Guérin, Maurice de (1810-39), was born and died at the Château du Cayla (Tarn). After his mother's death he was brought up in an atmosphere of religious austerity by his sister Eugénie de Guérin. He was intended for the Church, and in 1832 he joined Lamennais's Christian Community at La Chesnaie. After the dissolution of the Community in 1833 he attempted to earn his living by writing and teaching, but his health was weakened and he eventually died of tuberculosis.
His was a fragile and troubled nature, and his attitudes and ideas combine the mystic and the pagan. His verse is generally considered to be mediocre; his strength and literary reputation lay in his prose poems, Le Centaure (1840) and La Bacchante (1862), and in his Journal and letters. The poems bring together a Dionysiac sensuousness and a sense of pervading anxiety. His reputation was established initially by George Sand, Barbey d'Aurevilly, and Sainte-Beuve, and since the early 20th c. his works have been regularly in print.
[Bernard Swift]
