CHENIER, MARIE-JOSEPH BLAISE DE (1764— isi 1 ), French poet, dramatist and politician, younger brother of Andre de Chenier, was born at Constantinople on Feb. II, 1764. He was brought up at Carcassonne, and educated in Paris at the College de Navarre. After two years spent in the army he began to write plays on the Voltairian model. The notoriety attained by, the later plays was due to political considerations rather than to any intrinsic literary merit. His Charles IX. was kept back for nearly two years by the censor; its production (Nov. 4, 1789) was an immense success, due in part to Talma's magnificent imper sonation of Charles IX. Camille Desmoulins said that the piece had done more for the Revolution that the days of October, and a contemporary memoir-writer, the marquis de Ferriere, says that the audience came away "ivre de vengeance et tourmente d'une soif de sang." The performance occasioned a split among the actors of the Comedie Francaise, and the new theatre in the Palais Royal, established by the dissidents, was inaugurated with Henri VIII. (1791), generally recognized as Chenier's master piece ; Jean Calas, ou l'ecole des juges followed in the same year. In 1792 he produced his Caius Gracchus, which was proscribed in 1793 at the instance of the Montagnard deputy, Albitte, for an anti-anarchical hemistich (Des lois et non du sang!) ; Fenelon 93) was suspended after a few representations ; and in his Timoleon, set to 1?tienne Maul's music, was also proscribed. This piece was played after the fall of the Terror, but the fratri cide of Timoleon became the text for unfounded insinuations that, by his silence, Joseph de Chenier had connived at the judi cial murder of Andre. In fact Joseph knew that Andre's only chance of safety lay in being forgotten by the authorities, and that intervention would only hasten the end. Joseph Chenier had been a member of the Convention and of the Council of Five Hundred, and had voted for the death of Louis XVI. ; he had a seat in the tribunate ; he belonged to the committees of public instruction, of general security and of public safety. Neverthe less, before the end of the Terror he had become a marked man. His purely political career ended in 1802, but from 1803 to 1806 he was inspector-general of public instruction. Cyrus (1804) was written in honour of Napoleon, but Chenier was temporarily dis graced in 1806 for his Epitre a Voltaire. He died on Jan. 10, 1811. The list of his works includes hymns and national songs— among others, the famous Chant du depart; odes, Sur la snort de Mirabeau, Sur l'oligarchie de Robespierre, etc. ; tragedies which never reached the stage, Brutus et Cassius, Philippe deux, Tibere; a Tableau historique (18o8) of contemporary French literature; translations from Sophocles and Lessing, from Gray and Horace, from Tacitus and Aristotle; with elegies, dithyrambics and Ossi anic rhapsodies.
See Uuvres completes de Joseph Chenier (8 vols., 1823-26), con taining notices of the poet by Arnault and Daunou ; Charles Labitte, Etudes litteraires (1846) ; Henri Welschinger, Le Theatre revolution naire, 1789-1799 (1881) ; and A. Lieby, Etude sur le theatre de Marie Joseph Chenier 0902).