Renee Mauperin

de Goncourt Edmond

Description

pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. The partnership of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt is probably the most curious and perfect example of collaboration recorded in literary history. The brothers worked together for twenty-two years, and the amalgam of their diverse talents was so complete that, were it not for the information given by the survivor, it would be difficult to guess what each brought to the work which bears their names. Even in the light of these confidences, it is no easy matter to attempt to separate or disengage their literary personalities. The two are practically one. Jamais ame pareille n'a ete mise en deux corps. This testimony is their own, and their testimony is true. The result is the more perplexing when we remember that these two brothers were, so to say, men of different races. The elder was a German from Lorraine, the younger was an inveterate Latin Parisian: "the most absolute difference of temperaments, tastes, and characters - and absolutely the same ideas, the same personal likes and dislikes, the same intellectual vision

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 23 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819913603
• Langue: English

Extrait

I
The partnership of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt isprobably the most curious and perfect example of collaborationrecorded in literary history. The brothers worked together fortwenty-two years, and the amalgam of their diverse talents was socomplete that, were it not for the information given by thesurvivor, it would be difficult to guess what each brought to thework which bears their names. Even in the light of theseconfidences, it is no easy matter to attempt to separate ordisengage their literary personalities. The two are practicallyone. Jamais âme pareille n'a été mise en deux corps. Thistestimony is their own, and their testimony is true. The result isthe more perplexing when we remember that these two brothers were,so to say, men of different races. The elder was a German fromLorraine, the younger was an inveterate Latin Parisian: "the mostabsolute difference of temperaments, tastes, and characters – andabsolutely the same ideas, the same personal likes and dislikes,the same intellectual vision." There may be, as there probablyalways will be, two opinions as to the value of their writings;there can be no difference of view concerning their intensedevotion to literature, their unhesitating rejection of all thatmight distract them from their vocation. They spent a small fortunein collecting materials for works that were not to find two hundredreaders; they passed months, and more months, in tedious researchesthe results of which were condensed into a single page; theyresigned most of life's pleasures and all its joys to dedicatethemselves totally to the office of their election. So they lived –toiling, endeavouring, undismayed, confident in their integrity andgenius, unrewarded by one accepted triumph, uncheered by a singlefrank success or even by any considerable recognition. The youngerGoncourt died of his failure before he was forty; the elderunderwent almost the same monotony of defeat during nearly thirtyyears of life that remained to him. But both continued undaunted,and, if we consider what manner of men they were and how dear famewas to them, the constancy of their ambition becomes all the moreadmirable.
Despising, or affecting to despise, the generalverdict of their contemporaries, they loved to declare that theywrote for their own personal pleasure, for an audience of a dozenfriends, or for the delight of a distant posterity; and, when theabsence of all appreciation momentarily weighed them down, theyvainly imagined that the acquisition of a new bibelot consoled them. No doubt the passion of the collector was strong inthem: so strong that Edmond half forgot his grief for his brotherand his terror of the Commune in the pursuit of first editions: sostrong that the chances of a Prussian bomb shattering hisstorehouse of treasures – the Maison d'un artiste – atAuteuil saddened him more than the dismemberment of France. But,even so, the idea that the Goncourts could in any circumstancessubordinate literature to any other interest was the merestillusion. Nothing in the world pleased them half so well as thesight of their own words in print. The arrival of a set ofproof-sheets on the 1st of January was to them the best possibleaugury for the new year; the sight of their names on the placardsoutside the theatres and the booksellers' shops enraptured them;and Edmond, then well on in years, confesses that he thrice stoledownstairs, half-clad, in the March dawn, to make sure that theopening chapters of Chérie were really inserted in the Gaulois . These were their few rewards, their only victories.They were fain to be content with such small things – la petitemonnaie de la gloire . Still they were persuaded that time wason their side, and, assured as they were of their literaryimmortality, they chafed at the suggestion that the most splendidrenown must grow dim within a hundred thousand years. Was so poor alaurel worth the struggle? This was the whole extent of theirmisgiving.
Baffled at every point, the Goncourts were unable toaccount for the unbroken series of disasters which befell them; yetthe explanation is not far to seek. For one thing, they attemptedso much, so continuously, in so many directions, and in such quicksuccession, that their very versatility and diligence laid themunder suspicion. They were not content to be historians, orphilosophers, or novelists, or dramatists, or art critics: theywould be all and each of these at once. In every branch ofintellectual effort they asserted their claims to be regarded asinnovators, and therefore as leaders. Within a month they published Germinie Lacerteux and an elaborate study on Fragonard; and,while they plumed themselves (as they very well might) on theirfeat, the average intelligent reader joined with the averageintelligent critic in concluding that such various accomplishmentmust needs be superficial. It was not credible that one and thesame pair – par nobile fratrum – could be not only closeobservers of contemporary life, but also authorities on Watteau andOutamaro, on Marie Antoinette and Mlle. Clairon. To admit thiswould be to emphasize the limitations of all other men of letters.Again, the uncanny element of chance which enters into everyenterprise was constantly hostile to the Goncourts. They not onlypublished incessantly: they somehow contrived to publish atinopportune moments – at times when the public interest was turnedfrom letters to politics. Their first novel appeared on the veryday of Napoleon III's Coup d'état , and their publisher evenrefused to advertise the book lest the new authorities should seein the title of En 18 – a covert allusion to the 18thBrumaire. It would have been a pleasing stroke of irony had theMinistry of the 16th of May been supported by the country as it wassupported by Edmond de Goncourt, for that Ministry intended toprosecute him as the author of La Fille Élisa . LaFaustin was issued on the morning of Gambetta's downfall; andthe seventh volume of the Journal des Goncourt had barelybeen published a few hours when the news of Carnot's assassinationreached Paris. Lastly, the personal qualities of the brothers –their ostentation of independence, their attitude of supercilioussuperiority, and, most of all, their fatal gift of irony – raisedup innumerable enemies and alienated both actual and possiblefriends. They gave no quarter and they received none. All this isextremely human and natural; but the Goncourts, being nervousinvalids as well as born fighters, suffered acutely from what theyregarded as the universal disloyalty of their comrades.
They could not realize that their writings containedmuch to displease men of all parties, and, living at war withliterary society, they sullenly cultivated their morbidsensibility. The simplest trifle stung them into frenzies ofinconsistency and hallucination. To-day they denounced the libertyof the press; to-morrow they raged at finding themselves thevictims of a Government prosecution. Withal their ferocious wit,there was not a ray of sunshine in their humour, and, instead ofsmiling at the discomfiture of a dull official, they brooded tilltheir imaginations magnified these petty police-court proceedingsinto the tragedy of a supreme martyrdom. Years afterward theycontinually return to the subject, noting with exasperatedcomplacency that the only four men in France who were seriouslyconcerned with letters and art – Baudelaire, Flaubert, andthemselves – had been dragged before the courts; and they ended byconsidering their little lawsuit as one of the historic statetrials of the world. Henceforth, in every personal matter – andtheir art was intensely personal – they lost all sense ofproportion, believing that there was a vast Semitic plot to stifle Manette Salomon and that the President had brought pressureon the censor to forbid an adaptation of one of their novels beingput upon the boards. Monarchy, Empire, Republic, Right, Centre,Left – no shade of political thought, no public man, no legislativemeasure, ever chanced to please them. They sought for the causes oftheir failure in others: it never occurred to them that the faultlay in themselves. Their minds were twin whirlpools of chaoticopinions. Revolutionaries in arts and letters as they claimed tobe, they detested novelties in religion, politics, medicine,science, abstract speculation. It never struck them that it wasincongruous, not to say absurd, to claim complete liberty forthemselves and to denounce ministers for attempting to extend thefar more restricted liberty of others. And as with the ordering oftheir lives, so with their art and all that touched it. Unable toconciliate or to compromise, they were conspicuously successful instimulating the general prejudice against themselves. They paradedtheir self-contradictions with a childish pride of paradox. In onebreath they deplored the ignorance of a public too uncultivated toappreciate them; in another breath they proclaimed that everygovernment which strives to diminish illiteracy is digging its owngrave. Priding themselves on the thoroughness of their owninvestigations, they belittled the results of learning in others,mocked at the superficial labour of the Benedictines, ridiculed theinartistic surroundings of Sainte-Beuve and Renan, and protestedthat antiquity was nothing but an inept invention to enableprofessors to earn their daily bread. Not content with assertingthe superiority of Diderot to Voltaire, they pronounced the AbbéTrublet to be the acutest critic who flourished during thateighteenth century which they had come to consider as theirexclusive property. Resolute conservatives in theory, piquingthemselves on their descent, their personal elegance, their tactand refinement, these worshippers of Marie Antoinette admired thetalent shown by Hébert in his infamous Père Duchêne , andthen went on to lament the influence of socialism on literature.They were papalini who sympathized with Garibaldi; theylooked forward to a repetition of '93, and almost welcomed