Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804 - 1869)
"J'oserai affirmer, sans crainte d'être démenti, que Byron et de Sade (je demande pardon du rapprochement) ont peut-être été les deux plus grands inspirateurs de nos modernes, l'un affiché et visible, l'autre clandestin, - pas trop clandestin." --Sainte-Beuve, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1843
Related: 1800s literature - cultural criticism - literary criticism - French literature - Modernism
In 1843 famed critic Sainte-Beuve wrote that Byron and Sade "are perhaps the two greatest inspirations of our moderns, the first openly and visibly, the second clandestinely, but not very." --Quelques vérités sur la situation en littérature, July 1843
One of Sainte-Beuve's major critical contentions was that in order to understand an artist it was first necessary to understand that artist's biography (a reversed opinion of New Criticism). Marcel Proust took issue with this contention and began an essay meant to refute it. Proust's essay eventually developed into À la recherche du temps perdu, ironically a very autobiographical work. [Oct 2006]
Biography
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (December 23, 1804 - October 13, 1869) was a literary critic and one of the major figures of French literary history.
He was born in Boulogne, and studied at the College Charlemagne in Paris. He became friendly with Victor Hugo after publishing a favourable review of the author's work, and had an affair with Hugo's wife. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Augustin_Sainte-Beuve [Feb 2005]
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