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Infidels,
Freethinkers, Humanists, and Unbelievers |
Ackermann,
Louise Victorine (1813-1890) |
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Ackerman was a French poet. She was born in Paris, but spent her
younger days in more rural surroundings near Montdidier, south-east
of Amiens. In 1829 her father, having undertaken her early education
in the philosophy of the Encyclopaedists, sent her to school in
Paris. In 1838 Victorine Choquet went to Berlin to study German,
and there married in 1843 Paul Ackermann, an Alsatian philologist.
After little more than two years of happy married life her husband
died, and Madame Ackermann went to live at Nice with a favorite
sister. In 1855 she published Contes en vers, and in 1862 Contes
el poesies. |
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She published work much different different from these simple and
charming contes later in life, and it is upon these that Madame
Ackermann's real reputation rests. She published in 1874 Poesies,
premieres poesies, poesies philosophiques, a volume of sombre
and powerful verse, expressing her revolt against human suffering.
The volume was enthusiastically reviewed in the Revue des deux mondes
for May 1871 by E. Caro, who, though he deprecated the impiete desespiree
of the verses, did full justice to their vigour and the excellence
of their form.
Soon after the publication of this volume
Ackermann moved to Paris, where she gathered around her a circle
of friends, but published nothing further except a prose volume,
the Pensees d'un solitaire ("Thoughts of a Recluse",
1883), to which she prefixed a short autobiography. She died at
Nice in August 1890.
She
was resolutely Agnostic, without using that word in her Pensees
d'une solitare. She wrote a poem for her tombstone which
begins: "I do not know." In the strict sense she was
an atheist, or perhaps an agnostic. |
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