Paul et Virginie, published in 1788, was an immediate success: a tragic love story in an idealised tropical setting, nourished by its author's stay on the Île de France, today Mauritius. Close to Rousseau, he prefigured the romantic sensibility of the following century.
The story
Born at Le Havre in 1737, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was an engineer before he was a writer: sent in 1768 to the Île de France — today's Mauritius — he spent two years there and brought back the landscapes that would make his literary fortune.
In 1788 he published “Paul et Virginie”, a tragic love story set in an idealised tropical landscape, which met with immense and immediate success and foreshadowed the romantic sensibility that would flower in the following century.
A friend of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, superintendent of the Jardin des plantes in 1791, elected to the Académie française in 1803, he died in 1814 and lies in Division 11, in the oldest part of the cemetery.
On site, do not miss
A grave linked to one of the great literary successes of the late eighteenth century.
Visitors' questions
What is “Paul et Virginie” about?
A tragic love story set in an idealised tropical landscape, published in 1788 by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. The book was an immediate and immense success, foreshadowing the Romantic sensibility of the century that followed.
The writers and poetsWhere did Bernardin de Saint-Pierre find his inspiration?
Not least in a stay, as a young man, on the Île de France — today Mauritius — whose tropical setting fed the imagination behind “Paul et Virginie”.
Marcel ProustWas Bernardin de Saint-Pierre close to Rousseau?
Yes, he shared with Jean-Jacques Rousseau a love of nature and a sensibility that heralded Romanticism, two hallmarks of his literary work.
Alain DecauxWho else rests in Division 11?
Émile Blémont, poet and man of letters, and the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart, who designed the cemetery itself, both rest in that same Division.
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