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Rémy de Gourmont (1858-1915) | |
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French essayist, novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher, a prominent figure of the French Symbolist movement. Gourmont's some 50 published volumes are mainly collections of essays. During his lifetime Gourmount enjoyed considerable fame both in France and in English-speaking countries. Later his views on literature affected such writers as Ezra Pound, John Middleton Murray, and T.S. Eliot, who praised him as "the perfect critic." In 1921 Aldous Huxley published Gourmont's A Virgin Heart, his translation of Un cœur virginal (1907). "Conformism, imitativeness, submission to rules and to teachings is the writer's capital crime. The work of a writer must be not only the reflection, but the larger reflection of his personality. The only excuse that a man has for his writing is to write about himself, to reveal to others the sort of world that is mirrored in his own glass; his only excuse is to be original; he must speak of things not yet spoken of in a form not yet formulated. He must create his own aesthetics - and we must admit as many aesthetics as there are original spirits and judge them for what they are, not for what they aren't." (Gourmont in his introduction to the first Book of Masks, 1896-98) Rémy de Gourmont was born in Bazoches-en-Houlme, Orne, in Normandy, into an old aristocratic family. His mother Marie, née de Montfort, was a descendant of the poet François de Malherbe (1555-1628). After studies at a lycée in Countances from 1868 to 1876, he entered the University of Caen, where he studied law. From 1881 to 1891 he worked as an assistant librarian at Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Although Gourmont detested his job, the endless rows of books provided him means to devote himself to his polymath interests and esoteric studies. His first book of criticism, Le Latin mystique (1992), was about medieval hymnology. From the early 1880s Gourmont contributed to many periodicals. In 1887 he started a liaison with Berthe de Courrière. His literary friends included Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and Huysmans. With Alfred Vallette and other symbolist he cofounded Mercure de France, a highly influential magazine, and was its major contributor from 1890. He was also cofounder of L'Ymagier (1894-96) and La Revue des Idées in 1904. Gourmont was dismissed in 1891 for publishing in the Mercure de France an "unpatriotic" article, 'Le joujou patriotisme', which attacked French chauvinism and criticized government's policy toward Germany. He retreated into a semi-recluse in his Paris apartment due to a tubercular skin disease (lupus erythrematosus) which disfigured his face. Perhaps this was a reason why his erotic poems have been characterized as cold and distant. "Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity," he once said. In The Natural Philosophy of Love (1904) Gourmont claimed that "love" is no more than a primitive instinct. "There is no abyss between man and animal; the two domains are separated by a tiny rivulet which a baby could step over. We are animals, we live on animals, and animals live on us. We both have and are parasites. We are predatory, and we are the living prey of the predatory. And when we follow the love act, it is truly, in the idiom of theologians, more bestiarum. Love is profoundly animal; therein is its beauty." André Gide attacked in Corydon (1924) Gourmont's sexual theories - he considered Gourmont as "one of the spirits I detest most". Gourmont's fame started to decline after Le Problème du style (1902) which was marked the peak of his career and widely commented. In it he emphasized image - this view influenced the literary movement known as Imaginism. Poetry makes us see the world in the literal sense, not just realize. Gourmont defined style mainly in terms of its visual qualities and notes that Flaubert understood that the art of description is the art of seeing. During the last years of his life, Gourmont was often visited by the American writer Natalie Clifford Barney, a pioneer of lesbian writing, whom he called l'Amazone (the Amazon). Gourmont's letters to Barney were published in Lettres à l'Amazone (1914) and Lettres intimes à l'Amazone (1926). Gourmount died in Paris, on September 27, 1915. He had a stroke while he was writing an article condemning the Germans for shelling of Rheims Cathedral. Gourmont's younger brother Jean (1877-1928), who was also a writer, took charge of his estate. The Book of Masks (1896-98) portrayed a number of leading writers of the time. It was one of the first studies to define symbolist aesthetics. Gourmont was a strong opponent of Naturalism and its major representative, Emile Zola. "Literature in fact is nothing less than the artistic development of an idea, the symbolizing of the idea by means of the imaginary hero. The heroes, or these men (for every man is a hero in his own sphere) are only sketched out by life; it is art which completes them by giving them, in exchange for their poor sick souls, the treasure of an immortal idea, and the most humble of men can be called to this participation, if he is chosen by a great poet." (from Book of Masks, 1896-98) As an essayist Gourmont wrote on a wide range of subjects. His collections of essays are mostly drawn from articles originally published in Mercure de France. Gourmont believed in the autonomous value of critical writings, and like Montaigne, he argued with personal, conversationalist tone. He did not offer definitive answers, but preferred "dissociation of ideas" to fixed truths. Gourmont saw that style above all was the most important thing in the craft of writing: "the criticism of style would suffice as literary criticism; it contains all the others." Often Gourmont crystallized his ideas aphoristically and ironically: "Posterity is like a schoolchild condemned to learn by heart a hundred lines of verse. He remembers ten, and stammers a few syllables of the rest. Ten lines are the fame; the rest is literary history." Epilogues (1903-1913) was a commentary on contemporary events and persons, Promenades littéraires (1904-27) and Promenades philosophiques (1905-09) were literary and philosophical essays. Gourmont also published works on style, language, and aesthetics. His intellectual attitude and concern with the artistic arrangement of musical words marked his novels, which include Sixtine (1890), a "novel of cerebral life," as Gourmont himself described, Les Chevaux de Diomède (1897), Le Songe d'une femme (1899), and Un cœur virginal (1907). From his love for words, their savor and music, also originated L'Esthétique de la langue française (1899). For further reading: Aspects and Impressions by Edmund Gosse (1922); Rémy de Gourmont. son œuvre by Legrand-Chabrier (1925); Rémy de Gourmont: A Modern Man of Letters by Richard Aldrington (1928); Rémy de Gourmont by P.E. Jacob (1931); Rémy de Gourmont: essai da biographie intellectuelle by G. Rees (1940); Rémy de Gourmont, Literary Critic by Glenn S. Burne (1956); Rémy de Gourmont, His Ideas and Influence in England and America by Gelnn S. Burne ( 1963); Instigations: Ezra Pound and Rémy de Gourmont by Richard Sieburth (1978); A History of Modern Criticism 1750-1950, vol. 8, by René Wellek (1992, p. 23-25) - For further information: Les Œuvres de Rémy de Gourmont - The Natural Philosophy of Love, trans. by Ezra Pound - Note: the American writer Ben Hecht selected Gourmont's Natural Philosophy of Love for his list of 50 books he would keep in his library. Selected works:
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