René Armand François Prudhomme, known as Sully Prudhomme (1839–1907), French poet and writer, the first Nobel Literature Prize laureate, in 1901. Les Principes de M. Taine sur l’Art. Signed autograph manuscript, [c. 1869]. 43 folios, in-8° [numbered 35], rectos only, autograph title on an endpaper. Midnight blue Jansenist morocco leather, spine with four false raised bands, gilt title, double gilt fillet on the cuts, contreplats lined in red morocco leather decorated with a gilt framing fillet, beige woven endpaper, double endpapers. (Marius Michel).
An autograph manuscript in two parts, heavily crossed out and corrected, probably a literary review of ‘Mr Taine’s three treatises’ following the publication of Philosophie de l’art en Italie (1866), Philosophie de l’art en Grèce and Philosophie de l’art dans les Pays-Bas (1969), three lectures delivered at the École des Beaux-Arts by the philosopher, edited by Germer Baillière, in the ‘Bibliothèque de philosophie contemporaine’ series. Pencil annotations, presumably wrote by a foreman, which suggest that this text was intended for publication, though we have found no trace of it.
In Les Principes de M. Taine sur l’Art, Sully Prudhomme criticises, in particular, the determinism set out by the philosopher in his Philosophie de l’art (published in 1865 and reprinted in 1882), as well as in De l’idéal dans l’art: leçons professées à l’École des Beaux-arts (published in 1867), quoting numerous passages from these two works.
In the first part, after praising the style of Taine’s works, written in a sparkling, lively and confident style (« d’une plume étincelante, nerveuse et sure »), Sully-Prudhomme analyses his theories on aesthetic determinism, before subjecting them to criticism; it is, he notes, unable to give a complete account of the facts, and even less able to predict them; it lacks the essential characteristics of a law: application to observable cases and the ability to anticipate future cases (« à la fois impuissante à rendre compte entièrement des faits [individuels biffé] et plus impuissante encore à les annoncer ; les caractères essentiels d’une loi, l’application aux cas observables [des phénomènes et la prévision, lui font donc défaut au cas particulier biffé] et la prévision pour les cas futurs lui font défaut. »). He points out in passing that there can be no literary work or work of art unless the writer’s personality [genius] is imprinted upon it (« il n’y aura pas œuvre littéraire, œuvre d’art, si la personnalité [le génie] de l’écrivain n’y est pas empreinte »), admittedly influenced by his milieu. He cites as examples the writers Goethe, Hugo, Lamartine and, above all, Musset, followed by the painters Masaccio, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Delacroix. He criticises Taine for failing to take sufficient account of the interplay of the inner, sudden, mysterious forces that constitute the supreme genius of the great artist (« le jeu des forces intimes, soudaines, mystérieuses qui constituent le génie souverain du grand artiste ») and thus refutes his theory that the relationship between the individual and social circumstances is governed by a scientific law; that is to say, by such a connection that, once one of the terms—the individual or the environment—is known, the other can be determined (« le rapport de l’individualité aux circonstances sociales est soumis à une loi scientifique c’est-à-dire à une connexité telle que l’un des termes, l’individu ou le milieu, étant connu, on puisse déterminer l’autre »). Sully-Prudhomme claims that the ideas and feelings that pervade a society only take shape within an individual mind through that mind’s own perceptions—perceptions which are by no means passive but which, on the contrary, transform all intellectual material through a special process of synthesis. […] Mr Taine’s studies, so ingenious, so profound and so beautiful, have therefore not led him to formulate a law governing the production of works of art. (« les idées, les sentiments qui sont dans l’air d’une société, ne prennent corps dans une âme individuelle que par les perceptions propres à cette âme, perceptions qui ne sont nullement passives, mais qui, bien au contraire, transforment tous les matériaux intellectuels par un mode spécial de synthèse. […] Les [recherches biffé] études si ingénieuses, si profondes, et [(qu’il nous passe le mot) biffé] si belles de Mr Taine, ne l’ont donc pas conduit à la détermination d’une loi dans la production des œuvres d’art). »
In the second part, he criticises the conception of the artistic ideal that Taine set out in De l’idéal dans l’art: leçons professées à l’École des Beaux-Arts. He begins by summarising the philosopher’s thinking: the importance of character; the primacy of one ideal over another; empirical, indeed scientific, analysis enabling the identification of the absolute ideal; the faculty of benevolence as distinct from the faculty of resistance; and the theory as applied to literature and the fine arts: At the pinnacle of nature are sovereign powers that dominate all others; at the pinnacle of art are masterpieces that surpass all others; the two pinnacles are on a par, and the sovereign powers of nature find expression in the masterpieces of art […] A masterpiece is one in which the greatest power is most fully realised.(« Au sommet de la nature sont des puissances souveraines qui maitrisent les autres ; au sommet de l’art sont des chefs d’œuvre qui dépassent les autres ; les deux cimes sont de niveau et les puissances souveraines de la nature s’expriment par les chefs d’œuvre de l’art […] Le chef d’œuvre est celui dans lequel la plus grande puissance reçoit le plus grand développement. »)
Sully-Prudhomme criticises various principles: the importance of characters, and the modern ideal, glimpsed and grasped in passing to be immortalised in works of poetry. Hugo, Musset, Balzac, Sand, Mérimée, Delacroix, Ingres, Decamps, Meissonnier – masters of all kinds will be admired for having expressed, not the unchanging traits of humanity, but the characteristics of human life, which never ceases and is nothing but a perpetual accident.(« pour être éternisé dans des créations [admirables biffé] poétiques. [Balzac, Sand biffé], Hugo, Musset, Balzac, Sand, Mérimée, Delacroix, Ingres, Decamps, Meissonnier, [tous biffé] les maitres en tous genres seront admirés [non pas biffé] pour avoir exprimé, non pas les caractères stables de l’humanité, mais les caractères de la vie humaine qui ne s’arrête point et qui n’est qu’un perpétuel accident. [au contraire le plus riche de vie et par suite le plus sujet à la variété, et à la mort variable et le plus particulier. Biffé] »). He is being ironic about the method Taine uses in his research into the a defining characteristic, the most important one for art (« caractère [principe biffé] dominant, le plus important pour l’art »), attributing superiority to the mineral world, and thus placing it at the centre of the world, the stable foundation of everything. If the centre of the world is the supreme object of artistic thought, then the point is the masterpiece of form! (« Si le centre du monde est le suprême objet de la pensée artistique, le point est le chef-d’œuvre de la forme ! »). He highlights the transience of artistic values, just as in life, and points out that the ‘fundamental thing’ is nothing more than the condition of the ideal, the ideal is what gives meaning to everything else […] The indefinable curve of a smile has dethroned the monstrous ellipses of gravity. What does it matter to us what lasts! Do we ever see enthusiasm, ecstasy, inspiration, pain and joy last? Does even love last longer than life itself? What lasts is the brute. (« l’idéal, c’est ce qui donne un sens à tout le reste […] L’arc indéfinissable du sourire a détrôné les ellipses monstrueuses de la [pesanteur biffé] gravitation. Que nous importe ce qui dure ! Voit-on durer l’enthousiasme, l’extase, l’inspiration, la douleur et la joie ? l’amour même dure-t-il plus que la vie ? ce qui dure, c’est la brute. »)
He then analyses the principle of beneficence as that which ‘preserves and fosters life’. He agreed with Taine, whilst at the same time refining his thinking by distinguishing between as many forces, each progressively more dignified and more capable of benevolence, as there are stages from mechanical force through instinct to free will; for us, the superiority of a force lies in the nature of the effort that brings about the act […] (« autant de forces, graduellement plus dignes et plus capables de bienfaisance, qu’il y a de degrés depuis la force mécanique jusqu’à la force libre en passant par l’instinct ; la supériorité d’une force consiste pour nous dans la nature de l’effort qui accomplit l’acte […] »). A conscious or unconscious effort, this particular and diverse beauty can only come about through the existence of general and constant laws, but it is by no means obliged to express those laws, which are its condition and not its essence. (« […] cette beauté [toute contingente biffé] particulière et diverse ne peut se produire que grâce à l’existence des lois générales et constantes, mais elle n’est nullement obligée d’exprimer ces lois qui sont sa condition et non son essence. ») He then criticises contemporary aestheticism, which believes it can move beyond the concept of beauty by reducing it to health – mens sana in corpore sano – and refers to German philosophy, which deserves credit to attribute to the individual being the importance and value that ancient metaphysics ascribed to the infinite, universal, abstract being (« de rapporter à l’être individuel l’importance et la valeur que les anciennes métaphysiques attachaient à l’être infini, universel, abstrait »), in a state of constant evolution, striving towards an ideal of perfection. Finally, he concludes as follows: one may criticise Mr Taine, but one does not take on his task with impunity; and would he not be entitled to tell us, as he did his young listeners, that it is not a matter of singing ‘an ode’ but rather of discovering ‘a law’? (« on peut critiquer Mr Taine, [mais biffé] on ne reprend pas impunément sa tâche [après lui biffé], et ne serait-il pas en droit de nous dire, comme à ses jeunes auditeurs, qu’il ne s’agit pas de chanter “ une ode ” mais bien de découvrir “ une loi ” »).
Its provenance is particularly interesting. This manuscript on aesthetics was part of the library of the great pianist Alfred Cortot (1877–1962).
Bernard Gavoty recounts what Cortot told him he had felt during a rehearsal, around 1896: ‘I suddenly felt the music enter me, not through its notes, but through its spell, its power to radiate and convey the incommunicable […] From that moment on, I understood what music evoked and how the vocation of a performer could transcend the craft of a pianist. I knew, I saw, I believed, I was disillusioned.’ How can one not draw a parallel with this interplay of those inner, sudden, mysterious forces which constitute the supreme genius of the great artist. The artist may, if he so wishes (and he does so by nature), shake off the shackles of the prevailing mindset as much as he sees fit and take the reins of his own genius into his own hands (« jeu des forces intimes, soudaines, mystérieuses qui constituent le génie souverain du grand artiste. L’artiste peut, s’il en a la volonté (et il l’a par tempérament) secouer autant qu’il le juge bon le harnais de l’esprit régnant et prendre en main les rênes de son propre génie ») (pp. 19–20 of our manuscript), to quote just these lines. After years of painstaking study, Cortot thus had a revelation regarding his art as a performer, marking the beginning of his illustrious career; Sully-Prudhomme’s writings undoubtedly played a part in this.
From Alfred Cortot’s library, later that of his son Jean Cortot. Cortot auction: ‘L’Univers du peintre Jean Cortot’, Dijon, 27 March 2026, no. 165 of the catalogue.
Back very slightly insolated with few very slight scuffs.
An exceptional manuscript on artistic creation, one of Alfred Cortot’s aesthetic inspirations, elegantly transcribed by Marius Michel.
2 000 €