Renée Mauperin By: Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896)
First Page: The French Classical Romances Complete in Twenty Crown Octavo Volumes Editor in Chief EDMUND GOSSE, LL.D. With Critical Introductions and Interpretative Essays by HENRY JAMES PROF. RICHARD BURTON HENRY HARLAND ANDREW LANG PROF. F. C. DE SUMICHRAST THE EARL OF CREWE HIS EXCELLENCY M. CAMBON PROF. WM. P. TRENT ARTHUR SYMONS MAURICE HEWLETT DR. JAMES FITZMAURICE KELLY RICHARD MANSFIELD BOOTH TARKINGTON DR. RICHARD GARNETT PROF. WILLIAM M. SLOANE JOHN OLIVER HOBBES [Illustration: (signed) J. de Goncourt] DE GONCOURT RENÉE MAUPERIN Translated from the French by Alys Hallard With a Critical Introduction by James Fitzmaurice Kelly A Frontispiece and Numerous Other Portraits with Descriptive Notes by Octave Uzanne P. F. Collier & Son New York Copyright, 1902 by D. Appleton & Company EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT I The partnership of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt is probably the most curious and perfect example of collaboration recorded in literary history. The brothers worked together for twenty two years, and the amalgam of their diverse talents was so complete that, were it not for the information given by the survivor, it would be difficult to guess what each brought to the work which bears their names. Even in the light of these confidences, it is no easy matter to attempt to separate or disengage their literary personalities. The two are practically one. Jamais âme pareille n'a été mise en deux corps. This testimony is their own, and their testimony is true. The result is the more perplexing when we remember that these two brothers were, so to say, men of different races. The elder was a German from Lorraine, the younger was an inveterate Latin Parisian: "the most absolute difference of temperaments, tastes, and characters and absolutely the same ideas, the same personal likes and dislikes, the same intellectual vision." There may be, as there probably always will be, two opinions as to the value of their writings; there can be no difference of view concerning their intense devotion to literature, their unhesitating rejection of all that might distract them from their vocation. They spent a small fortune in collecting materials for works that were not to find two hundred readers; they passed months, and more months, in tedious researches the results of which were condensed into a single page; they resigned most of life's pleasures and all its joys to dedicate themselves totally to the office of their election. So they lived toiling, endeavouring, undismayed, confident in their integrity and genius, unrewarded by one accepted triumph, uncheered by a single frank success or even by any considerable recognition. The younger Goncourt died of his failure before he was forty; the elder underwent almost the same monotony of defeat during nearly thirty years of life that remained to him. But both continued undaunted, and, if we consider what manner of men they were and how dear fame was to them, the constancy of their ambition becomes all the more admirable. [Illustration: Edmond de Goncourt] Despising, or affecting to despise, the general verdict of their contemporaries, they loved to declare that they wrote for their own personal pleasure, for an audience of a dozen friends, or for the delight of a distant posterity; and, when the absence of all appreciation momentarily weighed them down, they vainly imagined that the acquisition of a new bibelot consoled them. No doubt the passion of the collector was strong in them: so strong that Edmond half forgot his grief for his brother and his terror of the Commune in the pursuit of first editions: so strong that the chances of a Prussian bomb shattering his storehouse of treasures the Maison d'un artiste at Auteuil saddened him more than the dismemberment of France. But, even so, the idea that the Goncourts could in any circumstances subordinate literature to any other interest was the merest illusion... Continue reading book >>

Renée Mauperin By: Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896)

First Page:

The French Classical Romances Complete in Twenty Crown Octavo Volumes

Editor in Chief

EDMUND GOSSE, LL.D.

With Critical Introductions and Interpretative Essays by

HENRY JAMES PROF. RICHARD BURTON HENRY HARLAND

ANDREW LANG PROF. F. C. DE SUMICHRAST

THE EARL OF CREWE HIS EXCELLENCY M. CAMBON

PROF. WM. P. TRENT ARTHUR SYMONS MAURICE HEWLETT

DR. JAMES FITZMAURICE KELLY RICHARD MANSFIELD

BOOTH TARKINGTON DR. RICHARD GARNETT

PROF. WILLIAM M. SLOANE JOHN OLIVER HOBBES

[Illustration: (signed) J. de Goncourt]

DE GONCOURT

RENÉE MAUPERIN

Translated from the French by Alys Hallard

With a Critical Introduction by James Fitzmaurice Kelly

A Frontispiece and Numerous Other Portraits with Descriptive Notes by Octave Uzanne

P. F. Collier & Son New York

EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT

The partnership of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt is probably the most curious and perfect example of collaboration recorded in literary history. The brothers worked together for twenty two years, and the amalgam of their diverse talents was so complete that, were it not for the information given by the survivor, it would be difficult to guess what each brought to the work which bears their names. Even in the light of these confidences, it is no easy matter to attempt to separate or disengage their literary personalities. The two are practically one. Jamais âme pareille n'a été mise en deux corps. This testimony is their own, and their testimony is true. The result is the more perplexing when we remember that these two brothers were, so to say, men of different races. The elder was a German from Lorraine, the younger was an inveterate Latin Parisian: "the most absolute difference of temperaments, tastes, and characters and absolutely the same ideas, the same personal likes and dislikes, the same intellectual vision." There may be, as there probably always will be, two opinions as to the value of their writings; there can be no difference of view concerning their intense devotion to literature, their unhesitating rejection of all that might distract them from their vocation. They spent a small fortune in collecting materials for works that were not to find two hundred readers; they passed months, and more months, in tedious researches the results of which were condensed into a single page; they resigned most of life's pleasures and all its joys to dedicate themselves totally to the office of their election. So they lived toiling, endeavouring, undismayed, confident in their integrity and genius, unrewarded by one accepted triumph, uncheered by a single frank success or even by any considerable recognition. The younger Goncourt died of his failure before he was forty; the elder underwent almost the same monotony of defeat during nearly thirty years of life that remained to him. But both continued undaunted, and, if we consider what manner of men they were and how dear fame was to them, the constancy of their ambition becomes all the more admirable.

[Illustration: Edmond de Goncourt]

Despising, or affecting to despise, the general verdict of their contemporaries, they loved to declare that they wrote for their own personal pleasure, for an audience of a dozen friends, or for the delight of a distant posterity; and, when the absence of all appreciation momentarily weighed them down, they vainly imagined that the acquisition of a new bibelot consoled them. No doubt the passion of the collector was strong in them: so strong that Edmond half forgot his grief for his brother and his terror of the Commune in the pursuit of first editions: so strong that the chances of a Prussian bomb shattering his storehouse of treasures the Maison d'un artiste at Auteuil saddened him more than the dismemberment of France. But, even so, the idea that the Goncourts could in any circumstances subordinate literature to any other interest was the merest illusion... Continue reading book >>

Genres for this book
Fiction
Literature

eBook links
Wikipedia – Edmond de Goncourt
Wikipedia – Renée Mauperin

eBook Downloads
ePUB eBook • iBooks for iPhone and iPad • Nook • Sony Reader	Kindle eBook • Mobi file format for Kindle
Read eBook • Load eBook in browser	Text File eBook • Computers • Windows • Mac