Should the President of France die in office, the head of the Académie Française is 24th in line to succeed. Something I discovered ten years ago.
Now like a slowly, questing vole I have noticed the Académie Goncourt has at least two other distinctions. Members cannot belong to the Académie Française and they award France’s most prestigious literary prize – the Prix Goncourt. I expect you have heard of it but, like me, you may be hazy about the origins of the prize. The brothers Goncourt wrote twenty-two volumes of journals in the second half of the 19th century; an invaluable insight into literary life and their prejudices. Maybe, but I have no first hand evidence. The prize they funded is more prestige than cash.
“It was first conceived in 1867 by the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, authors of Journals, and created in 1903 by a bequest of Edmond that established the Académie Goncourt, a literary society of 10 members (none of whom may also be a member of the Académie Française) whose chief duty is to select the winner. Along with a now-nominal monetary award, the prize confers recognition on the author of an outstanding work of imaginative prose each year; novels are preferred. The prize is awarded each November. Among the writers who have won the Prix Goncourt are Marcel Proust, André Malraux, Elsa Triolet, Simone de Beauvoir, Romain Gary, André Schwarz-Bart, Michel Tournier, and Marguerite Duras “. (Britannica.com)
I def do not want to wade through the Goncourt brothers musings but I have ordered an edited version.
“The diary of the two de Goncourt brothers who were novelists, critics and dilettanti of Parisian literary and fashionable circles during the second half of the 19th century. The brothers were opposite in temperament, yet identical in tastes and desires and wrote their “nightly confession” as the effusion of a single ego, exploring their suspicions, neuroses and occasional spite, revealing an honest, uninhibitedly perceptive document. They evoke the liveliness of the “belle epoque” of Parisian life, art, politics, society, women in their confessions as well as discussing well-known figures, including Flaubert, Gautier, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Rodin, Degas, Baudelaire and Sainte-Beuve.”
Here are some samples from the internet. They bring to mind Oscar Wilde.
”If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.
Genius is the talent of a person who is dead.
A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.
People don’t like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug.
The English are crooked as a nation and honest as individuals. The contrary is true of the French, who are honest as a nation and crooked as individuals.
Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilisation.” (Edmond de Goncourt)
And one, not I think on the internet, that I throw down as a challenge to those of you who listen to my brother’s sermons. Your chance to win a sort of Prix Goncourt. Entry restricted to confirmed members of the C of I in the diocese of Armagh who take Communion.
”The Provinces exceed anything that could be put into a novel. Never will a novelist invent the incident of the wife of a Major of Gendarmerie putting into verses the Vicar’s sermons.” (The Goncourt Journals)
Good topic. I suspect you will find the diaries a fount of fascinating Bon mots. The Goncourt is very French unsurprisingly. The winner gets a cheque for €10 which they usually frame. The sales of the winner each year far exceed any possible cash prize. The judges have lunch once a month at the restaurant Drouant in the Place Gaillon in Paris. Top nosh. Each judge has a place setting with each item of gold vermeil inscribed with their initials. Must save on the washing up.