Antoine de Rivarol
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Portrait of Antoine de Rivarol, by Melchior Wyrsch.
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| Born | Antoine Rivaroli (1753-06-26)26 June 1753 Bagnols, Languedoc, Kingdom of France |
| Died | 11 April 1801(1801-04-11) (aged 47) Berlin, Brandenburg, Holy Roman Empire |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Nationality | French |
Antoine de Rivarol (26 June 1753 – 11 April 1801) was a Royalist[1] French writer and translator who lived during the Revolutionary era.[2][3] He was briefly married to the translator Louisa Henrietta de Rivarol.
Rivarol was born in Bagnols, Languedoc. It appears that his father, an innkeeper, was a cultivated man. The son assumed the title of comte de Rivarol, asserting a connection with the noble Italian family Riveroli, although his enemies said his name was really "Riverot" and that he was not of noble stock.[4] He went to Paris in 1777 and won several academic prizes.[5]
In 1780 he married Louisa Henrietta de Rivarol, a translator of Scottish descent. She had translated some works by Samuel Johnson and Johnson had become a friend of her family. Antoine Rivarol abandoned his wife after a short relationship which resulted in the birth of a son.[6] To Rivarol's embarrassment, a nurse who supported his abandoned wife was awarded the Montyon Prize for her humanity. He was divorced in 1784.[6]
In 1784, his Discours sur l'Universalité de la Langue Française and his translation of Dante's Inferno were favourably noted.[7][8] The year before the French Revolution broke out, he and Champcenetz published a lampoon, titled Petit Almanach de nos grands hommes pour 1788, that ridiculed without pity a number of writers of proven or future talent, along with a great many nobodies.[9]
Rivarol was the foremost journalist, commentator and epigrammatist among that faction of aristocrats which was most stalwartly conservative: he heaped scorn upon republicanism and defended the Ancien Régime.[10][11]
Rivarol's writing was published in the Journal PolitiqueofAntoine Sabatier de Castres and the Actes des ApotresofJean Gabriel Peltier. He left France in 1792, first settling in Brussels, then moving successively to London, Hamburg, and Berlin, where he died. Rivarol's rivals in France – in sharp conversational sayings – included Alexis Piron and Nicolas Chamfort.
His brother, Claude François Rivarol (1762–1848), was also an author. His works include a novel, Isman, ou le Fatalisme (1795); a comedy, Le Véridique (1827); and the history Essai sur les Causes de la Révolution Française (1827).
He died as exile in Berlin and was interred in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery, but the site of his grave was soon forgotten.[12]
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