FRANCS
203
FRANCE
selves in the theories and the works of the Parnassian
poets, so called because the first collection of their
verses appeared (in ISiilJ) under the title "Parnasse
conteniporain ". The Parnassian poetry is character-
ized, in the first place, by great striving after imper-
sonality, the writer making it his object to avoid
putting into his work anything of his own personal
Mahie de France
XIII Century MS., Bibliothf'que de I'Arsi^nal, Paris
emotions; and next, anxious to be before all things an artist, the writer carries to an excess the effort to attain perfection of form. The chief of the Parnas- sian school was Leconte de ITsle (1S20-1894); he does not take himself as the theme of his "Poemes an- tiques" (1853) or his "Poemes barbares" (1862); his theme is the history of humanity. His work is at once learned, epical, and pliilosophical. Others belonging to the Parnassian school, though each with his own personality, are: J. M. de H^r^dia (1842-1905), an immediate disciple of Leconte de I'lsle, who has man- aged to produce a complete picture of some epoch in each of the sonnets of his "Tro[5h^es" (1893); Sully- Prudhomme, both poet of the interior life and poet philosopher; Francois Copp^e, whose true originality consists in being the poet of the common people and of their everyday life. In reaction against certain ten- dencies of the Parnassians there appeared in the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Symbolist poets, grouped around Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), who in some points of view recalls Villon, and Stephane Mal- larmS (1842-1898). It is as yet difficult to define the action and the degree of importance of these SjTnbolist poets, who, moreover, made a merit of being obscure. At present Parnassism and Symbolism seem to have been reconciled in the person of M. Henri de Regnier (b. 1864). We may mention, also, among the poets of to-day, M. Jean Richepin, a belated Romantic.
In the second half of the nineteenth century the romance developed to an extent even more consider- able than in the first. It tends to engulf all the other literary forms and become itself the only department of literature. It is a convenient frame successively for historical pictures, studies of passion, pictures of manners, and moral theories. The same tendencies appear in it as we have already noted in the period from 1820 to 1850, with, however, this notable differ- ence, that the realistic current becomes much stronger. This time the originator and master is Gustave Flau- bert, author of one of the masterpieces of all romance, "Madame Bovary" (1857). The peculiar character- istic of Flaubert is his combination of the elements of Romanticism with those of Realism. For him the great Romantic masters — Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo — are the objects of a special cult; on another side, by his conception of art, Flaubert is a Realist. In the first place he does not admit the propriety of a
writer's putting himself into liis work; the work must
be objective, impersonal, impassive. In the second
place he makes it his task to paint life as it is, or as he
sees it, with whatever there may be in it of unlovelj-
ncss and of vulgarity. This theory of the romance is
in evidence in all his works, as much in a study of pro-
vincial bourgeois life, like "Madame Bovary", as in a
picture of Paris life, like "I'Education sentimentale ",
or a reconstruction of a vanished civilization, like
"Salammbo" (1862).
From Flaubert's example and from the misinterpre- tation of Positivist theories issued the Naturalistic school. This again was realism, but realism publish- ing far and wide its own scientific pretensions and seeking to assimilate the processes of literature to those of science. The leader, and the theorist, of Naturalism was Emile Zola (1840-1902), a writer whose gift was compounded of strength and triviality, and whose books ("Les Rougon-Macquart", a series of romances, from 1871 to 1893), are tainted with an unpardonable coarseness. To the Naturalistic school belong the Goncourt brothers, who have sought to ex- press reality by the aid of a bizarre, tortured, and pedantic vocabulary, and Guy de Maupassant (1850- 1893), whose powers of observation, his intensity of vision, and a robust style borrowed from the finest traditions place him among the best writers of this group. Alphonse Daudet (1840-97), another WTiter who aims to portray life as it is, nevertheless stands apart from Naturalism by virtue of his own peculiar qualities of sensibility, fancy, and irony. If he has painted Parisian life (" Le Nabab ", 1879) , he has none the less succeeded in descriljing the destinies of the lowly with a sympathetic tenderness.
In spite of the encroaching Realistic tendencies, the idealist and Romantic romance, in the manner of George Sand, survived with Octave Feuillet (1821- 91), a dainty writer who embodies in a wonderful de- gree the type of the fashionable story-teller. How- ever, after 1885, although Realism is still the iiispira- tion of most French fiction. Naturalism, with its ex- aggerations, its deliberate determination to be coarse, its narrow and brutal aesthetics, loses ground and soon falls into disrepute. The traditions of the romance of psychological analysis reappear with M. Paul Bourget, who, following the example of Octave FeuiUet, chooses fashionable life as the setting of his stories. In recent years M. Bourget has broadened his manner and at- tacked the great moral and social problems of the hour ("L'Etape", 1902; "Un divorce", 1904; "L'Emi- gr^", 1907). M. Edouard Rod, a Swiss by birth, has
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iJlbllothequc N
undertaken in his romances to deal with questions of
conscience. On another side, by way of reaction
against the crass dogmatism of Zola and his school, a
certain number of writers, with a talent for playing
upon fine shades of meaning and a very especial taste
for crowding contrary ideas together, have taken a
