dun, who had written some striking novels of " anticipation " on the forms of future warfare ; the brothers Ernest and Michel Psichari ; Charles Miiller, a brilliant critic and romanticist; Andre Lafon, poet and novelist, who had gained the Grand Prix for literature of the French Academy; Andre du Fresnois, poet, novelist and critic; Lucien^Bonneff, the author of popular works on the theories of socialism ; Emile Nolly, a writer of novels on colonial life (chiefly of Annam) ; Charles d'Olonne, an explorer besides being a man of letters; Claude Casimir-Perier, son of a former president of the re- public, the author of works on the mercantile marine and maritime questions. A number of remarkable poets also disappeared in the great struggle, among them Pierre Fons, a " laureate " of the Acad- emy, Robert d'Humieres, Guillaume Apollinaire, Lionel des Rieux.
The best remembered of all those who fell before the enemy is Charles Peguy, who died an heroic death in the first few months of the war. The poet of Jeanne d 'Arc, and Grand Prix of the Academy, he was a leader in the school of Barres and a disciple of the fervent nationalism which had such an extraordinary effect on the young men of France. The founder and director of the famous Cahiers de la Quinzaine, which saw the birth of numbers of remarkable works, he came of peasant stock and joined to a profound love of democracy a sort of national-religious mysticism (like the Christian socialist patriotism of the men of 1848). He dedicated his Jeanne d' Arc " To all those who have learned the remedy (to the universal evil) ; to all those who have lived their human life; to all those who have died from their moral life for the establishment of the Universal Socialist Republic." Later works of his were L'Appel aux Armes, Le Voyage du Centurion, etc.
Leon Daudet's (b. 1868) name (he is also of the " Goncourts ") is one of those most on people's lips, and naturally so when we remember his tremendous production on political, national and other subjects during the war (to say nothing of his polemical writings as editor of the Action Frmc.aise, and his vigorous trenchant style. Up to 1921 his latest incursion into pure literature was en- titled L' Amour est un Songe. But Leon Daudet is one of the most picturesque figures of modern France, and his Memoirs will be a valuable addition to the history of the epoch.
Several notable women writers had in 1921 recently passed away, the most picturesque among them perhaps being Judith Gautier (1850-1919), the gifted daughter of a man of genius and the one- time wife of another, Catulle Mendes. Most of her novels and stories had their scenes laid in China or Japan, being reminiscences of the teaching of her former professor, the Chinaman whom her father found wandering fh the streets of Paris and took home with him. Madame Daniel-Lesueur (1850-1921), starting as a poet with great talent and the translator of Byron, wrote a larger number of novels showing great powers of observation and vivacity, though in her latter years she had risen little above the feuilleton type.
Among the names of prominent women writers may be cited the Comtesse de Noailles, who was awarded the French Academy prize for literature (10,000 francs) in 1921, Marcelle Tinayre (b. 1872), Colette Yver (b. 1874), Jeanne Landre, Lucie Delarue-Mardrus (b. 1880), Marie-Anne de Bovet. " Colette " followed up her suc- cess in Vagabonde with Cheri, which depicts exactly the same sort of society and with an equally remarkable talent, and another work showing her exceptional love and understanding of animals. Mar- guerite Audoux, the seamstress authoress of Marie-Claire, subse- quently followed this work up with a sequel called L'Atelier de Marie-Claire, though the second work cannot be said to possess the same qualities as the one which led Octave Mirbeau to find a publisher for her. In general it maybe said of French women writers, as of those of other countries, that their treatment of many subjects is bolder and more outspoken than that of the men.
Two women writers notably have got their inspiration from the East, where both of them were born Miriam Harry, a gifted writer, the child of French parents settled in Palestine, and Elissa Rhais (authoress of Saada la Marocaine and Le Cafe-Chantant), a Moham- medan lady from Algeria, whose mother, she tells us, used to relate to her interminable stories in the manner of the Arabian Nights.
A feature of French literature worth noting is the long list of " regionalist " writers, who lay the scenes of their romances in and depict the life of particular parts of the provinces with which they are most familiar. Thus we find Henry Bordeaux devoting himself especially to the Dauphine, while Paul Bourget is the special mouth- piece of the Auvergne, as Maurice Barres is of Lorraine. J.-H. Rosny jeune (see 23.739) places a good many of his scenes in the Landes, while there are several novelists who devote themselves to Provence, including Edmond Jaloux and E. Henriot. Writers on the Basque country include Pierre Loti, Paul Faure (b. 1876) and others. Madame Lucie Delarue-Mardrus is the writer for Normandy, Marc Elder and Andre Savignon (who gained the Prix Goncourt for his Filles de la Pluie) for the Ocean (Ushant and the Isles). Pierre Guitet-Vauquelin (b. 1882) is the special writer for the Cen- tral Pyrenees and Corsica, and there are others who make a spe- cialty of the Bas-Languedoc, Anjou, Brittany, etc. Indo-China finds interpreters in Pierre IVlille (b. 1864), Loti, Farrere, while the list of romanticists for Algeria, Morocco and French Africa is a long one.
Among the poets of 1921 a leading place was taken by Fernand Divoire (b. 1883), the symbolist, who had since the war published a
volume entitled Ames, with a decided Shakespearean inspiration. Divoire is a champion of the most advanced schools, including " cubism "; he is also particularly interested in the technique and art of the dance, and has written on the art of Isadora Duncan. Henry Bataille (b. 1872), the prolific and popular dramatist, pub- lished La Divine Tragedie and other poems during the war. Paul Valery is a poet who enjoys a remarkable reputation abroad. Paul Fort (b. 1870), the so-called " Prince of Poets," author of a seemingly interminable series of Ballades Franqaises, continued to produce his remarkable personal, Puck-like, capricious and prolific muse. Some of his admirers have compared him to Walt Whitman. There is truly something of Whitman in him, but it is perhaps more true to say of him that when he is least like himself he is imitating Paul Fort. " I make all lyres vibrate," he says. " The human soul is my religion. I am a poet solely a poet. In other words, a dreamer, a conscious creator. Or again, and above all, a creating God, a dreaming God." Spirituel, picturesque, solemn or comic, he has always a wonderful command of phraseology and of the vers libre, and above all, he is essentially French. <; Paul Fort is a mask," one writer says of him, "and under that mask is the familiar daemon of the land of France." Jules Romain, of the group or " chapel " of the Nouvelle Revue Franc,aise, and founder of the style of " Un- anisme," or the absolute expression of reality in verse, has produced Le Voyage des Amants in vers libre. Maurice Magre (b. 1877), author of La Montee aux Enfers, who is also a dramatist, began his career as a poet of social inspiration, but turned Baudelairian. Francis Carco, the humorist, is a poet of a very sensitive muse.
French criticism suffered severely in the loss of the two veteran critics Jules Lemaitre (see 16.408) and mile Faguet (see 10.125). Jules Lemaitre (1853-1914) was the man of an epoch, and he dis- appeared when that epoch finished. Poet, dramatist, novelist and critic, he rendered the most service in this last capacity. An admirer and disciple of Flaubert, he was imbued with the particular modern- ism and fantasy of that master. In the little notebooks he filled at the time with all sorts of impressions, bold, brilliant and often tumultuous, is found the nucleus of all his afterwork. His volumes of criticisms on his " Contemporaries," who included the Parnas- sians and the Symbolists, and all the leading figures of the middle of the last century, are particularly valuable. A keen analyst, ironical, sceptical and ingenious, mingling the finesse of a metaphys- ical moralist with the fantasy of a dilettante, and unable to accept the finality of any j udgments (' ' One must not worry too much about the future," was one of his sayings), his work is marked by an intense personality and by novel opinions on old subjects. The inventor of the impressionistic method of criticism, if he severely flagellated some of his contemporaries, he succeeded in making criticism a living and enduring thing. Emile Faguet (1847-1919), by the variety of his encyclopaedic knowledge and his independent views (sometimes over-independent), had in his latter years, with- out abandoning the study of letters, devoted himself more especially to the study of contemporary sociology in its various forms. Thus among his last works were two volumes on Le Culte de I' Incompetence and a continuation Et I'Horreur de la Responsabilite. Criticism was in 1921 represented by Paul Souday, the well-known literary critic of the Temps, Fernand Vanderem (b. 1864), Adolphe Brisson (b. 1860), editor of Les Annales Politiques, Rene Doumic (see 8.450), of the French Academy, and Camille Mauclair (b. 1872).
History is chiefly represented by Gabriel Hanotaux (see 12.923), the author of a voluminous History of France, Ernest Lavisse (see 16.294), Aulard (see 2.916) and Len6tre (b. 1857), the author of brilliant works on 18th-century characters and the Napoleonic era. The drama had a serious setback in France during the war, when old favourites for the amusement of the " permissionaires " had it all their own way. The most prolific and most popular dramatist in 1921 was Henry Bataille, who, though several of his pieces have been slightly suggested by the war, has given it as his opinion that the war can have and should have no durable effect on art. Within a short couple of years several of his highly literary pieces had been produced notably, Tendresse, Les Sasurs d' Amour, and L'Homme a la Rose. Sacha Guitry (b. 1885), a phenomenon in himself, has latterly been represented by his studies of those two great French- men, Beranger and Pasteur, and by his lighter pieces, Je t'aime, Le Comedien, and Le Grand Due. Among other notable playwrights who have been particularly prominent may be mentioned De Curel (see 7.637), with his " pieces a these " (L'Ame en Folie, etc.), Maurice Magre (La Mart Enchatnce, Arlequin, a fairy comedy), Carco, the versatile humorist with his study of apaches and low life generally (Man Homme), Lucien Descaves (b. 1861), L'As du Ccsur, one of the best of a series of post-war plays dealing with the problem of the returned combatant, Lenormand, Andre le Lorde (b. 1871) (of the Grand Guignol), Zamacois, Fauchois (Beethoven, etc.), St. Georges de Bouhelier, Bernstein (b. 1876), M. Hennequin, and that indefatig- able writer of farces, Henry de Gorsse (b. 1868), who had several thousand pieces, written, alone or in collaboration, to his credit.
It must be added that great influence had of late been exerted on the drama and letters by the Theatre du Vieux-Colombier, which, under the direction of J. Copeau, had become a veritable nursing home of ideas and was par excellence the leading classical inter- national theatre. (S. S.)
