Émile Augier
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Guillaume Victor Émile Augier (September 17, 1820 – October 25, 1889), was a French dramatist.
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Works
Augier described his own life as "without incident". L'Aventurière (1848), the first of his important works, already shows a deviation from romantic ideals; and in the Mariage d'Olympe (1855) the courtesan is shown as she is, not glorified as in Dumas's Dame aux Camélias. In Gabrielle (1849), the husband, not the lover, is the sympathetic character. In the Lionnes pauvres (1858) the wife who ls her favours comes under the lash. Greed of gold, social moralization, ultramontanism, lust of power, these are satirized Les Effrontés (1861), Le Fils de Giboyer (1862), La Contagion announced under the title of Le Baron d'Estrigaud (1866), Lions et renards (1869) - which, with Le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier (354), written in collaboration with Jules Sandeau, reach the high water mark of Augier's art; in Philiberte (1853) he proced a graceful and delicate drawing-room comedy; and in Jean de Thommeray, acted in 1873 after the great reverses of 1870, the regenerating note of patriotism rings high and clear.
His last two dramas, Madame Caverlet (1876) and Les Fourchambault (1879), are problem plays. But it would be unfair to suggest that Augier was a mere preacher. He was a moralist in the same sense in which the term can be applied to Molière and the great dramatists. Nor does the interest of dramas depend on elaborate plot. It springs from character. His men and women are real, several of them typical. Augier's first drama, La Ciguë, belongs to a time (1844) when romantic drama was on the wane; and his almost elusively domestic range of subject scarcely lends itself to lyric bursts of pure poetry. His verse, if not that of a great poet, has excellent dramatic qualities, while the prose of his prose dramas is admirable for directness, alertness, sinew and a large and effective wit.
He wrote the libretto for Charles Gounod's 1851 opera, Sapho.
| Preceded by Narcisse-Achille de Salvandy |
Seat 1 Académie française 1857–1889 |
Succeeded by Charles de Freycinet |
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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