- "I pray you do not recall my brother's writings in the Journal de Paris, coming as they did from an intemperate poet's heart. Rather I beg you, if my own humble skills have been even the smallest of aid to our glorious Revolution, spare my brother. In his writings I see burgeoning of France's greatest poet, a light that will shine for all time."
- ―Marie-Joseph Chénier in his letter to Robespierre, 1794.[src]-[m]
Marie-Joseph Blaise de Chénier (11 February 1764 – 10 January 1811) was a French poet, dramatist, and politician of Greek descent, as well as the brother of fellow poet André Chénier.
In 1794, André was sentenced to death after opposing the Jacobin leader Maximilien de Robespierre through his poems. That June, Marie-Joseph wrote a letter to Robespierre in an attempt to save his brother. In it, he wrote that André had been arrested and imprisoned without a warrant, and that his poems in the Journal de Paris came from an "intemperate poet's heart". Naming his brother as having the makings to be Revolutionary France's greatest poet, he pleaded with Robespierre to spare him. Despite the letter, Robespierre was unmoved, and André was guillotined in late July.[1]