Paul Hervieu

Paul Hervieu (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1857 - Paris, 1915) is a dramatic author and French novelist.

He was born in Neuilly in a middle-class family. He intends himself first of all for the bar, becomes lawyer and frequent one moment the political circles. He obtains in 1881 a station of embassy attach3e to Mexico City, which he does not preserve a long time. Interested especially by the literature, it is devoted mainly to the writing, while attending literary living rooms and society men, such those of Madam de Pierrebourg, which was its mistress, and of Mrs Emile Straus, where it côtoye of the writers, Marcel Proust, Henri Meilhac, Ludovic Halévy, Guy of Maupassant, of the aristocrats, the Princesse Mathilde, Prince Georges Bibesco, of the actors like Réjane or Lucien Guitry and of the artists like Edgar Degas.

In 1883, begins its long friendship with Octave Mirbeau, of which he becomes the confidant. He collaborates this year, under the pseudonym of Liris, with the transitory review which his/her new friend founds and in which also collaborate Alfred Capus and Etienne Grosclaude, Grimaces , satiric weekly and of anti-opportunist combat, but also anti-semite, intended according to Mirbeau “to make grimacer all this false world of unpunished brigands of finance”. However, following the example Mirbeau, which will belong to the intellectuals the most engaged dreyfusists, Hervieu will be dreyfus ard, which will be worth to him a failure at the time of its first academic candidature.

Worried by the social problems of its time, it exposes them in psychological novels and society men, with the manner of Paul Le Bourget, and in plays, readily moralisatrices. Wanting to analyze a situation rigorously and to show the inescapable consequences of them, it puts in scene characters who act with an extreme logic, without least humanity, attentive only with the feeling of the duty and the social conventions. This pleasing rigidity with dramatic outcomes which appear outrageous today. The problems are exposed in aristocratic mediums or society men: the adulteress in the Enigma and in the Alarm clock , the remarriage of a woman divorced in the Maze , and the care due to the children, whatever are the consequences, in the Race of the torch .

It succeeded in 1900 Edouard Pailleron armchair 12 of the French Academy. Edmond de Goncourt said of him: “ small Hervieu has a curious voice, it is as the remote voice of a sleepwalker that its endormor would make speak. ” ( Newspaper , June 12th, 1887)

Principal works

the Parisian Silly thing (1882).
the Unknown , novel (1886).
Flirt , novel (1891).
Painted by themselves , novel by letters (1893)
the Clippers (1895)
the Law of the Man (1897)
the Enigma , part in two acts (1901)
the Race of the torch , part in four acts (1901).
Théroigne de Méricourt , part in 6 acts with 60 characters + of many observers (1902)
the Maze , part in five acts (1903)
the Alarm clock , part in three acts (1905)
Modesty , part in an act, (May 1908 in London, April 1909 in Paris)
Know , part in three acts (1909)

External bonds

Biographical note of the French Academy
Paul Hervieu, '' Argile of woman '', Alphonse Lemerre, Paris, 1894.
Mirbeau and Hervieu supporters of Dreyfus.
New on line on the electronic Library of Lisieux.

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