4 Quotes & Sayings By Herculine Barbin

Herculine Barbin was a French/Algerian actress and dancer who lived from 1775 to 1842. Her career in the theatre began with a ballet company at the Comédie-Française in Paris. She was soon invited to join the Opéra-Comique troupe where she met the young François-Joseph Talma. In 1792 she met Napoleon Bonaparte, fell in love with him, and became his mistress for several years Read more

With the French Revolution broke out, Barbin moved to London where she made her stage debut at Drury Lane Theatre. She returned to France after Waterloo and retired from dancing and acting in 1832.

1
May you hear my feeble voice! It will tell you that here below there is a heart full of the memory of you. Herculine Barbin
2
Oh! To live alone, always alone, in the midst of the crowd that surrounds me, without a word of love ever coming to gladden my soul, without a friendly hand reaching out to me! Herculine Barbin
3
You are to be pitied more than I, perhaps. I soar above all your innumerable miseries, partaking of the nature of the angels; for, as you have said, my place is not in your narrow sphere. You have the earth, I have boundless space. Enchained here below by the thousand bonds of your gross, material senses, your spirits cannot plunge into that limpid Ocean of the infinite, where, lost for a day upon your arid shores, my soul drinks deep. . Herculine Barbin