Paulin Gagne

Who was Paulin Gagne?

Étienne-Paulin Gagne, known as Paulin Gagne was a French poet, essayist, lawyer, politician, inventor, and eccentric whose best known poem, The Woman-Messiah, is among the longest poems in French, or any language. The poem is 25,000 verses and is notable for its 24th act entitled Bestiologie which enumerates the advantages that a citizen of Paris would have by marrying the animals of the Jardin des Plantes. He is also notable for proposing "Anthropophagy" at a public meeting and offering himself as food to starving Algerians.