Anatole France

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The works of the French novelist and essayist Anatole France (1844-1924) combine classical purity of style with penetrating flashes of irony. He is a major figure in the tradition of liberal humanism in French literature.

Jacques Anatole François Thibault, who was to take the literary name of Anatole France, was born in Paris on April 16, 1844, the son of a self-educated bookseller. He attended the Collège Stanislas, a Catholic school, but was far from a brilliant pupil and emerged with a lasting dislike of the Church. Greater intellectual profit came to him from browsing among his father's books and from friendships with influential customers, which led to work for a publisher. France's first book was a study of the poet Alfred de Vigny and was followed by poetry and a verse drama, politely received but not particularly successful. At the same time he was pursuing a career in literary journalism, and in 1877 he married Valérie Guéin, the daughter of a well-to-do family, with whom he had a daughter, Suzanne, in 1881.

Early Career

France's first great literary success came in 1881 with Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard). This story of an aging scholar betrays to the present-day reader an excessive sentimentality, but its optimistic theme and kindly irony were welcomed as a reaction against the brutal realism of the prevailing school of Émile Zola. The novel which followed, Les Désirs de Jean Servien (1882; The Aspirations of Jean Servien), was less well received. By the close of the 1880s France had established himself as a literary figure and had also begun a liaison with Madame Arman de Caillavet, who had a celebrated literary salon. Their relationship ended only with her death in 1910. France's marriage was dissolved in 1893.

In 1890 appeared Thaïs, set in Egypt in the early Christian era, treating the story of the courtesan Thaïs and the monk Paphnuce with tolerant irony and skepticism. It was followed in 1893 by La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque (At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque), another tale with philosophical implications, this time set in the 18th century; and in 1894 by Le Lys rouge (The Red Lily), a more conventional novel of love in the wealthier classes, set largely in Italy. Le Jardin d'Épicure (1884; The Garden of Epicurus) consists of reprinted articles but contains the essence of France's attitude to the world at that point: a weary skepticism redeemed by an appreciation of the delicate pleasures of the mind.

Elected to the French Academy in 1896, France was at the height of a successful career. But his journalistic articles had begun to include social as well as literary criticism, and when the Dreyfus case came to a head in 1897, he felt obliged to take sides with the Jewish officer, whom he considered to have been wrongly condemned. For the rest of his life France was to abandon the political skepticism of his earlier years, while the irony in his books turned sharply critical of the contemporary world. This becomes increasingly evident in four books of L'Histoire contemporaine (1897-1901; Contemporary History), in which the figure of Monsieur Bergeret acts as the representative of France's own views on the Dreyfus case and other social problems, and in the story Crainquebille (1901), in which the case was transposed into a parable of the unjust prosecution of a harmless and innocent street peddler.

Later Works

The book in which France's political irony reached its height was, however, L'Île des Pingouins (1908; Penguin Island), a penetrating glance at French history and life and perhaps the only satire in French literature which can be compared to Voltaire's Candide. The novel generally regarded as France's finest came out 4 years later: Les Dieux ont soif (The Gods Are Athirst). Set during the French Revolution, the book portrays the gradual development of a young artist, Évariste Gamelin, from his initial idealism and good nature to a point at which, through membership in a Revolutionary tribunal, his virtues have been transformed into a bloodthirsty and merciless fanaticism. France's own attitude is made clear through the character of Brotteaux, a formerly wealthy tax collector whose only possession is now his edition of Epicurus. Brotteaux, unjustly condemned by Gamelin's tribunal, meets the guillotine with stoic resolution. The novel ends with the overthrow of Robespierre and Gamelin's own execution.

France's last major work was La Révolte des anges (1914; The Revolt of the Angels), another satire, in which a group of angels attempt to free themselves from divine despotism. Less bitter than L'Île des Pingouins the book is also less successful. In France's later years he was increasingly involved politically with the extreme left and for a time became a supporter of the French Communist party. In 1921 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature; a year later his works were put on the papal Index. France, who had married again in 1920, died 6 months after his eightieth birthday, in 1924.

The many other books by France include collected articles on literary and social topics, volumes of autobiography, and a life of Joan of Arc. Regarded at the turn of the century as probably the most important French writer of his age, France lived too long for his reputation not to be viewed with impatience by a younger generation of writers who had little time for either his clarity of style or his polished irony. He himself had said, "People will reproach me for my audacity until they start reproaching me for my timidity." But if overvalued earlier, looked at in perspective, France's achievement as a novelist and satirist and his stand for the principles of justice and tolerance mark him as a major writer.

Further Reading

The most recent biography of France in English is David Tylden-Wright, Anatole France (1967). Among the older biographies, Edwin Preston Dargan, Anatole France: 1844-1896 (1937), treats France's life until the Dreyfus case, and Jacob Axelrad, Anatole France: A Life without Illusions, 1844-1924 (1944), deals with France's entire career. Up-to-date literary studies are Reino Virtanen, Anatole France (1968), and Dushan Bresky, The Art of Anatole France (1969). Alfred Carter Jefferson concentrates on France's political development in Anatole France: The Politics of Scepticism (1965). Useful earlier studies are James Lewis May, Anatole France: The Man and His Work (1924), and Haakon M. Chevalier, The Ironic Temper: Anatole France and His Time (1932).

France, Anatole (pseudonym of Jacques‐Anatole‐François Thibault1844–1924), French poet, novelist, critic, and Nobel laureate (1921). France had an abiding interest in fairy tales. An early story, ‘L'Abeille’ (‘The Bee’, 1882), features two young heroes who are eventually united by the King of the Dwarfs. Intended for children, the tale's mythological allusions and erudition appeal to adults as well. ‘Dialogue sur les contes de fées’ (‘Conversation about Fairy Tales’), found in France's celebrated Le Livre de mon ami (My Friend's Book, 1885), is a passionate defence of the educational value and imaginative power of fairy tales. France's best‐known tales are subversive reworkings of Charles Perrault's ‘Bluebeard’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’. In ‘Les Sept femmes de la Barbe‐Bleue d'après des documents authentiques’ (‘The Seven Wives of Bluebeard according to Authentic Documents’, 1909), Bluebeard is the unwitting victim of avaricious and adulterous wives. Here the revisionist narrator ‘corrects’ the ‘errors’ in Perrault's account, which he treats as fact rather than fiction. France's wilful confusion of these categories validates fiction by equating it with history and simultaneously undermines history's claims to accuracy and objectivity.

Bibliography

• Bancquart, Marie‐Claire, Anatole France, un sceptique passionné (1984).
• Bresky, Dushan, The Art of Anatole France (1969).
• Levy, Diane Wolfe, ‘History as Art: Ironic Parody in Anatole France's Les Sept Femmes de la Barbe‐Bleue’, Nineteenth‐Century French Studies, 4 (1976).
• Tendron, Edith, Anatole France inconnu (1995).

— Adrienne E. Zuerner

France, Anatole (pseud. of Jacques-Anatole-François Thibault) (1844-1924). Novelist and critic, Nobel laureate (1921), son of a royalist Parisian bookseller. His early work (1862-77) as a reviewer and publisher's editor produced a sympathetic study of Vigny (1868) and a variety of slight but suggestive essays on authors ranging from Apuleius to Zola, some reprinted in Le Génie latin (1913). Criticism written for Le Temps (1887-93) during the years of his fame as a writer, and reprinted in four volumes of La Vie littéraire (1888-92), reveal a subtle and elegant mind but no great originality or force. Whether judging Balzac, Baudelaire, or Dumas fils, he is lucid, appreciative, but lacks rigour and penetration. He embarked on poetry but soon abandoned it. Poèmes dorés (1873) and a poetic drama, Les Noces corinthiennes (1876), reflect Parnassian sympathies but, while displaying flashes of sensuous life, lack a personal voice.

Though his erudite reflections on a variety of subjects, from war to morals, won him admirers for Le Jardin d'Épicure (1894) and Sur la pierre blanche (1905), France's fame rests on the witty, mocking, and urbane scepticism pervading him impressive body of short stories and novels. Of these, the barely fictionalized ‘novels’ evoking his childhood—Le Livre de mon ami (1885), Pierre Nozière (1899), Le Petit Pierre (1919), La Vie en fleur (1922)—have a simple directness and charm which contrast with the arch pastiche of 18th-c. life to be found in La Rôtisserie de la reine Pédauque (1893) and Les Opinions de M. Jérôme Coignard (1893). More impressive are the fine short stories in Balthasar (1889), L'Étui de nacre (1892), Le Puits de Sainte-Claire (1895), etc. Thaïs (1890), an exotic tale of courtesan turned saint, and Le Lys rouge (1894), a study of sexual jealousy in Florence, represent France's most ambitious attempts to write about human passion, but they cannot rival his later novels. First among these must be Les Dieux ont soif (1912), his vivid and masterly study of Revolutionary fanaticism and corruption. Next come the four volumes of his Histoire contemporaine: L'Orme du mail (1897), Le Mannequin d'osier (1897), L'Anneau d'améthyste (1899), Monsieur Bergeret à Paris (1901), offering their scathing mockery of French politics. Finally, L'Île des pingouins (1908), his disenchanted allegory of human progress, and La Révolte des anges (1914), his playful but subversive account of Christianity, reveal a true satirist.

[S. Beynon John]

Bibliography

• R. Virtanen, Anatole France (1968)

Quotes:

"Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues."

"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't."

"Nine tenths of education is encouragement."

"We reproach people for talking about themselves; but it is the subject they treat best."

"I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom."

"Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear."

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Anatole France
Born	April 16, 1844(1844-04-16) Paris, France
Died	October 12, 1924 (aged 80) Tours, France
Occupation	novelist
Nationality	French
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature 1921

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Anatole France (16 April 1844—12 October 1924), born François-Anatole Thibault,^[1] was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie française, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Literary career 3 Bibliography 4 Famous sayings 5 Notes 6 External links

Early life

The son of a bookseller, France spent most of his life around books. His father's bookstore, called the Librairie France, specialized in books and papers on the French Revolution and was frequented by many notable writers and scholars of the day.^[1] Anatole France studied at the Collège Stanislas and after graduation he helped his father by working in his bookstore. After several years he secured the position of cataloguer at Bacheline-Deflorenne and at Lemerre. In 1876 he was appointed librarian for the French Senate.

Literary career

Anatole France began his career as a poet and a journalist. In 1869, Le Parnasse Contemporain published one of his poems, La Part de Madeleine. In 1875, he sat on the committee which was in charge of the third Parnasse Contemporain compilation. He moved Paul Verlaine and Mallarmé aside of this Parnasse. As a journalist, from 1867, he wrote a lot of articles and notices. He became famous with the novel Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881). Its protagonist, skeptical old scholar Sylvester Bonnard, embodied France's own personality. The novel was praised for its elegant prose and won him a prize from the French Academy. In La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque (1893) Anatole France ridiculed belief in the occult; and in Les Opinions de Jerome Coignard (1893), France captured the atmosphere of the fin de siècle.

He was elected to the Académie française in 1896.

France took an important part in the Dreyfus Affair. He signed Emile Zola's manifesto supporting Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer who had been falsely convicted of espionage. France wrote about the affair in his 1901 novel Monsieur Bergeret.

France's later works include L'Île des Pingouins (1908) which satirizes human nature by depicting the transformation of penguins into humans - after the animals have been baptized in error by the nearsighted Abbot Mael. La Revolte des Anges (1914) is often considered France's most profound novel. It tells the story of Arcade, the guardian angel of Maurice d'Esparvieu. Arcade falls in love, joins the revolutionary movement of angels, and towards the end realizes that the overthrow of God is meaningless unless "in ourselves and in ourselves alone we attack and destroy Ialdabaoth."

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. He died in 1924 and is buried in the Neuilly-sur-Seine community cemetery near Paris.

In the 1920s, France's writings were put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Prohibited Books Index) of the Roman Catholic Church.

Bibliography

Poetry

• Les Légions de Varus, poem published in 1867 in the Gazette rimée.
• Poèmes dorés (1873)
• Les Noces corinthiennes (The Bride of Corinth) (1876)

Prose Fiction

• Jocaste et Le Chat maigre (Jocasta and the Famished Cat) (1879)
• Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard) (1881)
• Les Désirs de Jean Servien (The Aspirations of Jean Servien) (1882)
• Abeille (Honey-Bee) (1883)
• Balthasar (1889)
• Thaïs (1890)
• L’Étui de nacre (Mother of Pearl) (1892)
• La Rôtisserie de la reine Pédauque (At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque) (1892)
• Les Opinions de Jérôme Coignard (The Opinions of Jerome Coignard) (1893)
• Le Lys rouge (The Red Lily) (1894)
• Le Jardin d’Épicure (The Garden of Epicurus) (1895)
• Le Puits de Sainte Claire (The Well of Saint Clare) (1895)
• L’Histoire contemporaine (A Chronicle of Our Own Times)
  • 1: L’Orme du mail (The Elm-Tree on the Mall)(1897)
  • 2: Le Mannequin d'osier (The Wicker Woman) (1897)
  • 3: L’Anneau d'améthyste (The Amethyst Ring) (1899)
  • 4: Monsieur Bergeret à Paris (Monsieur Bergeret in Paris) (1901)
• Clio (1900)
• Histoires comiques (1903)
• Sur la pierre blanche (The White Stone) (1905)
• L'Affaire Crainquebille (1901)
• L’Île des Pingouins (Penguin Island) (1908)
• Les Contes de Jacques Tournebroche (The Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche) (1908)
• Les Sept Femmes de Barbe bleue et autres contes merveilleux (The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard and Other Marvellous Tales) (1909)
• Les dieux ont soif (The Gods Are Athirst) (1912)
• La Révolte des anges (The Revolt of the Angels) (1914)

Memoirs

• Le Livre de mon ami (My Friend's Book) (1885)
• Pierre Nozière (1899)
• Le Petit Pierre (Little Pierre) (1918)
• La Vie en fleur (The Bloom of Life) (1922)

Plays

• Au petit bonheur (1898)
• Crainquebille (1903)
• La Comédie de celui qui épousa une femme muette (The Man Who Married A Dumb Wife) (1908)
• Le Mannequin d'osier (The Wicker Woman) (1928)

Historical Biography

• Vie de Jeanne d'Arc (The Life of Joan of Arc) (1908)

Literary Criticism

• Alfred de Vigny (1869)
• Le Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte (1888)
• Le Génie latin (1913)

Social Criticism

• Opinions sociales (1902)
• Le Parti noir (1904)
• Vers les temps meilleurs (1906)
• Sur la voie glorieuse (1915)
• Trente ans de vie sociale, in four volumes, (1949, 1953, 1964, 1973)

Famous sayings

• "I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom."
• "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." (Le Lys Rouge)
• "To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream, not only plan but also believe."
• "Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom."
• "Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe."
• "For every monarchy overthrown the sky becomes less brilliant, because it loses a star. A republic is ugliness set free."
• "She fought him off vigorously, scratched, cried that she will die before she submits, but the chevalier paid no attention to her words and took her. Afterwards, she smiled coyly and told him: "Do not think, dear chevalier, that you won me against my will. Better thank our good preacher who reminded me that we are mortal, and a pleasure missed today is missed forever. Now we can proceed, for I missed too many pleasures while being too prudent for my own good." (Fable by Anatole France.)
• "Nine tenths of education is encouragement."
• "All religions breed crime." (Thaïs)
• "The people who have no weaknesses are terrible: there is no way of taking advantage of them." (The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard)
• "It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion."
• "The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards."
• "Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened."
• "Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not."
• "All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."
• "Of all sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest."

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} w:fr:Anatole France

Quotes:

"We have never heard the devil's side of the story, God wrote all the book."

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Anatole France

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Anatole France

• Works by Anatole France at Project Gutenberg
• Anatole France Biography at LitWeb
• Anatole France, Nobel Prize Winner by Herbert S. Gorman, The New York Times, 20 November 1921
• Correspondence with architect Jean-Paul Oury at Syracuse University
• The Seven Wives of Bluebeard (English) by Anatole France
• The Story of the Duchess of Cicogne and of Monsieur de Boulingrin (English) by Anatole France
• Works by Anatole France at Internet Archive
• Anatole France on religion
• (French) Anatole France, his work in audio version

Cultural offices
Preceded by Ferdinand de Lesseps	Seat 38, Académie française 1896-1924	Succeeded by Paul Valéry

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Persondata
NAME	Thibault, Jacques Anatole François
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	France, Anatole (pen name)
SHORT DESCRIPTION	French novelist
DATE OF BIRTH	16 April 1844(1844-04-16)
PLACE OF BIRTH	Paris, France
DATE OF DEATH	21 October 1924
PLACE OF DEATH	Tours, France

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