The “Parnassiens” were the group, or groups, of Fr. poets who were born about 1840 or 1850 and gravitated around Leconte de Lisle. They treated a number of nonpersonal themes taken from history, science, philosophy, nature, or contemp. life; but some were mainly lyricists. They respected and often followed their elders, used traditional verseforms, and regarded the cult of poetry as a religion. Le prémier Parnasse contemporain (1866) was followed by other recueils in 1871 and 1876, but the works of individual P. covered the period from 1865 to the end of the century, representing an important trend in Fr. poetry between the Romantics and the Symbolists.
The movement was initiated by Catulle Mendès and de Ricard in the early 1860s, when the P. first met in Lemerre’s bookshop and in the salon of the Marquise de Ricard; later they gathered in the salon of Mme. Leconte de Lisle, whose formidable husband was regarded as a manner of oracle. Of the 50 or more poets called P. only a few can be mentioned here. Among the more independent, Albert Glatigny (1839-73) was a wit and virtuoso who took his cue from Banville. Sully-Prudhomme (1839-1907) explored the secrets of the inner life in verses as poignant as Heine’s but without Heine’s bitterness. He wrote philosophic poems using a delicate imagery drawn from the natural sciences. François Coppée (1842-1908) described the life and problems of humble folk and, like Sully-Prudhomme, was sensitive to the writer’s moral responsibilities. The followers of Leconte de Lisle respected traditional morals, but worshipped “Art.” Gautier as well as Banville remained a potent influence. Léon Dierx (1838–1912) wrote tragic poems on historical themes and struck a note of despair. Jean Lahor (1840-1909) exhaled his melancholy in Buddhistic verses. J.-M. de Heredia (1842-1905) drew inspiration from the Gr. myths, from the epigrams of the Greek Anthology and from the Lat. poets. He was something of a scholar and paleographer, but above all a finished artist. Most of his Trophiés (1895) are sonnets, and he is one of the outstanding sonneteers of late 19th-c. France. Anatole France (1844–1924) was more independent: although a versatile neo-Hellenist, he was also, in his Poèmes dorés, an able nature poet. Jules Lemaitre (1853–1914), the critic and literary historian, was a conteur and poet who achieved formal eloquence.
Though some of them underwent the influence of Ménard, the P. were not primarily Hellenists, nor were they as a whole impassive or impersonal. If they had anything in common, it was a love of precision, a devotion to formal beauty, the cult of rhyme, and, beyond that, “un romantisme assagi et mitigé” (Henri Peyre), which left a mark on such great poets as Mallarmé and Verlaine and, to a lesser extent, on a few figures of the following generation like Paul Valéry in his Album de vers anciens. In England the work of Banville and others inspired a vogue for Fr. fixed forms such as the villanelle, sestina, and triolet (qq.v.).
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