François Coppée

François Coppée
François Coppée, by Nadar, c. 1880.
Born	François Edouard Joachim Coppée (1842-01-26)26 January 1842 Paris, France
Died	Paris, France
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	French
Signature

François Edouard Joachim Coppée (26 January 1842 – 23 May 1908) was a French poet and novelist.

Biography

He was born in Paris to a civil servant. After attending the Lycée Saint-Louis he became a clerk in the ministry of war, and won public favour as a poet of the Parnassian school. His first printed verses date from 1864. In 1869 his first play, Le Passant, was received with approval at the Odéon theatre, and later Fais ce que dois (1871) and Les Bijoux de la délivrance (1872), short poetic dramas inspired by the Franco-Prussian War, were applauded.

After holding a post in the library of the senate, Coppée was chosen in 1878 as archivist of the Comédie Française, an office he held till 1884. In that year his election to the Académie française caused him to retire from all public appointments. He was made an officer of the Legion of Honour in 1888.

Coppée was famed as le poète des humbles (the poet of the humble). His verse and prose focus on plain expressions of emotion, patriotism, the joy of young love, and the pitifulness of the poor. He continued to write plays, mostly serious dramas in verse, two in collaboration with Armand d'Artois. The performance of a short episode of the Commune, Le Pater, was prohibited by the government in 1889. Coppée published his first prose work in 1875 and went on to publish short stories, an autobiography of his youth, a series of short articles on miscellaneous subjects, and La Bonne Souffrance, a popular account of his reconversion to the Roman Catholic Church. His conversion was due to a severe illness which twice brought him close to death. He was also interested with public affairs, joining the Nationalist movement (while remaining contemptuous of the apparatus of democracy) and taking a leading part against Alfred Dreyfus in the Dreyfus affair. He was one of the founders of the Ligue de la Patrie Française.

Criticism

The poet Arthur Rimbaud, a young contemporary of Coppée, published numerous parodies of Coppée's poetry. Rimbaud's parodies were published in L'Album Zutique (in 1871? 1872?). Most of these poems parody the style ("chatty comfortable rhymes" that were "the delight of the enlightened bourgeois of the day") and form (Alexandrine couplets arranged in ten line verses) of some short poems by Coppée. Rimbaud published them under the name François Coppée.

Works

Poetry

• Le Reliquaire (1866)
• Intimités (1867)
• Poémes modernes (1867-9)
• Les Humbles (1872)
• Le Cahier rouge (1874)
• Olivier (1875)
• L'Exilée (1876)
• Contes en vers (1881)
• Poèmes et récits (1886)
• Arrière-saison (1887)
• Paroles sincères (1890)
• Dans la prière et la lutte
• Vers français
• Salut, Petit Jesus

Plays

Caricature of François Coppée, by Émile Cohl, circa 1885

• Le Passant (1869) Translated into Portuguese by Alves Crespo (playwright, 1847-1907) as Sonho and published in 1905.
• Deux Douleurs (1870)
• Fais ce que Dois (1871)
• L'Abandonnée (1871)
• Les Bijoux de la Délivrance (1872)
• Le Rendez-Vous (1872)
• Prologue d'Ouverture pour les Matinées de la Gaîté (1874)
• Le Luthier de Crémone (1876)
• La Guerre de Cent Ans (1877)
• Le Tresor (1879)
• La Bataille d'Hernani (1880)
• La Maison de Moliére (1880)
• Madame de Maintenon (1881)
• Severo Torelli (1883) Translated into Portuguese by Jaime Victor and Macedo Papança, Visconde de Monsaraz, and performed in Lisbon at the National Theatre in 1887. Published in the same year.
• Les Jacobites (1885)
• Le Pater (1889) Translated into Portuguese by Margarida de Sequeira as O Pater.
• Pour la couronne (1895) Translated into English by John Davidson as For the Crown and performed at the Lyceum Theatre, London, in 1896. For the Crown was performed at Covent Garden as a prize-winning opera The Cross and the Crescent with music by Colin McAlpin in 1903.

Prose works

François Coppée, by André Rouveyre.

• Une Idylle pendant le siège (1874)
• Toute une jeunesse (1890)
• Les Vrais riches (1892)
• Le Coupable (1896)
• Mon franc-parler (1893–96) (articles)
• La Bonne Souffrance (1898)

Works in English translation

• Ten Tales (1890; translated by Walter Learned)
• Disillusion; or, The Story of Amédée's Youth (1890; translated by E.P. Robins)
  • A Romance of Youth (1905)
• "The Barrel-Organ." In: Tales of To-day and Other Days (1891; translated by E.P. Robins)
• "Wolff's Christmas." In: Romance, Vol. VIII, No. 2 (1892; translated by H.L.B. Porter)
• "Forgiveness." In: Romance, Vol. XII (1893; translated by J. Matthewman)
• True Riches (1893)
• Blessed Are the Poor (1894)
• "The Lost Child." In: Short Stories: A Magazine of Select Fiction, Vol. XVII (1894; translated by J. Matthewman)
• "Jean Vignol's Baby." In: Short Stories, Vol. XVIII (1895; translated by Lucy Martin)
• Happy Suffering (1900; translated by Catherine M. Welby)
• "The Victim of a Habit." In: Parisian Illustrated Review, Vol. X (1901)
• Tale for Christmas, and Other Seasons (1901)
• "A Piece of Bread." In: International Short Stories (1910)
• The Guilty Man (1911; translated by Ruth Helen Davis)
• Pater Noster (1915)
• "The Wounded Soldier in the Convent." In: War Poems and Other Translations, by Lord Curzon (1915)
• The Lord's Prayer (1931)

References

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Further reading

• Claretie, Jules (1883). Fr. Coppée. Paris: Maison Quantin.
• Brisson, Adolphe (1904). Portraits intimes, Vol. 2. Paris: Armand Colin.
• Delfour, Louis-Clodomir (1899). La Religion des Contemporains, Vol. 2. Paris: Société française d'imprimerie et de librairie.
• Delfour, Louis-Clodomir (1902). La Religion des Contemporains, Vol. 4. Paris: Société française d'imprimerie et de librairie.
• Druilhet, Georges (1902). Un Poète Français. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre.
• Gaubert, Ernest (1906). François Coppée. Paris: E. Sansot & Cie.
• Gauthier-Ferrières, Léon Adolphe (1908). François Coppée et son Oeuvre. Paris: Société du Mercure de France.
• Lecigne, Constantin (1908). Du Dilettantisme à l'action. Paris: P. Lethielleux.
• Lescure, Mathurin de (1889). François Coppée: l'Homme, la Vie et l'Oeuvre, 1842-1889. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre.
• Monval, Jean (1912). "François Coppée et les Parnassiens d'après des documents inédits," La Revue hebdomadaire, Vol. VIII, pp. 642–62.
• Monval, Jean (1923). "Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly 'Connétable des Lettres' d'Après les Souvenirs de François Coppée," Le Correspondant, Vol. CCXCIII, No. 1466, pp. 341–48.
• Monval, Jean (1924). "Albert Glatigny et François Coppée (d'après des lettres et souvenir inédits) (1865-1873)," La revue de France, No. 5, pp. 174–83.
• Monval, Jean (1925). "Huysmans et Coppée (1877-1907)," Le correspondant, Vol. CCC, pp. 98–107.
• Monval, Jean (1925). "Albert Samain et François Coppée (1883-1900)," Le correspondant, Vol. CCC, pp. 525–46.
• Monval, Jean (1927). "Sully-Prudhomme et François Coppée (1865-1907)," Le Correspondant, Vol. CCCVIII, pp. 817–43.
• Monval, Jean (1930). "José-Maria de Hérédia et François Coppée (lettres et souvenirs)," Figaro, No. 284, p. 5.
• Sageret, Jules (1906). Les Grands Convertis. M. Paul Bourget, M. J. K. Huysmans, M. Brunetière, M. Coppée. Paris: Société du Mercure de France.
• Schoen, Henri (1909). François Coppée: l'Homme et le Poète. Paris: Librairie Fischbacher.

External links

• Works by François Coppée at Hathi Trust
• Works by François Coppée at JSTOR
• Works by François Coppée at Project Gutenberg
• Works by François Coppée at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by François Coppée at Unz.com