Works
After a short period writing poetry, he turned to fiction, publishing a collection of overheated tales of “poor love” (Quatre histoires de pauvre amour, 1897), then two sentimental portraits of village girls (La bonne Madeleine et la pauvre Marie, 1898), and a lyrical evocation of his own childhood and youth (La Mère et l’enfant, 1900). A brief liaison with a prostitute inspired his best-known novel, Bubu de Montparnasse (1901), which earned him critical as well as popular attention. A provincial novel followed: Le Père Perdrix (1902) recounts the painful old age of a blacksmith, and explores the small-town class system. Marie Donadieu (1904) returns to Paris to tell a passionate love story tinged with individualism inspired by Nietzsche. Croquignole (1906) evokes the stifling office atmosphere Philippe knew well, and which his hero escapes, but briefly, through an inheritance.
Despite some strong support (notably from Octave Mirbeau), the last three novels failed to win the new Prix Goncourt. He turned next to a fictionalised life of his father (Charles Blanchard), but abandoned what was to be a kind of hymn to work shortly before his sudden death, from meningitis, in December 1909. In his last years he had also written 50 entertaining short stories for a large-circulation Paris paper, Le Matin, which were published in volume form after his death (Dans la petite ville, 1910, Les Contes du Matin, 1916).
Thanks to the efforts of Gide, other occasional writings and two volumes of letters were published between 1911 and 1928 : Lettres de jeunesse (1911), Chroniques du Canard sauvage (1923), Lettres à sa mère (1928).
L’Association internationale des Amis de Charles-Louis Philippe has existed since 1935 to promote knowledge of his life and work through an annual Bulletin. Secretary: d.roe@leeds.ac.uk.
Read more about this topic: Charles-Louis Philippe
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Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
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—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“Artists, whatever their medium, make selections from the abounding materials of life, and organize these selections into works that are under the control of the artist.... In relation to the inclusiveness and literally endless intricacy of life, art is arbitrary, symbolic and abstracted. That is its value and the source of its own kind of order and coherence.”
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“Now they express
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Yet works on uselessly with shortened breath.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)