“I’m young, it’s true, but for well-bred souls valor takes no account of age.”

Corneille (1606-1684)
Playwright

“When it seems to him that the atmosphere of Rouen, even with the presence of his brothers and his wife, has become a bit burdensome, Pierre Corneille gets in a coach and leaves for Paris. It only takes three or four days to arrive. There he finds his dear Place Royale, fine cavaliers, literary life and discussion, and his triumphant youth. Despite his retirement, he is an illustrious man, the greatest writer of his time. But all that is not without a bit of melancholy. There is no connection between the normal arrears that come from glory, a solid income generated by that glory, and the pocket change with which it settles its accounts with the young. It is agreeable to be thirty-four years old, to be known by all, to have been translated into every language, to even be what some in the provinces would call rich. But it is marvelous to be twenty-three years old, to be discovered by an actor on tour, to wander in the streets of Paris, to walk into a coffee-house for the first time, awkwardly but with head held high, to discover a taste for life. The best thing in success is not arriving, but setting out… In the midst of these artificial, though charming, gatherings [of the salons], Corneille – who lacked neither youth nor grace – proferred silence, the rare presence of grandeur. (…) At first you might take him for “just some bourgeoisie from Rouen,” but soon he was recognized as the father of the most elegant tragedy of the century. He was naively pleased by this strange place, because he found a charming aristocracy, and a declared liking for his poetry, and admiration, while being at the same time surrounded by a whirlwind of shouts, and games, and laughing, which renewed his youth, in a somewhat mechanical way, but in a way only Paris is capable of.”

20th century Writer
Writer