Antoine-Léonard de Chézy

Biography

Antoine-Léonard de Chézy was born in Neuilly. His father, Antoine de Chézy, an engineer who rose to lead the École des Ponts et Chaussées, had planned for his son to follow the same career. Instead, in 1799, de Chézy took a position in the oriental manuscripts department of the national library. Around 1803, he began teaching himself Sanskrit, managing to learn the language well enough to write poetry in it despite having no grammar book or dictionary.

In Paris between 1800 and 1805, he was introduced by Dorothea Schlegel, wife of Friedrich Schlegel, to Wilhelmine Christiane von Klencke, known as Hermina or Hermine. She was a very young divorcée—highly unusual for the era—who had come to Paris as a correspondent for German newspapers. They married in 1805, and she later gave birth to two sons: Wilhelm Theodor von Chézy, who became an author, and Max von Chézy, a painter. The marriage failed, and the couple separated in 1810 without divorcing; de Chézy continued to support her with annual payments until his death.

In 1815, he became the first professor of Sanskrit at the Collège de France. His students there included Alexandre Langlois, Auguste-Louis-Armand Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, and notably Eugène Burnouf, who succeeded him at the Collège after his death in 1832. De Chézy was a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur and a member of the Académie des Inscriptions. His published works include Medjnoun et Leïla (1807), translated from Persian; Yadjnadatta-badha ou la mort d’Yadjnadatta (1814); La Reconnaissance de Sacountala (1830), from Sanskrit; and Anthologie érotique d’Amarou (1831), issued under the pseudonym A. L. Apudy.