Gautier, Théophile

Gautier, Théophile (tāôfēl` gōtyā`), 1811–72, French poet, novelist, and critic. He was a leading exponent of art for art's sake—the belief that formal, aesthetic beauty is the sole purpose of a work of art. An important manifesto of this theory appeared in the preface of his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835). Gautier was a painter before he turned to writing. His theory of plasticity, that words should be used as the painter and sculptor use their tools, is illustrated in his volumes of poems Voyage en Espagne (1845) and Emaux et camées [enamels and cameos] (1852). His other works include the poem La Comédie de la mort (1838), the novel Le Capitaine Fracasse (1863), and L'Histoire de l'art dramatique en France (1858–59). He prepared the way for the Parnassians and symbolists in their reaction against romanticism.

Bibliography

See studies by A. B. Smith (1977), R. Shell (1982), and K. Bulgin (1988).

His daughter,

Judith Gautier, 1850–1918, was married to the poet Catulle Mendès and then to Pierre Loti, with whom she wrote the novel La Fille du ciel (1911; tr. The Daughter of Heaven, 1912). Her novels, poems, and essays were usually on Asian subjects. She was the first woman to become a member of the Goncourt Academy.

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Gautier, Théophile

(born Aug. 31, 1811, Tarbes, France—died Oct. 23, 1872, Neuilly-sur-Seine) French poet, novelist, critic, and journalist. He lived most of his life in Paris, where he initially studied painting. He insisted on the sovereignty of the beautiful in such works as the novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835). He developed a poetic technique for recording his exact impressions of works of art, as in the formally perfect poems of Émaux et camées (1852). Travel inspired some of his best poetry, in España (1845), and finest prose, in Voyage en Espagne (1845). He also wrote copious art and drama criticism. His works inspired such poets as Charles Baudelaire, whose Fleurs du Mal was dedicated to him, and his prodigious and varied output influenced literary sensibilities for decades.

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Gautier, Théophile 

Born Aug. 31, 1811, in Tarbes; died Oct. 22, 1872, in Neuilly, near Paris. French writer and critic.

In his youth Gautier was an adherent of romanticism but later became the spiritual father of the Parnassian school. His early Poems (1830), the narrative poem Albertus (1833), the tales Young France (1833), and the verse collection Comedy of Death (1838) exhibit traces of Byronic demonism; he combined an inclination to fantasy with measured verse. Rejecting bourgeois everyday life as a kingdom of vulgar men and hucksters, Gautier gave one of the first full-scale substantiations of the theory of “art for art’s sake,” in the foreword to the novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835–36) and in articles in the book The New Art (1852). He rejected both petit bourgeois moralizing and democratic ideological content in literature. In the lyric miniatures of the collection Enamels and Cameos (1852; Russian translation, 1914), the elegance, fluidity, and color of things underscore his indifference to what he considers transitory passions.

Gautier’s penchant for the picturesque re-creation of distant periods and countries found expression in his Novel About a Mummy (1858; Russian translation, 1911), set in ancient Egypt; in his adventure novel about the life of itinerant actors in 17th-century France, Captain Fracasse (1863, Russian translation, 1895, 1957; expanded French editions in 1929, 1942, 1961, France); and in Journey to Russia (1867).

Gautier’s more interesting works of criticism include Grotesques (1844), about forgotten poets of the 15th through 17th centuries, A History of Romanticism (1874, posthumous), and his essay on Baudelaire (Russian translation, 1915). V. G. Benediktov, V. Ia. Briusov, and N. S. Gumilev have translated Gautier’s poetry into Russian.

WORKS

Oeuvres choisies. Paris, 1930.
Contes fantastiques. Paris, 1962.
In Russian translation:
Izbr. stikhi. Paris, 1923.

REFERENCES

Istoriia frantsuzskoi literatury, vol. 2. Moscow, 1956.
Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, C. Histoire des oeuvres de T. Gautier, vols. 1–2. Paris, 1887.
Jasinski, R. Les Années romantiques de T. Gautier. Paris, 1929.
Larguier, L. Théophile Gautier. Paris, 1948.
Richardson, J. T. Gautier, His Life and Times. New York [1959].
Delvaille, B. Théophile Gautier. Paris, 1968.

S. I. VELIKOVSKII