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LXXIII. Louis-Xavier de Ricard, Poet of Progress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Aaron Schaffer*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas

Extract

In the course of his essay on Paul Verlaine, Anatole France, in speaking of the early Parnassians, makes the very shrewd observation:

Nous avions, je ne sais trop pourquoi, la prétention d'être impassibles. Le grand philosophe de l'école, M. Xavier de Ricard, soutenait avec ardeur que l'art doit être de glace et nous ne nous apercevions même point que ce doctrinaire de l'impassibilité n'écrivait pas un vers qui ne fût l'expression violente de ses passions politiques, sociales ou religieuses.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , December 1935 , pp. 1191 - 1199
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1935

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References

1 La Vie littéraire (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, n.d.) iii, 311.

2 Vide Catulle Mendès: la Légende du Parnasse contemporain (Brussels, 1884), p. 239.

3 Louis-Xavier de Ricard, Editions de la Revue littéraire de Paris et de Champagne (Reims, 1906), p. 25.

4 Vide Mendès, op. cit., pp. 7–8, and the present writer's Parnassus in France, pp. 66–67.

5 Op. cit., p. 5. Two “fragments” of this poem were published in les Chants de l'aube.

6 (Paris: Jouaust, 1860).

7 Italics inserted.

8 Passy, chez l'auteur.

9 A. Mlle. Léontine Huguet, p. 7.

10 Ibid., pp. 12–13.

11 (Paris: Poulet-Malassis, 1862).

12 Les Chants de l'aube, p. 273.

13 Ibid., p. 32.

14 Ibid., p. 49.

15 Ibid., p. 53.

16 Ibid., p. 176.

17 Ibid., p. 179.

18 Ibid., p. 187.

19 Ibid., p. 196.

20 Ibid., p. 197.

21 Ibid., p. 228.

22 Vide the somewhat Leconte-de-Lislean poem, “le Panthéisme.”

23 Ibid., p. 273.

24 Ibid., p. 372.

25 Ibid., p. 399.

26 (Lemerre, Paris: 1866).

27 Ciel, rue et foyer, p. 1.

28 Ibid., p. 10.

29 Ibid., p. 16.—Italics inserted. These same three words had already been used in A Mlle. Léontine Huguet.

30 Ibid., pp. 18 and 19.

31 Ibid., p. 27.—Italics inserted. Note, in connection with this poem, the oft-quoted line of Verlaine: “Est-elle ou non en marbre, la Vénus de Milo.”

32 Ibid., p. 53.

33 Ibid., pp. 79, 81.

34 Ibid., p. 83.

35 Ibid., p. 95.

36 Ibid., pp. 96–97—Italics inserted.

37 Ibid., p. 100—Italics inserted.

38 Ibid., p. 105.

39 Ibid., p. 108.

40 Ibid., “la Volonté,” p. 124.

41 Ibid., p. 141.

42 Ibid., pp. 150–151.

43 Ibid., p. 169.

44 Ibid., p. 184.

45 Ibid., p. 182.

46 Ibid., p. 190.

47 Op. cit., p. 24.—Clerget goes on to characterize Ricard's poetry as “vaillante et surtout sincère” and the poet himself as “un homme.”

48 Les Œuvres représentatives (Paris, 1929), p. 40.

49 Ibid., p. 129.

50 Op. cit., p. 26.—Catulle Mendès deserves to be placed with if not ahead of Ricard.