François De La Rochefoucauld (writer)

François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac (; 15 September 1613 – 17 March 1680) was an accomplished French moralist of the era of French Classical literature and author of ''Maximes'' and ''Memoirs'', the only two works of his dense literary oeuvre published. His ''Maximes'' portray the callous nature of human conduct, with a cynical attitude towards putative virtue and avowals of affection, friendship, love, and loyalty. Leonard Tancock regards ''Maximes'' as "one of the most deeply felt, most intensely lived texts in French literature", with his "experience, his likes and dislikes, sufferings and petty spites ... crystallized into absolute truths."

Born in Paris in 1613, at a time when the royal court was vacillating between aiding the nobility and threatening it, he was considered an exemplar of the accomplished seventeenth-century nobleman. Until 1650, he bore the title of ''Prince de Marcillac''. His great-grandfather François III, count de La Rochefoucauld, was killed in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, being a Huguenot.

Biography

Early life: 1613–1629

François de La Rochefoucauld was born on September 15, 1613, at Rue des Petits Champs, in Paris's 1st arrondissement neighborhood. La Rochefoucauld was given the education of a nobleman of his era, which concentrated on military exercises, hunting, court etiquette, elegance of expression and comportment, and a knowledge of the world. He was married at the age of fourteen to Andrée de Vivonne. Belonging to one of the most illustrious families of the French nobility, the young La Rochefoucauld, then prince of Marcillac, succeeded at the age of 16 (1 May 1629) to his uncle Benjamin de La Rochefoucauld, count of Estissac, as camp master of the Estissac regiment.

Military career

He joined the army the following year and almost immediately established himself as a public figure. He fought bravely in the annual campaigns, though his actions were never formally recognised.

Under the patronage of Madame de Chevreuse, whom he met at this time, the first of the three celebrated women who influenced his life, he joined the service of Queen Anne of Austria. In one of Madame de Chevreuse's quarrels with Cardinal Richelieu and her husband, a scheme apparently was conceived by which La Rochefoucauld was to carry her off to Brussels on horseback. Other cabals against Richelieu once resulted in La Rochefoucauld being sentenced to eight days in the Bastille, and he was occasionally required to leave the Court, exiled to his father's estates. In the power vacuum following Richelieu's death in 1642, La Rochefoucauld among others took an active role in urging the queen and Condé to act together against Gaston, Duke of Orléans. However, the growing reputation of Mazarin impeded the ambition of the plotters, and La Rochefoucauld's 1645 liaison with Duchess of Longueville made him irrevocably a ''frondeur'' (aristocratic rebel). He was a conspicuous figure in the 1649 siege of Paris, fought in many of the frequent military engagements, and was seriously wounded at the siege of Mardyke.

In the second ''Fronde'', La Rochefoucauld allied himself with Condé. He used the occasion of his father's funeral in 1650 to urge the attending provincial nobility to help him attack the royalist garrison of Saumur. In the battle of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, in 1652, he was shot through the head. It was feared that he would lose his sight, but he recovered after a year's convalescence.

For some years thereafter, he retired to his country estate of Verteuil. Although his fortune had been much reduced, in time he was able to restore it somewhat, thanks chiefly to the fidelity of Gourville was about to assume absolute power, and the aristocratic anarchy of the Fronde was over. He wrote his memoirs during this time, as did many of his prominent contemporaries.

''Salon'' participation

Somewhat earlier, La Rochefoucauld had taken his place in the salon of Madeleine de Souvré, marquise de Sablé, a member of the Marquise de Rambouillet ''côterie'', and the founder of a kind of successor to it, whose special literary work was the writing of ''Sentences'' and ''Maximes''. In 1662, the Dutch firm House of Elzevir surreptitiously published what purported to be his memoirs, which brought him both trouble and fame. Many of his old friends were offended. These memoirs were not a faithful copy of what he had written, and while he hastened to deny their authenticity, this was not generally believed.

Three years later, in 1665, he anonymously published the ''Maximes'' (maxims), which established his position among the men of letters of the time. At about the same date, his friendship with Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, Comtesse de La Fayette, began, which lasted for the rest of his life. The glimpses which we have of him henceforward are chiefly from the letters of Madame de Sévigné, and though they show him suffering from gout, are on the whole pleasant ones.

He had a circle of devoted friends and was recognized as a top-ranking moralist and man of letters. His son, the Prince de Marcillac, to whom he gave his titles and honors in 1671, enjoyed a considerable position at court. But above all La Rochefoucauld was recognized by his contemporaries, including the king, as an exemplar of the older ''noblesse'', the nobility that existed under the great monarch before the brilliance of his reign faded.
This reputation he has retained to the present day.

La Rochefoucauld's ethical views have given rise to attacks upon his works by pious moralists of later eras. Like his contemporaries, he saw politics as a chessboard for powerful players, rather than as a struggle of ideologies or a means for achieving broad social goals. He appears to have been unusually scrupulous in his personal conduct, and his lack of success in the aristocratic struggles arose more from this than from anything else.

He died in Paris on 17 March 1680.

Literary works

His importance as a social and historical figure is overshadowed by his towering stature in French literature. His literary work consists of three parts—his ''Memoirs'', the '' Maximes'', and his letters.

The ''Memoirs'' are of high interest and literary merit. A book purporting to be La Rochefoucauld's memoirs was published in the Dutch Republic whence, despite the author's protest, it continued to be reprinted for some thirty years. It has now been proved to have been pieced together from the work of half a dozen men, with scarcely a third of it being La Rochefoucauld's. Some years after La Rochefoucauld's death, a new recension appeared, still largely adulterated but with some errors corrected. This work went unchallenged for more than a century. Only in 1817 did anything like a genuine, if still imperfect, edition appear.

However, the pithy, elegant ''Maximes'' (maxims) had no such fate. The author made frequent alterations and additions to them during his life and a few were added after his death. It is usual now to publish them in their totality of 504. The majority consist of just two or three lines, and hardly any exceed half a page. La Rochefoucauld reflects on the conduct and motives of mankind, from the point of view of a man of the world who intends not to sugar-coat his observations. In fact, in his introduction, he advises,

Physical appearance

La Rochefoucauld's literary debut was his self-portrait: ''Portrait de La Rochefoucauld fait par lui-même'', published in collection compiled in salon of Mademoiselle de Montpensier: ''Recueil des Portraits et éloges en vers et en prose''.

Influence

Nearly all the great French critics of the 19th century wrote to some extent about La Rochefoucauld.

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche greatly admired La Rochefoucauld and was influenced not only by his ethics, but also his style.

The editions of La Rochefoucauld's ''Maximes'' (as the full title runs, '' Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales'') published in his lifetime bear the dates 1665 ('' editio princeps''), 1666, 1671, 1675, 1678.

Previous editions were superseded by that of Jean Désiré Louis Gilbert and Jules Gourdault (1868–1883), in the series ''Grands Écrivains de la France'', 3 vols.

A separate edition of the ''Maximes'' is the so-called ''Édition des bibliophiles'' (1870). See also the English translation of ''The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke De La Rochefoucauld'' by George H. Powell (1903).See also

Ancestry

Citations

General references

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External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:La Rochefoucauld, Francois de
1613 births
1680 deaths
17th-century French writers
17th-century French male writers
Aphorists
Dukes of La Rochefoucauld
French letter writers
French male non-fiction writers
French memoirists
French Roman Catholics
Literary peers
Prisoners of the Bastille
17th-century memoirists