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JOSE MARIA DE See also: modern master of the French sonnet, was See also: born at See also: Fortuna Cafeyere, near See also: Santiago de See also: Cuba, on the 22nd of See also: November 1842, being in See also: blood See also: part See also: Spanish Creole and part French
.
At the age of eight he came from the West Indies to See also: France, returning thence to See also: Havana at seventeen, and finally making France his home not long afterwards
.
He received his classical See also: education with the priests of See also: Saint Vincent at Senlis, and after a visit to Havana he studied at the Ecole See also: des Chartes at See also: Paris
.
In the later 'sixties, with See also: Francois Coppee, Sully-Prudhomme, See also: Paul See also: Verlaine and others less distinguished, he made one of the See also: band of poets who gathered round Leconte de See also: Lisle, and received the name of Parnassiens
.
To this new school, form—the technical See also: side of their art—was of supreme importance, and, in reaction against the influence of Musset, they rigorously repressed in their See also: work the expression of See also: personal feeling and emotion
.
" True See also: poetry," said M. de See also: Heredia in his discourse on entering the Academy—" true poetry dwells in nature and in humanity, which are eternal, and not in the See also: heart of the creature of a See also: day, however See also: great." M. de Heredia's place in the See also: movement was soon assured
.
He wrote very little, and published even less, but his sonnets circulated in MS., and gave him a reputation before they appeared in 1893, together with a few longer poems, as a See also: volume, under the title of See also: Les Trophees
.
He was elected to the See also: Academy on the 22nd of See also: February 1894, in the place of See also: Louis de Mazade-Percin the publicist
.
Few purely
See also: literary men can have entered the Academy with See also: credentials so small in., quantity
.
A small volume of verse—a See also: translation, with introduction, of Diaz del See also: Castillo's See also: History of the See also: Conquest of New See also: Spain (1878–1881)—a translation of the See also: life of the nun Alferez (1894), de Quincey's " Spanish Military Nun "—and one or two See also: short pieces of occasional verse, and an introduction or so—this is but small literary baggage, to use the French expression
.
But the sonnets are of their kind among the most superb in modern literature
.
" A Le'gende des siecles in sonnets " M
.
Francois Coppee called them . Each presents a picture, striking, brilliant, See also: drawn with unfaltering hand—the picture of some
characteristic scene in See also: man's long history
.
The verse is flawless, polished like a See also: gem; and its See also: sound has distinction and See also: fine harmony
.
If one may suggest a fault, it is that each picture is sometimes too much of a picture only, and that the poetical See also: line, like that of M. de Heredia's master, Leconte de Lisle himself, is occasionally overcrowded
.
M. de Heredia was none the less one of the most skilful craftsmen who ever practised the See also: art of verse
.
In 1901 he became librarian of the Bibliotheque de 1'See also: Arsenal at Paris
.
He died at the Chateau de Bourdonne (See also: Seine-et-See also: Oise) on the 3rd of See also: October 1905, having completed his critical edition of See also: Andre See also: Chenier's See also: works
.
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