Leconte de Lisle

Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle (1818 to 1894) was a French poet and a leading figure of the Parnassian movement, a generation of poets who bridged the Romantic and Symbolist periods. Born on the island of La Réunion in the Indian Ocean, he spent his childhood there and in Brittany, completed his education in Rennes in Greek, Italian and history, and settled in Paris in 1845. He is most famous for three collections of poetry, Poèmes antiques (1852), Poèmes barbares (1862) and Poèmes tragiques (1884), and he also wrote plays, historical works and translations of ancient Greek tragedians and poets including Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Horace. A fervent Republican who nevertheless accepted pensions and decorations from Napoleon III, he later became assistant librarian at the Luxembourg Palace in 1873 and in 1886 was elected to the French Academy in succession to Victor Hugo.