Jules Renard

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Jules Renard

Jules Renard (born February 22, 1864 in Châlons-du-Maine , † May 22, 1910 in Paris ) was a French writer who preferred the small form and went to work with "fine, sometimes cruel humor". Politically he was close to the left, as an author, despite all the impressionistic comedy, he is characterized by a deep melancholy .

life and work

The son of a Burgundian construction company grows up in the forest and water-rich landscape dominated by the low mountain range of the Morvan . The oppressive climate at home for the child can easily be guessed from Renard's episodic novel Rotfuchs , which helped him achieve his breakthrough as a writer (1894). The child was a high school student in Nevers until 1881 , then in Paris. Renard's Abitur (1883) is too bad to be able to calculate his chances for the Ecole Normale. In addition, he has meanwhile warmed up to writing and the corresponding literary milieu. However, it is a thorny road to the first book publication (a volume with novellas in 1888). The capital city's literary business is a "fevered job" in which one has success or one dies, he writes to his sister.

Red fox

Young Renard holds out his father, who continues to support him financially, with vague information. He's looking for. After completing his military service (in Bourges ) in 1886/87 , he worked as an attorney's assistant and private tutor. He meets Marie Morneau, which also proves to be a stroke of luck from an economic point of view, as her wealthy mother owns an apartment building in Paris. The two lovers move in there as a married couple in 1888. In the following year Renard participates (even as the main shareholder) in the creation of the magazine Mercure de France , which quickly brings it to prominence. He regularly provides both narrative and critical contributions for them. First attempts at novels show Renard, who was impressed by Balzac , Flaubert and Zola , that his strength, in contrast to these models, does not lie in typing, but in the accurate drawing of the individual. He is also the wrong man for the "large form" and for extensive production.

When the book about the little red fox , unloved by his mother, appears, Renard already has two children himself. In 1896 he rented a former parsonage near Chitry-les-Mines, his hometown, where the family would spend their summers in the future. Winter belongs to Paris. Of Red Fox , a stage version will come out in 1900, which puts it in the same year to 125 ideas and Renard's reputation increased dramatically. He made friends with well-known authors such as Edmond Rostand , Tristan Bernard , Alfred Capus and met actors such as Lucien Guitry and Sarah Bernhardt and the painter Toulouse-Lautrec . In the Dreyfus affair , which upset all of France, he, like numerous other celebrities, signs a petition for the revision of the misjudgment, which appears on January 15, 1898 in Le Temps . In 1904, like his father, he was elected mayor of his hometown. He has ties to Paris' leading socialists Jean Jaurès and Léon Blum . The renowned Académie Goncourt accepted him in 1907.

Disease of scruples

Reputation and office don't make Renard arrogant. Certainly he longs for recognition, but "he hated the exercise of power - so much so that he was reluctant to give instructions to a barber." In 1904 he tore up his hunting license (after shooting a lark). Perhaps not by chance, he was stricken with the "disease of scruples" as well as with migraines throughout his life . Those who do not know this disease, it is said in the last entry (from March 15, 1910) of the diary selection Ideas, dipped in ink , should "not even think about being honest." Perhaps this was due to the melancholy that Renard cultivates and spread, also, an affinity for death in his family. Renard already feels exhausted by 30, even used up. His brother Maurice dies at 28; the father shoots himself in 1897; her mother drowns in 1909 in a well she fell into or threw herself into. In the same year Renard suffers a serious heart attack himself. The following May he dies, 46 years old.

Saying on a house gable in Weimar

His diary or journal, committed to unusual “brevity and conciseness” and therefore rather an extensive collection of aphorisms , is generally considered to be Renard's main work. It was highly valued by authors such as André Gide , Kurt Tucholsky , Jean-Paul Sartre , Samuel Beckett and Somerset Maugham , among others . Sartre was even faced with a literature of silence . This "silence" is not lacking in humor, yes, laughter. Winfried Engler points out that Renard succeeds remarkably well in "depicting banal events from an ironic distance in such a way that they appear interesting". On February 18, 1901, Renard wrote:

I haven't even been lucky enough to miss a train that crashed.

Works

Stories and novels

  • Crime de village , 1888
  • Sourires pincés , 1890
  • L'Écornifleur , 1892, German Der Schmarotzer Stuttgart 1964
  • La Lanterne sourde , 1893
  • Coquecigrues , 1893
  • Deux fables sans morale , 1893
  • Le coureur de filles , 1894
  • Histoires naturelles , 1894, German natural history Zurich 1960
  • Poil de carotte , 1894, German as Rotfuchs Baden-Baden 1946, as mother's son Munich 1989
  • Le Vigneron dans sa vigne , 1894
  • La Maîtresse , 1896, German Die Maitresse , Munich 1986
  • Bucoliques , 1898
  • Les Philippe , 1907
  • Patrie , 1907
  • Mots d'écrit , 1908
  • Ragotte , 1909, German Die Magd Ragotte , Stuttgart 1991
  • Nos frères farouches , 1909

journal

  • Diaries 1887-1910 , 1925, German selection under the title: Ideas, dipped in ink , Munich 1986

Dramas

  • Le Plaisir de rompre , 1897, German The desire to part , Munich 1990
  • Le Pain de ménage , 1898
  • Poil de Carotte (Red Fox), 1900
  • Monsieur Vernet , 1903
  • La Bigote , 1909

literature

  • Henri Bachelin: Jules Renard, 1864-1910. Son œuvre , Paris 1930
  • HB Coulter: The Prose Work and Technique of Renard , Washington 1935
  • Léon Guichard: L'œuvre et l'âme de Jules Renard , Paris 1936
  • Pierre Nardin: La Langue et le style de Jules Renard , Paris 1942
  • Arthur J. Knodel: Jules Renard as a critic , University Press, Berkeley, Calif. 1951
  • Marcel Pollitzer: Jules Renard. Sa vie. Son œuvre , Paris 1956
  • Pierre Schneider: Jules Renard par lui-même , Paris 1956
  • Léon Guichard: Renard , 1961
  • Pierre Schneider: Dans la vigne de Renard. Inédits recueillis et présentés by Léon Guichard , 1965
  • Serge Zeyons: Monsieur Poil de Carotte , Paris 1976
  • Maurice Toesca: Jules Renard , Paris, 1977
  • Michel Autrand: L'humor de Jules Renard , Paris 1978
  • AM Balestrazzi: Renard. Il mito personale e l'avventura letteraria , Bari 1983

Web links

Commons : Jules Renard  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Jules Renard  - Sources and full texts (French)
Wikiquote: Jules Renard  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Meyer's Lexicon of the seventh edition from 1925
  2. ↑ a b c Hanns Grössel in the afterword to ideas, dipped in ink , Munich 1986
  3. ↑ According to Winfried Engler, he also published in: Gil Blas , L'Écho de Paris , Figaro , L'Humanité
  4. ^ A b Winfried Engler : Lexicon of French Literature (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 388). 2nd, improved and enlarged edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-520-38802-2 . See also these excerpts from the diary , accessed on August 10, 2011
  5. ↑ Henner Reitmeier: The Great Stockraus. Ein Relaxikon , Berlin 2009, page 95
  6. ↑ Although only a selection (always problematic), this volume undermines a number of literal or analogous repetitions of Renard's text entries, as Reitmeier mentions on page 131 of his book.
  7. ^ Kindlers . The diary was only published posthumously, initially only mutilated. Hanns Grössel gives a short history of its origins and effects in his afterword to the selection from 1986.
  8. ^ Kindlers . The lexicon refers to the text L'homme ligoté in Sartre's Situations , Volume 1, Paris 1947
  9. ↑ Ideas ... page 181
  10. ↑ In French also online ( Memento of the original dated November 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. readable, accessed on August 10, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.scribd.com
  11. ↑ Brief discussion in Spiegel 50/1964 , accessed on August 10, 2011
  12. ^ Book presentation by Kurt Tucholsky, 1927 , accessed on August 10, 2011
  13. ↑ Some of these short prose pieces were set to music by Maurice Ravel
  14. ↑ The material has already been filmed several times.
personal data
SURNAME Renard, Jules
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French author
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Châlons-du-Maine
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1910
Place of death Paris