Henri de Bornier
Encyclopedia
Lunel
Lunel is a commune in the Hérault department in southern France. Lunel is located east of Montpellier and southwest of Nîmes .-History:The ancient Roman site of Ambrussum is located nearby. The troubadour Folquet de Lunel was from Lunel....
(Hérault
Hérault
Hérault is a department in the south of France named after the Hérault river.-History:Hérault is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790...
).
He came to Paris in 1845 with the object of studying law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
, but in that year he published a volume of verse, Les Premieres Feuilles, and the Comédie-Française
Comédie-Française
The Comédie-Française or Théâtre-Français is one of the few state theaters in France. It is the only state theater to have its own troupe of actors. It is located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris....
accepted a play of his entitled Le Manage de Luther.
He was given a post in the library of the Arsenal
Arsenal
An arsenal is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, issued to authorized users, or any combination of those...
, where he served for half a century, becoming director in 1889. In 1875 was produced at the Théâtre Français his heroic drama in verse, La Fille de Roland. The action of the play turns on the love of Gerald, son of the traitor Ganelon
Ganelon
In the Matter of France, Ganelon is the knight who betrayed Charlemagne's army to the Muslims, leading to the Battle of Roncevaux Pass. His name is said to derive from the Italian word inganno, meaning fraud or deception....
, for the daughter of Roland
Roland
Roland was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the Matter of France. Historically, Roland was military governor of the Breton March, with responsibility for defending the frontier of Francia against the Bretons...
. The patriotic subject and the nobility of the character of Gerald, who renounces Berthe when he learns his real origin, procured for the piece a great success. The conflict between honor and love and the grandiose sentiment of the play inevitably provoked comparison with Corneille
Pierre Corneille
Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...
. The piece would indeed be a masterpiece if, as its critics were not slow to point out, the verse had been quite equal to the subject.
Among the numerous other works of de Bornier should be mentioned: Dimitri (1876), libretto of an opera by Victorin Joncières; and the dramas, Les Noces d'Attila (1880) and Mahomet (1888). The production of this last piece was forbidden in deference to the representations of the Turkish ambassador. Henri de Bornier was critic of the Nouvelle Revue from 1879 to 1887. His Poésies complètes were published in 1894. He died in January 1901.