Judith Gautier

Biography

Girl of the writer Théophile Gautier and the professional singer Ernesta Grisi, it passed her childhood to the countryside in an absolute freedom which returned only heavier its adolescence to him to the boarding school Our-Lady-of-the-Mercy.

When his/her father guessed his potential of seduction, it made it come near him to Neuilly-sur-Seine where she was used to him as secretary. It had collected old Chinese Mandarin, political refugee in France, name of Ding Dunling, which taught him the Chinese Langue and initiated it with civilization, in particular the literature, of the Empire of the Medium. In eighteen years, it published a translation of old Chinese poems, the Jade Book.

It evolved/moved in a medium set on occultism and, with its attached eyes, it convinced that it was the reincarnation of a Chinese princess and wrote on this topic a novel, the imperial Dragon , which irresistibly makes think of the Roman of the mummy of his/her famous father. It did not have of cease to show its Eastern physique: “medal syracusaine become, by the culture of itself, a Japanese woman of Hokusai, regular and pale face, one would say modelled in kaolin, under the black hair like Indian ink” (Jean Lorrain).

Reading enormously, it made readily the criticism of what it read and started to send of the articles at the newspapers. These articles rained, and its criticism of the Eureka of Edgar Allan Poe was worth to him a long letter of Charles Baudelaire.

His/her father was surrounded by a cosmopolitan circle - receiving constantly Theodore de Banville, Gustave Flaubert, Edmond de Goncourt, Charles Baudelaire, Champfleury, Arsène Houssaye, Gustave Doré… - where it made devastations. A Persan prince continued it a long time his assiduities, and Gustave Flaubert, which fell passionately in love from there, was one day strong marri to be gotten rid of because it was the hour of the lesson of occultism of beautiful. It ends up throwing its reserved on Catulle Mendès, that his/her father did not like, but that it married nevertheless in 1866.

The young couple, accompanied by Villiers of Isle-Adam, went to spend the summer 1869 to Lucerne near Richard Wagner whose Judith made the conquest: it is said that it inspired to him the “girl-flowers” of Parsifal and that he wrote close to her the third act of Siegfried . She one was accustomed of Bayreuth, teaching with the Master subtleties of the Eastern mystics. Perhaps it was not its mistress, but it was undoubtedly its last love.

She also fascinated Victor Hugo, which wrote to him one of its very rare sonnets and subjugated Jean Lorrain, met in 1873 at the time of holidays with Fécamp.

She separated from Catulle Mendès in 1873 - officially in 1878 - and settled 31 rue Washington (VIIIe district) in a charming apartment filled Buddhas where she held living room every Sunday. But it spent also much time in its villa to Brittany, where it studied the occultism with the echoes of the Celtic legends.

In 1904, the committee of the Prix Fémina requested its adhesion. But the dedication occurred in October 1910, when it became the first woman of the Académie Goncourt. Elected with the second cover with died of Jules Fox, it ironically took to the place of that which indicated it like “old in addition to black, bad and bitter, crowned pinks like a cow of contest”. In spite of the extent of the honor, Judith sat very little in this assembly. One had refused to him the presence of his lady's companion, but it estimated séant little to be the only female presence in the middle of all these men.

Works

the Jade Book, poems
the Dragon imperial , novel (1869)
the Usurper , novel (1875), crowned by the French Academy and republished in 1887 pennies the title the Sister of the sun
Lucienne , novel (1877)
Cruelties of the love , tales (1879)
strange People , test (1879)
Isoline , novel (1882)
Richard Wagner , test (1882)
the Woman of Putiphar , tales (1884)
the Commercial one of smiles , part, with Pierre Parcelled out (1888)
Flowers of the East , tales (1893)
the Old man of the mountain , novel (1893)
Iskender , history Persian (1894)
Princesses of love (1900)
odd Musics , test (1900)
the Collar of the days, memories (1904)
In China , test (1911)
Dupleix , test (1912)
dazzled India , test (1913)
the second rank of the collar
the third rank of the collar

Quotations

Of Judith Gautier:

“Independent I lived, independent I age, independent I will die. ”

De Remy de Gourmont:

“Here is thus a woman from which the life of imagination occurred very whole to Asia; its studies and much of its readings related to literatures deeply different as of ours; its social relations even felt of this taste if pronounced for exoticism. It is difficult to go to Mrs. Judith Gautier without meeting there some Japanese badly disguised by the European costume, or two or three Mandarins brilliances out of national dress, whose braid is balanced on their back, however that with a charming courtesy they are inclined. Its living room is an Asian academy. ”

Of Theodore de Banville:

“The line of the nose continues that of the face. The black hair frisottant and is slightly crespelés, which gives them the dishevelled air; the brown dye chechmate, the small and spaced teeth, the purple lips of a coral red, the small and a little inserted, but very sharp eyes and which take the malignant air when the laughter the celandine, the opened nostrils, the fine and right eyebrows, the exquisite ear, a little strong collar and attached very well, are of a quiet and divine sphynge. ”

Portraits

John Singer Sargent, 1885, oil on panel, 99,1 X 62,2 cm, Strait, Institute Strait off Arts * John Singer Sargent, “Miss Judith Gautier with Cheating”, C. 1883-1885, oil on panel, 31,4 X 41,3 cm, Aix-the-Baths, Jean-Faure Museum

References

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