Creation
The legend of Belles Lettres all started during the Great War, when the linguist Joseph Vendryes (1875–1960), who was fighting against the Germans, wished to read a critical edition of Homer. Unfortunately at this time there were no critical French editions, only German.
At the end of the war they created the Association Guillaume Budé- - named after the French humanist of the 16th century. The association gave a goal to spread the great classics from the Greek and Latin culture, and decided to publish "a comprehensive collection of Greek and Latin authors, texts and translations in French. "
But the Association Guillaume Budé- did not afford its ambitions. To edit these classics, a publishing company was founded, the company Oxford University Press for the development of classical culture, now publishing company Oxford University Press. Capital was assembled from "friends of French manufacturers of Classics," a total of 300 shareholders. Its first president was the Hellenist Paul Mazon (1874–1955), translator of Homer. The headquarters of the editions was in Paris at 157 Boulevard Saint-Germain.
Read more about this topic: Les Belles Lettres, History
Famous quotes containing the word creation:
“As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“She sings as the moon sings:
“I am I, am I;
The greater grows my lift
The further that I fly.”
All creation shivers
With that sweet cry.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)