Goncourt brothers
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"Yes, there is no doubt about it, this is an age which has a liking for unsavoury conduct. Who, after all, are the idols of the youth of today? They are Baudelaire, Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Verlaine: three men of talent admittedly, but a sadistic Bohemian, an alcoholic, and a murderous homosexual."-- The Goncourt Journal (January 27, 1895) by Edmond de Goncourt |
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The Goncourt brothers were Edmond de Goncourt (1822-96) and Jules de Goncourt (1830-70), both French Naturalist writers. They formed a partnership that "is possibly unique in literary history. Not only did they write all their books together, they did not spend more than a day apart in their adult lives, until they were finally parted by Jules's death in 1870". (Kirsch, 2006)
Their career as writers began with an account of a sketching holiday together. They published books on aspects of eighteenth-century French art and society (eg Portraits intimes du XVIII siecle), dismissing the vulgarity of the Second Empire in favour of a more refined age. They also wrote the long Journal des Goncourt from 1851, which gives an interesting view of the literary and social life of their time. They are often not only caustic, but even spiteful.
They published six novels, of which Germinie Lacerteux, 1865, was the fourth. It is based on the true case of their own maidservant, Rose Malingre, whose double life they had never suspected.
Their emphasis on pathological cases occasionally trumped their psychological delicacy, but their impressionist style nonetheless had an intense and original precision.
Works
Novels
- Sœur Philomène (1861)
- Renée Mauperin (1864)
- Germinie Lacerteux (1865)
- Manette Salomon (1867)
- Madame Gervaisais (1869)
and, by Edmond alone:
- La Fille Elisa (1878)
- Les Frères Zemganno (1879)
- La Faustin (1882)
- Chérie (1884)
Other
- Journal des Goncourt, 1851-1896
- Portraits intimes du XVIIIe siècle (1857)
- La Femme au XVIIIe siècle (1862)
- La du Barry (1878)
- L’Art du XVIIIe siècle (French Eighteenth Century Painters) (1859–1875)
See also