Sully Prudhomme 1901 (2)

Sully Prudhomme 1901 (2)

Sully Prudhomme was born in Paris. Sully Prudhomme (born March 16, 1839, Paris—died Sept. 6, 1907, Chatenay, France) was a French poet who was a leading member of the Parnassian movement, which sought to restore elegance, balance, and aesthetic standards to poetry, in reaction to the excesses of Romanticism. He was awarded the first Nobel Prize for Literature in 1901. After an eye disease forced him to discontinue engineering studies, he supported himself for a while as a lawyer. He had already begun writing poetry as a student, and his debut came in 1865. In time he became a respected poet, particularly through induction into the French Academy in 1881. As time passed, his health declined and he lived alone in his home in the southern suburbs of Paris, where he died in 1907. Sully Prudhomme used the money from his Nobel Prize to establish a fund for publishing young French poets. The first writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (given “in special recognition of his poetic composition, which gives evidence of lofty idealism, artistic perfection and a rare combination of the qualities of both heart and intellect”), he devoted the bulk of the money he received to the creation of a poetry prize awarded by the Société des gens de letters. He also founded, in 1902, the Société des poets français with Jose-Maria de Heredia and Leon Dierx.

Sully Prudhomme (1901) French poet Sully Prudhomme (1839-1907) was the first recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1901. Sully Prudhomme, the pseudonym of Rene Francois Armand Prudhomme, was born into a middle-class Parisian family, the son of a successful merchant who died when the boy was two years old. Thereafter a member of his uncle’s household, Sully Prudhomme attended the Lycee Bonaparte, where his curriculum focused on classics and science, and he subsequently enrolled in a polytechnic university to prepare for an engineering career. However, a persistent eye ailment ended these aspirations, and he worked for a time in the office of an iron foundry in Creuzot. In 1860, Sully Prudhomme began studying law. He worked as a clerk in a solicitor’s office in Paris and in his free time studied philosophy. He began writing poetry during this period, reportedly in an attempt to recover from a failed romance.

Sully Prudhomme belonged to the French Parnassian school, a group of poets that, in the tradition of Théophile Gauthier, wanted to write in a classic and formally elegant style. The movement got its name from La Parnasse Contemporain anthology. Sully Prudhomme’s poetry combined a Parnassian regard for formal perfection with an interest in science and philosophy. According to the Swedish Academy, his elevated poetry fit in Alfred Nobel’s formulation about works in an ideal direction

His first collection, Stances et Poemes (“Stanzas and Poems”, 1865), was praised by Sainte-Beuve. It included his most famous poem, Le vase brisé. He published more poetry before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. This war, which he discussed in Impressions de la guerre (1872) and La France (1874), permanently damaged his health.

During his career, Prudhomme gradually shifted from the sentimental style of his first books towards a more personal style which unified the formality of the Parnassus school with his interest in philosophical and scientific subjects. The inspiration was clearly Lucretius’s De rerum natura, for the first book of which he made a verse translation. His philosophy was expressed in La Justice (1878) and Le Bonheur (1888). The extreme economy of means employed in these poems has, however, usually been judged as compromising their poetical quality without advancing their claims as works of philosophy. He was elected to the Académie française in 1881. Another distinction, Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, was to follow in 1895.

After, Le Bonheur, Prudhomme turned from poetry to write essays on aesthetics and philosophy. He published two important essays: L’Expression dans les beaux-arts (1884) and Reflexions sur lart des vers (1892), a series of articles on Blaise Pascal in La Revue des Deux Mondes (1890), and an article on free will (La Psychologie du Libre-Arbitre, 1906) in the Revue de meta physique et de morale.

Sully Prudhomme shared these early poems with fellow members of the Conference la Bruyere, a student society. He began to publish his works and, prompted by the favourable reception his early poems received, resolved to forgo legal training and devoted himself to literature. His first volume, Stances et Poemes (1865) [Stanzas and Poems], was well reviewed by Sainte-Beuve and established his reputation. Sully Prudhomme combined a Parnassian regard for formal perfection and elegance with philosophic and scientific interests, which are revealed, for instance, in his translation of the first book of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (1878-79). Some of his other poetic works are: Croquis Italiens (1866-68) [Italian Notebook]; Solitudes (1869); Impressions de la guerre (1870) [Impressions of War]; Les Destins (1872) [Destinies]; La Revolte des fleurs (1872) [Revolt of the Flowers]; La France (1874); Les Vaines Tendresses (1875) [Vain Endearments]; La Justice (1878); and Le Bonheur (1888) [Happiness]. Les Epaves (1908) [Flotsam], published posthumously, was a collection of miscellaneous poems. A collected edition of his writings in five volumes appeared in 1900-01. He also wrote essays and a book on Pascal, La Vraie Religion selon Pascal (1905) [Pascal on true Religion].

The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, five years after Alfred Nobel donated 94% of the fortune in his will to recognize individuals who “have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” Prudhomme’s contemporaries that year were Jacobus H. van’t Hoff (Chemistry), Wilhelm C. Rontgen (Physics), Emil A. van Behring (Medicine), and Jean H. Dunant with Frederic Passy (Peace). Their accomplishments included the development of pressure laws and thermodynamics, which are considered the most important and comprehensive laws in natural science; the discovery of the first X-rays; the development of antitoxin for diphtheria and tetanus; and the establishment of the International Red Cross.

The Nobel Prize was only one of several honors Prudhomme earned during his life in literature. He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1881, serving on the 40-member board for 26 years. In 1895, he was awarded the highest decoration in France when he was named a Knight in the French Legion of Honour.

Sully Prudhomme experienced a successful and productive period during the late 1860s, when he published a number of well-received works on personal subjects. A melancholic tone reflected in themes of loneliness and sorrow pervade the sonnets in Les epreuves (The Test), published in 1865, and the elegies in Les solitudes (Solitudes) from 1869. Sully Prudhomme’s knowledge of scientific and philosophic subjects is apparent in the works collected in Les epreuves, which are organized under the headings “Doubt,” “Love,” “Dream,” and “Action.” French novelist Anatole France described Les epreuves in 1914 as “a collection of sonnets of a beauty at once intellectual and concrete. Several of [the poems] express the profoundest thought in the most fragrant language.” Other works in the volume seek to reconcile art and science and to define the role of the artist in modern society. During this period Sully Prudhomme also published Croquis Italiens (Italian Notebook).

During the middle period of his career Sully Prudhomme employed longer poetic forms to discuss important philosophical and scientific concepts that would reconcile art and life. In La justice, published in 1878, he away from a religious basis for morality, and sought morality in nature, discovering it manifested in the evolution of the human conscience. Presented as a dialog between “The Seeker” and “A Voice,” the work serves as an argument against despair in a world without God. The first part of La justice outlines war, suffering, and the destruction that has been wrought by nature and by humanity throughout history. The second part of the poem counters this with the intelligence and yearning for a greater good that continues to develop in human consciousness. He concludes that “La Justice est l’amour guidé par la lumiére” (Justice is love guided by enlightenment). According to Marble, Sully Prudhomme’s conclusion indicates that while “Justice cannot be located in the Universe; it may be found in the heart of man, ‘which is its inviolable and sacred temple.’ ”

Sully Prudhomme was a member of the French Academy from 1881 until his death in 1907. According to C. D. Wirsen of the Swedish Academy, writing on the occasion of the Nobel Award, “Sully Prudhomme is one of the major poets of our time, and some of his poems are pearls of imperishable value… [His] work reveals an inquiring and observing mind which finds no rest in what passes and which, as it seems impossible to him to know more, finds evidence of man’s supernatural destiny in the moral realm, in the voice of conscience, and in the lofty and undeniable prescriptions of duty.” Sully Prudhomme was highly praised during his lifetime, his works reflecting a broadening appreciation of classical forms and a growing belief in the ability of science to replace religion. In the Spectator a contemporary reviewer asserted that “M. Sully Prudhomme, in his prose work on Expression in the Fine Arts, and in his elaborate preface to the translation of the first book of De natura rerum, has written what are probably the most brilliant essays of philosophic thought which modern France has produced.” However, the poet’s work has been discussed since the 1920s, when modernism supplanted the older forms in literature and the arts. Nevertheless, his Solitudes was reprinted in 1978.

Late in his life, Prudhomme gave up verse. He lived in the suburbs of southwest Paris and suffered from attacks of paralysis while writing essays almost exclusively about philosophy and free will, and working on his book about the religious notions of Blaise Pascal (La Vraie Religion selon Pascal, 1905). He died suddenly on September 6, 1907 and was buried at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.