Remy de Gourmont

“ In Diderot, as in Remy de Gourmont, one may find a natural inclination toward general ideas, an enjoyment of specific facts and scientific theories, a happy, spontaneous interweaving of art and philosophy, of myth and thought, of type and paradox, a common dilettanteism in criticism and in painting.
It goes without saying that Remy de Gourmont was not merely a repetition of Diderot, for no man, least of all a man of genius, is a repetition of a predecessor. Between the one and the other there lies a century of corrective and advancing culture. Romanticism has not been in vain. ”

“ Moralist, logician, poet, intuitive as well as deductive, passionate lover of ideas, Remy de Gourmont possessed also the merit of being a voluntary recluse, exceedingly proud, clinging tenaciously to his liberty, disdaining all fame, living as a solitary spirit and as a man truly above all social prejudices. ”

“ Remy de Gourmont would free us from the rule of dogmatist and moralist, but he would free us from these without plunging us into a yet sterner ascesis. The tone and temper advocated by him is one eminently sane, peaceful, quiet, friendly and gay. He does not free us from a dark responsibility to God to plunge us under the yoke of a darker responsibility to posterity. ”

“ One can only stick to what one loves. To keep a treasure, you must have found it first."
He had spoken with passion.
"What eloquence!" said M. Des Boys.
All of a sudden, Rose began to laugh, a laugh so happy, so full of gratitude, that M. Hervart could make no mistake about its meaning.
"You're being laughed at, my poor friend," M. Des Boys went on.
At this mistake, Rose's laughter redoubled. It became gay, childish, uncontrollable.
"This is something," said Mme. Des Boys, "which will console you, I hope. But what a little demon my daughter is!" ”

“ It is really liberty—first and last—in the full beautiful meaning of that great human word, that Remy de Gourmont claims for us; though he is perfectly aware that such liberty can never be enjoyed except by those whose genuine intellectual emancipation renders them fit to enjoy it. It is always for the liberty of man as an individual, never for men as a herd, that he contends; as his favourite phrase, "subjective idealism," constantly insists.
And, above all, it is perfect and untrammelled liberty for the artist that he demands. ”

“ Remy de Gourmont has written one immortal philosophical romance in "A Night in the Luxembourg." He has written some exquisite poetry full of a voluptuous and ironic charm; full of that remoteness from sordid reality which befits a lonely and epicurean spirit, a spirit pursuing its own way on the shadowy side of all human roads where the old men dream their most interesting dreams and the young maidens dance their most unreserved dances. ”

“ It is not, on this occasion, Sully-Prudhomme whom we are considering, but his critics. If Théophile Gautier was right in 1867, Rémy de Gourmont must have been wrong in 1907; yet they both were honourable men in the world of criticism. Nor is it merely the dictum of a single man, which, however ingenious, may be paradoxical. It is worse than that; it is the fact that one whole generation seems to have agreed with Gautier, and that another whole generation is of the same mind as Rémy de Gourmont. ”

“ Upon arising, he was another person, and certitude, pure and clear certitude did not abandon him an instant until evening. At half past eight, the hour chosen and fixed by her, he would see her. Until then he walked with closed eyes, almost like a blind man, all the powers of his mind, all his faculties of idealisation, together with his scorn and skepticism, drowned in that drop of water—Sixtine. He did not even have enough strength for astonishment: a rising moon, a dawning love dominated his horizon. ”

“ Her restless studded fingers clasped her knees that were covered with a red robe. Hubert embraced the knees and kissed the fingers. It was the same as happens with little serpents in skins of old silver found under withered ferns, in the sunlight; as soon as one touches them, they stiffen and become as brittle as glass. Sixtine, at this brusque contact, grew rigid as a lady of stone in her emblazoned seat, and Hubert felt that the least insistence would shatter that soul. It was too late. As Sixtine had so well conjectured, the startled occasion had fled. ”

“ Gourmont, standing in the outer court, attracts the young and the audacious around him by protesting that no laws exist save those which are founded on an artist's own eclecticism. Together, or rather back to back, they addressed almost everyone who was intelligent in France between 1895 and 1914.
We have seen in Emile Faguet a typical member of the middle class. Remy de Gourmont was an aristocrat both by descent and by temperament. He was born on the 4th of April, 1858, in the château of La Motte, near Bazoches-en-Houlme, in the Orne ”

“ He wanted something to eat; Rose acquiesced. As she was slow in getting up he wanted to pick her up in his arms; but his arms, grown strangely weak, were unequal to the light burden. M. Hervart felt, too, that his legs were not as solid as they might have been. He would have liked to eat and at the same time to lie down in the grass. He let himself fall back on the bench.
"You look so tired," said Rose, inventing every kind of tenderness. "Stay her, I'll bring you some cakes and wine." ”

“ Some of the “children of Mallarmé” are dead; others are forgotten; a few still remain. Maeterlinck, Vielé-Griffin, Jammes, and Remy de Gourmont occur first to one’s mind as the best living representatives of the great Symbolist school, and of these the subtlest, the most fascinating, the most modern is Remy de Gourmont. ”

“ The more he dreamed about Rose, the more disquietingly tense grew his nerves. His desire did not turn towards her; he caught himself one evening spying on the wife of the Barnavast keeper, who was showing her legs as she bent over the well. It made him feel rather ashamed, for this big Norman peasant woman, so young and fresh, could boast, he imagined, of nothing more than a peasant's cleanliness—wholly exterior, and he would only, could only tolerate woman in the state of the nymph fresh risen from the bath, like the companions of Diana. ”

“ The work of Remy de Gourmont is known and read in all parts of the civilized world. Yet he has not a large circulation and a purely commercial writer would probably be disgusted at his profits, but he has an influence, especially over the younger and more adventuresome spirits, which few writers today possess. ”

“ Rose made an abrupt movement which parted them, and looking full at M. Hervart, her face radiant with tenderness, she said:
"I'm not unhappy now."
She got up, and they moved away together through the wood, exchanging little insignificant phrases in voices full of tenderness. Each time their eyes met, they smiled. They kept on fingering leaves, flowers, mere pieces of wood, so as to have an excuse for touching each other's hand. Coming to a clearing where they could walk abreast, they allowed their arms on the inner side to hang limply down, so that their hands touched and were soon joined. ”

“ Love is indeed, as Remy de Gourmont remarks, a delicate art, for which, as for painting or music, only some are apt.
It must not be supposed that the demand on the lover and husband to approach a woman in the same spirit, with the same consideration and skilful touch, as a musician takes up his instrument is merely a demand made by modern women who are probably neurotic or hysterical. ”

“ She picked a red rose and put it to her lips, kissing it as though it were something sacred and adored.
M. Des Boys looked at his daughter with astonishment.
"Well, M. Encoignard, we must do what she wants. Hervart, what do you think about it?"
"I think that one ought to leave nature as unkempt as possible. I also think that one ought to love the plants of the country where one lives. They are the only ones that harmonize with the sky and the crops, with the colour of the rivers and roads and roofs." ”

“ After reading Remy de Gourmont, with his wise, friendly ironic interest in every kind of human emotion, one is inclined to feel that, after all, in the large and tolerant courts of some less zealous traditional "order" there might be more pleasant air to breathe, more peaceful sunshine, more fresh and dewy rose-gardens, than in a world dominated by the Eagle and the Serpent of the Zarathustrian Overman. ”

“ He knew very well that he would captivate none but willing slaves, slaves by profession, slaves by birth. But the hunt, if the game came and offered itself graciously to the hunter, would still have its attraction—that of choice; the fun would be to put one's hand on the fattest partridge.
"No," he said to himself, as he walked down the Avenue de l'Opera, "this child from Robinvast shall not obsess me thus, hour by hour. Any woman, provided she is acceptable to my senses, will deliver me from this silly vision. Is there such a thing as love without carnal desire? ”

“ Hortense is a perfect violin; I will be her devoted bow. And between her hands, am not I also a good instrument? Oh! the fools who pass their life fighting against their passions! After that, what happens? When they see that the garden is almost flowerless, they come in melancholy fashion to smell the last rose: the wind passes and they find only a bush of leaves and thorns! But shouldn't I also ask: after that? May it not be that the only delicious thing in life is the constancy of an unconscious love? I know only too well that I love Hortense, and I know only too well why I love her. ”

“ He only read newspapers, and the vilest of them, so that nothing might disturb his belief that no one wrote save to earn money, and that the viler and more lying any literature is, the more it entertains the public—all the public.
Entragues paused in his work and reflected: "We are almost in accord, yes, for if I detest to lull myself in joy and in the contentment of my heart, it is not through a desired and coddled impotence. I do not disdain life, I have never disowned its pleasures. It is neither bad nor good, it is indifferent, it is the conditional state of dreams, and that is all. ”

“ Sixtine seemed enchanted with the plan: Moscowitch had a vision of the glory he would gain; Entragues said to himself: "Either they are making a fool of me, and I have nothing to lose in being amiable to this Russian, or else she is only interesting herself in him through vanity, and the more I do, the more she will be grateful to me. No, I shall certainly be a dupe and without reward; there are old relations between them: the S. M. proves it. Oh! how anxious I am to mock gently before being mocked myself by the facts. That would mean to lose all. ”

“ It was time to go down.
"How dark the staircase is," said Rose. "Give me your hand."
At the bottom, as though to thank him for his help, she offered her cheek. His kiss settled on the corner of her mouth. Rose recoiled, warned of danger by this new sensation that was too intimate, too intense. But in the process of moving away, she came near to falling. Her hands clutched at his, and she found herself once more leaning towards M. Hervart. They looked at one another for a moment. Rose shut her eyes and waited for a renewal of the burning touch. ”

“ He found himself once more at the outset of life and as incapable of mournful thoughts as at twenty.
His whole manner suddenly changed. He hoisted himself on to the terrace and, sitting on the edge in the dry grass, lit a cigarette and looked at the world without thinking of anything at all. ”

“ One day Leonor let fall, from the top of a ladder, a pocketbook from which a flood of papers—sketches, bills, letters, picture postcards—escaped. Rose picked them up, without giving them more than the discreetest glance, when Martinvast castle caught her eye. At the foot of the keep she found M. Hervart's 'love and kisses'. The blood came suddenly to her eyes; she turned the card over and read: "Mademoiselle Gratienne Leboeuf, Rue du Havre, Honfleur." She looked up; Leonor did not seem to have noticed the incident, and with a rapid gesture she folded up the card and slipped it into her bosom. ”

“ The adorable woman surrendered to his kisses; the carnal dream made them unconscious of good and evil; they advanced, eagerly and with swimming heads, ready to place their feet on the bark that sails towards the Isle of Delights, seeking to ascertain how the sails were shifting and the condition of the rudder. Entragues suddenly got up, pale; ghostly behind the window curtains, terrible in her red robe, Sixtine had revealed herself.
"Ah!" he vaguely thought, terrified, but his own self again, "this is reality. The illusions are reaped, the hay is brought in, the field is bare. ”

“ Sixtine continued inwardly, "evoke my will before me, let me see it with my eyes, let me touch it with my hands. You can do it, you should be able, since you are a man!..."
She waited a second: the aura of a nervous stroke hovered nearby and played along her spine, the swelling ball traveled along her neck; her fingers thrilled in the hand of Entragues, she felt the imperious necessity of shunning all contact and, suddenly rising, she went to her piano and feverishly played an incoherent piece of music which saved her.
"She is strange," thought Entragues. ”

“ It was Marguerin, the theosophist, whose friends excused his licentious folly as a malady of the cerebellum. His play of features, strangely promising, seduced women in search of debasement: he was rich and subsidized an angelical review. This day, a fixed idea, which he confided to Entragues, gave his face an imbecile appearance.
"Dead! Perhaps you remember that blond girl, Maia!"
"His present phantasy," thought Hubert, "does not incite any repugnance. Have I not had the madness of eyes, and am I cured of it? Has not the vision of two large eyes ever been necessary to complete my happiness? ”