Grant someone complete and perfect knowledgeof the present, and they would scarcelyneed to lift a finger to see the future.— Sainte-Beuve History has long established a law linking society’s political upheavals to its spiritual transformations. This principle traces how art visibly shifts alongside social change, both in its modes of expression and, at least temporarily,…

“In abstraction, dream and symbol.” M. Taine Until Science finally arrives at its inevitable destination in Mysticism, the intuitions of Dream forge ahead, already celebrating this marriage—still to come yet already sealed—between Religious and Scientific sensibility in an aesthetic celebration where humanity’s profound desire to reunite all its powers through a return to original simplicity…

We must first establish that Art is the soul’s journey back into its own depths, where it casts off every shackle in pursuit of joy and understanding—of both the world and itself. This defines the metaphysical atmosphere pervading the entire work, the essential and primary significance of this Prologue. Yet such freedom, such liberation, by…

“Poetic Fiction” has always worked to stir wonder at what lies beyond our grasp, conjuring the illusion of another world—whether by casting the poem into distant ages or propelling its action to the earth’s remotest corners. Analysis, by contrast, requires no such invention. Operating as it does within the realm of deliberate unreality—isolating what in…

To render this fiction directly, stripped of its unfolding complexities, would be no art at all. Such an approach could convey meaning only through bald statement, achieving no more power or beauty than the plain assertion: ‘Art is deliverance.’ What we must do instead is make that deliverance felt—unfurl those wings with syllables that at…

Summary — Chateaubriand and Goethe. — Stendhal, Vigny, Senancour, Nerval. — Hugo. — Balzac; Wagner. — Poe; Baudelaire. — Flaubert; Sainte-Beuve. — Leconte de Lisle; Banville and the Parnassians. — Goncourt; Barbey d’Aurevilly. — Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Verlaine, Judith Gautier, Huysmans, Rimbaud, Mallarmé. As the brief Romantic and Naturalist periods unfolded in the wake of…

Notes 1 Reading collections of parliamentary speeches is equally instructive. Berryer, Montalembert retain some interest, at least a possibility: Gambetta, the most recent of these times’ “great orators,” is utterly intolerable, owing to the gibberish. 2 M. de Villiers de l’Isle-Âdam. 3 Scientists have, in the Poet’s eyes, yet another fault, doubtless linked to the…

I ought to have given Émile Hennequin pride of place here, had not death cut down the hopes we all invested in him. Alas, he no longer belongs to the Literature of Tomorrow—that literature where, as both critic (our sole true critic) and creator, he would undoubtedly have claimed a magnificent rank. Those who knew…

Édouard Rod, who once moved in Naturalist circles and swore allegiance to Zola, gradually forged a path between Naturalism and the psychological novel—a path whose brilliant originality lay in redirecting the famous modern “enquiry” from its subsidiary concern with appearances and the external world towards an exploration of consciousness itself. From the objective formula of…

I have dwelt at considerable length on the ancient causes behind the literary movement of our day. I have just warned that difficulties of every sort stand in its way. What’s more, I believe this movement has been too hastily defined and delimited. People speak of Decadence and Symbolism, yet I recognise no genuine literary…