Remy de Gourmont: His Ideas and Influence in England and America

Abstract

Remy de has turned out to be one of those writers whose importance lies in their influence on other, greater writers. Certainly English and American readers, perhaps French readers too, are primarily interested in contribution of Gourmont's thought and practice to ideas and practice of such giants as Pound and Eliot. Around raged that ferment of new ideas about processes of literary creation that so distinguished 1900-1914 period. He is unquestionably a major figure in vortex from which emerged modern English and American literature, while he remains a relatively minor figure in French letters. present book in Southern Illinois Crosscurrents series is not full-dress study of that influence which many have been waiting for. It is, however, a useful clarification of problems, directions, and possibilities of further investigation. Mr. Burne reserves topic of Gourmont and AngloAmericans for his last 40 pages; his first 110 pages include a biographical sketch and an exploration of Gourmont's philosophy, critical ideas, and conception of Such an exploration is, of course, indispensable to any further study of prestige, reputation, fortune, and influence. What, for Remy de Gourmont, was relation of physiology to artistic creation? What did mean by dissociation of ideas? By sensibility? By the subconscious, style, and tradition? And what does T. S. Eliot, for example, mean by those terms, and what is nature and extent of debt? This short book defines terms and issues; it does not settle anything. To comparatists, therefore, Burne's most enlightening pages will be those in which he attempts to distinguish between what Eliot's critical practice does and does not owe to Gourmont. For instance, he shows that in Eliot's essay on Massinger, for whom (in Eliot's words) became word and word was Anglo-American follows quite directly. Whereas, in essay on The Metaphysical Poets, ... When Eliot speaks of 'a direct sensuous apprehension of thought,' he is speaking pure Gourmont, but when he speaks of 'A recreation of thought into feeling,' he is reversing order of events... problem, for Gourmont, is not one of transmuting an idea into a sensation, but rather of transmuting that idea, which is but a faded sensation, into language... That is problem of style. Except in what concerns a few poems of Ezra Pound, Gourmont's poetry, much less his novels and plays, made little or no mark on Anglo-American writers. It is as an impressionistic critic-as author of Promenades litteraires, Livres des masques, Probleme du style-and above all as a personality, cultivating from his symbolist beginnings to his death in 1915 supreme integrity of art and artist, that left his impress on his admiring younger readers. One may hold opposite or different views, but doctrines of sensation as key to creation, of criticism itself as creative, of style as product of physiological processes, of received ideas as bane of original artist, of primary role of unconscious in creation-such opinions of are still current and viable; they were authentic discoveries. One may regret Burne's unusual dependence on other critics, some (like Burton Rascoe) of dubious credentials; one may remark his sometimes hazy idea of what constitutes an influence (but then many comparatists are hazy