Étienne-Paulin Gagne, known as Paulin Gagne was a French poet, essayist, lawyer, politician, inventor, and eccentric. His best-known poem, The Woman-Messiah, is among the longest poems in French, or any language. The poem is 25,000 verses and is notable for its 24th act entitledBestiologie which enumerates the advantages that a citizen of Paris would have by marrying the animals of the Jardin des Plantes. He is also notable for proposing anthropophagy at a public meeting and offering himself as food to starving Algerians.
Biography
Gagne was born in Montoison on June 8, 1808, of a family which soon reestablished itself in Montélimar. Early on he established himself as a lawyer and, after moving to Paris, lost his only lawsuit. In the 1850s, he moved back to Montélimar, and turned to prose and poetry after giving up law. His writings focused primarily on bizarre and burlesque social and political matters. In 1853 he married Élise Moreau. He spent time as a minor politician and the creator of an unsuccessful journal entitled Hope. More success came with his second publication entitled The Theatre of the World in which contained some well-regarded articles, none by Gagne. Shortly thereafter, Gagne wrote, The Woman-Messiah, one of his many lengthy poems. During this time he also invented a universal language he named La Gagne-monopanglotte, which had no other known speakers. In 1863, he moved back to Paris. He began to publish primarily in journals devoted to esoteric topics. One such journal, Uniter of the Visible and Invisible World, published an article in which Gagne alleged the intervention of Satan at a séance. Towards the end of the Second French Empire, at public meetings, Gagne would make speeches on socialism, anti-monarchy and similar topics. Often he would organize strange political demonstrations at which he was the only participator. Many of his antics brought on laughter, but he was always a perpetual candidate for parliament. Gagne consistently took the radical route. In 1868, during an Algerian famine, he called for hippography as a solution and then suggested cannibalism and called for legislation that would prevent the famine by making the Algerians eat all elderly persons in France over the age of 60, including himself. He stated, " human being over sixty is neither useful nor ornamental, and to prove that I mean what I say, I am willing to give myself as food to my sublime and suffering townsmen."
