DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21805#0211
Henri Beyle
By Norman Hapgood
The fact that none of his work has been translated into English
is probably a source of amused satisfaction to many of the
lovers of Beyle. Though he exercised a marked influence on
Merimee, was wildly praised by Balzac, was discussed twice by
Sainte-Beuve, was pointed to in Maupassant’s famous manifesto-
preface to Pierre et ‘Jean; though he has been twice eulogised by
Taine, and once by Bourget ; and though he has been carefully
analysed by Zola, he is read little in France and scarcely at all
elsewhere. While his name, at his death scarcely heard beyond
his little circle of men of letters, has become rather prominent,
his books are still known to very few. His cool prophecy that a
few leading spirits would read him by 1880 was justified, and the
solution of his doubt whether he would not by 1930 have sunk
again into oblivion seems now at least as likely as it was then to
be an affirmative. “To the happy few,” he dedicated his latest
important novel, and it will be as it has been, for the few, happy
in some meanings of that intangible word, that his character and
his writings have a serious interest.
In one of the Edinburgh Review's essays on Mme. du Deffand
is a rather striking passage in which Jeffrey sums up the con-
ditions that made conversation so fascinating in the salons of the
F ran ce
By Norman Hapgood
The fact that none of his work has been translated into English
is probably a source of amused satisfaction to many of the
lovers of Beyle. Though he exercised a marked influence on
Merimee, was wildly praised by Balzac, was discussed twice by
Sainte-Beuve, was pointed to in Maupassant’s famous manifesto-
preface to Pierre et ‘Jean; though he has been twice eulogised by
Taine, and once by Bourget ; and though he has been carefully
analysed by Zola, he is read little in France and scarcely at all
elsewhere. While his name, at his death scarcely heard beyond
his little circle of men of letters, has become rather prominent,
his books are still known to very few. His cool prophecy that a
few leading spirits would read him by 1880 was justified, and the
solution of his doubt whether he would not by 1930 have sunk
again into oblivion seems now at least as likely as it was then to
be an affirmative. “To the happy few,” he dedicated his latest
important novel, and it will be as it has been, for the few, happy
in some meanings of that intangible word, that his character and
his writings have a serious interest.
In one of the Edinburgh Review's essays on Mme. du Deffand
is a rather striking passage in which Jeffrey sums up the con-
ditions that made conversation so fascinating in the salons of the
F ran ce