Académie française

Paul Valéry (1871-1945) published some early poetry before 1900 but then disappeared completely from the literary scene until 1917 when La jeune Parque came out in print. Like Mallarmé, Valéry is an implacable perfectionist, and he demands of form what the older poet sought in harmonic effects. Valéry is above all an intellectual poet whose work requires a real effort on the part of the reader. His influence on the twentieth century has been very great.

• "Paul Valéry." Representative French Poetry. Ed. Victor E. Graham. 2nd edn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965. 112-14.

José-Maria de Heredia (1842-1905) was born in Cuba of a Spanish father and a French mother. Educated in France, he became the disciple and close friend of Leconte de Lisle. Like the latter, he cultivates erudition, impersonality, and perfection of form. Heredia excelled in sonnets, and these were made into a collection by him in 1893 under the tide Les Trophées.

• "Jose-Maria de Heredia." Representative French Poetry. Ed. Victor E. Graham. 2nd edn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965. 91-94.

Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894) was born on Reunion Island off East Africa. He studied law in France but spent his life as a journalist and translator. Like Vigny, he is a pessimist, but he refuses to express his personal despair. He turns for inspiration to the classics and the Orient. In his cult of perfection of form with erudition, Leconte de Lisle had great influence on the younger poets of his day.

• "Leconte de Lisle." Representative French Poetry. Ed. Victor E. Graham. 2nd edn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965. 86-91.

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) was born of a noble family at Mâcon, where he spent a happy childhood with his mother and sisters. In October 1816 Lamartine visited Aix-les-Bains where he met Madame Julie Charles, who, as Elvire, was to inspire many of the poems in the famous Méditations poétiques. She was ill with tuberculosis, but it was agreed that they would meet again the next summer at the same spot. Lamartine went back to Aix in August 1817, but Madame Charles was too ill to travel there and she died December 18 of that year. In later life Lamartine entered politics and after the Revolution of 1848 he was for a short time the leader of the government. He died impoverished in relative obscurity.

• "Alphonese de Lamartine." Representative French Poetry. Ed. Victor E. Graham. 2nd edn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965. 31-38.
• Alphonse de LAMARTINE (1790-1869). Les grands Classiques. Boulogne: la société Webnet, 1996-2009.

Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863) was a rather austere man, proud of his noble birth and the restrictive demands of the military career which was traditional in his family. His poetry is philosophic and the lessons it teaches are stoic: nature is cruel or indifferent and man must accept his destiny unflinchingly; the thinker is isolated from his fellow-men but only through knowledge can we hope to strive for the best, suffer without complaint, and die gallantly.

• "Alfred de Vigny." Representative French Poetry. Ed. Victor E. Graham. 2nd edn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965. 39-49.