Remy de Gourmont
Encyclopedia
Remy de Gourmont was a French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
Symbolist
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
poet, novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
ist, and influential critic
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
. He was widely read in his era, and an important influence on Blaise Cendrars
Blaise Cendrars
Frédéric Louis Sauser , better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss novelist and poet naturalized French in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the modernist movement.-Early years:...
. (The spelling Rémy de Gourmont is incorrect, albeit common and used by Ezra Pound in translations of his work.)
Life
De Gourmont came from a publishingPublishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
family from Cotentin. He was the son of count
Count
A count or countess is an aristocratic nobleman in European countries. The word count came into English from the French comte, itself from Latin comes—in its accusative comitem—meaning "companion", and later "companion of the emperor, delegate of the emperor". The adjective form of the word is...
Auguste-Marie de Gourmont and his countess, born Mathilde de Montfort. In 1866 he moved to a manor close to Villedieu
Villedieu
Villedieu is the name or part of the name of several communes in France:* Villedieu, Cantal, in the Cantal département]]* Villedieu, Côte-d'Or, in the Côte-d'Or département* Villedieu, Vaucluse, in the Vaucluse département...
near La Manche. He studied law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
at Caen
Caen
Caen is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the Calvados department and the capital of the Basse-Normandie region. It is located inland from the English Channel....
, and was awarded a bachelor's degree in law in 1879; upon his graduation he moved to Paris.
In 1881, de Gourmont was employed by the Bibliothèque Nationale. He began to write for general circulation periodicals such as Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
and Le Contemporain. He took an interest in ancient literature, following the footsteps of Gustave Kahn
Gustave Kahn
Gustave Kahn was a French Symbolist poet and art critic.Kahn was born in Metz.He claimed to have invented the term vers libre, or free verse; he was in any case one of the first European exponents of the form. His principal publications include Les Palais nomades, 1887, Domaine de fée, 1895, and...
. During this period, he also met Berthe Courrière, model and heir of the sculptor Auguste Clésinger
Auguste Clésinger
Auguste Clésinger was a 19th-century French sculptor and painter.- Life :...
, which whom he struck a lifelong attachment. The two lived together for the rest of their lives.
De Gourmont also began a literary alliance with Joris-Karl Huysmans
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans was a French novelist who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans . He is most famous for the novel À rebours...
, to whom he dedicated his prose work le Latin mystique ("Mystical Latin"). In 1889 de Gourmont became one of the founders of the Mercure de France
Mercure de France
The Mercure de France was originally a French gazette and literary magazine first published in the 17th century, but after several incarnations has evolved as a publisher, and is now part of the Éditions Gallimard publishing group....
. Between 1893 and 1894 he was the co-editor, along with Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....
, of L'Ymagier
L'Ymagier
L’Ymagier, subtitled “A Magazine of Engravings” was a French symbolist art magazine edited by Alfred Jarry and Remy de Gourmont between 1894 and 1895...
, a magazine dedicated to symbolist wood carvings. In 1891 he published a political polemic called Le Joujou Patriotisme ("Patriotism - a toy") which argued that France and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
shared an aesthetic culture and urged a rapprochement between the two countries, contrary to the wishes of nationalists in the French government. The fallout from this political essay led to his losing his job at the Bibliothèque Nationale, in despite of Octave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeau was a French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde...
's chronicles.
During this same period, de Gourmont was stricken with the disease lupus vulgaris
Lupus vulgaris
Lupus vulgaris are painful cutaneous tuberculosis skin lesions with nodular appearance, most often on the face around nose, eyelids, lips, cheeks and ears. The lesions may ultimately develop into disfiguring skin ulcers if left untreated...
. Disfigured by this illness, he largely retired from public view, appearing only at the offices of the Mercure de France. In 1910, de Gourmont met Natalie Clifford Barney
Natalie Clifford Barney
Natalie Clifford Barney was an American playwright, poet and novelist who lived as an expatriate in Paris....
, to whom he dedicated his Lettres à l'Amazone ("Letters to the Amazon").
However, de Gourmont's health continued to decline during this period, and he began to suffer from locomotor ataxia
Locomotor ataxia
Locomotor ataxia is the inability to precisely control one's own bodily movements. Persons afflicted with this disease may walk in a jerky, nonfluid manner. They will not know where their arms and legs are without looking, but can, for instance, feel and locate a hot object placed against their feet...
and be increasingly unable to walk. He was deeply depressed by the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
as well, and died of cerebral congestion in 1915. Berthe Courrière was his sole heir; she inherited a substantial body of unpublished work from him, which she sent to his brother Jean de Gourmont; she died within a year of his death. De Gourmont is buried in Père-Lachaise.
Works
His poetic works include Litanies de la rose (1892), Les Saintes du paradis (1898), and Divertissements (1912). His poems plunge from perhaps ironic piety to equally ironic blasphemy; they reflect, more than anything else, his interest in mediæval Latin literatureLatin literature
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings of the ancient Romans. In many ways, it seems to be a continuation of Greek literature, using many of the same forms...
, and his works led to a fad for late Latin literature among authors like Joris-Karl Huysmans
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans was a French novelist who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans . He is most famous for the novel À rebours...
. He was also a literary critic of great importance, and was admired by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
and Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
in that capacity.
Prose
- Sixtine, roman de la vie cérébrale
- Lettres à l'Amazone
- Le latin mystique
- Le joujou patriotisme
- Le Livre des masques
- Esthétique de la langue française
- Physique de l'amour
Poetry
- Litanies de la rose
- Les Saintes du paradis
- Divertissements
- Les feuilles mortes
Quotation
- Que tes mains soient bénies, car elles sont impures!
- Elles ont des péchés cachés à toutes les jointures;
- Leur peau blanche s'est trempée dans l'odeur âpre des caresses
- Secrètes, parmi l'ombre blanche où rampent les caresses,
- Et l'opale prisonnière qui se meurt à ton doigt,
- C'est le dernier soupir de Jésus sur la croix.
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External links
- Selected poems by Remy de Gourmont (in French): http://poesie.webnet.fr/auteurs/gourmont.html
- Les amateurs de Remy de Gourmont (site is in French): http://www.remydegourmont.org/