French Decadent Tales (Oxford World's Classics) (7 page)

1872 Introduction of compulsory military service and creation of a territorial army.
Nietzsche,
The Birth of Tragedy
Zola,
La Curée
Monet,
Impression: le lever du soleil

1873 Death of former Emperor Napoleon III at Chislehurst, in Kent. Resignation of Thiers, and accession of Maréchal MacMahon as President of France. Institution of the
septennat
, limiting the mandate of the Presidency to seven years. James Clark Maxwell, Theory of electromagnetism. Joseph Glidden invents barbed wire.
Corbière,
Les Amours jaunes
Rimbaud,
Une Saison en enfer
Verlaine,
Art poétique
Pater,
The Renaissance
Manet,
Gare Saint-Lazare

1874 Laws regulating public morality, including the re-establishment of
censorship. French commerce expands in Indochina, Tonkin becomes a French protectorate. First Impressionist Exhibition opens in the photographer Nadar’s studio.
Barbey d’Aurevilly,
Les Diaboliques
Ribot,
La Philosophie de Schopenhauer
Verlaine,
Romances sans paroles

1875 The Constitution voted, which definitively establishes France as a republic. First explorations in Equatorial Africa, led by Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, later Commissioner-General for the French Congo. Barbey’s
Les Diaboliques
formally withdrawn from public sale, with the agreement of the writer. Zola criticizes Barbey for this, and earns the latter’s undying hostility.
Zola,
The Sin of Father Mouret
Moreau,
Fleur mystique

1876 Members of the two legislative bodies, elected in accordance with the 1875 Constitution (Chambres des députés and Sénat), take their seats. Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone. Villiers wins second prize in the Michaëlis competition for drama.
Huysmans,
Marthe
Mallarmé,
L’Après-midi d’un faune
Richepin,
La Chanson des gueux
;
Les Morts bizarres
Wagner,
Siegfried
Gustave Moreau, exhibits in the Salon,
L’Apparition
and
Salomé dansant devant Hérode
Swinburne,
Poems and Ballads, second series
Degas,
L’absinthe
Rops,
Le buveur d’absinthe

1877 Chamber of Deputies dissolved. Death of Thiers. Republican victory in legislative elections. Edward Muybridge creates the first moving pictures. Edison invents the cylinder phonograph. Ludwig Boltzmann: statistical definition of entropy. So-called ‘Baptism’ of the Naturalist school, around a restaurant table: Flaubert, Edmond de Goncourt, and Zola, with their young disciples Alexis, Céard, Hennique, Huysmans, and Mirbeau.
Flaubert,
Trois Contes
Zola,
L’Assommoir
Huysmans, ‘Émile Zola et
L’Assommoir
’

1878 Universal Exhibition in the Trocadéro; Congress of Berlin (break-up of Turkey, Austria to occupy Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus ceded to the English). Charcot starts clinical experiments with hypnosis at the Salpêtrière.
Duret,
Les Peintres impressionistes
Zola,
Une page d’amour

1879 MacMahon resigns as President; succeeded by Jules Grévy. Gambetta elected President of the Chambre des députés.
La Marseillaise
becomes the national anthem again. Reprint of Barbey’s
Un prêtre marié
forbidden by the archiepiscopate of Paris.
Maupassant publishes an article, ‘Gustave Flaubert’, in
La République des lettres
.
Huysmans,
Les Soeurs Vatard
Redon,
Dans le rêve
, lithographs
Rops illustrates Barbey’s
Les Diaboliques

1880 Anticlerical decrees order dispersion of the Society of Jesus and other congregations not recognized by the state. Final amnesty granted to participants in the Commune. Official institution of Bastille Day (14 July) as the
fête nationale
, and adoption of the
tricolore
. Maupassant is threatened with a court action for offence to public morals, for his poem
Une fille
; in the end no action is taken. Mallarmé institutes his famous salon,
les Mardis
, in the rue de Rome.
Barbey d’Aurevilly,
Goethe et Diderot
Maupassant,
Boule de suif
, gathered in the volume
Les Soirées de Médan
Huysmans,
Croquis parisiens
Mendès,
Les Mères ennemis
Rachilde,
Monsieur de la nouveauté
Villiers,
Le Nouveau-Monde

1881 Jules Ferry presides over the institution of free, secular, and compulsory primary education for all. Law ensuring freedom of the press. Large parts of Tunisia occupied, and France imposes a protectorate upon Tunis. Pasteur discovers anthrax vaccine.
Maupassant,
La Maison Tellier
Huysmans,
En ménage
Verlaine,
Sagesse
Flaubert,
Bouvard et Pécuchet
(published posthumously)
Cézanne,
Autoportrait

1882 Fall of Gambetta. The
Loi Jules Ferry
for primary education becomes law. The new Hôtel de Ville inaugurated, replacing the one destroyed by the Commune in 1871. Charcot begins studying cases of fetishism. Opening of the Grévin Wax Museum.
Barbey d’Aurevilly,
Une histoire sans nom
Maupassant,
Mademoiselle Fifi
Mendès,
Monstres parisiens
Wagner,
Parsifal
Redon,
Pour Edgar Poe
Renoir,
Baigneuse

1883 Death of the Comte de Chambord, last of the succession claiming divine right to the monarchy in France. Colonial wars in Indochina. Charcot starts his study of Satanism, and gathers documents for his Bibliothèque diabolique at the Salpêtrière.
Villiers,
Contes cruels
Paul Bourget,
Essais de psychologie contemporaine
Huysmans,
L’Art Moderne
(praise for Moreau and Redon, and for the Impressionists)
Maupassant,
Une vie
;
Contes de la Bécasse
Lorrain,
La Forêt bleue
Mendès,
Les Folies amoureuses
Ribot,
Les Maladies de la volonté
Rollinat,
Les Névroses

1884 Colonial expansion, annexation of Cambodia (Kampuchea) to Cochin-China. Legalization of divorce; trade unions legalized. Lewis Waterman invents the first practical fountain-pen; James Ritty invents the mechanical cash-register.
Huysmans,
A Rebours
(the ‘Bible of Decadence’)
Barbey d’Aurevilly,
Ce qui ne meurt pas
Maupassant,
Miss Harriet
;
Les Soeurs Rondoli
;
Yvette
(short stories)
Péladan,
Le Vice suprême
Rachilde,
Monsieur Vénus
Verlaine,
Les Poètes maudits
(studies of Corbière, Rimbaud, Mallarmé)

1885 Fall of Jules Ferry’s government. Jules Grévy re-elected President of the Republic. Death of Victor Hugo. Harim Maxim invents the machine-gun. Karl Benz invents the first practical automobile to be powered by an internal-combustion engine. Freud studies under Charcot at the Salpêtrière; foundation of the Society of Physiological Psychology under the leadership of Charcot.
Laforgue,
Les Complaintes
Lorrain,
Modernités
and
Viviane
Mallarmé, ‘Prose pour Des Esseintes’
Maupassant,
Bel-Ami
Zola,
Germinal
Pater,
Marius the Epicurean

1886 General Boulanger becomes Minister of War. Gottlieb Daimler builds the world’s first four-wheeled motor vehicle. Anatole Baju
founds
Le Décadent
, a journal that gathers writers who will be associated with the term.
Bloy,
Le Désespéré
Edouard Drumont,
La France juive
(anti-Semitic tract)
Gourmont,
Merlette
Maupassant,
Toine
;
La Petite Roque
Mirbeau,
Le Calvaire
Rimbaud,
Illuminations
(edited by Verlaine)
Villiers,
L’Eve future
;
L’Amour suprême
Zola,
L’Oeuvre

1887 Resignation of General Boulanger; honours scandal forces resignation of President Grévy. Sadi Carnot elected President. Ferdinand de Saussure lecturing on
la linguistique générale
at the Collège de France. Heinrich Hertz invents radar; Emile Berliner invents the gramophone. Construction starts on the Eiffel Tower. Alfred Binet, in ‘Le Fétichisme dans l’amour’, first coins the term ‘fetishism’.

Death of Laforgue.
Laforgue,
Moralités légendaires
Mallarmé,
Poésies
Maupassant,
Le Horla
Mendès,
La Première Maîtresse
Zola,
La Terre

1888 Wilhelm II becomes Emperor of Germany. Foundation of the Institut Pasteur; Chair of Experimental Psychology established at the Collège de France. John Boyd Dunlop patents the first commercial successful pneumatic tyre. Gauguin and Van Gogh in Arles.
Lorrain,
Dans l’oratoire
Maupassant,
Pierre et Jean
;
Sur l’eau
Mirbeau,
L’Abbé Jules
Rachilde,
Madame Adonis
Villiers,
Histoires insolites
;
Nouveaux contes cruels
Wilde,
The Happy Prince and Other Tales

1889 Inauguration of the Eiffel Tower and International Exhibition in the Centenary Year of the Revolution. The Java pavilion and its dancers cause a sensation (Paul Gauguin executes sketches of them). Failed
coup d’état
by General Boulanger. Sir James Dewar and Sir Frederick Abel co-invent cordite. Opening of Le Moulin Rouge. Anatole Baju publishes last number of
Le Décadent
. The
Mercure de France
journal and publishing house founded by Gourmont, Rachilde, and Vallette. Death of Barbey d’Aurevilly and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam.
Bergson,
Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience
Bourget,
Le Disciple
Huysmans,
Certains
Janet,
L’Automatisme psychologique
Maupassant,
La Main gauche
;
Fort comme la mort

1890 First May-day celebrations, marked by popular unrest. Fall of Bismarck. J. G. Frazer publishes first volumes of
The Golden Bough
.
Gourmont,
Sixtine, roman de la vie cérébrale
Laforgue,
Derniers vers
(posthumous)
Maupassant,
La Vie errante
;
L’Inutile Beauté
;
Notre coeur
Mendès,
Méphistophéla
Mirbeau,
Sébastien Roch
Villiers,
Axël
(posthumous)
Zola,
La Bête humaine

1891 Boulanger commits suicide in Belgium. Popular and social unrest marked by strike action. Foundation of the Rosicrucian Society, with Péladan among its leaders. First petrol-powered automobiles (Panhard and Levassor). In
The Man of Genius
, Cesare Lombroso cites mental abnormality and disease as a cause of artistic genius. Gauguin’s first period in Tahiti. Death of Rimbaud.
Jules Huret,
Enquête sur l’évolution littéraire
Huysmans,
Là-bas
(his novel about black-magic circles)
Lorrain,
Sonyeuse
;
Soirs de province, soirs de Paris
Maeterlinck,
Pelléas et Mélisande
Schwob,
Coeur double
Wilde,
Intentions
;
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime
;
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Zola,
L’Argent

1892 Factory Acts brought in banning work for children under thirteen and limiting the working day for adults. Anarchist bomb scares. Start of the long-running politico-financial scandal involving the Panama Canal Company founded by Ferdinand de Lesseps; its bankruptcy incurs massive financial losses. In Germany Max Nordau publishes his influential
Entartung
(
Degeneration
), a virulent attack on moral and aesthetic decline, published in France in 1894 as
Dégénerescence
. Wilde’s play
Salome
is banned by the censors in England.
Bloy,
Le Salut par les Juifs
Gourmont,
Lilith
,
Litanies de la Rose
, and
Le Latin mystique
(with a preface by Huysmans)
Richepin,
Cauchemars
Rodenbach,
Bruges-la-Morte
Schwob,
Le Roi au masque d’or
Zola,
Le Débâcle
Conan Doyle,
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

1893 Anarchist bomb attack on the Chambre des Députés. Trials concerning the Panama Canal scandal. Lombroso’s
The Degenerate Female
claims that prostitution is a biologically inherited tendency. Sarah Bernhardt plays the title role in Wilde’s
Salome
, translated into French by Lord Alfred Douglas. Verlaine reads in Oxford and London. Death of Maupassant.
Freud and Breuer,
Studies in Hysteria
Arthur Symons,
The Decadent Movement in Literature
Gourmont,
Le Fantôme
;
L’Idéalisme
Lorrain,
Buveurs d’âmes
Mallarmé,
Vers et Prose
Rachilde,
L’Animale
Schwob,
Mimes
Yeats,
The Celtic Twilight
Zola,
Le Docteur Pascal
(final volume in the Rougon-Macquart cycle)

1894 Anarchist bombings; French President Sadi Carnot assassinated in Lyon by Italian anarchist Cesario; Casimir Périer elected President. Start of the Dreyfus Affair: Captain Dreyfus is arrested and charged with treason by anti-Semitic, Catholic-dominated military court; found guilty, he is sentenced to solitary confinement for life on Devil’s Island. Émile Durkheim publishes
Les Règles de la méthode sociologique
. Havelock Ellis,
Man and Woman
. Founding of
The Yellow Book
by Henry Harland and Aubrey Beardsley in England. Marconi’s experiments with wireless. Death of Robert Louis Stevenson.
Bloy,
Histoires désobligeantes
Geffroy,
Le Coeur et l’esprit
Gourmont,
Histoires magiques
Louÿs,
Les Chansons de Bilitis
Rodenbach,
Musée des béguines, natures mortes et nouvelles
Schwob,
Le Livre de Monelle
Conan Doyle,
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Kipling,
The Jungle Book