Charles Augustin Holy-Beuve

Charles-Augustin Holy-Beuve , born the December 23rd 1804 with Boulogne-sur-Mer and died with Paris the October 13rd 1869, is a literary critic and writer French.

The critical method of Holy-Beuve is based on the fact that the work of a writer would be before all the reflection of its life and could be explained by it. It is based on the research of the poetic intention of the author (intentionnism) and on its personal qualities (biographism). This method was criticized thereafter. Marcel Proust, in his test Against Holy-Beuve , is the first to dispute this method. The Russian formal school, as well as the critics Curtius and Spitzer, will follow it in this road. Its ideas have summers taken again by Jean-Paul Sartre, which believed in the bond between the writer and his work. The literature is a synonym of engagement, and for this reason the thought and the ideas of the author are reflected in his writings.

Biography

Orphan of father, it makes his studies with the college of Boulogne, then at the Medical school of Paris, but it gives up it quickly and enters at twenty years to the newspaper the Earth .

It binds friendship with Victor Hugo, with which it attends the meetings with the Coterie of Charles Nodier with the Bibliothèque of the Arsenal. It will have a connection with the woman of Hugo, Adèle Foucher.

After the failure of its novels, Holy-Beuve launches out in the literary studies, of which most known is Port-Royal , and collaborates in particular in the contemporary Revue. Port-Royal (1837-1859), the masterpiece of Saint-Beuve, described the history of the Abbey of Port-Royal-of-Fields, its origin to its destruction. This study was initially presented as from 1837 like a cycle of conferences to the Academy of Lausanne. This work played a big role in the renewal of the religious history. Certain historians qualify Port-Royal “attempt at total history”.

With the difference of Hugo, it adopts the Second Empire in 1852 and sits at the Sénat of 1865 until its death in 1869.

Criticisms with Holy-Beuve

In addition to his method, one reproaches Holy-Beuve not for not having always shown critical clearness: it encensé writers completely forgotten today and criticized very violently of large artists like Baudelaire, Stendhal or Balzac.

Anecdotes

on September 20th, 1830, Holy-Beuve and one of the owners of the newspaper the Earth , Paul-François Dubois, fight in duel. Under the rain, they exchange four balls without results. Holy-Beuve its umbrella kept in hand, saying that he wanted to be well killed but not wet.

In 1855, the Collège de France is invaded by republican students. They wished chahuter, successfully, the inaugural lesson of Holy-Beuve which had adopted the Second Empire. Holy-Beuve had a beautiful middle-class property with Villiers-the-Beautiful, commune of the northern suburbs of Paris. This property was repurchased by the commune at the end of the 20th century and the park which surrounded it transformed into public garden.

Holy-Beuve is put in scene in a comedy of Michel Lengliney, Critical condition , is assembled to Paris in 2005. The part stresses its relationship with Mrs Hugo.

Works

; Poetry

Life, poetries and thoughts of Joseph Delorme (1829)
the Consolations (1830)
Thought of August (1837)
Book of love (1843)
complete Poetries (1863)

; Novels and new

Pleasure (1835), Romance
Madam de Pontivy (1839)
Christel (1839)
the gold Nail
the Clock (1880)
Ray yellows

; Critical

historical and critical Table of French poetry and the French theater in XVIe century (1828), 2 volumes
Port-Royal (1840-1859), 5 volumes
literary Portraits (1844 and 1876-78), 3 volumes
contemporary Portraits (1846 and 1869-71), 5 volumes
Portraits of women (1844 and 1870)
Talks of Monday (1851-1881), 16 volumes
New Mondays (1863-1870), 13 volumes
First Mondays (1874-75), 3 volumes
Study on Virgile (1857)
Chateaubriant and its literary group (1860), 2 volumes
the General Jomini (1869)
Mrs Desbordes-Valmore (1870)
Mr. de Talleyrand (1870)
P. - J. Proudhon (1872)
Chronic Parisian (1843-1845 and 1876)
books of Holy-Beuve (1876)
My poisons (1926)

; Correspondence

Letters with the princess (Mathilde) (1873)
Correspondence (1877-78), 2 volumes
New correspondence (1880)
Letters in Collombet (1903)
Correspondence with Mr. and Mrs. Juste Olivier (1904)
Letters with Charles Labitte (1912)
Letters with two friends (1948)
Letters in Georges Sand
Letters with Adele Courriard

Bibiliography

famous Writers , Volume III, XIXe and XXe centuries, Editions of art Lucien Mazenod
Carl Schorske, Holy-Beuve. With the threshold of modernity , Gallimard, 2002, ISBN 2-07-075621-1

Internal bonds

Price Holy-Beuve (Literary prize)
Against Holy-Beuve (collection of tests of Marcel Proust)

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