Curated playlist
Lycée Louis-le-Grand alumni
- VoltaireThe line Voltaire is most quoted for was written in 1906, long after he died.
- Edgar DegasEdgar Degas showed only one sculpture in his lifetime. After he died, heirs found 150 wax figures in his studio.
- MolièreMolière collapsed on stage in 1673 while playing a fake sick man. He insisted on finishing the play.
- Denis DiderotJailed writer Denis Diderot annotated Paradise Lost with a toothpick and ink made from slate and wine.
- Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre asked to be dropped as a Nobel nominee, then won anyway. His 1964 letter went unread.
- Victor HugoVictor Hugo asked for a pauper's funeral and got the largest in French history.
- Charles BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire never reached India, yet he told stories of riding elephants there.
- Eugène DelacroixTalleyrand privately considered himself the real father of the painter Eugène Delacroix.
- Émile DurkheimÉmile Durkheim came from eight generations of rabbis, yet argued religion was social, not divine.
- Maximilien RobespierreRobespierre was executed without trial in 1794 by the movement he had helped build.
- Marquis de SadeOn the 2nd of July 1789, the Marquis de Sade stood at a window of the Bastille and shouted through a megaphone he had improvised himself. He told the people in the street below that the warders were murdering the prisoners. That evening he…
- Georges DumézilGeorges Dumézil was shut out of French academic jobs after his thesis. His teacher told him to go abroad, to Istanbul.