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
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute..”
—Edmund Burke (1729–97)
“Puritanism, in whatever expression, is a poisonous germ. On the surface everything may look strong and vigorous; yet the poison works its way persistently, until the entire fabric is doomed.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you’re weary or a stool
To stumble over and vex you ... “curse that stool!”
Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not,
But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!
This hurts most, this ... that, after all, we are paid
The worth of our work, perhaps.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)