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Biography of Remy de GourmontName: Remy de GourmontBirth Date: April 4, 1858 Death Date: September 27, 1915 Place of Birth: Normandy, France Nationality: French Gender: Male Occupations: author, critic, essayist Remy de Gourmont The French author Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915) was the most brilliant French critic and essayist of the period from 1900 to the outbreak of World War I.Remy de Gourmont was born on April 4, 1858, at the Château de La Motte in Normandy, the son of an old Norman family of minor nobility. He went to school at Coutances and studied law at the University of Caen before moving to Paris to take a post at the National Library at the age of 25. Once in Paris he came under the influence of the Decadent writers the Comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and J. K. Huysmans, and his early work is marked by a similar decadentism, extreme preciosity of style, and interest in the occult. In his mid-20s Gourmont fell victim to lupus, a skin disease which disfigured his face so badly that for some years he scarcely dared go out; …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…During his lifetime he published over 60 books of various kinds.As a critic, Gourmont was distinguished by an inquiring mind and extremely wide tastes, claiming that "a work of art exists only through the emotion it gives us." The result is impressionistic criticism with keen insight. His interest in language and style also produced ideas of lasting influence, in particular on the poets Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Gourmont was saddened and impoverished by the outbreak of war in 1914, and his remaining time was unhappy; he died of a stroke on Sept. 27, 1915. Further Reading The best of the English translations of Gourmont's works is Richard Aldington, Remy de Gourmont: Selections from All His Works (1928). Aldington also wrote Remy de Gourmont: A Modern Man of Letters (1928). Other studies include Paul Emile Jacob, Remy de Gourmont (1931), and Glenn S. Burne, Remy de Gourmont: His Ideas and Influence in England and America (1963). |