JEAN AICARD (1874)

Poet, novelist, and dramatist best known for his poems of the Provence region.


As a young man, he studied law for three years, abandoning it in the end to devote himself to poetry and literature. His fist boook of poetry, Jeunes Croyances or Beliefs of a Youth (1867) showed the influence of the Romantic poet Alphonse de Lamartine and was well received upon its appearance.


He went to Paris after the Franco-German War and published Les Rebellions et les apaisements or Rebellions and Reassurances (1871). Poèmes de Provence, a sensitive evocation of the Provençal scene, followed in 1874; two years later La Chanson de l´enfant or Child´s Song was published- both volumes receiving awards from the Académie Française, as did his later poem "Lamartine".


The most succesful of his 14 plays was Le Père Lebonnard or Father Lebonnard, first performed in 1889. Most of his novels, the best of which is Maurin des maures or Maurin of the Moors (1908), are also based on Provençal life.


He became a member of the Académie Française in 1909.