HKB
[Sidenote: Death of Fourier]
In France, an unfortunate attempt to fix large dowries on the Duc de Nemours and the Queen of the Belgians raised an outcry against the private avarice of the King. As the result of the Ministerial crisis that followed the defeat of these measures in the Chambers Guizot had to retire from the Ministry. Mole remained in charge with the reconstituted Cabinet. The success of a second expedition against Constantine, in which the Duc de Nemours gained distinction, invested Mole's new Ministry with a certain popularity. Measures for a general political amnesty and for the closing of gambling houses were readily voted by the Chambers. The people of Paris were kept amused first by the marriage of the Duc d'Orleans to Princess Helene of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and by the subsequent wedding of Princess Marie d'Orleans, the amateur sculptress, to Duke Alexander of Wurtemberg, a dilettante, like herself, in letters. The occasion provoked the German poet Heine, then lying ill at Paris, to some of his most pungent witticisms. Ailing though he was, Heine was made a member of the new "Societe des Gens de Lettres," founded by Balzac, Lamennais, Dumas and Georges Sand. Further events in French letters were the publication of Eugene Sue's "Latreaumont," and the appearance of the early part of Michelet's "History of France." Francois Charles Marie Fourier, the philosophic writer and follower of St. Simon, died in his sixty-fifth year. Before his death his well-elaborated system of communism, as put forward in his "Traite de l'Association Domestique et Agricole," had found general acceptance among the radical orders of France.
[Sidenote: Death of Leopardi]
[Sidenote: Ode to Brutus Minor]
[Sidenote: A self-apostrophe]
Count Giacomo Leopardi, the foremost lyric poet of modern Italy, died on June 14. Leopardi's genius was tinctured with pessimism. Like Byron, he was powerfully moved by the painful contrast between the classic grandeur of ancient Italy and the degeneracy of its latter days. The tendency toward pessimism was increased by his own ill health. His first works were the result of his eager study of classic antiquities. Thus he brought out a new edition and translation of Porphyrios' "De vita Plotini." His earliest verses, such as the fine "Ode to Italy," and his poem on a projected monument for Dante, already contained the strain of sadness that ran through all his later poems. On the publication of Leopardi's first collection of verses, Niebuhr, the Prussian Ambassador at Rome, offered him a professorship at Berlin, but the poet's failing health prevented acceptance. Religious dissensions with his father depressed his spirits still more. He gave expression to his increasing sadness in the beautiful ode on the "Minor Brutus." In 1825 he took part in bringing out the famous "Antologia" at Florence, and also issued an edition of Petrarch and two collections of Italian verse. Another collection of his own poems was published in 1826, followed by the prose dialogues "Operette Morali." In 1833, declining health led Leopardi to withdraw to Naples. One year before his death he brought out a last collection of poems distinguished alike for poignant pessimism and for their high lyric beauty. Characteristic of Leopardi's verse is this poem addressed to himself:
Now lie forever still, My weary heart. Farewell, my last illusion The dream that we endure. Farewell! Too surely I know my end, and now of self-deception The hope long since and dear desire has left me. Be still forever! Enough Of fluttering such as thine has been. Vain, vain Thy palpitation, the wide world is not worth Our sighs; for bitter pain Life's portion is, naught else, and slime this earth. Subside henceforth, despair forever! Fate gave this race of ours For only guerdon death. Then make a sport Of thine own self, of nature, and the dark First power that, hidden, rules the world for harm-- And of the infinite emptiness of all.
[Sidenote: Death of Pushkin]
[Sidenote: Lermontov]