DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51520#0022
Place Pigale opposite the fountain. Men of
letters used to go there, too—Duranty, one of
the original Realists, a contemporary of
Flaubert, used to stay with us for an hour or
so every night : a quiet, elderly man who
knew that he had failed and whom failure
had saddened. The Nouvelle Athenes was a
cafe of rates, literary and pictorial. The
literary rates were Alexis, Ceard, and
Hennique. At the time I am speaking of
Zola had ceased to go to the cafe, he spent
his evenings with his wife, but his disciples—
all except Maupassant and Huysmans, I do
not remember ever having seen them there—
collected about the marble tables, lured to the
Nouvelle Athenes by their love of art. One
generation of litterateurs associates itself with
painting, the next clings to music. The aim
and triumph of the Realist was to force the
pen to compete with the painter’s brush and
the engraver’s needle in the description, let us
say, of a mean street, just as the desire of a
symbolistic writer was to describe the vague
but intense sensations of music so accurately
that the reader would guess the piece he had
selected for description though it were not
named in the text. We all entertained doubts
regarding the validity of the art we practised
and envied the art of the painter, deeming it
superior to literature; and it is hardly an
exaggeration to say that we used to weary
a little of conversation amongst ourselves just
as dogs weary of their own society, and I think
I 2
letters used to go there, too—Duranty, one of
the original Realists, a contemporary of
Flaubert, used to stay with us for an hour or
so every night : a quiet, elderly man who
knew that he had failed and whom failure
had saddened. The Nouvelle Athenes was a
cafe of rates, literary and pictorial. The
literary rates were Alexis, Ceard, and
Hennique. At the time I am speaking of
Zola had ceased to go to the cafe, he spent
his evenings with his wife, but his disciples—
all except Maupassant and Huysmans, I do
not remember ever having seen them there—
collected about the marble tables, lured to the
Nouvelle Athenes by their love of art. One
generation of litterateurs associates itself with
painting, the next clings to music. The aim
and triumph of the Realist was to force the
pen to compete with the painter’s brush and
the engraver’s needle in the description, let us
say, of a mean street, just as the desire of a
symbolistic writer was to describe the vague
but intense sensations of music so accurately
that the reader would guess the piece he had
selected for description though it were not
named in the text. We all entertained doubts
regarding the validity of the art we practised
and envied the art of the painter, deeming it
superior to literature; and it is hardly an
exaggeration to say that we used to weary
a little of conversation amongst ourselves just
as dogs weary of their own society, and I think
I 2