(Five short stories by Anatole France.
Anatole France wa...)
Five short stories by Anatole France.
Anatole France was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. 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 1921 Nobel Prize for Literature "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament".
(When a bumbling holy man mistakenly baptizes a colony of ...)
When a bumbling holy man mistakenly baptizes a colony of penguins, God endows the animals with souls and their formerly peaceful community declines into a maelstrom of violence and sin. This witty allegory lampoons French history from ancient to modern times, taking satirical swipes at socialists, royalists, industrialists, militarists, and even the Dreyfus affair, and concluding with a remarkably prescient view of the future. Indeed, more than a hundred years after its initial publication, the story's insights into politics and society remain enduringly relevant.
Poet, novelist, and journalist Anatole France (18441924) received the Nobel Prize in 1921 in recognition of his literary achievements. His writings reflect an ironic and skeptical point of view, and many of his works were placed on the Roman Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books. This edition of Penguin Island is enhanced with the original black-and-white images by noted illustrator Frank C. Papé.
(BENEATH the shadow of St. Sulpice the ancient mansion of ...)
BENEATH the shadow of St. Sulpice the ancient mansion of the d'Esparvieu family rears its austere three stories between a moss-grown fore-court and a garden hemmed in, as the years have elapsed, by ever loftier and more intrusive buildings, wherein, nevertheless, two tall chestnut trees still lift their withered heads.
(Anatole France apoyó a Émile Zola en el caso Dreyfus; al ...)
Anatole France apoyó a Émile Zola en el caso Dreyfus; al día siguiente de la publicación del Yo acuso, firmó la petición que pedía la revisión del proceso. Devolvió su Legión de Honor cuando le fue retirada a Zola. Participó en la fundación de la Liga de los Derechos del Hombre.
The Gods Will Have Blood (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
(It is April 1793 and the final power struggle of the Fren...)
It is April 1793 and the final power struggle of the French Revolution is taking hold: the aristocrats are dead and the poor are fighting for bread in the streets. In a Paris swept by fear and hunger lives Gamelin, a revolutionary young artist appointed magistrate, and given the power of life and death over the citizens of France. But his intense idealism and unbridled single-mindedness drive him inexorably towards catastrophe. Published in 1912, The Gods Will Have Blood is a breathtaking story of the dangers of fanaticism, while its depiction of the violence and devastation of the Reign of Terror is strangely prophetic of the sweeping political changes in Russia and across Europe.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Anatole France was a French poet, journalist, and novelist.
Background
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.
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.
Education
Anatole attended the Collège Stanislas, a Catholic school, but was far from a brilliant pupil and emerged with a lasting dislike of the Church.
Career
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 so if (The Gods Are Athirst).
France's last major work was La Révolte des Anges (1914; The Revolt of the Angels), another satire, in which a group of angels attempts to free themselves from divine despotism. Less bitter than L'Île des Pingouins the book is also less successful. France died 6 months after his eightieth birthday, in 1924.
Politically, Anatole France was a socialist and an outspoken supporter of the 1917 Russian Revolution. In 1920, he gave his support to the newly founded French Communist Party.
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.
Views
Quotations:
“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened. ”
“Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me. ”
“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ”
“To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
“To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything. ”
“We have never heard the devil's side of the story, God wrote all the book. ”
“To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act. ”
“In art as in love, instinct is enough. ”
“If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living. ”
“It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel. ”
Membership
He was elected to the French Academy in 1896.
Connections
In 1877, Anatole France married Valérie Guérin de Sauville, a granddaughter of Jean-Urbain Guérin (fr) a miniaturist who painted Louis XVI, with whom he had a daughter, Suzanne, in 1881 (dec. 1918). France's relations with women were always turbulent, and in 1888 he began a relationship with Madame Arman de Caillavet, who conducted a celebrated literary salon of the Third Republic; the affair lasted until shortly before her death in 1910. After his divorce in 1893, he had many liaisons, notably with Mme Gagey, who committed suicide in 1911. France married again in 1920, Emma Laprévotte.