SULLY PRUDHOMME, REMÉ-FRANÇOIS-ARMAND PRUDHOMME, known as. - French poet, b. in Paris on 16 May 1839, d. at Chatenay on 7 Sept. 1907.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century he was one of the most fashionable poets in France. From scientific studies, and through various employments, he turned to exclusively literary activity after the success of his first volume, Stances et poèmes (1865), typically Parnassian. From this restrained and delicate kind of poetry, full of feeling, whose most typical and famous composition is Le vase brisé, S. P. turned towards philosophical poetry, first with the translation of the first book of Lucretius (1866) and with the Épreuves and the Solitudes (1866 and 1872; the latter still Parnassian in flavour); then with various lyrics, Les destins, La France, Les usines tendresses, La justice, Le bonheur, all published between 1872 and 1888. For S. P., poetry must be intimate and philosophical, and the « external world » is interesting only insofar as it is a « sublime enigma ». In his final poems, didactic and rhetorical, he ingeniously described the barometer, the Pythagorean table, positivist doctrine, and Stoic morality. He also published a study on Pascal and collected in his Testament poétique (1901) several critical essays, including a discussion with the Symbolists on the necessity of rhythmic verse. Member of the French Academy in 1881. Nobel Prize, 1901.