What precisely is the condition of French letters since Catulle Mendès published his magisterial work on The French Poetic Movement from 1867 to 1900? (Paris, 1903.) Nothing so exhaustive has appeared since, though a half-dozen Inquiries, Anthologies, and Symposiums are in existence.
The most comprehensive recently is Florian-Parmentier's Contemporary History of French Letters from 1885 to 1914. The author is a poet, one of les Jeunes, and an expert swimmer in the multifarious cross-currents of the day. His book is a bird's-eye view of the map of literary France as far as the beginning of the war. He is quite frank in his likes and dislikes, and always has his reasons for his major idolatries and minor detestations.
As a corrective to his enthusiasm and hatreds there are several new Anthologies at hand which aid us to form our own opinion of the younger men's prose and verse. And, finally, there is the significant Inquiry of Emile Henriot: "A Quoi Rêvent les Jeunes Gens?" (1913); of which more anon.
M. Florian-Parmentier is a native of Valenciennes, a writer whose versatility and fecundity are noteworthy in a far from barren literary epoch. He has, with the facility of a lettered young Frenchman, tried his hand at every form. All themes, so they be human, are welcome to him, from art criticism to playwriting. He is seemingly fair to his colleagues. Perhaps they may not admit this; but the question may be answered in the affirmative: Is he a safe critical guide in the labyrinth of latter-day French letters?
He notes, with an unaccustomed sense of humour in a critical barometer, the tendency of youthful poets, prose penmen, and others to form schools, to create cénacles, to begin fighting before they have any defined ideal. It leads to a lot of noisy, explosive manifestoes, declarations, and challenges, most of them rather in the air; though it cannot be denied that these ebullitions of gusty temperaments do clear that same air, murky with theories and traversed by an occasional flash of genius.
After paying his respects to the daily Parisian press, which he belabours as venal, cynical, and impure, our critic evokes a picture of the condition of literary men; not a reassuring one. Indeed, we wonder how young people can dream of embracing such a profession, with its heartaches, disappointments, inevitable poverty. Unless these aspiring chaps have a private income, how do they contrive to live?