michwo

This is a distillation of "A hundred phrases for fans" by Paul Claudel (1868-1955) which were not strictly speaking haiku, but were printed accompanied by Japanese ideographs. Claudel lived for a time in Japan. 

What with reading about Danton and Robespierre and the French Revolution generally in Hilary Mantel's "A Place of Greater Safety", I've gone back in time to the 18th century and singled out a painter who was for one of the leading lights of the Enlightenment in France, Denis Diderot, the bee's knees, even though he is now remembered for his domestic scenes and still lifes: Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699-1779). 

A fable by Voltaire's great-nephew who died of TB in September 1794 as a result of being imprisoned during the Terror. Two other poets - André Chénier and Jean-Antoine Roucher - were guillotined in July that year.