The French poet André Marie Chénier (1762-1794) compressed into his brief life many kinds of experience and many poetic forms. He emerges in history as a rare poet-hero whose life is exemplary and tragic.

André Chénier was born in Constantinople. His father was French, and his mother claimed to be of Greek origin. André's early sense of affinity for Greece was vital in his development as a poet. He spent most of his childhood with an aunt and uncle in Carcassonne in Languedoc. When he was 11, he rejoined his mother in Paris and was exposed to the flamboyant society of her salon.

Chénier was an excellent scholar at the exclusive Collége Navarre. His earliest works are adaptations of Homer and Virgil and poems of adolescent love. He was always an affectionate and ardent man; he had...