The Goncourt brothers formed a partnership that is perhaps unique in literary history. Not only did they write all their books together, but they were inseparable throughout their lives, until they were separated by the premature death of Jules in 1870. They are known for their literary work and diaries, which offer an intimate look at French literary society from the late 19th century. A joint photo of the Goncourt brothers perfectly reflects their complex nature.
Carier start
Their writing career began with a joint story about a sketch holiday. The brothers then published books on aspects of French and Japanese art and 18th-century society. Their stories ("Portraits in the style of the XVIII century" (1857), "La Femme au XVIIIe siècle" (1862), "La du Barry" (1878) and others) consist entirely of documents, autographs, descriptions of costumes, prints, songs, unconscious revelations of that time. In their volumes (for example, “Portraits in the Style of the 18th Century”), they rejected the vulgarity of the Second Empire in favor of a more refined aesthetics. They wrote a long “Racecourse Magazine” from 1851, which gives an idea of ​​the literary and social life of that time.
Features of creativity
When the Goncourt brothers began to write novels, they wanted to reveal the hidden inner truths of modern existence. They published six novels, of which "Germini Lazeru" (1865) was the fourth. This story is based on the fate of their own handmaid, Rosa Malindre, about whose double life they had never suspected. After the death of Jules, Edmond continued to write novels in the same style.
They invented a new novel, and their creations are the result of a new vision of the world in which the clarity of vision is blurred, as in the Monet painting. Seeing the surrounding reality through the nerve endings, and not through the eyes, in this conscious rejection of vision tricks, the world becomes an accumulation of distorted patterns and conflicting colors.
The novel of the Goncourt brothers consists of an infinite number of parts installed side by side, each of which is equally noticeable. While Flaubert’s novel, despite all its details, first of all, creates a single picture, Jules and Edmond’s novel deliberately dispenses with unity to expose the meaning of life, the warmth and the form of its moments, since they are all fleeting and passing. The novel of the Goncourt brothers is written in small chapters, sometimes not more than one page, and each of them is a separate designation of some significant event, some emotion or sensation, which seems to cast a sudden light on the picture of the soul.
For Gonkur, humanity is as picturesque as the world in which it exists. They do not go beyond the physical basis of life and find everything that can be known about this unknown force, clearly visible in the sudden images of small incidents, small expressive moments. Soul for them is a series of moods that replace each other without any too arbitrary logic. Their novels are not at all like a historical chronicle, rather, they are art galleries that depict fleeting lifestyles.
Brothers Prize
Edmond de Goncourt bequeathed all his property to the creation and maintenance of the Academy of Goncourt. Since 1903, the Goncourt Prize, established by the Academy, has become the main literary award in French literature.
Edmond de Goncourt
Edmond de Goncourt (May 26, 1822 - July 16, 1896), née Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de Goncourt, was a French writer, literary critic, art critic, book publisher and founder of the Goncourt Academy.
Goncourt was born in Nantes. For most of his life, he collaborated with his brother Jules, working on articles in the genre of literary criticism, the notorious Journal, and then on several novels. He also collected rare books, including a 1725 copy of the Prophet Pierre Rameau from the Abbey of Nuevel. After the death of Jules Goncourt, he continued to write novels alone.
In honor of his brother and associate Jules (December 17, 1830 - June 20, 1870), every December since 1903, the Academy awards the eponymous prize.
Marcel Proust, Simone de Beauvoir, Michelle Tournier, Margarita Duret, Romain Gary and Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano are some of the most famous authors who have received a hundred-year award.
Edmond de Goncourt died in 1896 and was buried at the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris.
Jules Goncourt
Jules, Edmond's brother (December 17, 1830 - June 20, 1870), nee Jules Alfred Wat, was a French writer who published books with his brother. Jules was born and died in Paris. His premature death at the age of 39 shocked the French literary society and, above all, his brother Edmond. The cause of death was a stroke caused by syphilis. Prix ​​Goncourt is awarded annually in his honor.
Goncourt Magazine
Goncourt magazine was a diary written by the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt in collaboration from 1850 until the death of his younger brother in 1870, and then only by Edmond until his own death in 1896. It is an unsurpassed and completely frank chronicle of the literary and artistic Parisian world in which they lived - the “world”, as it was said, of “bitter rivalry and fierce friendship, in which every dinner at a table in a cafe on Grand Boulevard elevated your status in the literary hierarchy. " Fear of lawsuits from friends of brothers and their heirs did not allow them to publish anything but carefully selected samples from the Journal for many years, but a full edition of the original French text appeared in the 1950s in 22 volumes. Some of these volumes have been translated into Russian.
Writing Brothers
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt formed a very close literary partnership. Not only did all of their novels, dramas, and non-fiction works be written together until the death of Jules, but, more surprisingly, they had a common journal diary, which became a real masterpiece of world literature.
The magazine was originally conceived by Edmond under the title "Double Dictatorship" - the original plan was that one brother had to dictate to another, and each had to re-read the work of the other. Their styles were so similar that it is impossible to say which brother wrote a specific passage.
For the most part, they wrote the Journal late at night, without much attention to the literary style, and therefore there are several stylistic features that characterize their novels that are difficult to grasp. Edmond himself admitted that since the entries in the Journal were "hastily scribbled on paper and not always reread, our syllable is sometimes difficult to read." They especially admired the simplicity and vulgarity of everyday speech. Jules' death was recorded by his brother in the Journal with all the details of his dying torment. When this story came to an end, Edmond initially decided to abandon the Journal, but again set to work on it to give a detailed description of life during the Franco-Prussian war, the siege of Paris and the Commune. Some critics believe the Journal improved when Edmond began leading it alone, without Jules.
Evaluation of contemporaries
The brothers were helped to keep a chronicle in the excellent memory of Edmond and, according to Flaubert, Jules habit of taking notes from the scene 24 hours a day. Louis Halevi, who was present at many events with his brothers, praised them, and the storyteller from Le Temps retrouvé Proust thought that Edmond de Goncourt “can listen just like he sees.” But some of Goncourt's contemporaries claimed that the brothers either knowingly or unconsciously distorted the conversations they recorded. For example, artist Jacques Blanche said that “there is nothing less truthful than their Magazines”, although Andre Gide, who fully enjoyed the Journal's conversations, objected that such an original manner of creativity made the brothers outstanding creators.
Magazine History
The diary of the Goncourt brothers (aka The Goncourt Magazine) was started on the same day when they published their first novel - December 2, 1851, when Louis Napoleon initiated a coup, which led to the establishment of martial law in Paris. The first novel of the brothers, however, was unsuccessful, because in this turmoil he went almost unnoticed. Goncourt's disappointment about this failure was duly recorded in the Journal, thereby setting the foundational literary tone for the remaining 45 years.
Poor sales, bad reviews, and the undeserved successes of their fellow literature writers were recorded in meticulous detail. “Oh, if one of Dostoevsky’s novels, whose black melancholy is regarded with such condescending admiration, is signed under the name of Goncourt, who will need it?”
Zola was one of their friends who deserved especially sharp comments, because the brothers believed that his style and literary devices were borrowed from them. “Critics can say what they like about Zola, but they cannot stop us, my brother and me, from becoming Jean-Baptistes of modern neurosis.”
Several famous acquaintances were praised in the diary of the Goncourt brothers, in particular, Princess Matilda Bonaparte, Paul Gavarni, Theophile Gauthier, Alfons Daudet and, at least at first, Gustave Flaubert and Paul de Saint-Victor. The critic Charles Augustine Saint-Bove was regularly mentioned in the Journal, as were the artist Edgar Degas and the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Mention was also given to Heinrich Heine, Charles Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, Ernest Renan, Hippolytus Thain, Karl Guysmans, Guy de Maupassant, Alexander Dumas and his son, Stefan Mallarmé, Georges Brande, Ivan Turgenev and Oscar Wilde.
Unsurprisingly, the Journal's often repulsive tone led to tense relationships with Edmond's surviving friends when they came to read his attitude towards them in published volumes. Back in the 1950s, the Dode family, worried about the reputation of their ancestor Alphonse, was still trying to block the publication of the full Journal. The life and work of the Goncourt brothers was always very difficult, and they did not lose their halo of scandal even after death.
Literary Failures and Criticism
Several carefully selected excerpts from the Journal were published by the Goncourt brothers in the now little-known book Ideas and Feelings (1866, revised 1877). In 1886, Edmond published in Le Figaro some excerpts from the Journal dating back to the years before Jules' death, and the following year a more substantial selection of letters from the same years appeared in a book form called Journal des Goncourt: Mémoires de la vie Littéraire. Books of the Goncourt brothers were not popular during their lifetime. Eight more volumes were published at a rate of approximately one per year, some of which were first serialized at L'Écho de Paris. The last volume appeared in May 1896, two months before Edmond's death.
The newspaper Le Figaro called the first volume a masterpiece of vanity. Worse, in three weeks, only 2,000 copies were sold, provoking Edmond's angry reaction: “Indeed, you should not risk duels for such a result.”
Le Figaro continued his attacks, giving an undesirable assessment of Edmond’s fourth volume: “He listens and thinks that he can hear, he looks and thinks that he can see ... From the literary elite of his age ... the best of its kind, all that he managed to give us most of the time - a grotesque and often repulsive picture. " The seventh volume provoked hostile articles in the Debate Journal and the Courier français, while Figaro reported that a funeral committee had been created on behalf of Edmond. The excrement was mailed to Edmond - the hatred of readers and critics was so strong. On the other hand, Anatole France wrote that "this completely private magazine is at the same time completely literary," and advised the brothers to get rid of indiscretion. The works of the Goncourt brothers were recognized only in a narrow circle of writers. However, this did not affect the fruitfulness of writers.
To American critics, the publication by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt of their notes naturally seemed less disturbing than most of their French counterparts. Atlantic Magazine wrote that in fifty years it would be “the most fascinating and vibrant story about the literary and artistic life of Paris in the last half of the 19th century.” Henry James, who writes in The Fortnightly Review, thought that the Journal and its authors would have succeeded even more if they had not limited their social life to a narrow layer of Parisian bohemia: “The Journal ... is basically a concentrated resentment and suffering, but we suspect that the real reason for its publication is also the inconvenience that we suffer as readers, is simply a lack of space and air. " Nevertheless, “Germini Laserté” by Edmond Goncourt / Jules Goncourt, decades later, will be recognized as a very subtle and sincere romance.
Confession after death
After the death of Edmond, Proust admired the creativity of the brothers and praised them for collecting the smallest details of social life, as well as their transformation into literary art, which essentially anticipated Proust's innovations that made him popular. In 1940, Christopher Isherwood admitted in his own journal that "in the work and personal life of the Goncourt brothers, gossip reaches the epigrammatic meaning of poetry." In 1962, another reviewer considered it necessary to warn his more delicate readers about the roughness of most of the conversations recorded by the brothers, and in 1971, translators of the Journal George J. Becker and Edith Philips wrote about the emotional coldness, even soullessness that can be found everywhere in the Journal, for with the exception of passages that describe Edmond’s relationship with his brother and with Dodet.
In later years, Jacques Noyrai called it “a modern Human comedy from the republic of letters”, while, according to another literary critic David Baguli, the magazine is “a huge machine for transforming past experiences into documentary form”, and was also used as raw material for writing brothers of their novels.
In the 21st century, the reputation of the Journal has never been greater. German satirist Harald Schmidt called it "the greatest collection of gossip in world literature, a real sensation," and for the historian Graham Robb, he is "one of the longest, most absorbing, and most enlightened diaries in European literature." The critic Adam Kirsch explains the contemporary interest in the French literary life of the late 19th century to the Goncourt Magazine.
Further fate of the Journal
By the will of Edmond, the manuscripts of the Journal were brought to the Academy of Goncourt, which became the repository of the dying will of the last of the brothers so that they were strictly protected from public abuse. But 20 years after the death of Edmond, the Journal gained worldwide recognition, and his manuscripts were transferred to the National Library of France. But a more complete version of the Journal, oddly enough, was released only in 1925.
In 1935-1936, the Goncourt Academy did indeed gradual publication of all the missing parts of the brothers' diary, although it did it selectively, publishing a massive work in nine volumes, and in 1945 she announced that a full and final publication would appear next year. But the then President of the Academy, Robert Bernan, did not fulfill his promise and died in 1953. Robert Ricate took his place, and the manuscript was finally published in 22 volumes between 1956 and 1959. In 2005, a new multi-volume edition of the Goncourt Brothers Diary appeared, the work of a large drafting group led by Jean-Louis Cabanes.
Translation into english and russian
The full translation of the Journal has never been done in either English or Russian. In Russia, they learned about him at the end of the 19th century thanks to the initiative of enthusiastic translators who were members of the bohemian literary circles of Europe. In 1908, the first translations of the work into English appeared, published in the United States. George J. Becker also edited and translated two thematic collections: Paris Under Siege, 1870-1871 (1969), and (in collaboration with Edith Philips) Paris and Art, 1851-1896 (1971). In Russian during the Soviet era, the Journal was not published, in contrast to the Goncourt novel "Actress Faustin."
"Until death do them part"
On his brother’s deathbed, Edmond sees the demise not as the final elevation of a literary genius, but as a moment when such a genius ultimately does not matter, because it is insignificant in the shadow of death. “Really,” he asks, seeing the agony of Jules, “is this atonement that we deserve?” This is what I ask myself when I look back at this life, which has only a few hours left. This life, which received nothing from existence, except bitterness, nothing from literature and painstaking searches of fame, except insults, contempt and cruelty ... this life, which for five years every day struggles with physical pain and is about to end mental and physical agony? This is also evidenced by the fact that, approaching death, Jules cannot remember the name of any of his novels. ”
Edmond's insight seemed to be short-lived. His later entries in the Diary are still oozing snobbery, envy and petty reasoning about the 19th century Parisian bohemian. But again and again, Edmond returns to the same question: does the inevitability of death justify the obsession with his entourage of posthumous fame, or, on the contrary, crosses out everything that was done in life? He would have known that Jules Goncourt's Jarmini Laserté would be a huge success in the future, like their other works!
Conclusion
Throughout their lives and literary careers, the Goncourt brothers experienced mockery and contempt from the Paris literary community. They laughed at them, despised them, threatened them, their work was considered "second grade" in the worst sense of the word. In addition, public morality intervened. People of that time could calmly perceive the vulgar homosexual relationship of Verlaine and Rambo, Baudelaire's narcotic revelations, the bold prose of Andre Gide and Mallarmé, but the poisonous snobbery and negativity of the Goncourt brothers destroyed all representations of decency that existed in those days. In principle, the haters of the brothers' creativity can be understood: how else to relate to people whose main topic of literary creativity was retelling gossip and toxic criticism of their colleagues? Nevertheless, decades after the death of Edmond de Goncourt, the eldest of the brothers, their Journal (also known as the Diary) became not only a "bestseller" of its time, but also added to the list of books of French classical literature. The biography of the Goncourt brothers ultimately flaunts in all literary encyclopedias. Indeed, in life, the brothers could not even dream of such success.
The Goncourt Prize, as already mentioned, has become the most prestigious literary prize in France.