Goncourt brothers
The Goncourt brothers (UK: /ɡɒnˈkʊər/,[1] US: /ɡoʊŋˈkʊər/,[2] French: [ɡɔ̃kuʁ] ⓘ) were Edmond de Goncourt (1822–1896) and Jules de Goncourt (1830–1870), both French naturalism writers who, as collaborative sibling authors, were inseparable in life.
Background
Edmond and Jules were born to minor aristocrats Marc-Pierre Huot de Goncourt and his second wife Annette-Cécile de Goncourt (née Guérin).
Partnership
They formed a partnership that "is possibly unique in literary history. Not only did they write all their books together, they did not spend more than a day apart in their adult lives, until they were finally parted by Jules's death in 1870."[8] They are known for their literary work and for their diaries, which offer an intimate view into the French literary society of the later 19th century.
Career
Their career as writers began with an account of a sketching holiday together. They then published books on aspects of 18th-century French and Japanese art and society. Their histories (Portraits intimes du XVIIIe siècle (1857), La Femme au XVIIIe siècle (1862), La du Barry (1878), and others) are made entirely out of documents, autograph letters, scraps of costume, engravings, songs, the unconscious self-revelations of the time.
In their volumes (e.g., Portraits intimes du XVIII siecle), they dismissed the vulgarity of the
In 1865, the brothers premiered their play Henriette Maréchal at the Comédie-Française, but its realism provoked protests and it was banned after only six performances.[14]
When they came to write novels, it was with a similar attempt to give the inner, undiscovered, minute truths of contemporary existence.
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition:
[T]hey invented a new kind of novel, and their novels are the result of a new vision of the world, in which the very element of sight is decomposed, as in a picture of
Flaubert, for all its detail, gives above all things an impression of unity, a novel of the Goncourts deliberately dispenses with unity in order to give the sense of the passing of life, the heat and form of its moments as they pass. It is written in little chapters, sometimes no longer than a page, and each chapter is a separate notation of some significant event, some emotion or sensation which seems to throw sudden light on the picture of a soul. To the Goncourts humanity is as pictorial a thing as the world it moves in; they do not search further than "the physical basis of life," and they find everything that can be known of that unknown force written visibly upon the sudden faces of little incidents, little expressive moments. The soul, to them, is a series of moods, which succeed one another, certainly without any of the too arbitrary logic of the novelist who has conceived of character as a solid or consistent thing. Their novels are hardly stories at all, but picture-galleries, hung with pictures of the momentary aspects of the world.
They are buried together (in the same grave) in Montmartre Cemetery.
Legacy
Edmond de Goncourt bequeathed his entire estate for the foundation and maintenance of the Académie Goncourt. Since 1903, the académie has awarded the Prix Goncourt, probably the most important literary prize in French literature.
The first English translation of Manette Salomon, translated by Tina Kover, was published in November 2017 by Snuggly Books.
Works
Novels
- En 18... (1851)
- Sœur Philomène (1861)
- Renée Mauperin (1864)
- Germinie Lacerteux (1865)
- Manette Salomon (1867)
- Madame Gervaisais (1869)
and, by Edmond alone:
- La Fille Elisa (1878)
- Les Frères Zemganno (1879)
- La Faustin (1882)
- Chérie (1884)
Plays
- Henriette Maréchal (Performed at the Comédie-Française in 1865)
- La patrie en danger (Published 1873, performed at the Théâtre Libre in 1889)
Other
- La Révolution dans les moeurs (1854)
- Histoire de la société française pendant la Révolution (1854)
- Histoire de la société française pendant le Directoire (1855)
- Sophie Arnould (1857)
- Journal des Goncourt, 1851–1896
- Portraits intimes du XVIIIe siècle (1857)
- Histoire de Marie Antoinette (1858)
- Les Maîtresses de Louis XV (1860)
- La Femme au XVIIIe siècle (1862)
- La du Barry (1878)
- Madame de Pompadour (1878)
- La Duchesse de Chateauroux et ses soeurs (1879)
- L'Art du XVIIIe siècle (French Eighteenth Century Painters) (1859–1875)
Notes
- ^ "Goncourt". Lexico UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press.[dead link]
- ^ "Goncourt". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Retrieved 8 August 2019.
- ^ a b Joanna Richardson (August 1975). "The Goncourt Brothers". Vol. 25, no. 8. historytoday.com. Retrieved 2021-03-24.
- ^ "Goncourt, Edmond de". Dictionary of Art Historians. Retrieved 2021-03-18.
- ^ Edmond & Jules de Goncourt (1902). Renée Mauperin. P.F. Collier & Son. p. xxxi.
- ^ a b "Biographie". www.goncourt.org. Retrieved 2021-04-09.
- ^ Journal des Goncourt, 1989; p. LXXVIII
- ^ Kirsch (2006)
- ^ a b public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Goncourt, De". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 231. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ Adam Kirsch (2006-11-29). "Masters of Indiscretion". New York Sun. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
- ^ Journal des Goncourt, 1989; p. LXX
- ^ "Edmond and Jules Goncourt". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 2021-03-18.
- ^ Journal des Goncourt, 1989; p. LXXXI-LXXXII, 886
- ^ Journal des Goncourt, 1989; p. LXXXIV
- ^ Edmond & Jules de Goncourt (1989). Journal des Goncourt Mémoires de la Vie Littéraire I: 1851-1865. Robert Laffont. p. LXXXIV-LXXXVI.
- ^ "Bibliographie de 1851 à 1896". www.goncourt.org. Retrieved 2021-04-15.
References
- Edmond & Jules de Goncourt. Journal des Goncourt: Mémoires de la Vie Littéraire I, 1851-1865 (Robert Laffont, 1989)
- Kirsch, Adam "Masters of indiscretion" in The New York Sun August 29, 2006
External links
- "Goncourt Brothers and the Taste for the 18th Century" symposium at the Frick Collection, featuring art historians Olivier Berggruen and Yuriko Jackall