Coppée, François-Édouard-Joachim

COPPÉE, FRANÇOIS-EDOUARD-JOACHIM. - French poet, born in Paris on Jan. 12, 1842, died there on Jan. 23, 1908.

1908. Member of the Académie française from Dec. 18, 1884. Initially a collaborator of the Parnasse, a literary journal with a classicizing orientation, C., endowed with exquisite sensitivity and facility in versification—which was always sustained by a watchful sense of artistic dignity—turned decisively toward poetry of an intimate subject matter. He thus became the best-known and most acclaimed exponent of a genre that had already attracted Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and De Maistre, not without reviving, in certain lyrical pieces, inspirations of a warmer tone that recall Baudelaire, although C.'s moral universe managed to remain otherwise healthy and elevated.

In 1868 he published the verse collection Intimités, and in 1872 Les humbles, a collection of sketches and subjective lyrical outpourings. This was followed by Arrière-saison (1887), perhaps his best collection of verse, certainly the most widely circulated and imitated in Italy (L. Stecchetti) and France (F. Jammes).

C.'s theatrical productions are numerous, and some are noteworthy: Le Passant (1869), a one-act comedy in verse set in Renaissance Florence, later adapted by G. Targioni-Tozzetti and G. Menasci into a melodrama (Zanetto, music by P. Mascagni); Le Luthier de Crémone (1876); Severo Torelli (1883), a 5-act drama in verse set in Pisa in 1494 (translated by E. Panzacchi); Le Pater (1890), a drama whose performance was banned by ministerial measures in 1889; Pour la couronne (1895), another 5-act drama set in the Balkans, etc.

The long inner turmoil of C.'s spirit, directed toward the search for God through the changing appearances of the contingent world and the dissatisfaction left by earthly pleasure, found a choice expression in the moving pages of La bonne souffrance (1898), the justly famous testimony of his return to Catholic practice. With this prose work, which is also his best artistically, C.—who had already pointed to Esmenard, Lebrun, and Chenodollé as his preferred authors—entered the ranks of the writers of the great spiritualist current associated with Brunetière, Huysmans, and Jørgensen.

Works: Very useful for C.'s biography are the Lettres à sa mère et à sa soeur (1869-73) published by J. Monval in the Revue des deux mondes, 8 (July 15, 1911), pp. 376-404, and those to the same (1862-1908), edited by him and published by J. Lemerre (Paris 1914). The complete edition of the Works, in 4 octavo volumes, with illustrations by De Styrbech and Robaudi, was published in Paris n. d. by the same publisher.