807
- Birthplace: Ceva, Piedmont, France (now in Italy)
- Died: April 29, 1841
- Place of death: Paris, France
Biography
Aloysius Bertrand was born in 1807 in Ceva, Piedmont, France (now in Italy), the first of four children. His father, Georges, was an army subaltern from Lorraine whose second wife and Bertrand’s mother, Laure Davico, was the daughter of the town’s mayor. In connection with his father’s army career, the family moved to several cities, eventually settling in Dijon, France in 1815. According to Bertrand, Dijon’s medieval environment and atmosphere played an immense role in developing his imagination and his literary and artistic sensibilities. He also received intellectual stimulation from his school, the Lycée of Dijon, where the faculty prided themselves on intellectual openness. Bertrand and a group of like-minded friends formed the Société d’études de Dijon in 1827, with the fifteen-year-old Bertrand as vice president. He read some of his early works to the society, while other works were published in Provincial, a newspaper he and his friends founded. In addition to writing poetry, Bertrand also published a manifesto in which he declared that the epic of the new generation would be written in prose. His published work attracted the attention of author Victor Hugo.
When Provincial ceased publication in 1828, Bertrand moved to Paris to seek his livelihood as a writer. Paris was not yet ready for him, and he returned home in 1829 to work for another publication, Spectator. He reacted to the Revolution of 1830 as a passionate republican, vilifying the royalists in print and public speech. In 1832, he wrote and staged a light comedy, Le Sous-lieutenant des hussards, which flopped, and he returned to Paris in 1833. He had already completed his masterpiece, a loosely connected series of prose poems, Gaspard de la nuit, and quickly succeeded in selling this manuscript to Pierre Eugène Renduel, one of the most prestigious publishers in Paris, who specialized in meticulous, sumptuous editions. Bertrand was invited to the Arsenal, a literary circle where he was befriended by the leading lights of the Romantic movement including Hugo, author Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, and the artists Louis Boulanger and David d’Angers, who all shared Bernard’s passion for the angelical, diabolical, and macabre — in short, the gothic.
Bertrand invited his widowed mother and his sister, Elisabeth, to come and live with him in Paris; his brother, Balthasar, already lived in nearby Versailles. At the very moment when his life appeared to be taking a happy turn, things fell apart. He had an unhappy love affair with a woman named Célestine. He wrote a second play, Louise, which flopped. He succumbed to tuberculosis. It took Renduel many months to prepare a meticulous edition of Gaspard de la nuit, and during this time Bertrand lived on borrowed money and appeared increasingly shabby and desperate. When he had the strength, he visited museums and libraries, writing descriptions of French and Flemish paintings.
In 1839, Bertrand was hospitalized; after fifteen months, he was pronounced cured and released from the hospital, but was soon readmitted. His friends took his still unpublished manuscript back from Renuel and prepared a new edition, adding a preface by Sainte- Beuve. Bertrand died at age thirty-four in 1841. The following year, Gaspard de la nuit finally appeared, but by then the reading public had lost interest in gothic romanticism. Bertrand, however, was rediscovered and reprinted a generation later when he became popular among a new generation of poets known as the Symbolists and the Parnassians. His new readers, including poets Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé, appreciated his combination of exquisitely polished prose with ineffably mystical material. Composer Maurice Ravel created three tone poems for piano, using Bertrand’s title, Gaspard de la nuit, in 1909.