En attendant l’hécatombe : Le rapport Catulle Mendès sur l’état de la poésie en 1900

In 1900 Catulle Mendes, poet and influential critic, wrote an official report for the government in which he outlined the development of French poetry in the last third of the 19th century. This document clearly shows why much of the poetry of the period, so self-confident and convinced of its own success, was soon doomed to near-oblivion. The fact that Mendes’critical method is highly inconsistent suggests that his intention was primarily to deploy power positions in the given part of the literary field, mostly from the viewpoint of one of the competing parties, the Parnassists (a movement he belonged to), albeit adjusted by the current aesthetics of Decadence. Thus, Mendes abandons the concept of universality, which had been the basis of general strategies of French culture since the 16th century, and accentuates the “purely French” nature of poetic genius in its struggle against foreign influences as well as the vulgar “Gallic spirit”, which suppresses it – so much so that this spirit is virtually silent in the period between La Chanson de Roland and Victor Hugo. Nationalism and xenophobia also mark Mendes ’ view of contemporary poetry, especially of the evolution of poetic forms in the rival Symbolist movement. This is all the more absurd given the fact that the author of the report, written during the Dreyfus affair, comes from a family of Portuguese-Jewish immigrants; in this light his concept might be explained as merely “pataphysical”, though, more probably, Mendes ’ true purpose was to express his patriotic loyalty at a critical moment on France ’ s path from Sedan to Verdun. Mendes is blind to what the 20th century would come to value most in poetry: the poetry he defends was to die of its own alleged self-sufficient grandeur, full of Decadent pride and over-refinement, and disdainful of simple, “down-to-earth” human cares. Thus, the only excuse for the author is, paradoxically, his own insincerity.