30 August 2020

Alexis Piron in Dijon, (Côte-d'Or (21))



'ALEXIS PIRON
POÈTE SATIRIQUE
1689 - 1773'

Also in the Jardin de l'Arquebuse in Dijon is Piron's bust. He was a playwright as well as a poet  and a man of undoubted brillance and quick wit, although his first published work, an erotic poem written about the age of twenty – Ode à Priape (1710) – was to dog him throughout his life and prevent him from being elected to the Académie française. His self-composed, self-denigrating epitaph is rather harsh:

'Ci-gît Piron
qui ne fut rien,
Pas même académicien'.

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