Louis Jacques Napoléon Bertrand, more well known by his pen name Aloysius Bertrand (April 20, 1807 â€" April 29, 1841), was a French Romantic poet, playwright and journalist. He is famous for having introduced prose poetry in French literature, and is considered a forerunner of the Symbolist movement. His masterpiece is the collection of prose poems Gaspard de la Nuit, that was published posthumously in 1842 and had three of its poems famously adapted to a homonymous piano suite by Maurice Ravel in 1908.
Born in Ceva on April 20, 1807, Louis Jacques Napoléon Bertrand was the son of Georges and Laure (or Laurine-Marie) Bertrand, née Davico. Georges Bertrand was born on July 22, 1768 at Sorcy-Saint-Martin (or Saulieu, according to other sources) into a family of soldiers. A gendarmerie lieutenant, he married his second wife during his stay in the Department of Montenotte (now the Province of Cuneo), Laure Davico (born August 2, 1782), on June 3, 1806 in Ceva. After the birth of Louis, the eldest, in 1807, a second son, Jean Balthazar, was born on July 17, 1808.
On March 15, 1812, Georges was appointed as gendarmerie captain in Spoleto, whose mayor was at the time Pierre-Louis Roederer. There, on December 23, the poet's sister Isabella-Caroline (or Elizabeth) was born. On September 3, 1814 he was assigned to Mont-de-Marsan, where he made the acquaintance of Charles Jean Harel, then-prefect of the Department of Landes. Retiring in the end of August 1815, he left Landes and moved to Dijon, where on March 19, 1816 his fourth child was born, Charles Frédéric (who later became a journalist).
While in Dijon Aloysius developed an interest in the Burgundian capital. His contributions to a local paper lead to recognition by Victor Hugo and Sainte-Beuve. He lived in Paris for a short while. He returned to Dijon and continued writing for local newspapers. Gaspard was sold in 1836 but it wasn't published until 1842 after his death of tuberculosis. The book was rediscovered by Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé. It is now considered a classic of poetic and fantastic literature. He's also considered as a Poète maudit, like Petrus Borel or Alice de Chambrier. He died in Paris.
§References
§External links
- Works by Aloysius Bertrand at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Aloysius Bertrand at Internet Archive
- Works by Aloysius Bertrand at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
