Ernest Psichari

Ernest Psichari (27 September 1883 – 22 August 1914) was a French author, religious thinker and soldier. The son of noted intellectual Ioannis Psycharis and grandson of liberal writer Ernest Renan, Psichari was baptised into the Greek Orthodox faith. After a troubled upbringing which saw him attempt suicide over an unrequited love, Psichari entered the army for his national service. Enjoying military life, he re-enlisted in the ranks and transferred to the Troupes coloniales in search of adventure abroad. He saw service in the French Congo and Mauritania and wrote a number of militaristic autobiographical works that proved popular with French nationalists. Converting to Catholicism in 1913, Psichari considered becoming a priest but instead decided he could better serve his church in the army. Fighting in the defence of Belgium in August 1914 during World War I, he was killed at Rossignol during the Battle of the Frontiers.

Early life

Ernest Psichari was born on 27 September 1883 in Paris. His father was the Greek-French Ioannis Psycharis, professor of Greek philology at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and one of the leading champions of demotic Greek. His mother was Noémi Psichari, daughter of the anti-clerical, liberal historian and philosopher Ernest Renan, one of the most famous intellectuals of 19th-century France. Born into one of the most famous republican families of France, he was baptised into the Greek Orthodox Church at the insistence of his mother, though the family had a background of agnosticism. Psichari's parents argued much; his father was concerned that his children (he had a younger brother Michel and a sister Henriette) saw too little of him and knew only their mother and maternal grandfather. Psichari's parents eventually separated just prior to the First World War. Renan died in 1892 when Psichari was nine.

Ioannis Psycharis

Ioannis (or Yannis) Psycharis (Greek: Ιωάννης (Γιάννης) Ψυχάρης; French: Jean Psychari; 1854–1929) was a French philologist of Greek origin, author and promoter of Demotic Greek.

Biography

Psycharis was born on 15 May 1854 to a Greek family from Chios island, in Odessa (in modern-day Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire), on the coast of the Black Sea. Nicholas I of Russia still reigned at the time of his birth and his government exercised censorship and other controls over education, publishing, and all manifestations of public life.

He made a short stay in Constantinople during his youth, and settled definitely in Paris at the age of fourteen.

He studied at the École des langues orientales, where he later became a professor.

In 1882, he married Ernest Renan's daughter, Noémi, from whom he had four children, among which Ernest Psichari, Henriette Revault d'Allonnes and Corrie Siohan, raised in the Scheffer-Renan Hôtel, the current Musée de la Vie romantique in the heart of the Nouvelle Athènes neighbourhood, in Paris.