Maurice de Guérin

Who was Maurice de Guérin?

Georges Maurice de Guérin du Cayla was a French poet.

Descended from a noble and rich family, he was born at the chateau of Le Cayla in Andillac, Tarn. He was educated for the church at a religious seminary at Toulouse, and then at the Collège Stanislas, Paris, after which he entered the society at La Chesnaye in Brittany, founded by Lamennais. It was with continuing doubts that, under the influence of Lamennais, he joined the new religious order in the autumn of 1832; and when, in September of the next year, Lamennais, who had come under the displeasure of Rome, severed his connection with the society, Maurice de Guérin soon followed his example.

Early in the following year he went to Paris, where he was for a short time a teacher at the Collège Stanislas. In November 1838 he married a Creole lady of some fortune; but a few months afterwards he died of consumption. In the Revue des deux mondes for 15 May 1840, a memorial of Maurice de Guérin by George Sand was published, to which she added two fragments of his writings--one a composition in prose entitled "The Centaur", and the other a short poem.