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Anatole France and Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Aaron Schaffer
Aaron Schaffer*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas
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Extract

IN a recently-published volume, Anatole France: critique littéraire,1 Mlle. Annette Antoniu gives a very closely-documented and, in the main, trustworthy, account of the intellectual and critical development of the great novelist. This work, however, confines itself to the consideration of Anatole France's pronouncements in his works of criticism and is, by the very nature of its subject, somewhat diffuse in its treatment. It may, therefore, be of some interest to study France's attitude towards poetry and poets as expressed in his novels and short-stories, in his volumes of essays and in his reminiscences of childhood, as well as in his conversations with some of the numerous “literary reporters” who, during the past decade, have been basking in the glory of the deceased master. Such an examination is of importance in view of the many bitter attacks that have been leveled at France by critics who are not content with attempting to expose what they consider to be the dangers inherent in his skepticism, and have left no stone unturned in the effort to prove that, both as man and as thinker, he was totally devoid of the moral sense. Thus, for example, in his Historie du Parnasse,2 M. Maurice Souriau would have us believe that France dealt treacherously by his erstwhile comrades, the Parnassians, and, more especially, by their principal leader, Leconte de Lisle.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 1932 , pp. 262 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932

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References

1 Paris, Boivin, 1929. The study, like so many others produced in France, is rendered much less effective than it might be by the fact that it lacks an index. There are lacunæ in the bibliography and occasional factual slips, but these are almost inevitable in so ambitious a work.

2 Paris, Editions Spes, 1929, pp. 370–387 and passim.

3 Emile Bergerat: Souvenirs d'un enfant de Paris (Paris, Charpentier, 3 vols., 1911–12), ii, 164. Mlle. Antoniu states (op. cit., p. 49) that France entered the employ of Lemerre “après la guerre de 1870,” but this is undoubtedly incorrect.

4 Vide Souriau, op. cit., p. 407.

5 Vide L.-X. de Ricard: “Anatole France et le Parnasse contemporain—souvenirs inédits de jeunesse,” la Revue (Feb., 1902), pp. 301–319.

6 Paris, Fontemoing, 1904, pp. 109–110.

7 Paris, Lemerre, 1873 and 1876.

8 Vide Souriau, op. et loc. cit., and the present writer's Parnassus in France (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1929), pp. 111–115.

9 Loc. cit., p. 311.

10 Anatole France: The Degeneration of a Great Artist (New York, The Dial Press, 1926), p. 15. In the face of his scathing attacks on most of France's prose works, it would seem that Professor Cerf ought logically to have wished that the artist who had so sadly degenerated had remained a poet.

11 Vol. i, p. 155. The edition of France's works used for this study is the Calmann-Levy original, except where otherwise noted.

12 Ibid., pp. 163–164.

13 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 104.

14 Ibid., vol. iv, p. 185.

15 Alfred de Vigny, in Calmann-Levy, Œuvres complètes d'Anatole France (Paris, 1925), i, 63.

16 Ibid., pp. 110–111.

17 Le Jardin d'Epicure, pp. 61–66. Italics inserted.

18 Ibid., pp. 94–96.

19 Ibid., pp. 71–75.

20 Ibid., pp. 75–76.

21 Ibid., p. 151.

22 Rabelais, Œuvres complètes (1928), xvii, 208.

23 Le Livre de mon ami in Œuvres complètes (1925), iii, 400.

24 Anatole France en pantoufles (Paris, Crès, 1927). p. 177.

25 Op. cit., pp. 211 et seq.

26 Vide Les Matinées de la Villa Saïd: Propos d'Anatole France (Paris, Grasset, 1921), p. 138.

27 Ibid., p. 161.

28 Ibid., pp. 163–164.

29 locaste et le Chat maigre, pp. 224–225.

30 Ibid., p. 203.

31 Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, 1881 (New York: Henry Holt, 1890), p. 99.

32 Les Désirs de Jean Servien, p. 107.

33 Ibid., p. 195.

34 Ibid., p. 201.

35 L'Etui de nacre, in “Mémoires d'un volontaire,” p. 228.

36 Le Lys rouge, p. 35.

37 Ibid., p. 94.

38 Ibid., p. 96.

39 Ibid., p. 100.

40 Ibid., p. 68.

41 Ibid., p. 4.

42 Ibid., p. 136.

43 Ibid., p. 157.

44 Idem.

45 Ibid., p. 287.

46 Ibid., p. 224.

47 Ibid., p. 290.

48 Ibid., p. 339.

49 Promenades d'Anatole France (Paris, Calmann-Levy, 1927). The author, a Hungarian woman whose real name is Mme. Bölöni, served as Anatole France's secretary and traveling companion in 1910, after the death of Mme. de Caillavet.

50 Louis Nicolardot (1822–1888), Catholic journalist and violent critic of anti-clericalism.

51 Promenades, pp. 147–148.

52 Le Mannequin d'osier, p. 83.

53 Ibid., pp. 84–86.

54 La Révolte des anges, pp. 16–17.

55 Le Livre de mon ami (New York: Henry Holt), p. 99.

56 Le Petit Pierre, p. 330.

57 Ibid., p. 331. It is unnecessary to labor further Anatole France's love for and indebtedness to Racine, as they have been most conclusively demonstrated by G. Des Hons: Anatole France et Jean Racine (Paris: Colin, 1927).

58 “Demain” and “Charles Morice” (la Vie littéraire, vol. ii) and “Jean Moréas” (ibid., vol. iv).

59 Vide op. cit., pp. 210–237.

60 Ibid., ii, 263. This “pièce de maîtrise” is a poem called “Roland,” “une ode dans une épître,” and is styled by France “le joyau du romantisme” (p. 262).

61 Ibid., i, 302.

62 Les Opinions de M. Jérôme Coignard, pp. 41–42.

63 Alfred de Vigny, ed. cit., p. 33.

64 Ibid., p. 40.

65 Ibid., p. 42.

66 Ibid., p. 108.

67 Ibid., p. 110.

68 Ibid., p. 113.

69 Ibid., p. 115. “Le fils du général” was Louis-Xavier de Ricard, to whom France was probably indebted for the opportunity of seeing Vigny two or three times in the last year of the latter's life.

70 Le Génie latin, ed. cit., p. 199.

71 Ibid., p. 373.

72 “D'Après Hérodote,” in Sur la voie glorieuse (Paris, Champion, 28th ed.), p. 57.

73 Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1925, p. 89.

74 Paris: Hachette, 1926.

75 Paris: Plon, 1925.

76 Paris: Crès, 1924.

77 Paris: Crès, 1927.

78 Gsell, op. cit., p. 303.

79 Brousson: Anatole France en pantoufles, p. 134.

80 Ibid., p. 239.

81 Brousson: Itinéraire de Paris à Buenos-Ayres, p. 112.

82 Sándor Kémeri: Promenades d'Anatole France, pp. 3–4.

83 La Vie littéraire, vol. i.

84 Ibid., vol. ii.

85 Vers les temps meilleurs (Paris: Pelletan, 1906), pp. 61–62. France is here really paying homage to the Republican and Socialist Hugo rather than to the poet and thinker.

86 Gsell, op. cit., p. 45.

87 Anatole France en pantoufles, p. 177.

88 Ibid., p. 301.

89 Ibid., p. 239.

90 Op. cit., p. 385.

91 Op. cit., ii, 166–167.

82 For an account of this episode and a copy of the letters which passed between the two principals, vide the appendix to J. Huret: Enquête sur l'évolution littéraire (Paris: Charpentier, 1911).

93 Anatole France en pantoufles, p. 328.

94 Ibid., p. 329.

95 Op. cit., pp. 61–62.

96 Op. cit., pp. 62–63.

97 Ibid., p. 165.

98 This story is wholly discredited by the fact that Anatole France did not become a Parnassian until after the publication of the first Parnasse contemporain.

99 Ibid., p. 168.

100 Ibid., pp. 169–171.

101 The delightful chapter in le Livre de mon ami on the poetry of Pierre Nozière's first teacher, Mlle. Lefort, “la Révélation de la poésie,” shows that he was exposed to poetry at a tender age.

102 In the preparation of this study, all of Anatole France's published volumes were reexamined, with the exception of his la Vie de Jeanne d'Arc (1908), which, from its very nature, could have but little, if any, bearing on the subject. Biographical and critical works on France, like those of Michaut, Shanks, May, Massis, and many others were used for reference but not cited, because the object of the writer was to permit Anatole France to speak for himself. The writer has attempted, as far as possible, to keep himself out of his study, except in the formulation of the conclusions, which slight lapse from scientific objectivity he trusts may be pardoned.