Paul Bourget

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Paul Bourget (1852-1935).

Paul Charles Joseph Bourget (born September 2, 1852 in Amiens , † December 25, 1935 in Paris ) was a French writer who worked primarily as a novelist .

Life and work

Paul Bourget (his name as an author) grew up in Clermont-Ferrand , where his father had received a university professorship and a little later became a high official in the education system (recteur d ' Académie ). At the age of 15 he came to Paris and completed the last years of high school at the renowned Lycée Louis-le-Grand . In 1870 he experienced the uprising of the Paris Commune at first hand , which, after initial sympathy for the revolutionaries, reinforced his conservative attitude. During his subsequent literature studies, he developed contacts with the group of poets of the Parnassians , wrote poetry, which he published for the first time as a book in 1875, and was active as a literary journalist, especially as a theater critic. During this time he met Léon Bloy .

Around 1880 he wrote a series of astute portraits of important newer authors, including Charles Baudelaire , Ernest Renan , Stendhal , Hippolyte Taine , which he published in 1883 in the widely acclaimed volume Essais de psychologie contemporaine . He then developed into a novelist who also concentrated on the psychology of his characters and thus consciously set himself apart from naturalism à la Goncourt and Zola . The best-known titles of these first years as a novelist were Cruelle énigme (Cruel Riddle, 1885), Un Crime d'amour (Crimes of Love, 1886), André Cornélis (1887), Mensonges (Lies, 1887) and above all Le Disciple (the Schüler / Jünger, 1889), whose plot is set in the sophisticated Parisian milieu and revolves around a compulsive young analyst of himself and the suicide of the young woman who loves him and whom he seduces and drives to death.

After that, Bourget began to shift to more morally intended novels, with which he was above all a sophisticated, conservative, i.e. H. Catholic, monarchist, nationalist, bourgeois and, above all, female audiences, with whom he was extremely successful with his considerable production up to the First World War .

In 1894 he was rewarded with admission to the Académie française . In 1898, at the time of the Dreyfus affair , he was a conservative anti-Dreyfusard and a sympathizer of the nationalist Action française .

In 1901 he returned to the piety of his childhood and treated related topics in his novels. After the world he wrote about and for had largely perished in the First World War , Bourget was forgotten even while he was still busy producing. Mental and social historians consider his novels to be a treasure trove of information on the way of life and imagination of the Parisian bourgeoisie of the Belle Époque .

Works

Études et portraits , 1889
  • Le demon de midi . New edition Fayard, Paris 1951.
  • Études et portraits , 1889; Plon, Paris 1919 (2 vol.).
  • Deuxième Amour . Alphonse Lemerre, Paris 1898.
  • A woman's heart (“Un cœur de femme”). Manesse Verlag, Zurich 2006, ISBN 978-3-7175-2082-5 .
  • A cruel riddle (“Une cruelle énigme”). Lüders publishing house, Berlin 1885.
  • Cosmopolis. Roman ("Cosmopolis"). Engelhorn Verlag, Stuttgart 1892 (2 volumes).
  • Lies ("Mensonges"). German Grimm Publishing House, Budapest 1891.
  • Nouvelles pages de critique et de doctrine . Plon, Paris 1922 (2 vols.).
  • Psychological treatises on contemporary writers ("Essais de psychologie contemporaine"). Bruns Verlag, Munich 1903 (2 volumes).
  1. Charles Baudelaire , Ernest Renan , Gustave Flaubert , Taine , Stendhal (from which: Charles Baudelaire )
  2. Alexandre Dumas the Younger , Leconte de Lisle , Les Goncourt , Iwan Turgenjew , Henri-Frédéric Amiel .
  • The student. Roman ("Le Disciple"). DVA, Stuttgart 1889.
  • The sense of death ("Le Sens de la mort"). Orell Füßli, Zurich 1916.
  • Lazarine (1917). Zurich 1923

literature

  • Nicolas Di Méo: Le cosmopolitisme dans la littérature française. De Paul Bourget à Marguerite Yourcenar . Droz, Geneva 2009, ISBN 978-2-600-01311-6 .
  • Monika D. Kautenburger: From “roman expérimental” to “roman psychologiuqe”. Medicine and psychology in novels at the end of the 19th century from Emile Zola to Paul Bourget . Lang Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2003, ISBN 3-631-51424-7 .
  • Anne Martin-Fugier: La bourgeoise. La femme au temps de Paul Bourget . Grand Livres du Mois, Paris 1998, ISBN 2-7028-1889-7 .
  • Marie-Gracieuse Martin-Gistucci: Paul Bourget et l'Italie . Slatkine, Geneva 1985, ISBN 2-05-100693-8 (publication in honor of Paul Bourget's 50th anniversary of death).
  • Joelle Stoupy: Maître de l'heure. Paul Burget's reception in German-language literature around 1890; Hermann Bahr , Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Leopold von Andrian , Heinrich Mann , Thomas Mann and Friedrich Nietzsche . Lang Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 1996, ISBN 3-631-47935-2 (also dissertation, University of Frankfurt / M. 1994).
  • Crister Stephen Garrett: Paul Bourget and the politics of traditionalism. UCLA, Los Angeles 1993 (dissertation).

Web links

Wikisource: Paul Bourget  - Sources and full texts (French)
Commons : Paul Bourget  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Bourget, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bourget, Paul Charles Joseph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French poet and critic
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Amiens
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 1935
Place of death Paris