© Opale

Anatole FRANCE

Nobel Prize 1921

 

"In recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament"

 

Anatole France (pen name of Jacques Anatole France Thibault) was born on the 16th of April 1844 in Paris. His family came from peasantry in the region of La Beauce. His father, Noel France, was originally a legitimist under-officer, and resigned the day after the Revolution of 1830. Noel France owned a bookshop on the Quai Malaquais that specialised in works and documents about the French Revolution. This bookshop was frequented by an erudite clientele including numerous writers, such as the Goncourt Brothers. Brought up in his father’s bookshop Anatole would discover a taste for books and learning at an early age, as well as a profound knowledge of the revolutionary period that would serve as the back drop for several of his novels and short stories, such as The Gods are Athirst.

France was a young disciple of Leconte de Lisle, and was introduced at a very early age into literary circles. His first works were works of poetry: The Golden Poem, published in 1873, and a verse drama modeled on classical works entitled Les Noces Corinthiennes in 1876. These are replete with Parnassian influences. France would later orient himself towards the novel form, publishing Jocasta in 1889. He found his first public success at the age of 38 with The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, awarded a prize by the Academie Francaise in 1881.

France was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1884. He told the story of his childhood in The Book of My Friend which came out the following year. A librarian at the Senate, he also became the literary critic of the prestigious review Le Temps in 1887. His articles were collected in La Vie Litteraire from 1888 onwards. Equally he wrote for Le Globe, Les Lettres et les Arts and La Revue Alsacienne. Later he participated in La Revue des Deux Mondes and L’Echo de Paris.

France aspired to a bourgeois lifestyle, but his marriage to Valerie Geurin de Saville in 1887 would prove disastrous, despite the birth of his daughter Suzanne in the same year. In 1888 he met Madame Arman de Caillavet who held a famous literary salon. He left his wife in 1892 to live with her. This new romance inspired Thais (1890), and The Red Lily (1894). The Queen Pedauque, a picaresque work in the style of Lesage, in which the writer recounted the intrepid adventures of Jacques Tournebroche, was published in 1893, followed by The Opinions of M. Jérôme Coignard in 1894. During these years, Anatole France was also writing short stories. Two collections were published: Mother of Pearl in 1892 and The Well of Saint Claire in 1895. During these years, Anatole France reconciled himself with Stephen Mallarme and Paul Verlaine, two poets whose works he had refused in 1875 at the Parnasse Contemporain.

France was elected to the Academie Francaise on the 23rd of January 1896, at Fauteuil 38, where he would succeed Ferdinand de Lesseps. Now a reknowned author, he rallied to the side of Emile Zola during the Dreyfus Affair, the day after the publication of J’Accuse. On the 14th of july 1898 he signed the petition demanding the revision of the trial, and was practically the only person in the Academy Francaise to do so. He gave back his Legion of Honour after that of Zola was withdrawn and for a long time refused to take his seat in the Academy. His engagement in the Dreyfus case found expression in his Contemporary History, a chronicle of the pettiness and absurdity of a provincial prefecture at the time of the Affair. His subsequent works, including Crainquebille, The White Stone, Penguin Island, and The Revolt of the Angels, testify to his political engagement. He was also involved in the founding of the Ligue des droits de l’homme.

In 1912, The Gods Will Have Blood appeared: during the Terror, Evarsite Gamelin, a mediocre painter but an impassioned defender of revolutionary ideals, becomes a juror of the Revolutionary Tribunal.

A humanist writer and committed skeptic, Anatole France campaigned in favour of the separation of Church and State, trade union rights, and against military penal servitude. A friend of Jean Jaurès and of Francis de Pressensé, he joined the Socialist Party and continued to write for L’Humanité, which he had helped found. After the death of his companion, Madame de Caillavet, his love-life proved a source of difficulty.

Following the declaration of war, the writer, hostile to the Sacred Union, broke with the Socialist Party. He left Paris to live in Béchellerie, near Tours. An article in which he expressed his reservations about the war, pulished in 1914, was the subject of strong criticism. In January 1916 a collection of his writings appeared, The Path of Glory. France considered enlisting in the army, then killing himself. But he did no such thing. In 1919 he declared his opposition to the Treaty of Versailles (‘Against an unjust peace’, L'Humanité, 22nd July 1919). Close to the Section Française de l’internationale ouvrière, he would later be critical of the Communist Party.
On 11th October 1920, Anatole France married his second wife, Emma Laprévotte, Madame de Caillavet’s former governess. In 1921 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his body of work. He then retired from the literary world. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, a public ceremony honouring him was held at the Trocadero on 24th April 1924, which he attended,

He died on the 12th October of the same year at Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. A national funeral was organized on the 18th October. After his death he was the target of a Surrealist pamphlet. Proust would turn him, under the name of Bergotte, into one of the characters in À la recherche du temps perdu.