10 September 2015

Paris 2015: Hégésippe Moreau, Cimetière du Montparnasse #3



HÉGÉSIPPE MOREAU
AUTEUR DU "MYOSOTIS"
1810 – 1838

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Passant, sur la pierre qui s'use,
Aux baisers de l'air et de l'eau,
Lisez un nom cher à la Muse :
                 Hégésippe Moreau

                      (Pierre Dupont)'

The book Le Myosotis, petits contes et petits vers mentioned above was published in the last year of Hégésippe's brief life, when he died of tuberculosis. Sainte-Beuve wrote the Preface to Œuvres de Hégésippe Moreau (1881), and Georges Brassens set his poem 'Sur la Mort d'une cousine de sept ans' to music. The songwriter and poet Pierre Dupont (1821–70) wrote the poem 'Hégésippe Moreau' in 1851, and the above verse is the chorus of it. It is in part a rough sketch of Moreau's rough life and begins 'Au cimetière Montparnasse'.

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