Catulle Mendès

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Mendès, Catulle (1841–1909), French writer. Unable to establish a lasting reputation for himself, Mendès none the less played a role in the Parnassian and symbolist movements. As literary editor of La Revue fantaisiste (1861) and Le Parnasse contemporain (1866–76), he provided opportunities for writers now considered important. Cultivating contemporary tastes for la fantaisie (fantasy), Mendès published works with fairy themes for himself and others like Banville and Daudet. His ‘Les Mots perdus’ (‘Lost Words’, 1886) recounts a wicked fairy's vengeance upon a nation by removing the words ‘I love you’ from its memory. Only when she falls in love with a young poet does she release the land from the curse. His marvellous and fantastic stories generally reflect this fin‐de‐siècle taste for the ‘cruel’. In ‘Le Miroir’ (‘The Mirror’, 1886), an ugly queen who has forbidden all mirrors in her realm condemns a beautiful princess to death. The girl refuses to believe in her beauty until she sees it reflected in the hangman's sword. The double‐bind moral of ‘Les Deux Marguerites’ (‘The Two Daisies’, 1886) further illustrates his pessimistic decadent aesthetic. A fairy gives two young men each a magic flower which will provide them with various sensations. One man rapidly uses up his share of pleasure, while the other hoards the daisy; this delay results in the flower dying and thus losing its power. Of the two choices, using up all of one's happiness in youth or never experiencing it at all, neither appears satisfactory.

— Amy Ransom

Mendès, Catulle (1841-1909). Versatile, prolific, and superficial, Mendès is now more remembered for his critical writing than for his poetry, novels, and plays. With the support of Gautier (whose daughter, Julie, he later married), he founded La Revue fantaisiste in 1861 and five years later cofounded Le Parnasse contemporain, two reviews which figured prominently in the poetic movement linking the Romantic and Symbolist generations. He was a friend of Mallarmé, who addressed to him some of his most significant statements on poetry, and was one of the first and most ardent French defenders of Wagner. His eyewitness account of the Commune of 1871 is a revealing statement of the Parnassian separation of art and politics, and his Légende du Parnasse contemporain (1884) and Rapport sur le mouvement poétique français (1902) remain important histories of the poetry of the period.

[James Kearns]

Mendès, Catulle (kätül' mäNdĕs'), 1841-1909, French poet, critic, and novelist of the Parnassian school. He founded (1861) the Revue fantaisiste, contributed to the Parnasse contemporain, and wrote volumes of verse, including Philoméla (1863) and La Grive des vignes (1895).