103-489: André Paul Guillaume Gide ( French: [ɑ̃dʁe pɔl ɡijom ʒid] ; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a prolific French writer and author whose writings spanned a wide variety of styles and topics. He was awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature . Gide's career ranged from his beginnings in the symbolist movement, to criticising imperialism between the two World Wars. The author of more than fifty books, he
206-528: A book about the Blanche Monnier case titled La Séquestrée de Poitiers , changing little but the names of the protagonists. Monnier was a young woman who was kept captive by her own mother for more than 25 years. In 1939, Gide became the first living author to be published in the prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade . He left France for Africa in 1942 and lived in Tunis from December 1942 until it
309-417: A career in law or diplomacy, but instead Baudelaire decided to embark upon a literary career. His mother later recalled: "Oh, what grief! If Charles had let himself be guided by his stepfather, his career would have been very different ... He would not have left a name in literature, it is true, but we should have been happier, all three of us." His stepfather sent him on a voyage to Calcutta, India in 1841 in
412-399: A concern for others less fortunate than himself." André Gide's writings spanned many genres – "As a master of prose narrative, occasional dramatist and translator, literary critic, letter writer, essayist, and diarist, André Gide provided twentieth-century French literature with one of its most intriguing examples of the man of letters." But as Gide's biographer Alan Sheridan points out, "It
515-723: A continuous and developing tradition." In Thesee , written in 1946, he showed that an individual may safely leave the Maze only if "he had clung tightly to the thread which linked him with the past". In 1947, he said that although during the human history the civilizations rose up and died, the Christian civilization may be saved from doom "if we accepted the responsibility of the sacred charge laid on us by our traditions and our past." He also said that he remained an individualist and protested against "the submersion of individual responsibility in organized authority, in that escape from freedom which
618-453: A crucial moment, considering that finding himself no longer the sole focus of his mother's affection left him with a trauma, which goes some way to explaining the excesses later apparent in his life. He stated in a letter to her that, "There was in my childhood a period of passionate love for you." Baudelaire regularly begged his mother for money throughout his career, often promising that a lucrative publishing contract or journalistic commission
721-571: A defense of pederasty . At that time, the age of consent for any type of sexual activity was set at 13. 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature The 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the French author André Gide "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight". André Gide's early works such as
824-407: A dramatically different perspective. Benjamin translated Baudelaire's Tableaux Parisiens into German and published a major essay on translation as the foreword. In the late 1930s, Benjamin used Baudelaire as a starting point and focus for Das Passagenwerk , his monumental attempt at a materialist assessment of 19th-century culture. For Benjamin, Baudelaire's importance lay in his anatomies of
927-778: A favour to the Fascists, who greeted it with joy. In 1937, in response, Gide published Afterthoughts on the U. S. S. R. ; earlier, Gide read Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed and met Victor Serge who provided him more information about the Soviet Union. In Afterthoughts , Gide is more direct in his criticism of the Soviet society: "Citrine, Trotsky, Mercier, Yvon, Victor Serge, Leguay, Rudolf and many others have helped me with their documentation. Everything they have taught me so far I had only suspected it – has confirmed and reinforced my fears". The main points of Afterthoughts were that
1030-429: A homosexual?" Gide "No monsieur, I am not a homosexual, I am a pederast!" —from Vedres' documentary Life Starts Tomorrow (1950) Gide's journal documents his behavior in the company of Oscar Wilde . Wilde took a key out of his pocket and showed me into a tiny apartment of two rooms...The youths followed him, each of them wrapped in a burnous that hid his face. Then the guide left us and Wilde sent me into
1133-538: A letter as "the king of poets, a true God". In 1895, Stéphane Mallarmé published "Le Tombeau de Charles Baudelaire", a sonnet in Baudelaire's memory. Marcel Proust , in an essay published in 1922, stated that, along with Alfred de Vigny , Baudelaire was "the greatest poet of the nineteenth century". In the English-speaking world, Edmund Wilson credited Baudelaire as providing an initial impetus for
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#17327987724001236-546: A long time, as she was the daughter of his friends Maria Monnom and Théo van Rysselberghe , a Belgian neo-impressionist painter. This caused the only crisis in the long-standing relationship between Allégret and Gide, and damaged his friendship with van Rysselberghe. This was possibly Gide's only sexual relationship with a woman, and it was brief in the extreme. Catherine was his only descendant by blood. He liked to call Elisabeth "La Dame Blanche" ("The White Lady"). Elisabeth eventually left her husband to move to Paris and manage
1339-919: A massive stroke in 1866 and paralysis followed. After more than a year of aphasia , he received the last rites of the Catholic Church. The last year of his life was spent in a semi-paralyzed state in various "maisons de santé" in Brussels and in Paris, where he died on 31 August 1867. Baudelaire is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse , Paris. Many of Baudelaire's works were published posthumously. After his death, his mother paid off his substantial debts, and she found some comfort in Baudelaire's emerging fame. "I see that my son, for all his faults, has his place in literature." She lived another four years. Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of
1442-452: A melody by Weber." Delacroix, though appreciative, kept his distance from Baudelaire, particularly after the scandal of Les Fleurs du mal . In private correspondence, Delacroix stated that Baudelaire "really gets on my nerves" and he expressed his unhappiness with Baudelaire's persistent comments about "melancholy" and "feverishness". Baudelaire had no formal musical training, and knew little of composers beyond Beethoven and Weber . Weber
1545-449: A new urban sensibility, an awareness of individual moral complexity, an interest in vice (linked with decadence ) and refined sensual and aesthetic pleasures, and the use of urban subject matter, such as the city, the crowd, individual passers-by, all expressed in highly ordered verse, sometimes through a cynical and ironic voice. Formally, the use of sound to create atmosphere, and of "symbols" (images that take on an expanded function within
1648-413: A pederast the man who, as the word indicates, falls in love with young boys. I call a sodomite ("The word is sodomite, sir," said Verlaine to the judge who asked him if it were true that he was a sodomist) the man whose desire is addressed to mature men...The pederasts, of whom I am one (why cannot I say this quite simply, without your immediately claiming to see a brag in my confession?), are much rarer, and
1751-652: A rap about all these imbeciles, and I know that this book, with its virtues and its faults, will make its way in the memory of the lettered public, beside the best poems of V. Hugo, Th. Gautier and even Byron." Baudelaire, his publisher and the printer were successfully prosecuted for creating an offense against public morals. They were fined, but Baudelaire was not imprisoned. Six of the poems were suppressed, but printed later as Les Épaves ( The Wrecks ) (Brussels, 1866). Another edition of Les Fleurs du mal , without these poems, but with considerable additions, appeared in 1861. Many notables rallied behind Baudelaire and condemned
1854-675: A room in La Valeuse Cottage in St Brelade . Whilst there he worked on the second chapter of Strait Is the Gate (French: La Porte étroite ), and van Rysselberghe painted his portrait. In 1908, Gide helped found the literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Française ( The New French Review ). During World War I, Gide visited England. One of his friends there was artist William Rothenstein . Rothenstein described Gide's visit to his Gloucestershire home in his autobiography: André Gide
1957-485: A senior civil servant and amateur artist, who at 60, was 34 years older than Baudelaire's 26-year-old mother, Caroline (née Dufaÿs) (1794–1871); she was his second wife. Joseph-François died during Baudelaire's childhood, at rue Hautefeuille, Paris, on 10 February 1827. The following year, Caroline married Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Aupick [ fr ] , who later became a French ambassador to various noble courts. Baudelaire's biographers have often seen this as
2060-486: A short period of time. During this time, Jeanne Duval , a Haitian born actress became his mistress. She was rejected by his family. His mother thought Duval a "Black Venus" who "tortured him in every way" and drained him of money at every opportunity. Baudelaire made a suicide attempt during this period. He took part in the Revolutions of 1848 and wrote for a revolutionary newspaper. However, his interest in politics
2163-428: A sizable inheritance but squandered much of it within a few years. His family obtained a decree to place his property in trust, which he resented bitterly, at one point arguing that allowing him to fail financially would have been the one sure way of teaching him to keep his finances in order. Baudelaire became known in artistic circles as a dandy and free-spender, going through much of his inheritance and allowance in
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#17327987724002266-431: A strict and moralistic education had helped set these facets at odds. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritanical constraints. He worked to achieve intellectual honesty. As a self-professed pederast , he used his writing to explore his struggle to be fully oneself, including owning one's sexual nature, without betraying one's values. His political activity
2369-497: A talent which will stand the test of time. But he has a weak character. He seems to me crushed and stunned by shock." In his painting Music in the Tuileries , Manet includes portraits of his friends Théophile Gautier , Jacques Offenbach , and Baudelaire. While it's difficult to differentiate who influenced whom, both Manet and Baudelaire discussed and expressed some common themes through their respective arts. Baudelaire praised
2472-405: A tutor for her son. Élie Allégret had been best man at Gide's wedding. After Gide fled with Marc to London, his wife Madeleine burned all his correspondence in retaliation– "the best part of myself," Gide later commented. In 1918, Gide met and befriended Dorothy Bussy ; they were friends for more than 30 years, and she translated many of his works into English. Gide also became close friends with
2575-408: A while at Honfleur . Baudelaire was productive and at peace in the seaside town, his poem Le Voyage being one example of his efforts during that time. In 1860, he became an ardent supporter of Richard Wagner . His financial difficulties increased again, however, particularly after his publisher Poulet Malassis went bankrupt in 1861. In 1864, he left Paris for Belgium, partly in the hope of selling
2678-405: A wide range of subjects, drawing criticism and outrage from many quarters. Along with Poe, Baudelaire named the arch-reactionary Joseph de Maistre as his maître à penser and adopted increasingly aristocratic views. In his journals, he wrote: "There is no form of rational and assured government save an aristocracy . […] There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and
2781-415: Is Baudelaire's use of imagery of the sense of smell and of fragrances, which is used to evoke feelings of nostalgia and past intimacy. The book, however, quickly became a byword for unwholesomeness among mainstream critics of the day. Some critics called a few of the poems "masterpieces of passion, art and poetry," but other poems were deemed to merit no less than legal action to suppress them. J. Habas led
2884-463: Is characteristic of our age." Gide contributed to the 1949 anthology The God That Failed . He could not write an essay because of his state of health, so the text was written by Enid Starkie , based on paraphrases of Return from the USSR , Afterthoughts , from a discussion held in Paris at l'Union pour la Verite in 1935, and from his Journal ; the text was approved by Gide. In 1930 Gide published
2987-422: Is clad, as you will see, in a cold and sinister beauty. It was created with rage and patience. Besides, the proof of its positive worth is in all the ill that they speak of it. The book enrages people. Moreover, since I was terrified myself of the horror that I should inspire, I cut out a third from the proofs. They deny me everything, the spirit of invention and even the knowledge of the French language. I don't care
3090-418: Is immediately stifled. And I doubt whether in any other country in the world, even Hitler's Germany, thought to be less free, more bowed down, more fearful (terrorized), more vassalized. Gide does not express his attitude towards Stalin, but he describes the signs of his personality cult: "in each [home], ... the same portrait of Stalin, and nothing else"; "portrait of Stalin... , in the same place no doubt where
3193-454: Is the fiction that lies at the summit of Gide's work." "Here, as in the oeuvre as a whole, what strikes one first is the variety. Here, too, we see Gide's curiosity, his youthfulness, at work: a refusal to mine only one seam, to repeat successful formulas...The fiction spans the early years of Symbolism, to the "comic, more inventive, even fantastic" pieces, to the later "serious, heavily autobiographical, first-person narratives"...In France Gide
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3296-413: Is wanted now is compliance, conformism. What is desired and demanded is approval of all that is done in the U. S. S. R.; and an attempt is being made to obtain an approval that is not mere resignation, but a sincere, an enthusiastic approval. What is most astounding is that this attempt is successful. On the other hand the smallest protest, the least criticism, is liable to the severest penalties, and in fact
3399-401: Is what makes Gide's work 'essentially modern': the 'perpetual renewal of the values by which one lives.'" Gide wrote in his Journal in 1930: "The only drama that really interests me and that I should always be willing to depict anew, is the debate of the individual with whatever keeps him from being authentic, with whatever is opposed to his integrity, to his integration. Most often the obstacle
3502-417: Is within him. And all the rest is merely accidental." As a whole, "The works of André Gide reveal his passionate revolt against the restraints and conventions inherited from 19th-century France. He sought to uncover the authentic self beneath its contradictory masks." In his journal, Gide distinguishes between adult-attracted "sodomites" and boy-loving "pederasts", categorizing himself as the latter. I call
3605-471: The Index of Forbidden Books in 1952. Gide's biographer Alan Sheridan summed up Gide's life as a writer and an intellectual: Gide was, by general consent, one of the dozen most important writers of the 20th century. Moreover, no writer of such stature had led such an interesting life, a life accessibly interesting to us as readers of his autobiographical writings, his journal, his voluminous correspondence and
3708-471: The Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, studying law, a popular course for those not yet decided on any particular career. He began to frequent prostitutes and may have contracted gonorrhea and syphilis during this period. He also began to run up debts, mostly for clothes. Upon gaining his degree in 1839, he told his brother "I don't feel I have a vocation for anything." His stepfather had in mind
3811-526: The Romantics , and are based on observations of real life. His most famous work, a book of lyric poetry titled Les Fleurs du mal ( The Flowers of Evil ), expresses the changing nature of beauty in the rapidly industrialising Paris caused by Haussmann's renovation of Paris during the mid-19th century. Baudelaire's original style of prose-poetry influenced a generation of poets including Paul Verlaine , Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé . He coined
3914-525: The Soviet Union as a guest of the Soviet Union of Writers. He encountered censorship of his speeches and was particularly disillusioned with the state of culture under Soviet Communism. In his work, Retour de L'U.R.S.S. ( Return from the USSR , 1936), he broke with such socialist friends as Jean-Paul Sartre ; the book was addressed to pro-Soviet readers, so the purpose was to expose a reader to doubts instead of presenting harsh criticism. While admitting
4017-821: The Symbolist movement by virtue of his translations of Poe. In 1930, T. S. Eliot , while asserting that Baudelaire had not yet received a "just appreciation" even in France, claimed that the poet had "great genius" and asserted that his "technical mastery which can hardly be overpraised ... has made his verse an inexhaustible study for later poets, not only in his own language". In a lecture delivered in French on "Edgar Allan Poe and France" (Edgar Poe et la France) in Aix-en-Provence in April 1948, Eliot stated that "I am an English poet of American origin who learnt his art under
4120-565: The 1850s, and denouncing it as an art form, advocated its return to "its real purpose, which is that of being the servant to the sciences and arts". Photography should not, according to Baudelaire, encroach upon "the domain of the impalpable and the imaginary". Nadar remained a stalwart friend right to Baudelaire's last days and wrote his obituary notice in Le Figaro . Many of Baudelaire's philosophical proclamations were considered scandalous and intentionally provocative in his time. He wrote on
4223-436: The 1920s, Gide became an inspiration for such writers as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre . In 1923, he published a book on Fyodor Dostoyevsky . When he defended homosexuality in the public edition of Corydon (1924), he received widespread condemnation. He later considered this his most important work. In 1923, Gide sired a daughter, Catherine , by Elisabeth van Rysselberghe , a much younger woman. He had known her for
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4326-470: The Bible; [who enjoyed playing Chopin and other classic works on the piano;] and who engaged in commenting on the moral, political and sexual questions of the day. "Gide's fame rested ultimately, of course, on his literary works. But, unlike many writers, he was no recluse: he had a need of friendship and a genius for sustaining it." But his "capacity for love was not confined to his friends: it spilled over into
4429-474: The Romantic painter Delacroix , Baudelaire called him "a poet in painting". Baudelaire also absorbed much of Delacroix's aesthetic ideas as expressed in his journals. As Baudelaire elaborated in his "Salon of 1846", "As one contemplates his series of pictures, one seems to be attending the celebration of some grievous mystery...This grave and lofty melancholy shines with a dull light.. plaintive and profound like
4532-787: The United States in 1952. From July 1926 to May 1927, Gide traveled through the colony of French Equatorial Africa with his lover Marc Allégret . They went successively to Middle Congo (now the Republic of the Congo), Ubangi-Shari (now the Central African Republic), briefly to Chad and then to Cameroon. He kept a journal, which he published as Travels in the Congo (French: Voyage au Congo ) and Return from Chad (French: Retour du Tchad ). In this work, he criticized
4635-467: The World War II Gide came to a conclusion that "absolute liberty destroys the individual and also society unless it be closely linked to tradition and discipline"; he rejected the revolutionary idea of Communism as breaking with the traditions, and wrote that "if civilization depended solely on those who initiated revolutionary theories, then it would perish, since culture needs for its survival
4738-529: The aegis of Baudelaire and the Baudelairian lineage of poets." Eliot also alluded to Baudelaire's poetry directly in his own poetry. For example, he quoted the last line of Baudelaire's "Au Lecteur" in the last line of Section I of The Waste Land . At the same time that Eliot was affirming Baudelaire's importance from a broadly conservative and explicitly Christian viewpoint, left-wing critics such as Wilson and Walter Benjamin were able to do so from
4841-455: The banishment of truth, one of the distressing symptoms of war. The Germans were not all black, and the Allies all white, for Gide. In 1916, Gide was about 47 years old when he took Marc Allégret , age 15, as a lover. Marc was one of five children of Élie Allégret and his wife. Gide had become friends with the senior Allégret during his own school years when Gide's mother had hired Allégret as
4944-505: The behavior of French business interests in the Congo and inspired reform. In particular, he strongly criticized the Large Concessions regime (French: Régime des Grandes Concessions ). The government had conceded part of the colony to French companies, allowing them to exploit the area's natural resources, in particular rubber. He related that native workers were forced to leave their village for several weeks to collect rubber in
5047-423: The best. These were published as Histoires extraordinaires ( Extraordinary stories ) (1856), Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires ( New extraordinary stories ) (1857), Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym , Eureka , and Histoires grotesques et sérieuses ( Grotesque and serious stories ) (1865). Two essays on Poe are to be found in his Œuvres complètes ( Complete works ) (vols. v. and vi.). A strong supporter of
5150-451: The charge against Baudelaire, writing in Le Figaro : "Everything in it which is not hideous is incomprehensible, everything one understands is putrid." Baudelaire responded to the outcry in a prophetic letter to his mother: "You know that I have always considered that literature and the arts pursue an aim independent of morality. Beauty of conception and style is enough for me. But this book, whose title ( Fleurs du mal ) says everything,
5253-520: The critic Charles Du Bos . Together they were part of the Foyer Franco-Belge , in which capacity they worked to find employment, food and housing for Franco-Belgian refugees who arrived in Paris following the 1914 German invasion of Belgium . Their friendship later declined, due to Du Bos's perception that Gide had disavowed or betrayed his spiritual faith, in contrast to Du Bos's own return to faith. Du Bos's essay Dialogue avec André Gide
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#17327987724005356-463: The crowd, of the city and of modernity. He says that, in Les Fleurs du mal , "the specific devaluation of the world of things, as manifested in the commodity, is the foundation of Baudelaire's allegorical intention." François Porché published a poetry collection called Charles Baudelaire: Poetry Collection in memory of Baudelaire. The novel A Singular Conspiracy (1974) by Barry Perowne
5459-469: The dictatorship of the proletariat became the dictatorship of Stalin, and that the privileged bureaucracy became the new ruling class which profited by the workers' surplus labour , spending the state budget on projects like the Palace of Soviets or to raise its own standards of living, while the working class lived in extreme poverty; Gide cited the official Soviet newspapers to prove his statements. During
5562-400: The earlier 19th century, although its attention to the formal features of verse connects it more closely to the work of the contemporary "Parnassians". As for theme and tone, in his works we see the rejection of the belief in the supremacy of nature and the fundamental goodness of man as typically espoused by the romantics and expressed by them in rhetorical, effusive and public voice in favor of
5665-485: The economic and social achievements of the USSR compared to the Russian Empire, he noted the decay of culture, the erasure of the individuality of Soviet citizens, and the suppression of any dissent: Then would it not be better to, instead of playing on words, simply to acknowledge that the revolutionary spirit (or even simply the critical spirit) is no longer the correct thing, that it is not wanted any more? What
5768-413: The following decades. Gautier , writer and poet, earned Baudelaire's respect for his perfection of form and his mastery of language, though Baudelaire thought he lacked deeper emotion and spirituality. Both strove to express the artist's inner vision, which Heinrich Heine earlier stated: "In artistic matters, I am a supernaturalist. I believe that the artist can not find all his forms in nature, but that
5871-463: The forest, and compared their exploitation by the companies to slavery. The book contributed to the growing anti-colonialism movements in France and helped thinkers to re-evaluate the effects of colonialism in Africa. During the 1930s, Gide briefly became a Communist, or more precisely, a fellow traveler (he never formally joined any Communist party ), but he, an individualist himself, advocated
5974-478: The further room with little Mohammed and shut himself up in the other with the [other boy]. Every time since then that I have sought after pleasure, it is the memory of that night I have pursued...My joy was unbounded, and I cannot imagine it greater, even if love had been added. How should there have been any question of love? How should I have allowed desire to dispose of my heart? No scruple clouded my pleasure and no remorse followed it. But what name then am I to give
6077-477: The future theories of the Impressionist painters. In 1846, Baudelaire wrote his second Salon review, gaining additional credibility as an advocate and critic of Romanticism . His continued support of Delacroix as the foremost Romantic artist gained widespread notice. The following year Baudelaire's novella La Fanfarlo was published. Baudelaire was a slow and very attentive worker. However, he often
6180-497: The history of works of Balzac ) (1880), originally an article "Comment on paye ses dettes quand on a du génie" ("How one pays one's debts when one has genius"), in which his criticism turns against his friends Honoré de Balzac , Théophile Gautier , and Gérard de Nerval . By 1859, his illnesses, his long-term use of laudanum , his life of stress, and his poverty had taken a toll and Baudelaire had aged noticeably. But at last, his mother relented and agreed to let him live with her for
6283-419: The hope of ending his dissolute habits. The trip provided strong impressions of the sea, sailing, and exotic ports, that he later employed in his poetry. Baudelaire later exaggerated his aborted trip to create a legend about his youthful travels and experiences, including "riding on elephants". On returning to the taverns of Paris, he began to compose some of the poems of "Les Fleurs du Mal". At 21, he received
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#17327987724006386-499: The icon used to be. Is it adoration, love, or fear? I do not know; always and everywhere he is present." However, Gide wrote that these problems could be solved by raising the cultural level of Soviet society. When Gide began preparing his manuscript for publication, the Kremlin was immediately informed about it, and soon Gide would be visited by the Soviet author Ilya Ehrenburg , who said that he agreed with Gide, but asked to postpone
6489-539: The idea of Communist individualism. Despite supporting the Soviet Union, he acknowledged the political repression in the USSR. Gide insisted on the release of Victor Serge , a Soviet writer and a member of the Left Opposition who was prosecuted by the Stalinist regime for his views. As a distinguished writer sympathizing with the cause of Communism, he was invited to speak at Maxim Gorky 's funeral and to tour
6592-747: The latter was in exile. In 1895 the two men met in Algiers. Wilde had the impression that he had introduced Gide to homosexuality, but Gide had discovered homosexuality on his own. In 1895, after his mother's death, Gide married his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux, but the marriage remained unconsummated. In 1896, he was elected mayor of La Roque-Baignard , a commune in Normandy. Gide spent the summer of 1907 in Jersey , with friends Jacques Copeau and Théo van Rysselberghe and their families. He rented
6695-427: The miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness. This obsessive idea is above all a child of giant cities, of the intersecting of their myriad relations. Baudelaire is one of the major innovators in French literature. His poetry is influenced by the French romantic poets of
6798-408: The modernity of Manet's subject matter: "almost all our originality comes from the stamp that 'time' imprints upon our feelings." When Manet's famous Olympia (1865), a portrait of a nude prostitute, provoked a scandal for its blatant realism mixed with an imitation of Renaissance motifs , Baudelaire worked privately to support his friend, though he offered no public defense (he was, however, ill at
6901-676: The most remarkable are revealed to him in his soul." Gautier's frequent meditations on death and the horror of life are themes which influenced Baudelaire's writings. In gratitude for their friendship and commonality of vision, Baudelaire dedicated Les Fleurs du mal to Gautier. Manet and Baudelaire became constant companions from around 1855. In the early 1860s, Baudelaire accompanied Manet on daily sketching trips and often met him socially. Manet also lent Baudelaire money and looked after his affairs, particularly when Baudelaire went to Belgium. Baudelaire encouraged Manet to strike out on his own path and not succumb to criticism. "Manet has great talent,
7004-537: The narrator's." "In 1946, when Pierre Herbert asked Gide which of his books he would choose if only one were to survive," Gide replied, 'I think it would be my Journal.' " Beginning at the age of 18 or 19, Gide kept a journal all of his life and when these were first made available to the public, they ran to 1,300 pages. "Each volume that Gide wrote was intended to challenge itself, what had preceded it, and what could conceivably follow it. This characteristic, according to Daniel Moutote in his Cahiers de André Gide essay,
7107-542: The poem), betray a move towards considering the poem as a self-referential object, an idea further developed by the Symbolists Verlaine and Mallarmé , who acknowledge Baudelaire as a pioneer in this regard. Beyond his innovations in versification and the theories of symbolism and "correspondences", an awareness of which is essential to any appreciation of the literary value of his work, aspects of his work that regularly receive much critical discussion include
7210-428: The poet. To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practise what they call professions." Baudelaire's influence on the direction of modern French (and English) language literature was considerable. The most significant French writers to come after him were generous with tributes; four years after his death, Arthur Rimbaud praised him in
7313-777: The poet: Baudelaire next worked on a translation and adaptation of Thomas De Quincey 's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater . Other works in the years that followed included Petits Poèmes en prose ( Small Prose poems ); a series of art reviews published in the Pays, Exposition universelle ( Country, World Fair ); studies on Gustave Flaubert (in L'Artiste , 18 October 1857); on Théophile Gautier ( Revue contemporaine , September 1858); various articles contributed to Eugène Crépet's Poètes français ; Les Paradis artificiels : opium et haschisch ( French poets; Artificial Paradises: opium and hashish ) (1860); and Un Dernier Chapitre de l'histoire des oeuvres de Balzac ( A Final Chapter of
7416-745: The practical aspects of Gide's life (they had adjoining apartments built on the rue Vavin). She worshipped him, but evidently they no longer had a sexual relationship. In 1924, he published an autobiography If it Die... (French: Si le grain ne meurt ). In the same year, he produced the first French-language editions of Joseph Conrad 's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim . After 1925, Gide began to campaign for more humane conditions for convicted criminals. His legal wife, Madeleine Gide, died in 1938. Later he explored their unconsummated marriage in Et nunc manet in te , his memoir of Madeleine, published in English in
7519-410: The previous decade. The poems found a small, yet appreciative audience. However, greater public attention was given to their subject matter. The effect on fellow artists was, as Théodore de Banville stated, "immense, prodigious, unexpected, mingled with admiration and with some indefinable anxious fear". Gustave Flaubert , recently attacked in a similar fashion for Madame Bovary (and acquitted),
7622-407: The prize. Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire ( UK : / ˈ b oʊ d ə l ɛər / , US : / ˌ b oʊ d ( ə ) ˈ l ɛər / ; French: [ʃaʁl(ə) bodlɛʁ] ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet , essayist , translator and art critic . His poems are described as exhibiting mastery of rhyme and rhythm, containing an exoticism inherited from
7725-572: The prose poem Les nourritures terrestres ("Fruits of the Earth", 1897) were influenced by French symbolism . Later notable works include The L'Immoraliste ("The Immoralist", 1902), La Porte Étroite ("Strait is the Gate", 1907) and La Symphonie pastorale ("The Pastoral Symphony", 1919). The autobiographical Si le grain ne meurt ("If It Die...", 1924) is regarded as one of the great works of confessional literature . In 1926, his most complex novel Les faux-monnayeurs ("The Counterfeiters")
7828-529: The publication, as the Soviet Union assisted the Republicans in Spain; two days later, Louis Aragon delivered a letter from Jef Last asking to postpone the publication. These measures didn't help, and as the book was published, Gide was condemned in the Soviet press and by the "friends of the USSR": Nordahl Grieg wrote that the reason of writing the book was Gide's impatience, and that with his book he made
7931-476: The rapture I felt as I clasped in my naked arms that perfect little body, so wild, so ardent, so sombrely lascivious? For a long time after Mohammed had left me, I remained in a state of passionate jubilation, and though I had already achieved pleasure five times with him, I renewed my ecstasy again and again, and when I got back to my room in the hotel, I prolonged its echoes until morning. Gide's novel Corydon , which he considered his most important work, includes
8034-420: The rights to his works and to give lectures. His long-standing relationship with Jeanne Duval continued on-and-off, and he helped her to the end of his life. Baudelaire's relationships with actress Marie Daubrun and with courtesan Apollonie Sabatier , though the source of much inspiration, never produced any lasting satisfaction. He smoked opium , and in Brussels he began to drink to excess. Baudelaire suffered
8137-421: The role of women, the theological direction of his work and his alleged advocacy of "satanism", his experience of drug-induced states of mind, the figure of the dandy, his stance regarding democracy and its implications for the individual, his response to the spiritual uncertainties of the time, his criticisms of the bourgeois, and his advocacy of modern music and painting (e.g., Wagner , Delacroix ). He made Paris
8240-580: The sentence. Victor Hugo wrote to him: "Your fleurs du mal shine and dazzle like stars...I applaud your vigorous spirit with all my might." Baudelaire did not appeal the judgment, but his fine was reduced. Nearly 100 years later, on 11 May 1949, Baudelaire was vindicated, the judgment officially reversed, and the six banned poems reinstated in France. In the poem "Au lecteur" ("To the Reader") that prefaces Les Fleurs du mal , Baudelaire accuses his readers of hypocrisy and of being as guilty of sins and lies as
8343-612: The sodomites much more numerous, than I first thought...That such loves can spring up, that such relationships can be formed, it is not enough for me to say that this is natural; I maintain that it is good; each of the two finds exaltation, protection, a challenge in them; and I wonder whether it is for the youth or the elder man that they are more profitable. From an interview with film documentarian Nicole Védrès with Andre Gide: Védrès "May I ask you an indiscreet question? Gide "There are no indiscreet questions, only indiscreet answers." Védrès "Is it true, cher Maître , that you are
8446-668: The subject of modern poetry. He brought the city's details to life in the eyes and hearts of his readers. Baudelaire was an active participant in the artistic life of his times. As critic and essayist, he wrote extensively and perceptively about the luminaries and themes of French culture. He was frank with friends and enemies, rarely took the diplomatic approach and sometimes responded violently verbally, which often undermined his cause. His associations were numerous, including Gustave Courbet , Honoré Daumier , Félicien Rops , Franz Liszt , Champfleury , Victor Hugo , Gustave Flaubert , and Balzac . In 1847, Baudelaire became acquainted with
8549-437: The term modernity ( modernité ) to designate the fleeting experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility of artistic expression to capture that experience. Marshall Berman has credited Baudelaire as being the first Modernist . Baudelaire was born in Paris, France, on 9 April 1821, and baptized two months later at Saint-Sulpice Roman Catholic Church . His father, Joseph-François Baudelaire (1759–1827),
8652-555: The testimony of others. It was the life of a man engaging not only in the business of artistic creation, but reflecting on that process in his journal, reading that work to his friends and discussing it with them; a man who knew and corresponded with all the major literary figures of his own country and with many in Germany and England; who found daily nourishment in the Latin, French, English and German classics, and, for much of his life, in
8755-623: The time). When Baudelaire returned from Belgium after his stroke, Manet and his wife were frequent visitors at the nursing home and she played passages from Wagner for Baudelaire on the piano. Nadar (Félix Tournachon) was a noted caricaturist, scientist and important early photographer. Baudelaire admired Nadar, one of his close friends, and wrote: "Nadar is the most amazing manifestation of vitality." They moved in similar circles and Baudelaire made many social connections through him. Nadar's ex-mistress Jeanne Duval became Baudelaire's mistress around 1842. Baudelaire became interested in photography in
8858-577: The will but he was heartened nonetheless that the division with his mother might now be mended. At 36, he wrote to her: "believe that I belong to you absolutely, and that I belong only to you." His mother died on 16 August 1871, outliving her son by almost four years. His first published work, under the pseudonym Baudelaire Dufaÿs, was his art review "Salon of 1845", which attracted immediate attention for its boldness. Many of his critical opinions were novel in their time, including his championing of Delacroix , and some of his views seem remarkably in tune with
8961-495: The works of Poe , in which he found tales and poems that had, he claimed, long existed in his own brain but never taken shape. Baudelaire saw in Poe a precursor and tried to be his French contemporary counterpart. From this time until 1865, he was largely occupied with translating Poe's works; his translations were widely praised. Baudelaire was not the first French translator of Poe, but his "scrupulous translations" were considered among
9064-498: Was a professor of law at University of Paris; he died in 1880, when the boy was eleven years old. His mother was Juliette Maria Rondeaux. His uncle was political economist Charles Gide . His paternal family traced its roots to Italy. The ancestral Guidos had moved to France and other western and northern European countries after converting to Protestantism during the 16th century, and facing persecution in Catholic Italy. Gide
9167-473: Was brought up in isolated conditions in Normandy. He became a prolific writer at an early age, publishing his first novel The Notebooks of André Walter (French: Les Cahiers d'André Walter ), in 1891, at the age of twenty-one. In 1893 and 1894, Gide travelled in Northern Africa. There he came to accept his attraction to boys and youths. Gide befriended Irish playwright Oscar Wilde in Paris, where
9270-527: Was considered a great stylist in the classical sense, "with his clear, succinct, spare, deliberately, subtly phrased sentences." Gide's surviving letters run into the thousands. But it is the Journal that Sheridan calls "the pre-eminently Gidean mode of expression." "His first novel emerged from Gide's own journal, and many of the first-person narratives read more or less like journals. In Les faux-monnayeurs , Edouard's journal provides an alternative voice to
9373-530: Was described in his obituary in The New York Times as "France's greatest contemporary man of letters" and "judged the greatest French writer of this century by the literary cognoscenti." Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide expressed the conflict and eventual reconciliation of the two sides of his personality (characterized by a Protestant austerity and a transgressive sexual adventurousness, respectively). He suggested that
9476-434: Was impressed and wrote to Baudelaire: "You have found a way to rejuvenate Romanticism...You are as unyielding as marble, and as penetrating as an English mist." The principal themes of sex and death were considered scandalous for the period. He also touched on lesbianism, sacred and profane love, metamorphosis, melancholy, the corruption of the city, lost innocence, the oppressiveness of living, and wine. Notable in some poems
9579-490: Was in England during the war...He came to stay with us for a time, and brought with him a young nephew, whose English was better than his own. The boy made friends with my son John , while Gide and I discussed everything under the sun. Once again I delighted in the range and subtlety of a Frenchman's intelligence; and I regretted my long severance from France. Nobody understood art more profoundly than Gide, no one's view of life
9682-484: Was in some ways Wagner 's precursor, using the leitmotif and conceiving the idea of the "total art work" ("Gesamtkunstwerk"), both of which gained Baudelaire's admiration. Before even hearing Wagner's music, Baudelaire studied reviews and essays about him, and formulated his impressions. Later, Baudelaire put them into his non-technical analysis of Wagner, which was highly regarded, particularly his essay "Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris". Baudelaire's reaction to music
9785-477: Was just around the corner. Baudelaire was educated in Lyon , where he boarded. At 14, he was described by a classmate as "much more refined and distinguished than any of our fellow pupils ... we are bound to one another ... by shared tastes and sympathies, the precocious love of fine works of literature." Baudelaire was erratic in his studies, at times diligent, at other times prone to "idleness". Later, he attended
9888-442: Was more penetrating. ... Gide had a half satanic, half monk-like mien; he put one in mind of portraits of Baudelaire . Withal there was something exotic about him. He would appear in a red waistcoat, black velvet jacket and beige-coloured trousers and, in lieu of collar and tie, a loosely knotted scarf. ... The heart of man held no secrets for Gide. There was little that he didn't understand, or discuss. He suffered, as I did, from
9991-429: Was passing, as he was later to note in his journals. In the early 1850s, Baudelaire struggled with poor health, pressing debts, and irregular literary output. He often moved from one lodging to another to escape creditors. He undertook many projects that he was unable to complete, though he did finish translations of stories by Edgar Allan Poe . Upon the death of his stepfather in 1857, Baudelaire received no mention in
10094-435: Was passionate and psychological. "Music engulfs (possesses) me like the sea." After attending three Wagner concerts in Paris in 1860, Baudelaire wrote to the composer: "I had a feeling of pride and joy in understanding, in being possessed, in being overwhelmed, a truly sensual pleasure like that of rising in the air." Baudelaire's writings contributed to the elevation of Wagner and to the cult of Wagnerism that swept Europe in
10197-435: Was published in 1929. The essay, informed by Du Bos's Catholic convictions, condemned Gide's homosexuality. Gide and Du Bos's mutual friend Ernst Robert Curtius criticised the book in a letter to Gide, writing that "he [Du Bos] judges you according to Catholic morals suffices to neglect his complete indictment. It can only touch those who think like him and are convinced in advance. He has abdicated his intellectual liberty." In
10300-1751: Was published. André Gide had only been nominated for the prize once before in 1946 . In 1947, the Nobel committee received 43 nominations for 35 writers including T. S. Eliot (awarded in 1948 ), Boris Pasternak (awarded in 1958 ), Teixeira de Pascoaes , Jules Romains , Angelos Sikelianos , Carl Sandburg , Georges Duhamel , Ignazio Silone , Benedetto Croce , Ramon Perez de Ayala , Arnulf Øverland , Johan Falkberget and Marie Under . Eleven were nominated first-time such as Pär Lagerkvist (awarded in 1951 ), Ernest Hemingway (awarded in 1954 ), Mikhail Sholokov (awarded in 1965 ), Shmuel Yosef Agnon (awarded in 1966 ), Toyohiko Kagawa , Georgios Drossinis , Nikos Kazantzakis , Bernard O'Dowd and André Malraux . Most nominations were submitted for Henriette Charasson and Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz with three nominations each. Four were female nominees namely Henriette Charasson, Maria Madalena de Martel Patrício , Maila Talvio and Marie Under . The authors James Agate , Marie Belloc Lowndes , J. D. Beresford , Tristan Bernard , Jean-Richard Bloch , Svend Borberg , Wolfgang Borchert , Margaret Cameron , Emilio Carrere , Willa Cather , Sigurd Christiansen , Winston Churchill , Morris Raphael Cohen , Ananda Coomaraswamy , Max Dessoir , Léon-Paul Fargue , Joaquín Gallegos Lara , Edith Maud Hull , Richard Le Gallienne , William Le Queux , Gurli Linder , Hugh Lofting , Manuel Machado , Arthur Machen , Emma Orczy , Nicholas Roerich , Margaret Marshall Saunders , Balys Sruoga , Flora Thompson , E. C. Vivian , Swami Vipulananda and Alfred North Whitehead died in 1947 without having been nominated for
10403-639: Was re-taken by French, British and American forces in May 1943 and he was able to travel to Algiers where he stayed until the end of World War II. In 1947, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight". He devoted much of his last years to publishing his Journal. Gide died in Paris on 19 February 1951. The Roman Catholic Church placed his works on
10506-516: Was shaped by the same ethos. While sympathetic to Communism in the early 1930s, as were many intellectuals, after his 1936 journey to the USSR he supported the anti-Stalinist left ; during the 1940s he shifted towards more traditional values and repudiated Communism as an idea that breaks with the traditions of the Christian civilization. Gide was born in Paris on 22 November 1869 into a middle-class Protestant family. His father Jean Paul Guillaume Gide
10609-517: Was sidetracked by indolence, emotional distress and illness, and it was not until 1857 that he published Les Fleurs du mal ( The Flowers of Evil ), his first and most famous volume of poems. Some of these poems had already appeared in the Revue des deux mondes ( Review of Two Worlds ) in 1855, when they were published by Baudelaire's friend Auguste Poulet-Malassis . Some of the poems had appeared as "fugitive verse" in various French magazines during
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