Leconte de Lisle, Charles Marie

Leconte de Lisle, Charles Marie

(shärl märē` ləkôNt` də lēl), 1818–94, French poet. His first two books of poetry, Poèmes antiques (1852) and Poèmes et poésies (1855), were immediately successful. It was, however, Poésies barbares (1862; later enlarged as Poèmes barbares, 1872) that established him as the leading figure of the group later to be known as the ParnassiansParnassians
, group of 19th-century French poets, so called from their journal the Parnasse contemporain. Issued from 1866 to 1876, it included poems of Leconte de Lisle, Banville, Sully-Prudhomme, Verlaine, Coppée, and J. M. de Heredia.
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. Anti-Christian and a pessimist, Leconte de Lisle saw death as the only existing reality and drew his inspiration from antiquity. Later works include Les Erinnyes (1872), a verse drama; and Poèmes tragiques (1884). He was elected to the French Academy.