Anatole France

See also: France (homonymy)

Anatole France , of his exact name François-Anatole Thibault , is a writer French, born the April 16th 1844 with Paris, Quai Malaquais, dead the October 12th 1924 with Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He is regarded one of the great writers of the Third Republic of which he was also one of most important the critical arts persons, and as one of the most significant consciences of his time, engaging in favor of many social and political causes of the beginning of the 20th century.

Biography

Resulting from a modest family Country of the Beauce, his/her father, Christmas France, initially warrant officer legitimist, resigned the shortly after the Révolution of 1830. It held on the Quai Malaquais, with Paris, a Librairie (initially France-Thibault bookstore, then France) specialized in the works and documents on the French revolution, attended by many writers and scholars, like the Frères Goncourt. The name of Anatole France comes to him thus from his/her father. It is a diminutive of François.

Anatole France is elected with the French Academy the January 23rd 1896, with the Fauteuil 38, where it succeeds Ferdinand de Lesseps. He is received there the December 24th 1896, future neighbor of Louis Duchesne and Raymond Poincaré.

Become a writer recognized, influential and rich, Anatole France engages in favor of many causes. It holds several speeches denouncing the Armenian genocide and supports Archag Tchobanian, joined Emile Zola, with which it was reconciled, at the time of the business Dreyfus; the shortly after the publication of I show , it signs, almost only with the French Academy, the petition asking for the revision of the lawsuit. It returns its Légion of honor after one had withdrawn it in Zola and refuses a long time to sit under the Cupola. It takes part in the foundation of the Ligue of the human rights. Its engagement Dreyfusard is found in the four volumes of sound Modern history (1897 - 1901), chronicle of the meannesses and ridiculous of a prefecture of province at the time of the Business. It is in this work that it forges the term Xénophobe .

France engages for separation of the Église and the State, for the trade union rights, against the military bagnes. At the beginning of the First World War, it writes texts warlike and patriotic, that he will regret thereafter, but militates in favor of a Paix of Amitié between French and German, which will cause indignation and the hostility, and will be worth letters of insults and death threats to him. It gives an opinion in 1919 against the Traité of Versailles, signing the protest of the group Clarté entitled “Against a peace unjust”, and published in Humanity , July 22nd 1919.

Friend of Jaurès and Pressensé, it collaborates as of his creation in Humanity , by publishing On the white stone in the first numbers. Near to SFIO, it is later critical towards the PCF. If he writes a Salut with the Soviets , in Humanity of November 1922, he protests against the first lawsuits made with the socialist revolutionary by sending a telegram as of the March 17th. As from December 1922, it is excluded from any collaboration to the communist newspapers. Anatole France, while adhering to the socialist ideas, thus kept away from the political parties, that of which testify its pessimistic novels on the human nature, such as the Island of the penguins and especially the gods are thirsty (published in 1912) which, because of its critic of the climate of Terreur of the ideals utopians, by the left was badly accepted.

It Marie in 1920 with Emma Laprévotte. He is prize winner in 1921 Nobel Prize of literature for the whole of his work, and with Stockholm the December 10th receives it.

In 1922, the whole of its works ( opera omnia ) been the subject of a papal judgment (decree of the May 31st 1922).

For its 80e birthday, the shortly after the victory of the Trust of the lefts, it assists with a public demonstration given in its honor the May 24th 1924 to the palate of the Trocadéro. He dies the October 12th with Béchellerie, commune of Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, and of the national funeral are celebrated the 18.

Its work

Topics and style

Main themes of its work in prose emergent of the collection Balthasar and of the novel several times altered the Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard . Marie-Claire Blanquart announces inter alia the character of the sensitive, ridiculous or pleasant scholar, who has his life behind him, the library (which has a carnal presence), the action and justice. These topics are particularly exposed in speeches or conversations by characters such as Sylvestre Bonnard, Jerome Coignard and Mr. Bergeret. The style of France, often qualified the traditional one, is characterized by a Ironie amused, sometimes soft and pleasant, sometimes black and cruel, which expresses its land Scepticisme with regard to the Human nature , of its aspirations and the Connaissance, in particular the Histoire.

The work of Anatole France slices so much with the literary currents of its time (naturalism) that with the French Politique as regards education after the Franco-German Guerre of 1870. Against the exclusively scientific education preached by Jean Macé or Louis Fig tree, it develops the real force of imagination:

“Close to me this book, Miss Jeanne, leave there, please, “the blue Bird, color of time” that you find so pleasant and who makes you cry, and study the etherisation quickly. It would be beautiful that at seven years you did not have yet an opinion made on the anesthetic power of the nitrogen protoxide! ” Mr. Louis Figuier discovered that the fairies are imaginary beings. This is why it cannot suffer that one speaks about them with the children. He speaks to them about the guano, which does not have anything imaginary. - Eh well, doctor, the fairies exist precisely because they are imaginary. They exist in naive and fresh imaginations, naturally opened with the always young poetry of the popular traditions.

He refuses the realism of Zola, which he considers brutal, and, to the scientific spirit in literature, he opposes writers like Dickens and Sand, because, for him:

“the artist who does not see the things that into ugly did not know to see them in their reports/ratios, with their harmonies. ”

These works thus comprise many elements fairy-like and often close to the Fantastique.

It is in the same spirit that it approaches the Histoire, defying scientistic claims, not to reduce this discipline to a fable, but to underline uncertainties which are inherent for him. The history is a topic which often returns in its works. The style which it uses to speak is characteristic of the irony and humor francians:

“If I confess my error today, if I the inconceivable enthusiasm which inspired to me a completely disproportionate design, I acknowledge do it in the interest of young people, who will learn, on my example, to overcome imagination. It is our crueler enemy. Any scientist who did not succeed in choking it in him is lost forever for the scholarship. I still quivered with the thought of the abysses in which my adventurous spirit was going to precipitate me. I was with two fingers of what is called the history. What a falls! I was going to fall into Article Because the history is only one art, or at most a false science. Who doesn't know today that the historians preceded the archeologists, as the astrologers preceded the astronomers, as the alchemists preceded the chemists, as the monkeys preceded the men? God thank you! I was free for the fear. ”

France uses several types of irony: it can be a question of making speak naively about the characters so that the reader seizes the ridiculous one or of expressing with loquacity the antithesis of what the author thinks, while making feel the ineptitude of the made remarks. The first kind of humor is lightest and impregnates particularly the Island of the Penguins , described as “chronicle bouffonne of France” by Marie-Claire Blanquart. The second kind of humor appears especially by a black irony which for example the tale Crainquebille illustrates, history of an social injustice; Anatole France thus makes say to a character who analyzes the iniquitous verdict marked by a judge:

“That of which it is necessary to rent president Bourriche, says him he, it is to have known to deny themselves vain curiosities of the spirit and to keep EC intellectual pride which wants all to know. While opposing one to the other the contradictory depositions of the Matra agent and Doctor David Matthieu, the judge would have entered a way where one meets only the doubt and uncertainty. The method which consists in examining the facts according to the rules of criticism is irreconcilable with the good administration of justice. If the magistrate had imprudence to follow this method, its judgments would depend on its personal sagacity, which generally are small, and on the human infirmity, which is constant. Which would be the authority? One cannot deny that the historical method is completely unsuitable getting the certainty to him which it needs. ”

Analyzes its major works

the Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard

Sylvestre Bonnard, member of the Institute, are a Historien and a Philologue, equipped with a scholarship not stripped of irony:

“To know is nothing - he says one day - to imagine is all. ”

He lives in the middle of the Livre S, the city of the books , but launches out to research, in Sicily and with Paris, of the invaluable manuscript of the gilded Légende which he finishes one day by obtaining. The Hasard makes him meet the little girl of a Femme which he formerly liked and, to protect the child from an abusive tutor, he removes it. The young girl will marry thereafter a pupil of Mr. Bonnard. This novel, which was considered to be spiritual, generous and tender, made known Anatole France.

Balthasar

See also: Balthasar

Balthasar is the first collection of news published by Anatole France.

Thai

See also: Thai (novel)

This novel is regarded as a big step in the art of Anatole France.

Opinions of Jerome Coignard

the red Lily

the Modern history

See also: the Modern history

From 1895, France started to write chronicles for the Echo of Paris , under the title of Nouvelles ecclesiastics . These texts will form the beginning of the Modern history .

Around a teacher at the university of Tourcoing, a satirical tetralogy of the French company under the Third republic, the boulangism at the beginning of the 20th century.

the Island of the Penguins

See also: the Island of the Penguins

It is about a parodic history of France made up of many allusions to the modern history.

Maël, a saint man, approaches an island of the hyperborean seas where a storm pushed. Misled by its bad sight, Maël baptizes penguins which it took for men. God, after having consulted the Doctorss of the Church to solve the theological problem to know if the baptized Penguins are of this fact of the creatures of God, decides to transform the penguins into men. France then describes their history, the old origins, times, the future Middle Ages, Rebirth, modern times and times. Reflection of the French history, the history of the Penguins is only one “continuation of miseries, crimes and madnesses. That is true nation pingouine like all nations. ” The business of the eighty thousand bundles of hay is thus a parody of the Affaire Dreyfus. The future History describes the contemporary world and its escape ahead, a world “where the taste had lost pretty forms and brilliant toilets”, where reign “an immense and regular ugliness”… The human condition alternates then between disproportionate constructions, destruction and regressions: “One never found the houses rather high… Fifteen million men worked in the giant city…” It is the history without end, infernal cycle which, for France, makes improbable the idea of a company future better.

the gods are thirsty

See also: the gods are thirsty

the gods are thirsty is a novel published in 1912, describing the black years of the Terreur in Paris, France, between year II and III (1793 and 1794). On revolutionary bottom of age, Anatole France, who initially thought of writing a book on the Inquisition, develops his opinions on the cruelty of the human nature and the degeneration of the ideals of better following days.

The main character, Evariste Gamelin, a Fanatic revolutionary, and the other characters all are pulled by mechanics Tragique of a To be able absolute faded of Sang, and France paints them with their daily concern and their pleasures, with sometimes a direction of the sordid detail which reveals the perversity of the human instincts. The actors and persons in charge of Terror, directing the country with abstract ideas, want to make the happiness of the men in spite of them. Evariste Gamelin, missed painter, become one sworn of the revolutionary Tribunal, condemning to died with indifference. It will be victim him also of this logic Terroriste. Beside this play of the capacity and Dead, the Life and the Nature continue their cycle, incarnated by the mistress of Gamelin, Elodie.

“It is a large analyst of illusions. He penetrates about it and probes the most secret folds of them as if they were made realities of eternal substances. And it is of what its humanity consists: she is the expression of her deep and inalterable compassion. ” Joseph Conrad

the Revolt of the angels

Characters

Sylvestre Bonnard

Jerome Coignard

Mr Bergeret

Influence and posterity

France was regarded as an moral authority and arts person of first order. He was recognized and appreciated by writers and personalities like Marcel Proust, Marcel Schwob and Leon Blum. He is read and exerts an influence on the writers who refuse the naturalism, like the Japanese writer Jun' ichirō Tanizaki. Its works were published in the editions Calmann-Levy of 1925 with 1935. Anatole France, of sound living and some time after its death, the object of many studies.

But, after its death, it is the target of a lampoon of the Surréaliste S, a corpse which does not spare anybody , to which takes part Aragon with a text entitled: “Already slapped a death? ” in which he writes: “I hold any admiror of Anatole France for a degraded being. ” For him, Anatole France is an execrable histrion of the spirit , representative of the French ignominie . Gide the judge a writer “without concern” which “one exhausts of the first blow. ” The reputation of France became thus that of an official writer to the traditional and surface style, author reasonable and reconciling, obliging and satisfied, even denied, any poor quality that mainly Mr. Bergeret would incarnate. But many specialists in work in France consider that these judgments are excessive and unjust, or that they are even the fruit of ignorance, because they neglect of them the elements magic, unreasonable, buffoons, blacks or pagan. For them, the work of France still suffered and suffers from a fallacious image.

Reflecting this relative lapse of memory and this ignorance, the studies francians are rare today and its works, except sometimes the most known, are published little.

Works

  • Catalog of works of Anatole France

; Editions

  • Complete Works , Calmann-Levy, 1925 - 1935
  • Anatole France, Works , Edition of Marie-Claire Bancquart, the Pleiad, 1984 - 1994. ISBN 207011063X, ISBN 2070111253, ISBN 207011211X, ISBN 2070113612

; Poetries

  • gilded Poems (1873)
  • Corinthian Weddings (1876), ancient drama in worms

; Novels and news

; Memories

; Theater

  • With the small happiness , an act (1898)
  • Crainquebille , part (1903)
  • the Comedy of that which married a dumb woman , two acts (1908)
  • the Mannequin of wicker , comedy (1928)

; History

  • Life of Jeanne d' Arc (1908)

; Critical arts person

  • Alfred de Vigny , study (1869)
  • the Castle of Be worth-the-Viscount (1888)
  • Latin Genius (1913), collection of forewords

; Critical social

  • social Opinions (1902)
  • the black Party (1904)
  • About better times (1906), collection of speech and letters
  • On the glorious way (1915)
  • Thirty years of social life ; volume I, 1897-1904 (1949), and volume II, 1905-1908 (1953), commented by Claude Aveline; volume III, 1909-1914 (1964) and volume IV, 1915-1924 (1973), commented by Claude Aveline and Henriette Psichari; second edition (1971)

Adaptations

Theater

  • Crainquebille

Music

Catalog of films

• Anatole France on IMDb

Adapted works of Anatole France were realized of alive sound. It appears in documentary of Sacha Guitry in 1915, Those of on our premises .

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