Background

Paul Bourget was born at Amiens on the 2nd of September 1832. His father, a professor of mathematics, was afterward appointed to a post in the college at Clermont-Ferrand. His mother Anne Adelaïde Valentin died when Paul was six years old.

Education

Bourget developed a deep sadness and emotional anxiety after his mother’s death in 1857. He explores this in a volume of early poems titled La Vie inquiète. Less than a year after his mother died, Bourget’s father remarried, and Bourget met his new grandfather, teacher Joseph-Alexandre Nicard. Nicard introduced Bourget to literature, which Bourget embraced, having learned to read at age three.

Paul received his early education in the college at Clermont-Ferrand. He also studied at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes.

Career

Instead of continuing his career in academics, as his father had hoped, Bourget moved to the Latin Quarter to begin his literary career. Initially, Bourget wrote several experimental short stories. His best work of this time was in criticism, however, and his first article, published in the December 1872 issue of Renaissance, was about Benedict de Spinoza. His dramatic critiques in the Globe and Parlement allowed Bourget to fine-tune his opinions on literature, and the money enabled him to move to the upper-class area of Faubourg Saint-Germain in 1882. He would sometimes use this neighborhood as a setting for his fiction.

Bourget finally gained visibility through essays published in the Nouvelle Revue, that were later published in a single volume, Essais de psychologie contemporaine. These essays focus on Gustave Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire, and Alexandre Dumas, among other legendary authors. They investigate the connection between creativity and emotion, which Bourget would frequently use in such writing as Études et portraits.

Bourget’s novels reflect his fascination with multiple personalities and self-growth. The first examples appear in the novels Cruelle énigme and Un Crime d’amour. In Ciuelle énigme, Bourget explores the dynamics between an inexperienced man, Hubert Liauran, and Thérèse de Sauve, his more worldly lover. Un Crime d’Amour tells of the seduction of a married woman who is degraded by her adulterous affair; the ending is sorrowful. Critics, through Bourget, began to consider the psychological novel as a separate genre and mainstream it into French literature.

Surprisingly, only two of Bourget’s novels from the 1880s André Cornélius and Le Disciple do not probe women’s psyches.

Bourget traveled often, and one of his most admired works is Sensations d’Italie. While traveling in Rome, Bourget completed La Terre promise, a novel set in Palermo. Wishing to clarify his religion, Bourget traveled to the Holy Land in 1893. After spending four months there, however, he left, still skeptical about theology. However, Bourget’s most impressive travel-related work is Cosmopolis, which Jules Lemaître called “the cardinal point in Bourget’s fiction” in his introduction to the novel. The novel features Catherine Steno, a Venetian with two lovers. Boleslas Gorka, a Pole, and Lincoln Maitland, an American, battle for her affections. Julien Dorsenne, a novelist involved with Catherine’s daughter, witnesses their arguments. Unable to express emotion, Dorsenne seeks redemption through the Catholic church, as did Bourget when he returned to Catholicism in 1901.

After visiting America for eight months during 1893 and 1894, Bourget’s perceptions of the country were published in the New York Herald and Outremer Armand E. Singer, in Paul Bourget, commented that “rarely has France exported so enthusiastic a reporter of life in these United States.” Bourget’s impressions strengthened his opinion that French democratic insurrections would falter because they were intruding on tradition. He went on to defend royalist political views, hoping to save France from its chaotic class system.

Returning to his writing after serving in a military hospital during World War I, Bourget continued to write and publish essays in fiction and criticism. After his wife died in 1932, Bourget kept on writing until his death on Christmas morning of 1935.

Achievements

• Bourget was a master of the psychological novel. He was admitted to the French Academy in 1894, and in 1895 was promoted to be an officer of the Legion of Honour, having received the decoration of the order ten years before. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times.
  
  His first novels Cruelle énigme, Un crime d'amour and Mensonges had a great influence on the younger generation, which was looking for a modern dream.
  
  More than a dozen of Bourget’s poems have been used as lyrics for songs by such composers as Debussy, Chausson, and Koechlin.

Works

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  • Un Crime d'amour 1886
  • The Blue Duchess 1898
  • The Disciple 1888
  • Cosmopolis 1892
  • Le Démon de Midi 1914
  • Pauvre Petite! 1887
  • Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine 1883
  • Laurence Albani 1919
  • A Agua Profunda 1935
  • Les Deux Soeurs 1904
  • Une Laborantine 1934
  • L'Écuyère 1921
  • Mensonges 1887
  • La Terre Promise 1892
  • L'eau Profonde. Les Pas Dans les Pas 1902
  • André Cornélis 1886
  • Physiologie de L'amour Moderne 1890
  • Trois Petites Filles 1899
  • Une Nuit de Noël Sous la Terreur 1907
  • Le Fantôme 1900
  • Cruelle Énigme 1900
  • Extraits Choisis des Œuvres 1894
  • L'irréparable 1911
  • Un Homme d'affaires 1900
  • Pastels Eaux Fortes 1887
  • L'envers du Décor 1911
  • Le Justicier 1919
  • Le Sens de la Mort 1915
  • Steeple-chase 1894
  • Le Disciple 1888
  • La Rechute 1931
  • Monique 1902
  • Pages de Critique et de Doctrine 1912
  • A Tragic Idyl 1896
  • Oeuvres Completes: Tudes Et Portraits 1889
  • Pastelle 1895
  • Lazarine 1917

Religion

Bourget abandoned Roman Catholicism in 1867, but began a gradual return to it in 1889, fully converting only in 1901.

Politics

Some of Paul’s works constitute schematic statements in support of patriotism, clericalism and other traditional values, right up to the restoration of the monarchy.

In 1899 he also was among the organizers of the Ligue de la Patrie française.

Membership

Paul was a member of the French Academy and Ligue de la patrie française.

• Ligue de la patrie française , France

  1899

• French Academy , France

  1894

Personality

Charles Bourget was called among the most prominent and perhaps the most interesting writers of his generation.

Connections

Paul Bourget married Minnie David on August 21, 1890 in the Church of St. Francis de Sales.

Despite the fact that Paul Bourget was married, he also had an extramarital affair. His mistress was Marie Kann. Their romance lasted from 1881 to 1888, and Marie inspired the writer for the book Un Сrime D'Amour.

Father:

Justin Bourget

Mother:

Anne Adelaïde Valentin

Wife:

Minnie (David) Bourget

Grandfather:

Claude Bourget

Claude Bourget worked for the famous inventor Marc Seguin.

Partner:

Marie Kann

Friend:

Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé

Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé was a French diplomat, Orientalist, travel writer, archaeologist, philanthropist and literary critic.

Friend:

Saint-René Taillandier

Saint-René Taillandier was a French writer and critic.

Friend:

Henri Becquerel

Henri Becquerel was a French engineer, physicist, Nobel laureate, and the first person to discover evidence of radioactivity.

Friend:

Ferdinand Brunetiere

Ferdinand Brunetière was a French writer and critic.

References

• L'Idée Médicale: Dans les Romans de Paul Bourget
  1904