Poésies (Sully Prudhomme)

Overview

Sully Prudhomme (René François Armand Prudhomme, 1839–1907) was a Parnassian poet whose philosophical and often abstract verse made him the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1901; Wikipedia EN, "Sully Prudhomme"). By 1884 his published collections included Stances et Poèmes (1865), Les Solitudes (1869) and Les Vaines Tendresses (1875), the dates given on the Wikisource author page. The Wikisource links above give these and the other collections.

Marie and this work

1 June 1884 (104.0478, 104.0487, 104.0489), a few months before her death: she has been reading Sully Prudhomme "depuis hier matin", two volumes bought about six months earlier. At first she rejected them as pleasant verse; now she discovers things "dignes de me captiver" and reads everything at one sitting. She cares little for versification ("il n'y a pour moi que l'idée exprimée") and praises the subtle, high, almost abstract, "quintessencié" quality of his ideas, which "s'accorde parfaitement avec ma façon de sentir". She discusses him with Claire, who has lunched with her, and wonders why she reads him now: she thinks the push came from a visit by "ce pauvre Coppée", who did not mention him.

Identification note

Marie gives neither volume titles nor years, so the two volumes cannot be identified; all collections to 1884 are listed under full_text. There is no earlier glossary entry; Marie's other writer-friends in 104 (Maupassant, Coppée) are people entries.

References in Diary

Sources