Men of Letters
The Goncourt Brothers. By Andre Billy. Trans- lated by Margaret Shaw. (Deutsch, 30s.) WHAT real men of letters they were!' writes M. Billy perhaps with a shade of irony. 'No one has ev.er been so to such a degree as they.'.They were '3,1 the same opinion. '1 am a well-born man of letters; wrote Edmond, de Goncourt, defending the naturalism of Germinie Lacerteux, 'and the common people, the riff-raff if you like, have for. rile the particular attraction of races unknown and undiscovered,' something of that exotic quality which travellers go in search of at the cost of many hardships in far-off lands.'
their mother's death in 1848 qualified them for their chosen profession, by leaving them with fortune which, though modest, was sufficient 14 the independence to which they aspired.' Goncourt this event and the death of Jules de 'i Lnneourt in 1870 they wrote, together, thirty ?oaks. They were, in various not always very Important ways, pioneers. They made Japanese art fashionable in Paris, and' thereby had their .infhlence on the history of French painting. They 1,2finenced the history of the French novel--al- "ugh their own novels are, in the words of one of their more intelligent admirers, 'something of 4 trial'—by shifting the centre of attention of 8 ,,alzacian realism to the very poor: they showed f-4)1a the way. They may also claim a certain Influence on one subsequently powerful current ° European thought. Their novel—later drama- I' di.sed--Manette Salomon, `in certain parts an in- dictment of womankind in general and in Particular of the Jewish woman and the Pernicious influence she is capable of exerting over an artist,' attracted the attention of Edouard Drumont, author of La France Ittive and initiator of the press uproar which began the Dreyfus case. Edmond de Goncourt's anti-Semitism, how- ever, was, according to M. Billy, 'purely theore- tical, and did not prevent him from being friendly with "individuals of that race."' Most of their work is now part of the ghostly history of 'influences': what remains alive is their Journals, incomparable as a record of life and opinions under the Second Empire. Among their many repulsive traits was a capacity. for staying sober when everyone else was drunk and this enabled them, returning to Auteuil after a dinner at Magny's or with Princess Mathilde, to record the unguarded conversation of the great: 'Cloud-marshalling Zeus!' Taine cried out enthusiastically.
'The unharvestable sea!' exclaimed Sainte- Beuve, his little voice swelling prodigiously; 'the grapeless sea! (-cold any thing be- more beautiful?'
'As a matter of fact,' Renan broke in, 'the thing doesn't make sense. The Germans have discovered that the words have a different meaning altogether.'
'Which is what?' Sainte-Beuve asked.
'I don't remember,' said Renan, 'but it is wonderful.'
This delightful conversation, it should besaid, is taken not from M. Billy's book but from Lewis Galantiere's capably edited and well-translated selection, The Goncourt Journals, 1851-1870, published just before the last war. It would have been more useful to reprint that selection, or to print a new one, than to attempt a translation of M. Billy's very pedestrian biography, published in Paris six years ago. Following a prevailing bad habit the publishers of the present English ver- sion fail to mention the date of original publica- tion.
Something has to be said, finally, about the translation, because it is worse than usual. The translator of The Goncourt Brothers not only takes words like `eventual,' offer' and 'imagine' as unfailing equivalents for their French homonyms—most translators do that and small blame to them, considering the way they are paid—but quite recklessly takes almost any French word at its face value. Thus we are told that a Goncourt uncle, an artillery captain, 'rallied the army of the Loire,' when all he really did was to join it. And a friend of the GoncouTts was `tutor to a wealthy right-thinking family.' This kind of blur probably contributes to the suspicion- with which so many young Englishmen seem to regard French Writing. The Goncourt brothers may not be attractive, M. 'Billy may not be brilliant, but all three of them were at least lucid before they were done into English.
DONAT O'DONNELL
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