Francisque Sarcey

Life

He is resulting from a modest milieu, since his/her father, sons of Lyons silk worker, studied by itself, became Master of study at the Massin institution in Paris before holding his own boarding school in Dourdan.

It is thanks to the paternal relations that it is accepted with the famous Massin pension, street of Tiny in Paris, and can make its externat with the Lycée Charlemagne. It meets there Edmond About, which will remain his/her large friend.

In 1848, it enters to the National university where he is school-fellow of Edmond About, of Hippolyte Taine, Alfred Rotating crops and Lucien-Anatole Prévost-Paradol. In this revolutionary period which sees the end of the mode of Louis-Philippe, it is very marked by Voltaire and the spirit of the 18th century.

At its exit of the School in 1851, he becomes professor of letters with Chaumont (Haute-Marne). Hostile with the imperial mode, it is shown on several occasions impertinent towards its hierarchy. When the Minister for the State education, Hippolyte Fortoul, decides to prohibit to the professors the port of the beard because it sees a sign of anarchy there, Sarcey sends to its vice-chancellor a letter so ironic that this one forwards it to the minister. The young professor finds himself at once transferred to Lesneven (Finistere), in an establishment where the majority of the teachers are priests, and as the things happen there well and than it asks to remain there, it is sent to Rodez, then with Grenoble.

Introduced by Butt, it gives its first article in Le Figaro of January 1st, 1857, then resigns of teaching and settles in Paris in 1858. In 1860, it becomes critical dramatic with the newspaper the National opinion while collaborating in other publications. In 1867, it enters to the newspaper Time , always like dramatic criticism. Each Monday, he criticizes the parts of the week or gives an analysis of dramatic art. He will hold his serial to with it during 32 years, until May 8th, 1899, eight days before his death.

From 1868 to 1871, he collaborates almost daily in the Gaulois . Its articles, sometimes sharp, give place to polemics and are worth even a duel with Clément Duvernois to him. Enlisted in the national guard during the head office of Paris, it draws from this experiment a book of memories.

During the Common , it publishes a weekly booklet, the Tricolor . It written there a series of articles anti-communards in which it résoud so that one must shoot “: 80000 gredins” to save the middle-class and republican order, is caught some violently with Jules Vallès, “corroded of this double cancer of hatred and laziness”, and even with Victor Hugo, “the Manitoban of the Commune”.

He leaves the Gallic in 1871, when this newspaper becomes Bonapartist to enter to the XIXè century , a newspaper founded in 1871 per About, which militates for a moderate republic and against the reaction. He undertakes there sharp campaigns against the magistrature, the administration and especially the clericalism, which are worth lawsuits and judgments to him.

The character

Its long career of journalist and especially of dramatic critic in one of most read the newspapers time made some of sound living a famous figure. It gave many conferences, not only in Paris, but also in province, in Belgium, and even with the Netherlands and in England. Incarnation of the blunt middle-class man with his taste autoproclamé for the “large good sense” (its articles for Le Figaro were entitled “Grain of good sense”), its contempt of intellectualism, its simple style and enjoué (neglected, its detractors said), its good-naturedness and its very wrapped physique, it was abundantly pastiche by Alphonse Allais, which claimed to be only, with him, to have the right to sign articles Francisque Sarcey and put it in scene in its tales to make him say hugenesses. One caricatured it in the newspapers, a part put it in scene, and the students have several times walked his effigy ventripotente on the tanks of the carnival. It took these mockeries with good mood, and even with kindness for those which came from its neighbors (it lived street of Douai) Black Chat, informant: “I have nephews who have much humor. ”

It was called “the uncle” and its good-naturedness was so legendary that one of its detractors, Georges Darien, dedicated “to Francisque Sarcey, friend of the order and good man” a part, the Friend of the order , which proceeds during the repression of Versailles of the Commune.

He did not ask the Légion of honor, declined the offers of the French Academy and wanted that one made engrave on his tomb this modest epitaph: “Ci-to lie Sarcey, professor and journalist”.

Critic

He owed his celebrity with the eminent place which he occupied in dramatic criticism. Indeed, its opinion was capital for the success of the parts. Emile Zola writes of him in a hostile article: “As soon as it enters a theater, a murmur court of cabin in cabin. One leans to see it, the husbands show it with their wife, of the young girls contemplate it. The whispers are long to alleviate: “Sarcey! Sarcey! … Where thus? … Hold, this large over there which misses crushing a lady. ” If he applauds, the fortune of work is made; if it bucket, all is lost. ”

According to Jules Lemaître, Francisque Sarcey had a complete esthetics of the dramatic art: he thought that the theater was a particular kind, with rules of being respected, and that the parts were made to be played in front of a public many and not for an elite. From where a rather conventional vision, with “scenes to be made”, which made it hostile to a modern theater to which he praised anything to include/understand (Ibsen, Maetterlinck) and made the Turkish head of it of the innovative authors, holding of symbolism, the theater of Antoine and Lugné-Poë, who attacked it with violence, Octave Mirbeau going until qualifying its good sense of “excrement” and the old theater, that of Labiche, Scribe, Dumas wire and Sardou, of “sarceyforme”.

“The uncle” thought that there were few chiefs of work, but that each time had its fugacious taste. It is thus a question for the critic of analyzing this taste without scorning it, and of appreciating these light works and which will not last but which likes. “Success is the rule of criticism. It is not at all that it proves for me the absolute merit of the part; but it shows obviously that between work represented and the current taste of the public, there are certain secret reports/ratios which it is curious to discover. I seek them. I say the truth of the day, because I write in a newspaper. It is clear that, in ten years, and earlier perhaps, my judgment will be false; but the reasons on which I supported it are still right. It is true that nobody then will be concerned with it: parts and serials will have fallen into the deepest lapse of memory. ”

The Uncle

One often says that it is Rodolphe Salis, the director of the cabaret the black Cat which had baptized it “the uncle”. However, Edmond About already thus called it in 1860 in a letter that he addressed to him, and whereas he was professor in Grenoble, he had written itself a part in an act entitled: Hello my uncle! . Still earlier, in a letter of 1856 or 1857, he writes: “I will remain the old boy of the family; I will be the traditional Uncle, the safe given by nature. ”

His/her Yvonne daughter, born in 1869, married the dramatic critic Adolphe Brisson and collaborated in the Political record and literary created by his/her father-in-law Jules Brisson for his son, itself father of Pierre Brisson who, after the direction of the Annales , took the direction of the Figaro .

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