Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
By very far the most delightful work that I have read for many years is Sainte-Beuve's "Causeries du Lundi," or his weekly feuilletons in the "Constitutionnel." I am sure they would sell if there be any taste for French literature.
This last quotation was probably in Sainte-Beuve's mind when he spoke of the efflorescence by which Balzac gave to everything the sentiment of life and made the page itself thrill.
In nearly all the most famous friendships of distinguished men and women as we know in some cases and divine in others an hour's passion, in Sainte-Beuve's words, has served as the golden key to unlock the most precious and intimate secrets of friendship.
Contentment so often means resignation, abandonment of the hope seen to be forbidden. I cannot resolve this doubt. I have been reading Sainte-Beuve's Port Royal, a book I have often thought of reading, but its length, and my slight interest in that period, always held me aloof. Happily, chance and mood came together, and I am richer by a bit of knowledge well worth acquiring.
But the similarities discoverable between the author of Volupte and the author of the Comedie Humaine were present in Sainte-Beuve's work at a period when Balzac was only just issuing from obscurity, and appear, moreover, to be due to temperament. In the case of George Sand, the inference is based partly on the praise she meted out to Balzac in her reminiscences.
On the other hand, his estimate of Volupte, Sainte-Beuve's just then published novel, which he was soon to imitate and recreate in his Lily in the Valley, was manifestly prejudiced.
The writer who conforms to such a high standard is an excellent guide for the historian and no one who has made a study of these Causeries can help feeling their spirit of candor and being inspired to the attempt to realize so high an ideal. Sainte-Beuve's essays deal almost entirely with French literature and history, which were the subjects he knew best.
Only we are constantly reminded that the man had almost wholly resolved himself into the worker, and we remember a statement of Sainte-Beuve's, in one of his malignant foot-notes, to the effect that Balzac was "the grossest, greediest example of literary vanity that he had ever known" l'amour-propre littéraire le plus avide et le plus grossier que j'aie connu.
Abominable in either case, whether or not the implication was unfounded, Sainte-Beuve's numerous innuendoes in regard to Mme. Hugo are an indelible stain on his memory, and his infamy not only cost him his most precious friendships, but crippled him in every high endeavor.
It seems to me that in Sainte-Beuve's place I should have said, "That displeases you, let us talk no more about it." He lacked manners and poise. What disgusted me a little, between ourselves, was the way he praised the emperor to me! yes, he praised Badinguet, to me! And we were alone! The princess had taken the thing too seriously from the beginning.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking