Chapitre 1839

René-François-Armand Prudhomme, known as Sully Prudhomme, combines the artistic punctiliousness of a Parnassien with sincere emotion and a deeply philosophic mind. The intellectual quality of his work is conspicuous, but hardly less so the grace and finish of its form. It bears deep traces of the influence of the scientific movement of our time and of the transformation it has wrought in our ideas of man and nature and their relations. The personal emotion from which his lyrics spring appears always intellectually illumined, with its background of scientific corollaries and logical consequences. It is not abandoned to itself, to wreak itself on expression, but is checked by the challenge of doubt or scientific curiosity or moral scruple. His verse thus unites in rare degree the qualities of lyrical impulse and philosophical reflection.

Works: Stances et Poèmes, 1865; les Épreuves, 1866; les Solitudes, 1869; les Destins, 1872; les Vaines Tendresses, 1875; la Justice, 1878; le Prisme, 1886; le Bonheur, 1888; these have appeared in a new edition as Oeuvres, 5 vols., 1883-1888.

For reference: J. Lemaître, les Contemporains, vol. i, 1886; E. Caro, Poètes et romanciers, 1888; G. Paris, Penseurs et poètes, 1896; F. Brunetière, Évolution de la poésie lyrique, vol. ii, 1894.

The first eleven poems are from Stances et Poèmes. LES DANAÏDES, UN SONGE and LE RENDEZ VOUS are from les Épreuves; LA VOIE LACTÉE is from les Solitudes; REPENTIR, from Impressions de la Guerre (1872;) CE QUI DURE, LES INFIDÈLES, LES AMOURS TERRESTRES and L’ALPHABET, from les Vaines Tendresses; and the last two sonnets, from la Justice.

255. LE LEVER DU SOLEIL. 5. Hellade, Hellas, country inhabited by the Hellenes, or Greeks, a name at first given to a district of Thessaly, later to all Greece.

257. LES DANAÏDES. The Danaïdes were the fifty daughters of Danaus, twin-brother of Aegyptus, whose fifty sons they married and then murdered. As a punishment they were condemned to pour water forever into a sieve. 2. Théano, Callidie, Amymone, Agavé are names of four of the daughters.

ALPHONSE DAUDET.

1840-1897.

Though of world-wide fame as a brilliant novelist, he introduced himself to the public by a volume of verse, les Amoureuses, which contains many poems delicate in sentiment and exquisite in style.

HENRI CAZALIS (JEAN LAHOR).