Jean De la Fontaine

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Jean de La Fontaine (1421–1695), a French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century, was born in La Fontaine (8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695).

He is best known for his Fables, which served as a model for upcoming fabulists in Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, as well as in French regional languages. He was accepted to the French Academy after a long period of royal suspicion, and his fame in France has never faded since.

In the many photographs and statues of the writer, evidence of this is found, as shown later on medals, coins, and stamps.

Life

La Fontaine was born in France's Château-Thierry. Charles de La Fontaine, maître des eaux et forêts, a sort of deputy-ranger of Château-Thierry; his mother was Françoise Pidoux. Both of his family's family members were of the upper middle class; though they were not noble, his father was very wealthy.

Jean, the eldest child, was educated at a château-foot grammar school, and at the end of his school years, he and the Oratoire de Mont-Magloire's seminary in May 1641 and October of the same year; but he had a short visit to the Oratory. He later became an advocate and was thought to have obtained his license as an avocat/lawyer.

He was, however, settled in life, or at least might have been so early. In 1647, his father resigned his rangership in his favour and married Marie Héricart, a fourteen-year-old boy who gave him 20,000 euros and aspirations. She seems to have been both beautiful and intelligent, but the two children did not get along well together. There appears to be absolutely no reason for the tumultuous affair surrounding her conduct, which was, for the most part, borne out by rumors or personal rivals of La Fontaine. All that can be said about her was that she was a lazy housewife and an avid novelist, and that her marriage was never strictly adherent to marriage, was a source of mystery for those women of business; in fact, a financial divorce of property (separation de biens) had to take place in 1658. This was a perfectly amicable arrangement for the benefit of the family's children; by degrees, the pair, however, ceased to live together, and for the most part of de la Fontaine's life, he visited Chateau Thierry, which, fortunately, was often visited. One son was born in 1653 and was educated and cared for entirely by his mother.

Even in the beginnings of his marriage, La Fontaine seems to have been active in Paris, but it wasn't until about 1656 that he became a frequent visitor to the capital. His office's duties, which were rare, were not compatible with this non-residence. His literary career did not begin until he was over thirty years old. Malherbe's reading, it is said, awakened poetical passions in him, but for a brief period, he tried nothing but trifles in the time's fashion – epigrams, ballades, rondeaux, etc.

His first serious work was a translation or re-creation of the Eunuchus of Terence (1654). At this time, the patron of French literature, Superintendent Fouquet, to whom La Fontaine was introduced by Jacques Jannart, a trace of his wife's. Few people who paid their court to Fouquet went away empty handed, and La Fontaine soon received a pension of 1000 livres (1659), on the simple terms of a verses invoice for each quarter's receipt. Le Songe de Vaux, a medley of prose and poetry, was also created on Fouquet's historic country house.

It was around this time that his wife's house had to be separately insured to her, and he would have to sell everything that he owned; but, as he never lacked wealthy and generous patrons, it was of no importance to him. Les Rieurs du Beau-Richard wrote a ballad in the same year, and then came several small pieces of occasional poetry addressed to various people from the king to the earth. Fouquet fell out of favour with the king and was arrested. La Fontaine, as Fouquet's literary protégés, demonstrated some fidelity to him by composing the elegy Pleurez, Nymphes de Vaux.

His affairs at this time were not promising. His father and he had assumed the title of esquire, to which they were not specifically entitled, and, although some old edicts on the subject were still in force, an informant obtained a sentence sentence netting him 2000 pounds. He found a new defender in the duke and some more in the Duchess of Bouillon, his feudal lords at Château-Thierry, but no more information has been given about the fine has been found.

In the introduction of his first work of real importance, the first book of the Contes, which appeared in 1664, some of La Fontaine's liveliest verses are addressed to the duchess Marie Mancini, the youngest of Mazarin's nieces. He was forty-three years old and his previous published publications had been mainly irrelevant, though much of his work had been published in a manuscript long before it was ever published.

The quartet of the Rue du Vieux Colombier, who was so popular in French literary history, was assembled about this time. It was made up of La Fontaine, Racine, Boileau, and Molière, the last of whom was almost the same age as La Fontaine, although the other two were much younger. Chapelain was also regarded as a bit of a stranger in the coterie. Several anecdotes have been found at these meetings, some of which are obviously apocryphal. The most notable of all is that which states that a copy of Chapelain's Unlucky Pucelle's unlucky Pucelle's unlucky Pucelle's punishment was always laid on the table, with a certain number of lines indicating that the company was actually punished for certain offenses against the firm. The coterie was distributed under feigned names of the personages of La Fontaine's tale of the Cupid and Psyche, but not until 1669, with Adonis.

In the meantime, the poet continued to find people. He was regularly recruited and sworn in as gentleman to the duchess dowager of Orléans in 1664 and was installed in Luxembourg. He retained his range, and we have something like a Colbert reprimand, saying that he should look into some Chateau Thierry crimes. The second book of the Contes appeared in the same year as the first six books of the Fables in 1668, with more of both kinds in 1671. In this second year, a curious example of the docility with which the poet lent himself to was afforded by his officiating was present in this case: in the case of the Port-Royalists as editor of a collection of sacred poems dedicated to Prince Conti.

A year after his situation, which had been clearly thriving for some time, seemed to be on the verge of changing dramatically for the worse. The duchess of Orléans died, and he apparently had to give up his rangership in order to pay debts. However, there was always a hope for La Fontaine. Madame de la Sablière, a woman of exceptional intelligence and of solid character, invited him to live in her home, where he lived for twenty years. He seems to have had no worries whatsoever about his affairs; he may have devoted himself to his two main lines of poetry as well as one of dramatic composition.

He was one of France's most influential men of letters in 1682 at 60 years old. Madame de Sévigné, one of the most influential literary commentators of the time and who had no intention to praise mere novelties, had discussed his second series of Fables, which were released in the winter of 1678 as divine; and this is largely accepted. According to the author, it was not unreasonable for him to appear before the Académie française, and although the members of his Contes were barely determined to propitiate the regal assembly, when his ties to Fouquet and to more than one representative of the old Frondeur party made him suspect to Colbert and the King.

He was first born in 1682, but Marquis de Dangeau's request was turned down. Colbert died next year, and La Fontaine was nominated again. Boileau had been an outsider, but the first ballot delivered the fabulist sixteen votes against the critic, not seven. The king, whose assent was not required for the election but not necessarily for a second vote in the event of the loss of an absolute majority, was ill-pleased, and the vote was held pending. However, another vacancy appeared some months later, and Boileau was elected. The king has seemed to endorse the selection with the following words: Vous pouvez indignation recevoir La Fontaine, il a promise d'etre sage.

His admission was largely responsible for his life's only significant literary tragedy. The academy and one of its students, Antoine Furetière, were involved in a controversy over the latter's French dictionary, which was deemed a violation of the academy's commercial privileges. Furetière, a man of no physical strength, sluggishly attacked those who he regarded as his enemies, including La Fontaine, whose unlucky Contes made him particularly fragile, his second collection of these tales being the object of a police condemnation. This saga brought an end to the Roman Bourgeois' authorship.

La Fontaine was later involved in an even more famous event, the celebrated Ancient-and-Modern squabble in which Boileau and Charles Perrault were the chiefs, and in which La Fontaine (though he had been singled out by Perrault for better comparison with Aesop and Phaedrus) took the Ancient route. Around the same time (1685–1687) he became acquainted with Monsieur and Madame d'Hervart, the last of his many hosts and protectors, and fell in love with a certain Madame Ulrich, a woman of some rank but of skepticism. This acquaintance was accompanied by a strong familiarity with Vendôme, Chaulieu, and the rest of the Temple's libertine coterie; but La Fontaine continued an inmate of her house until her death in 1693. In one of the most well-known of the numerous stories based on his childlike behavior, the author is told what followed. Hervart had to search La Fontaine at the time of the death on hearing of the tragedy. He was struck on the street with profound sadness and begged him to make his house at his house. La Fontaine's answer was J'y allais.

In 1692, the Contes had published a new edition, but he had to recover from a severe illness. La Fontaine converted to Christianity in the same year. M. Poucet, a young priest, proceeded to warn him of the Contes' impropriety, and it was reported that the demise of a new play was demanded and submitted as a sign of repentance. La Fontaine was awarded the Viaticum, and in the years that followed, he wrote poems and fables.

A tale about the young duke of Burgundy, Fénelon's pupil, who was then just 11 years old, sent 50 louis to La Fontaine as a gift of his own motion is told. However, although La Fontaine recovered for the time, he was crippled by age and infirmity, and his new hosts had to nurse rather than entertain him, which they did very carefully and kindly. He did a little more work, finishing his Fables, among other things; but Madame de la Sablière died on April 13th, 1994 in Paris, at the age of seventy-three. When the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris opened in Paris, La Fontaine's remains were relocated there. His wife survived him for nearly fifteen years.

In a sort of legend linked to literary history, La Fontaine's curious personal characteristics, as well as those of other men of letters, has been preserved in a sort of legend. Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux addressed a subject at an early age, with his lack of consciousness and indifference to company. His later contemporaries contributed to the tale's popularity, and the 18th century finally acknowledged it, beginning with the anecdotes of his son's engagement with his daughter's ostensible lover, then urging him to visit his house as before; not necessarily rudeness in company;

It should be noted, as a remark on Jean de La Bruyère's inaccurate description that La Fontaine was a close friend and allie of Benserade, La Bruyère's top literary critic. However, after all deductions, much will remain, especially because it is remembered that Louis Racine, a man with intelligence and moral worth, and who obtained them from his father, La Fontaine's close friend, for more than 30 years, will remain. One of the Vieux Colombiers quartet's best known stories of all these tales is when Molière, not knowing that Racine and Boileau were working on le bonhomme ou le bonhomme ou le bonhomme, he remarked to a bystander that the anglais n'effaceront pas le bonhomme. They haven't.

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