Parny
PARNY, ^VARISTE D^SIRfi DE FORGES, Vicomte de (1753-1S14), was born in the Isle of Bourbon on the 6th of February 1753. He was sent to France at nine years old, was educated at Rennes, and in 1771 entered the army. He was, however, shortly recalled to the Isle of Bourbon, where he fell in love with a young lady whom he addresses as Eleonore. Her father refused to consent to her marriage with Parny, and she married some one else. Parny returned to France, and pubhshed his Poesies erotiques in 1778. He also published about the same time his Voyage de Bourgogne (1777), written in collaboration with his friend Antoine de Bertin (1752-1790); Epitre aux insurgents de Boston (1777), and Opuscules poetiques (1779). In 1796 appeared the Guerre des dieux, a poem in the style of Voltaire's Pucclle, directed against Christianity. Parny devoted himself in his later years almost entirely to the religious and political burlesque. He was elected to the Academy in 1803, and in 1813 received a pension from Napoleon. In 1S05 he produced an extraordinary allegoric poem attacking George III., ' Pope acknowledged the essay with affectionate praise, but in 1720 he said it was written " upon such memoirs as I had collected," and later he complained of its defects, saying it had cost him more pains to revise than it would have done to write it.
his family and his subjects, under the eccentric title of "Goddam! Goddam! par un French-dog." Parny's early love poems and elegies, however, show a remarkable grace and ease, a good deal of tenderness, and considerable fancy and wit. One famous piece, the Elegy on a Young Girl, is scarcely to be excelled in its kind. Parny died in 1814.
His CEuvres choisies were published in 1827. There is a sketch of Parny in Sainte-Beuve's Portraits contemporains.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
