BOURGET, PAUL. — French poet, novelist, and critic from Amiens, born 2 September 1852, died in Paris on 25 December 1935. Member of the Académie Française from 1894. A student of the most complex psychological and sociological problems of his time, which he approached with an upright and steadfast Catholic conscience, B. appeared as the most generous and vigorous champion opposing both Zola’s naturalism and Taine’s determinism. A brilliant continuator of Stendhal’s analytical method in the field of narrative literature, he disseminated a taste for a meticulous and acute investigation of the “self” and of the relationships governing life among human beings, an investigation reproached in some passages for an abstract aridity and an excessive tension of feeling. B. nevertheless remains a master of the modern novel, even though his outstanding qualities as a critic and a convinced, effective moralist are not matched by equally marked gifts of imagination and creative power. His chief characteristic and principal merit consist in having sought to organize the demands of the contemporary soul around the cornerstones of Christian morality, showing with delicate, profound, and persuasive artistry the inseparability of the interests and ends of both.
His characters belong preferably to the classes of the prosperous bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, in which B. found—or believed he found—the spiritual unease more widespread and represented in a more multifaceted manner, whose causes were the object of his passionate investigations.
He began in the field of lyric poetry, with the collections of verse published in his early youth, Au bord de la mer (1872), La vie inquiète (1875), Edel (1878), Les aveux (1882), in which he stands out more for exquisite stylistic gifts than for the originality of his individual inspiration, reflecting the examples of the literary generation dominated by Lamartine, Stendhal, and Baudelaire. Subsequently, turning decisively toward what were to remain his principal intellectual interests throughout his life, he published the highly valuable Essais de psychologie contemporaine (1883, definitive ed. 1901), followed by Pages de critique et de doctrine (1912) and Nouvelles pages de critique et de doctrine (1922). Meanwhile, he was disseminating the spiritualist conclusions to which he had arrived in a copious and successful series of novels, among which the best known are Le disciple (1889), whose lucid pages vigorously denounce the danger presented by philosophical positivism when it intervenes in the moral and logical formation of the young; Un divorce (1904), which addresses and forcefully upholds the theme of the indissolubility of marriage; Le démon de midi (1914) and Le sens de la mort (1915), in which the necessity of a profound restoration of moral and religious consciousness acquires new persuasive force from the disciplined artistry of an art increasingly vigilant and aware of its elevated ends.
In L'étape (1903), B., a supporter of monarchical tradition, pointed out the dangers of democracy; in the drama La barricade (1910), he showed the social theories of Georges Sorel in action.
A friend of Italy, to which he offered numerous testimonies of his admiration and spiritual attachment, B. is also the author of a book of observations and recollections, Sensations d'Italie (1891), which should be counted among his finest writings for its sincerity of inspiration and the felicity of its investigations. Particularly noteworthy are the moral and philosophical reflections inspired in him by a stay, the previous year, in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto. The volume entitled Outre-mer, notes sur l'Amérique (1895) should also be mentioned.
The collection of his Oeuvres complètes was published in Paris (1910 and subsequent supplements).