Catulle Mendès
Catulle Mendès (1841-1909) was a French writer and poet known for his significant contributions to literature during the late 19th century. Born in Bordeaux to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, he moved to Paris in 1859, where he quickly gained recognition by founding the journal *Revue fantaisiste*. This publication played a key role in promoting various poets of the time but was short-lived. Mendès created notable controversy with his first play, *Le Roman d'une nuit*, which led to his arrest for public indecency. Following a brief incarceration, he became a cofounder of the Parnassians, a group advocating for formalism and artistic detachment in poetry as a reaction against Romanticism.
Mendès displayed remarkable metrical skill in his poetry collection *Philoméla* (1863), which incorporated Hellenic themes. His personal life included two marriages, one to Judith Gautier, and he fathered five children with composer Augusta Holmès. Although he produced a prolific body of work across various genres, including novels and short stories, Mendès's legacy remains overshadowed by contemporaries. He died tragically in a railway tunnel in 1909, leading to a decline in his recognition in subsequent years.
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Catulle Mendès
Poet
- Born: May 20, 1841
- Birthplace: Bordeaux, France
- Died: February 8, 1909
- Place of death: Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
Biography
Catulle Abraham Mendès was born on May 20, 1841, in Bordeaux, France. Little is known about his early years. His father, a banker, was Jewish, and his mother was French and Catholic. In 1850, his family moved to Toulouse and in 1859 to Paris. In 1860, at age nineteen, Mendès began living independently in Paris, where he founded the journal Revue fantaisiste, which led to his prompt notoriety. The journal was supported by Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire, and it published many poets who would become famous. The journal itself, however, was short-lived.
In the May 15, 1860, issue, Mendès published his first play, the comic melodrama Le Roman d’une nuit (the romance of a night). The scandalous nature of the play evoked moral outrage, and its author was arrested and tried. Despite the presence of celebrated writers at the trial, including Gustave Flaubert and Baudelaire, Mendès was found guilty of committing an outrage to the public morals and decency. He was sentenced to one month in jail at Sainte-Pélagie and fined five hundred francs. Mendès continued to write while in prison, but the magazine folded.
Once he was released, Mendès became one of the cofounders of the Parnassians, a group of French poets who set a new standard of formal precision in lyric poetry from the 1860’s to the 1890’s, partly in reaction to what they believed was the uncontrolled emotional excess of Romanticism. They followed Gautier’s principle of art for art’s sake, which implies that poetry should not be a means to an end but an end in itself. They also extolled the virtues of impersonality, Hellenic themes, and traditional verse forms. The extraordinary metrical skill Mendès displays in his first volume of poems, Philoméla, published in 1863, as well as his artful use of Hellenic themes, epitomizes that aesthetic.
Mendès’s personal life has not been well documented, except that he married twice, and he was considered quite handsome. His first wife, Gautier’s daughter Judith, was an aspiring poet whose later works were published. Their marriage lasted from 1866 to 1878. Mendès’s second wife, Jane, was also a poet, but little has been written about that union. In addition, Mendès had five children with Augusta Holmès, a legendary beauty and a talented musician. Their three daughters inherited their mother’s golden hair, and they were painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1888.
Mendès wrote prolifically up to the end of his life, including critical and dramatic writings, novels and short stories. The themes of some of his works, particularly his collection of short fiction Lesbia (1887) and his lesbian- themed Méphistophéla (1890), place his works within the Decadent movement, characterized by refined aestheticism, artifice, and a quest for new sensations.
On February 8, 1909, early in the morning, Mendès was found dead in the railway tunnel of Saint Germain. He had left Paris by the midnight train the prior evening, and it is believed that he opened the door of his compartment while still in the tunnel, thinking he had arrived at the station. Although he was a prominent writer during the nineteenth century, Catulle Mendès is not well known today.