ALEXANDRE

See also:

• ALEXANDRE SOUMET (1788-1845)

SOUMET (1788-1845)  , French poet, was born on the 8th of February 1788 at Castelnaudary, department of Aude . His father wished him to enter the army, but an early-developed love of poetry turned the boy's ambition in other directions . He was an admirer of Klopstock and Schiller, then little known in France, and reproached Mme de Stael with lack of enthusiasm for her subject in De l'Allemagne . Soumet came to Paris in 181o, and some poems in honour of Napoleon secured his nomination as auditor of the Conseil d'etat . His well-known elegy La Pauvre fille appeared in 1814, and two successful tragedies produced in 1822, Clytemnestre and Said, secured his admission to the Academy in 1824 . Jeanne d'Arc (1825) aroused great enthusiasm, and was the best of his plays . Among his other pieces Elisabeth de France (1828), a weak imitation of Schiller's Don Carlos, may be noted, but Soumet's real bent was towards epic poetry . His most considerable work is a poem inspired by Klopstock, La Divine epopee, which describes the descent of Christ into Hades . Under Louis XVIII. he became librarian of Saint-Cloud, and subsequently was transferred to Rambouillet and to Compiegne . He died on the 3oth of March 1845, leaving an unfinished epic on Jeanne d'Arc . His daughter Gabrielle (Mme Beauvain d'Altenheim) had collaborated with him in some of his later works .