1. Ernest Psichari was a French author, religious thinker and soldier.
15 Facts About Ernest Psichari
1. 2.
Ernest Psichari saw service in the French Congo and Mauritania and wrote a number of militaristic autobiographical works that proved popular with French nationalists.
3.
Ernest Psichari was born on 27 September 1883 in Paris.
4.
Ernest Psichari's 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.
5.
Ernest Psichari's mother was Noemi Psichari, daughter of the anti-clerical, liberal historian and philosopher Ernest Renan, one of the most famous intellectuals of 19th-century France.
6.
Ernest Psichari's parents argued much; his father was concerned that his children saw too little of him and knew only their mother and maternal grandfather.
7.
Ernest Psichari grew close to contemporary intellectuals Maurice Barres, Charles Peguy and particularly to Jacques Maritain, with whom he had a passionate friendship.
8.
Ernest Psichari rejected him for another and on her wedding day Psichari attempted to kill himself by an overdose of drugs.
9.
Ernest Psichari undertook a tour of duty in the Congo in 1907 under Lieutenant Lenfant, an officer whom he came to idolise.
10.
Ernest Psichari had by now rejected thoroughly the anti-militarism of his youth and praised his army and his nation, becoming an idol of the nationalist right.
11.
Ernest Psichari initially feared that he would be bored in an area of the French colonies that was relatively pacified but soon grew to love the landscape and people of Mauritania.
12.
Ernest Psichari wrote L'Appel des armes in 1913, a military novel that was a record of his experiences and proved immensely popular with nationalist youth.
13.
Ernest Psichari's works were said to "combine militaristic sentiments with a semimystical religious devotion".
14.
Ernest Psichari became a tertiary member of the Dominican Order and considered becoming a priest.
15.
Ernest Psichari died in the last stand of the French artillery at the Battle of Rossignol.