Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de Racan


Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de Racan was a French aristocrat, soldier, poet, dramatist and member of the Académie française.

Biography

Racan was born at Aubigné-Racan into an illustrious noble family from the region of Tours, Maine and Anjou.
An orphan at the age of 13, Racan came under the protection of the Count de Bellegarde and became a page for king Henry IV of France. His education was minimal, and by his own account he learned only the rudiments of Latin, and was bored by most of his subjects, exception being made to French verse. Racan's successes as a courtier were limited by his physical appearance and his stuttering. In 1605, he met the esteemed poet François de Malherbe at the court, and the elder poet would become for Racan both a father figure and teacher. In 1621 Racan participated in the Wars of Religion and his military career would continue through the next decades.
Around 1619, Racan's pastoral play in verse Les Bergeries - inspired by Virgil, Tasso's Aminta, Giambattista Guarini's Il pastor fido, Honoré d'Urfé's L'Astrée, and, to a certain extent, the writings of Saint François de Sales - was performed to great acclaim. Racan had equal success with his Stances de la retraite, his translations of the Psalms - in an initial version in 1631, and later with his Odes sacrées and Dernières œuvres et poésies chrétiennes - and his memoirs on the life of Malherbe. Not knowing Hebrew, Racan relied on accurate French paraphrases of the sacred texts, but departed from the literal translations in the interest of poetic grace. Racan's acceptance speech for the Académie française Contre les Sciences, was an oration against "rules" and affectation, and in praise of "naturalness".
Racan's poetry was rigorous, but he did not completely reject the authors of Renaissance and was less inflexible on the question of the three unities. His elegies and pastoral show a sensitivity to the natural sights of his native region, and his poetry is often informed by a melancholy inspired by his youthful disappointments in love and the financial and personal tragedies of his life.
He died in Paris in 1670.