Page 341 - Beholding Liberty!

HALL OF THE TROPHIES
II.8.C.19
Casimir Delavigne
Messéniennes et Poésies diverses
Treizième édition. Tome premier.
A Paris, chez Ladvocat, Libraire de son altesse sérénissime Monseigneur la duc de Chartres. M DCCC XXVI. Library of the Hellenic Parliament
THE FRENCH POET Jean-François Casimir Delavigne (1793-1843) established the so-called Messéniennes, a type of lyric poetry with reference to Messenia. These are lyric poems inspired by the French misfortunes of 1814-15 and the defeat of France at Waterloo; the poet draws a parallel with the sufferings caused to the ancient Messenians by the Spartans.
Delavigne’s Messéniennes was a great success; notably, this edition, of 1826, is the thirteenth. With the proclamation of the Greek Revolution,
the poet added poems about Greece, as well. Characteristically, the sixth Messénienne is titled “The Christian Deacon, or Christian Greece” and is dedicated to his friend, the traveller François Pouqueville [cat. no. I.1.12], whose accounts had inspired Delavigne. It tells of the murder of a young clergyman by Ottoman soldiers in Mess- enia, while he was singing of the misfortunes of his homeland. The passionate patriotic quality of the poem reflects the horizons of expectation of Romanticism and Philhellenism.
SCENES AND FIGURES OF FREEDOM The phenomenon of Philhellenism 341