Mirbeau skewers the Académie Française for rewarding mediocrity over genius, lamenting Leconte de Lisle’s neglect while mocking Halévy’s ascent—an immortal triumph of charm and connections over literary greatness.
God forbid I should speak ill of the Académie Française which, at heart, despite its prejudices and old-lady quirks, is a most respectable personage. But still, one must note that it has opened its doors and given one of its seats to M. Ludovic Halévy.
M. Ludovic Halévy is a witty man; he has written charming little things, with a rather lively Parisianism accessible to all intelligences. He has collaborated with M. Henri Meilhac on merry operettas and light comedies; he tells stories nicely, without pretension, but also without brilliance, almost banally. In short, this amiable man of letters doesn’t rise above average, and one could count infinitely many writers in the world of letters who are neither better nor worse than M. Ludovic Halévy.
But M. Ludovic Halévy maintains a correct bearing in life; he’s orderly, a good fellow, indulgent and gentle, complimentary when needed, welcoming, smiling, charming. He tends his reputation like a plant, waters it, prunes it, protects it from too-bright sun and too-dark shade, as clever gardeners do. He has never offended anyone, and no one knows better than he how to choose his connections from the right quarters. He is seen at soirées of academic wives, in Baron de Rothschild’s boxes, and moreover, M. Albert Delpit, whose opinions are law, has long protected him. Finally, M. Ludovic Halévy, judging the moment opportune, published a book that artists and people of taste cannot forgive him, but which the ladies found admirable, and which the Academy, I believe, crowned, while waiting for better. This book was L’Abbé Constantin. It was met with enthusiasm, if I remember correctly, and Zola was left quite thunderstruck.
Nothing advances one in literary life like a bad book arriving at the right time; the talent is in making it bad—just bad enough, and at the moment it appeared, the book needed to be as bad as possible. M. Ludovic Halévy didn’t fail in this. L’Abbé Constantin decided the immortals to receive M. Halévy among them. Such that M. Henry Meilhac’s collaborator entered the Academy not because M. Meilhac had shown much wit and much success, but because he himself was the author of a novel from which one cannot extract a single page of style, nor a curious observation, nor wit, nor emotion, nor the slightest grain of art, nor anything that constitutes literature—a novel-void, a book whose insipidity would have discouraged Berquin himself, a book in short such as the Mame publishing house prints a hundred thousand of annually for prize-givings at Christian Brothers’ schools and nurseries, and whose authors don’t for all that enter beneath the illustrious dome.
M. Albert Delpit, whom I have already named, once expressed the opinion that there were academic people and others who weren’t. One recognised the academic ones by a certain something, as Bossuet says. M. Delpit doubtless wanted to explain that one becomes a man of letters when one has talent, and one is born an academician when one lacks it. He thus established the distance that often exists between an artist and an immortal. He was kind enough to cite, among the born academicians, M. Ludovic Halévy and, evidently through modesty, M. Delpit himself. This writer wasn’t mistaken. His predictions have come true for M. Ludovic Halévy; one more novel like La Marquise, one play like Les Maucroix, and the palms will go embroidering themselves on M. Delpit’s jackets.
This would be nothing, truly, if the Academy hadn’t, despite mockery, retained great prestige in the eyes of the bourgeois crowd. It’s quite certain that this distinction, most often poorly distributed, classifies a man and elevates him above others, and above his own merit. Who would know the names of M. Legouvé, M. Mézières, and so many others, if the Academy hadn’t come to pluck them from their obscurity and hadn’t placed around their brows something of the radiance projected by the sun of official routine?
We have a poet, and an admirable poet, perhaps greater than Musset, and more magnificent than Victor Hugo, a poet whose verses will resound through all ages as the most eloquent and dazzling expression of French genius. This poet has lived his whole life in a dream of the ideal, far from noise, far from publicity, far from the vain pleasures that popularity gives, far from society. He has made of his art a refuge deaf to all petty passions, all mean interests, the sterile struggles in which a country’s dignity and strength and glory go exhausting and crumbling themselves. He is never seen in influential salons, spouting platitudes to old bluestocking coquettes, intriguing here, begging there, lavishing bows on fools, flatteries on important people, dropping onto album pages doggerel quatrains and seamstress thoughts that are whispered from ear to ear and make the ladies of literature swoon. His name is never cited among those that grace theatres on first nights and illustrious crowds on days of grand funerals. He knows neither a banker, nor a reporter, nor a tart. This poet is Leconte de Lisle.
While wreaths are woven from all sides for François Coppée’s brow, he is forgotten. He publishes a book—that is, a grandiose and severe masterpiece—no one speaks of it. He presents himself to the Académie française; he gets two votes. This poet, who will be the glory of this age, whose works will illuminate this quarter-century so sterile in men, so poor in beautiful works, is almost despised. What do you expect the ignorant crowd to think, if those charged with enlightening it and teaching it to love and respect great men reject them as insufficient and unworthy? And isn’t it a shame the Academy brings upon itself, adding to its list of rejects—to Stendhal, to Balzac, to Gautier, to Baudelaire, to Flaubert—the name of Leconte de Lisle? You would think this exhausted, stunted century has a horror of what is strong, and that the weight of such geniuses is too heavy for its weak shoulders.
But M. Halévy becomes immortal. He is the favourite of mediocrity, that queen of the world. After M. Halévy, another of the same small stature, and so on. We will see successively M. Claretie, M. Delpit, M. Ohnet—that is, the ephemeral ones who shine for a day and disappear the next without leaving a trace.
O Victor Koning, you are truly today’s God. You have given your spirit, your soul to all things, and this century deserves to be branded on the shoulders with your initials.
This is one of 50+ rare French literary texts translated into English for the first time on this site.
Léon Hennique Novel 