Led a wandering and adventurous life. He was at different times actor in a travelling company, prompter, and writer. In his poems he shows a native gift of expression that made him a favorite of the Parnassiens.
Works: Les Vignes folles, 1857; les flèches d'or, 1864; Gilles et
Pasquins, 1872.
For reference: J. Lazare, A. Glatigny, sa vie, son oeuvre; Catulle
Mendès, Légende du Parnasse contemporain, 1884.
SULLY PRUDHOMME.
1839.
René-François-Armand Prudhomme, known as Sully Prudhomme, combines the artistic punctiliousness of a Parnassien with sincere emotion and a deeply philosophic mind. The intellectual quality of his work is conspicuous, but hardly less so the grace and finish of its form. It bears deep traces of the influence of the scientific movement of our time and of the transformation it has wrought in our ideas of man and nature and their relations. The personal emotion from which his lyrics spring appears always intellectually illumined, with its background of scientific corollaries and logical consequences. It is not abandoned to itself, to wreak itself on expression, but is checked by the challenge of doubt or scientific curiosity or moral scruple. His verse thus unites in rare degree the qualities of lyrical impulse and philosophical reflection.
Works: Stances et Poèmes, 1865; les Épreuves, 1866; les Solitudes, 1869; les Destins, 1872; les Vaines Tendresses, 1875; la Justice, 1878; le Prisme, 1886; le Bonheur, 1888; these have appeared in a new edition as Oeuvres, 5 vols., 1883-1888.
For reference: J. Lemaître, les Contemporains, vol. i, 1886; E. Caro, Poètes et romanciers, 1888; G. Paris, Penseurs et poètes, 1896; F. Brunetière, Évolution de la poésie lyrique, vol. ii, 1894.
The first eleven poems are from Stances et Poèmes. LES DANAÏDES, UN SONGE and LE RENDEZ VOUS are from les Épreuves; LA VOIE LACTÉE is from les Solitudes; REPENTIR, from Impressions de la Guerre (1872;) CE QUI DURE, LES INFIDÈLES, LES AMOURS TERRESTRES and L'ALPHABET, from les Vaines Tendresses; and the last two sonnets, from la Justice.
255. LE LEVER DU SOLEIL. 5. Hellade, Hellas, country inhabited by the Hellenes, or Greeks, a name at first given to a district of Thessaly, later to all Greece.