Sully Prudhomme (redirected from René-François-Armand Prudhomme)

Sully Prudhomme

 orig. René-François-Armand Prudhomme

Sully Prudhomme.

(credit: H. Roger-Viollet)

(born March 16, 1839, Paris, France—died Sept. 7, 1907, Châtenay) French poet. Inspired at first by an unhappy love affair, he published fluent and melancholic verse in volumes beginning with Stances et poèmes (1865), containing his well-known “Le Vase brise.” He later adopted the more objective approach of the Parnassian poets and attempted to represent philosophical concepts in verse. Among his best-known later works are La Justice (1878) and Le Bonheur (1888). In 1901 he was awarded the first Nobel Prize for Literature, over such greatly admired figures as Leo Tolstoy.