Nicolas Gilbert
Nicolas Joseph Florent Gilbert (Fontenoy-le-Château, December 15, 1750 - Paris, November 16, 1780) was a French poet of the 18th century who wrote the most of satires and mourning poems. biography
Nicolas Gilbert was born in Fontenoy-le-Château (Vosges) on a family of farmers on December 15, 1750. His father owned two small farms and was also the mayor of the small municipality. Gilbert studied at the Collage de l'Arc in Dole, whereupon he went to Paris to try his luck as a writer.
He was well received by d'Alembert, recommended by Mme de Verpillière, the wife of the provoost of Lyon's dealers. However, Gilbert did not admit to the philosophers, but joined the reactionaries.
At the age of twenty, he published his first novel, which remained unnoticed. In 1771 he published his Début poetique. He also participated in the annual contest of the Académie française with the poem Le Poète malheureux ou le Génie aux prizes avec la fortune (1772) and an ode to the Last Judgment (Le Jugement dernier) (1773). Twice he grabbed the prize and this came to Gilbert as a humiliation.
After staying in Nancy, Gilbert sat on the satire and showed himself a worthy successor to Juvenalis and Boileau. He wrote satirical pieces on Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert, La Harpe, and strongly condemned atheism, the sedation of the sages and the literary decadence of his time.
Gilbert died in a hospital in Paris in 1780, too early to make himself a big name. He had become insane after a skull drill, carried out after a horse's fall, and had swallowed a key of a chest stuck in his esophagus and thus caused his death. Gilbert died at the time when his existence as a bohemian had finally come to an end and he had obtained the protection of some high-ranking figures.
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