Online Encyclopedia

ALEXIS PIRON (1689-1773)

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Originally appearing in Volume V21, Page 642 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ALEXIS PIRON (1689-1773)  , French epigrammatist and dramatist, was born at
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Dijon on the 9th of
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July 1689 . His
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father, !rime Piron, was an apothecary, who wrote verse in the Burgundian
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patois . Alexis began
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life as clerk and secretary to a banker, and then studied law . In 1719, when nearly
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thirty years old, he went to seek his fortune at Paris . An accident brought him
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money and notoriety . The jealousy of the
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regular actors produced an edict restricting the Theatre de la Foire, or licensed booths at
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fair times, to a single character on the stage . None of the ordinary writers for this theatre would attempt a monologue-drama for the purpose, and Piron made a
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great success with a piece called Arlequin
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Deucalion, representing Deucalion immediately after the Deluge, amusing himself with recreating in succession the different types of man . In 1728 he produced
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Les Fils ingrats (known later as L'Ecole
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des peres) at the Comedic Fran raise . He attempted tragedy in Callisthene (1730), Gustave Vasa (1733) and Fernand Cones (1744), but none of these succeeded, and Piron returned to
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comedy with La Metromanie (1738), in which the hero, Damis, suffers from the verse
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mania . His most intimate associates at this time were Mlle Quinault, the actress, and her friend
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Marie Therese Quenaudon, known as Mlle de Bar . This lady was slightly older than Piron and not beautiful, but after twenty years' acquaintance he married her in 1741 . He died on the 21st of
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January 1773, in his eighty-
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fourth
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year .

He was elected in 1753 to the

Academy, but his enemies raked up a certain Ode a Priape, dating from his early days, and induced Louis XV. to interpose his veto . Piron however was pensioned, and during the last
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half-century of his life was never in any want . His best title to remembrance lies in his epigrams . The burlesque epitaph on himself, in which he ridicules the Academy " Ci-git Piron, qui ne fut rien, Pas meme academicien " is well-known, while many others are as brilliant . Grimm called him a " machine a saillies." Piron published his own theatrical
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works in 1758, and after his
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death his friend and
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literary executor, Rigoley de Juvigny, published his U uvres completes . M . Bonhomme produced a critical edition in 1859, completed by Poesies choisies et pieces inedites in 1879 .

End of Article: ALEXIS PIRON (1689-1773)
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