A Dramatisation of the Prophet Muhammad's Life: Henri De Bornier's Mahomet

Abstract

Henri, Vicomte de Bornier (1825-1901), is a dramatist held in no great esteem by modern critics of French literature, but one who achieved a considerable reputation in his own time. Of a family whose roots were in the Huguenot nobility of Languedoc but which had made a timely conversion to Catholicism when the Edict of Nantes was revoked, his life was an even progress in official library positions (punctuated by a spell of excitement when he defended the Bibliothique de l'Arsenal, where he eventually became Chief Librarian, against Communard incendiarists), and latterly, a string of successes in the literary and theatrical world. His romantic, heroic dramas, such as La fille de Roland (in which Sarah Bernhardt created the title r6le in 1874), Dmitri (on the theme, familiar from Mussorgsky's opera Boris Gudunov, of the pretended heir to Tsar Ivan IV and his brief elevation to power on the death of Boris), Les noces d'Attila (concerned with the Hunnish leader's marriage to Hildiga, daughter of the king of the Burgundians) and France ... d'abord (set in the 13th century and dealing with the regency in France of Louis VIII's widow Blanche of Castile for her son Louis XI), were especially attuned to the mood of patriotism and national fervour engendered under the Second Empire and by the traumatic experiences of 1870-1. In 1883 Bornier's career was crowned by the ultimate honour of election to the Acad~mie Frangaise. 1)