Books: Goncourt Brothers

THE GONCOURT JOURNALS—Edmond & Jules de Goncourt; edited and translated by Lewis Galantiere—Doubleday, Doran ($3.50).

In the winter of 1849 two young brothers arrived in Paris to make their literary fortune. Polished, aristocratic, neurasthenic, comfortably off, Edmond (27) and Jules (19) were an extraordinarily close corporation. They not only lived together in nearly continuous amity until death dissolved their partnership, they collaborated in all their writing, thought alike on nearly every subject and kept a joint diary. Little of their 30-odd collaborations—plays, novels, history, criticism—has survived into the 20th Century, but their Journals may be counted on to keep their memories green. Much of that racy record is still withheld. From the material now available Lewis Galantiere last week offered U. S. readers a scintillating selection.

The Goncourts began their journal in 1851, on the day their first novel was scheduled to appear. Unfortunately it was also the day Louis Napoleon Bonaparte had chosen for the coup d’etat that made him Napoleon III, so the novel was lost in the political shuffle. In their fight for fame the brothers encountered even graver difficulties. Rabid anti-romantics, they wrote such painstakingly realistic novels that old-line critics whooped “sculptured slime . . . literature of putrescence.” To younger men, such as Emile Zola, the Goncourts were prophetic pioneers. Gradually they built up a literary circle— Gautier, Sainte-Beuve, Flaubert, Renan, Taine—who used to meet fortnightly to dine well, talk how they liked. On one of these occasions, Gautier rebuked a silent guest: “As for you, I hope that the next time you come, you will compromise yourself. We all compromise ourselves here, and it is not fair that you sit by dispassionately observing us.” The members’ talk was not always as enamelled as their published words. On another occasion Gautier pierced a hubbub of argument by remarking: “I am very strong. I can hit 357 on the Turk’s head at the Fair, and what is more, my metaphors make sense. That is what counts.” Careful Critic Sainte-Beuve: “Criticism consists in saying whatever comes into one’s head. That is all there is to it.” Dispassionate observers, in spite of friendship, was just what the Goncourts were. Of their great friend Flaubert they report: “He works ten hours a day but is a great waster of time, forgetting himself in things he picks up to read, and constantly running away from the book he is writing. He hardly ever warms to his work before five in the evening, although he sits down invariably at noon . . . a very honest nature . . . [but] still never perfectly sincere.”

The Goncourt brothers never married, prided themselves on sharing a Rubens-esque blonde mistress. (Editor Galantiere raises eyebrows at this, suggests that in this case, too, Edmond was a dispassionate observer.) But that they were men of the world, not mere bourgeois scriveners, their journal amply witnesses. They were as much at home in a princess’ salon as in an actress’ dressing-room, describe each with equal skill.

Nineteen years after their Paris partnership began, younger Brother Jules died. Edmond took up his pen to record in the Journals an excruciatingly accurate account of Jules’s last days, to close their last collaboration with these words: “I saw him disappear into the vault in which lie my father and my mother, and where there is still room for me. When I got home I went to bed. I covered my bed with pictures of him, and his image was with me until night fell.”