Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

thumb|right|To lend freshness to things known, to spread knowledge of things new; an excellent program for a critic. Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (December 23 1804 – October 13 1869) was a French literary critic, poet and novelist. Quotes Le désespoir lui-même, pour peu qu'il se prolonge, devient une sorte d'asile dans lequel on peut s'asseoir et reposer. Despair itself if it goes on long enough, can become a kind of sanctuary in which one settles down and feels at ease. "Vie de Joseph Delorme" (1829), cited from Poésies completes de Sainte-Beuve (Paris: Charpentier, 1840) p. 16; Mardy Grothe Oxymoronica (London: HarperCollins, 2004) p. 201. Gardons-nous de l'ironie en jugeant. De toutes les dispositions de l'esprit, l'ironie est la moins intelligente. Let us beware of irony when making judgements. Of all the dispositions of the mind, irony is the least intelligent. Notebook entry, February 24, 1848, cited from Les cahiers de Sainte-Beuve (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1876) p. 75; Christopher Prendergast The Classic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) p. 244. Puisqu'il faut avoir des ennemis, tâchons d'en avoir qui nous fassent honneur. Since it is necessary to have enemies, let us endeavour to have those who do us honour. Derniers portraits littéraires (1852; Paris: Didier, 1858) p. 534 ; translated by W. Fraser Rae, in Sainte-Beuve English Portraits (London: Dalby, Isbister, 1875) p. xci. Renouveler les choses connues, vulgariser les choses neuves: un bon programme pour un critique. To lend freshness to things known, to spread knowledge of things new; an excellent program for a critic. Causeries du lundi, vol. 11 (1856; Paris: Garnier, 1868) p. 512; Philo M. Buck, Jr. Literary Criticism (New York: Harper, 1930) p. 398 Le plus souvent nous ne jugeons pas les autres, mais nous jugeons nos propres facultés dans les autres. Most often we are judging not others, but rather our own faculties in others. Œuvres choisies (Paris: A. Hatier, 1934) p. 774; Andrew George Lehmann Sainte-Beuve (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962) p. 301. Le silence seul est le souverain mépris. Silence is the sovereign contempt. Pensées et maximes (Paris: B. Grasset, 1954) p. 271; Nicholas Rescher Communicative Pragmatism and Other Philosophical Essays on Language (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998) p. 146. A philosophical thought has probably not attained all its sharpness and all its illumination until it is expressed in French Society for Pure English, Tract 5 The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems Author: Society for Pure English Release Date: June 5, 2004 On “the phenomenon of grace”. “For the soul arrives therebye at a certain fixed and invincible state, a state which is genuinely heroic, and from out of which the greatest deeds it ever performs are executed”. As quoted by william james in Varieties of Religious Experience Lecture 11, paragraph 3. Il m'a souvent passe par l'esprit, dit Gourville, que les hommes ont leurs proprietes a peu pres commes les herbes, et que leur bonheur consiste d'avoir ete destines ou de s'etre destines eux-memes aux choses pour lesquelles ils etaient nes. It has often passed through my mind, says Gourville, that men have their properties almost as herbs, and that their happiness consists in having been destined or [being] destined for the things for which they were born. "Memoires de Gourville", Causeries du lundi, v. 299 (Quoted in The Notebooks of Matthew Arnold, Google translation) ...je puis goûter une œuvre, mais il m'est difficile de la juger indépendamment de la connaissance de l'homme même, et je dirais volontiers: tel arbre, tel fruit. ...I can savor a work, but it is difficult for me to judge it independently from the author, and I would gladly say, as is the tree, so is the fruit. Misattributed L'injustice…est une mère qui n'est jamais sterile, et qui produit des enfants dignes d'elle. Injustice…is a mother who is never barren, and bears children worthy of her. Causeries du lundi (Paris: Garnier, 1857) vol. 1, p. 148; E. J. Trechmann (trans.) Causeries du Lundi (London: George Routledge, 1909) vol. 1, p. 117. Sainte-Beuve was here merely reporting words spoken by Adolphe Thiers, but many French quotation websites (e.g. Dico-Citations) attribute them to Sainte-Beuve himself. Quotes about Sainte-Beuve He had imperfections, prejudices, limitations, but when we have recognised them all, he remains the greatest literary critic that the world has seen. Edmund Gosse "The Prince of Critics", in More Books on the Table (London: William Heinemann, 1923) p. 13. The nearest approach to the infallible in literary judgment is represented in the colossal work of the teacher of all these three [Edmund Gosse, Edward Dowden and George Saintsbury], the greatest critic that ever lived – not an Englishman, but a Frenchman, the wonderful Sainte-Beuve. Lafcadio Hearn Life and Literature (1917; Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger, 2005) p. 82 The greatest of all French critics, and possibly the greatest European critic since Aristotle. J. G. Clark, in The Penguin Companion to Literature (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) vol. 2, p. 283. External links Sainte-Beuve at French Wikisource Category:Academics from France Category:Poets from France Category:Literary critics Category:Journalists from France Category:1804 births Category:1869 deaths Category:Novelists from France