Jules Renard (1864–1910)
Author of Carrot Top [novel]
About the Author
Image credit: Jules Renard en 1893
Works by Jules Renard
Carrot Top [novel] and the one-act comedy of the same name, and a lecture, and "the Bigot" [2-act comedy] (1979) 11 copies
Diario íntimo 4 copies
Romanzi e storie naturali 3 copies
Bildjägaren och andra prosadikter : anteckningar ur Dagboken. Översättning, urval och presentation av Bengt Erasmie. (1999) 3 copies
Monsieur Vernet 2 copies
Shakespeare 2 copies
Works 1 copy
Hunting with the Fox 1 copy
La Maitresse 1 copy
Journal / Le pain de ménage 1 copy
Jules Renard. L'Écornifleur, roman. Nouvelle édition. Dessins de Ch. Huard, gravure sur bois de G. Lemoine (1904) 1 copy
Tout l'esprit de Jules Renard : 4200 citations, pensées, paradoxes, poèmes, saynettes, 1062 thèmes, 2 index. (1987) 1 copy
Izlase 1 copy
Bucoliques 1 copy
Rose's Cousin 1 copy
The bigot 1 copy
Le coureur de filles 1 copy
Théâtre : Le Plaisir de rompre. Le Pain de ménage. Poil de Carotte. Monsieur Vernet. La Bigote (1956) 1 copy
Gotovan 1 copy
Les Cloportes, roman 1 copy
Scrieri alese 1 copy
פראנסוא ראש-גזר 1 copy
Associated Works
Food Tales: A Literary Menu of Mouthwatering Masterpieces (1992) — Contributor — 41 copies, 1 review
From Flaubert to the Present: French Stories — Contributor — 3 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Jules Renard
- Other names
- Renard, Pierre-Jules
- Birthdate
- 1864-02-22
- Date of death
- 1910-05-22
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Pensionnaire à Nevers
Lycée Charlemagne, Paris où il est reçu bachelier es lettres en 1883
Prépare le concours à l'Ecole normale supérieure mais y renonce rapidement - Occupations
- auteur
Jules Renard participe à la fondation du Mercure de France en 1889: il est à la fois rédacteur en chef et administrateur
Maire de Chitry en 1904 et jusqu'à sa mort en 1910 - Organizations
- Légion d'Honneur en 1900
- Awards and honors
- Académie Goncourt 31 octobre 1907
Société des gens de lettres en 1894
Place Jules Renard, dans le XVIIe à Paris - Relationships
- Danièle Davyle, pensionnaire de la Comédie-Française qui lui inspire le personnage de Blanche dans Le Plaisir de Rompre
Alphonse ALLAIS
Edmond Rostand
Georges Courteline
Alphonse Daudet
Les Goncourt - Short biography
- Jules Renard, de son véritable nom Pierre-Jules Renard, est né le 22 février 1864, à Châlons-du-Maine (Mayenne). Il a une sœur, Amélie et un frère, Maurice de deux ans son aîné. Lorsqu’il a deux ans, la famille retourne dans le pays de son père, à Chitry-les-Mines, dans la Nièvre. Son père, entrepreneur de travaux publics, est républicain, franc-maçon et anticlérical. Il devient maire de Chitry. Sa mère est une catholique dévote qui ne supporte plus ni son mari, ni le jeune Jules, un enfant non désiré. Le roman Poil de Carotte est très largement autobiographique et décrit cette enfance difficile, sans amour.
Jules est pensionnaire à Nevers. Il est reçu bachelier ès lettres en 1883 après des études au lycée Charlemagne à Paris. Il prépare le concours de l’École normale supérieure, mais renonce rapidement. Il écrit, lit énormément, fréquente les cafés littéraires et les théâtres. Il rencontre Danièle Davyle pensionnaire de la Comédie-Française qui lui inspirera le personnage de Blanche dans Le Plaisir de rompre. Il fréquente alors assidument le théâtre. Il commence à écrire pour quelques revues. Le 28 avril 1888, il épouse Marie Morneau, âgée de 17 ans qui apporte une belle dot. Le couple s’installe 44 rue du Rocher à Paris.
Jules Renard participe à la fondation du Mercure de France en 1889 : il est à la fois critique théâtral, rédacteur en chef et administrateur. Il publie en 1890, Sourires pincés, recueil de ses textes parus dans le Mercure de France. Jules Renard fréquente Alphonse Allais, Edmond Rostand, Courteline, Huysmans, Marcel Schwob, Alphonse Daudet, les Goncourt, Tristan Bernard, Lucien Guitry et Sarah Bernhardt. Le succès arrive avec L’Écornifleur, publié en 1892, qui raconte l’histoire d’un littérateur parasite. Jules Renard commence à publier des textes dans le Figaro, l’Écho de Paris, Gil Blas. En 1893, il publie Coquecigrues et La lanterne sourde et achève l’écriture de sa première pièce, La Demande, qui sera montée en 1895. En 1894, il entre à la Société des gens de lettres et publie Poil de Carotte, qui obtient immédiatement un grand succès.
À partir de 1895, Jules Renard passe plusieurs mois par an à Chaumot, proche de Chitry-les-Mines. Entre le 16 novembre 1895 au 4 janvier 1896, Jules Renard fait paraître les scènes de La Maîtresse, illustrées par Valloton dans la revue Le Rire. 1896 est marquée par la parution des Histoires naturelles et de La Demande.
Sa pièce Le Plaisir de rompre est créée aux Bouffes-Parisiens en 1997. La même année son père, malade depuis quelque temps et sachant son mal incurable, se suicide d’un coup de fusil de chasse en plein cœur.
Jules Renard commence la rédaction de son Journal en 1897, qui sera publié de façon posthume, de 1925 à 1927.
En 1898, Jules Renard prend position en faveur du Capitaine Dreyfus. La même année, Jules Renard connaît un nouveau succès au théâtre avec Le Pain de ménage, pièce dans laquelle joue Lucien Guitry. L’année suivante, Jules Renard rédige l’adaptation théâtrale de Poil de Carotte, qui connaît un véritable triomphe au Théâtre-Antoine.
En 1900, Jules Renard reçoit la Légion d’honneur et devient conseiller municipal de Chaumot. Entre 1901 et 1903, il rédige de nombreux articles politiques, anticléricaux et républicains, pour le journal L’Écho de Clamecy. Succédant à son père, il devient maire de Chitry en 1904 ; il restera maire jusqu’à sa mort en 1910. Élu sur une liste républicaine, il s’engage dans la lutte contre l’ignorance.
En 1901, la pièce Le Plaisir de rompre est représentée à la Comédie-Française. Jules Renard travaille à l’adaptation de l’Écornifleur au théâtre : Monsieur Vernet. La pièce sera représentée sur la scène du Théâtre Antoine le 6 mai 1903.
Jules Renard est élu membre de l’académie Goncourt le 31 octobre 1907, au fauteuil de Huysmans grâce à Octave Mirbeau, qui a dû menacer de démissionner pour assurer son succès.
Sa mère, ayant perdu la raison, décède en 1909 en tombant dans le puits de la maison familiale. La même année, la pièce La Bigote est créée à l’Odéon.
Le 22 mai 1910, Jules Renard meurt à Paris. Il est enterré civilement à Chitry-les-Mines dans le tombeau en forme de livre ouvert qu’il a fait construire après la mort de son frère en 1900. - Cause of death
- Maladie (Artériosclérose)
- Nationality
- France
- Birthplace
- Châlons-du-Maine, Mayenne, France
- Places of residence
- Chitry-les-Mines, Nièvre, France
Paris, France
Bourges, France
44 rue du Rocher à Paris (1888) après son mariage
Hôtel des étrangers, 24, rue Tronchet début 1888 , avant son mariage - Place of death
- Paris, France
- Burial location
- Chitry-les-Mines ,funérailles civiles dans un tombeau en forme de livre ouvert
- Map Location
- France
Members
Reviews
Although the cover might suggest some saccharine childhood tales, this is actually a pretty dark account of youngest child, "Carrots", brought up in middle class respectability by a mother who hates him and a father who doesn't really notice. His two siblings offer little comfort, and Carrots' life revolves around strategies for deflecting his mother's sadistic cruelty....which often fail (but not always.)
Such a narrative could create a whey-faced victim, but Carrots isn't that.... show more Brutalized, taking out his torments on animals he encounters (I'm not sure I LIKED Carrots, though I pitied him), the succession of short episodes leaves the reader with a sense that the boy will get through life, though likely always scarred from his childhood.
This was apparently a partly autobiographical work; Renard's mother being of a similar temperament. show less
Such a narrative could create a whey-faced victim, but Carrots isn't that.... show more Brutalized, taking out his torments on animals he encounters (I'm not sure I LIKED Carrots, though I pitied him), the succession of short episodes leaves the reader with a sense that the boy will get through life, though likely always scarred from his childhood.
This was apparently a partly autobiographical work; Renard's mother being of a similar temperament. show less
Poised, reflective, deliberate. In Nature Stories, Renard masks some biting commentary behind unassuming observations of the natural world around him. These vignettes focus upon pastoral scenes of farming, herding, and hunting. A favourite approach is to paint a self-portrait of mild ridicule, but I suspect Renard's chosen targets are fellow villagers and city visitors.
Renard's prose is effective because his criticism is merely one subtext. His short pieces are keenly observed, and his show more humour clearly draws from a deep well of sincere affection for the animals & people he writes about. He displays almost as much respect for the words he employs: I wonder how much I miss reading his prose in translation, and I suspect it's quite a bit. A translator's note indicates some pieces were omitted because the puns simply would not carry through.
This slight book is a wonder and worth revisiting, as a book of favourite verse should be. The NYRB edition is attractively understated, with Bonnard's line drawings and the book's heft nicely matched to Renard's text (though I'm very curious to see the Toulouse-Lautrec and Serafini illustrations). Reading Renard puts me in a good humour, calm and still but very much an active observer of events around me. Renard fits my conception of a naturalist, present to the moment and open to whatever might be there, but mustering a reservoir of past observations, and knowledge, and experience. A wonder. show less
Renard's prose is effective because his criticism is merely one subtext. His short pieces are keenly observed, and his show more humour clearly draws from a deep well of sincere affection for the animals & people he writes about. He displays almost as much respect for the words he employs: I wonder how much I miss reading his prose in translation, and I suspect it's quite a bit. A translator's note indicates some pieces were omitted because the puns simply would not carry through.
This slight book is a wonder and worth revisiting, as a book of favourite verse should be. The NYRB edition is attractively understated, with Bonnard's line drawings and the book's heft nicely matched to Renard's text (though I'm very curious to see the Toulouse-Lautrec and Serafini illustrations). Reading Renard puts me in a good humour, calm and still but very much an active observer of events around me. Renard fits my conception of a naturalist, present to the moment and open to whatever might be there, but mustering a reservoir of past observations, and knowledge, and experience. A wonder. show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
[Preface to A Writer's Notebook, Heinemann/Doubleday, 1949:]
The Journal of Jules Renard is one of the minor masterpieces of French literature. He wrote three or four one-act plays, which were neither very good nor very bad; they neither amuse you much nor move you much, but when well acted they can be sat through without ennui. He wrote several novels, of which one, Poil de Carotte, was very successful. It is the story of his own childhood, the story of a little uncouth boy whose harsh and show more unnatural mother leads him a wretched life. Renard's method of writing, without ornament, without emphasis, heightens the pathos of the dreadful tale, and the poor lad's sufferings, mitigated by no pale ray of hope, are heartrending. You laugh wryly at his clumsy efforts to ingratiate himself with that demon of a woman and you feel his humiliations, you resent his unmerited punishments, as though they were your own. It would be an ill-conditioned person who did not feel his blood boil at the infliction of such malignant cruelty. It is not a book that you can easily forget.
Jules Renard's other novels are of no great consequence. They are either fragments of autobiography or are compiled from the careful notes he took of people with whom he was thrown into close contact, and can hardly be counted as novels at all. He was so devoid of the creative power that one wonders why he ever became a writer. He had no invention to heighten the point of an incident or even to give a pattern to his acute observations. He collected facts; but a novel cannot be made of facts alone; in themselves they are dead things. Their use is to develop an idea or illustrate a theme, and the novelist not only has the right to change them to suit his purpose, to stress them or leave them in shadow, but is under the necessity of doing so. It is true that Jules Renard had his theories; he asserted that his object was merely to state, leaving the reader to write his own novel, as it were, on the data presented to him, and that to attempt to do anything else was literary fudge. But I am always suspicious of a novelist's theories; I have never known them to be anything other than a justification of his own shortcomings. So a writer who has no gift for the contrivance of a plausible story will tell you that story-telling is the least important part of the novelist's equipment, and if he is devoid of humour he will moan that humour is the death of fiction. In order to give the glow of life to brute fact it must be transmuted by passion, and so the only good novel Jules Renard wrote was when the passion of self-pity and the hatred he felt for his mother charged his recollections of his unhappy childhood with venom.
I surmise that he would be already forgotten but for the publication after his death of the diary that he kept assiduously for twenty years. It is a remarkable work. He knew a number of persons who were important in the literary and theatrical world of his day, actors like Sarah Bernhardt and Lucien Guitry, authors like Rostand and Capus, and he relates his various encounters with them with an admirable but caustic vivacity. Here his keen powers of observation were of service to him. But though his portraits have verisimilitude, and the lively conversation of these clever people has an authentic ring, you must have, perhaps, some knowledge of the world of Paris in the last few years of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth, either personal knowledge or knowledge by hearsay, really to appreciate these parts of the journal. His fellow writers were indignant when the work was issued and they discovered with what acrimony he had written of them. The picture he paints of the literary life of his day is savage. They say dog does not bite dog. That is not true of men of letters in France.
[…]
Jules Renard was very honest, and he does not draw a pretty picture of himself in his Journal. He was malignant, cold, selfish, narrow, envious and ungrateful. His only redeeming feature was his love for his wife; she is the only person in all these volumes of whom he consistently speaks with kindness. He was immensely susceptible to any fancied affront, and his vanity was outrageous. He had neither charity nor good will. He splashes with his angry contempt everything he doesn’t understand, and the possibility never occurs to him that if he doesn’t the fault may lie in himself. He was odious, incapable of a generous gesture, and almost incapable of a generous emotion. But for all that the Journal is wonderfully good reading. It is extremely amusing. It is witty and subtle and often wise. It is a notebook kept for the purposes of his calling by a professional writer who passionately sought truth, purity of style and perfection of language. As a writer no one could have been more conscientious. Jules Renard jotted down neat retorts and clever phrases, epigrams, things seen, the sayings of people and the look of them, descriptions of scenery, effects of sunshine and shadow, everything, in short, that could be of use to him when he sat down to write for publication; and in several cases, as we know, when he had collected sufficient data he strung them together into a more or less connected narrative and made a book of them. To a writer this is the most interesting part of these volumes; you are taken into an author’s workshop and shown what materials he thought worth gathering, and how he gathered them. It is not to the point that he lacked the capacity to make better use of them. show less
The Journal of Jules Renard is one of the minor masterpieces of French literature. He wrote three or four one-act plays, which were neither very good nor very bad; they neither amuse you much nor move you much, but when well acted they can be sat through without ennui. He wrote several novels, of which one, Poil de Carotte, was very successful. It is the story of his own childhood, the story of a little uncouth boy whose harsh and show more unnatural mother leads him a wretched life. Renard's method of writing, without ornament, without emphasis, heightens the pathos of the dreadful tale, and the poor lad's sufferings, mitigated by no pale ray of hope, are heartrending. You laugh wryly at his clumsy efforts to ingratiate himself with that demon of a woman and you feel his humiliations, you resent his unmerited punishments, as though they were your own. It would be an ill-conditioned person who did not feel his blood boil at the infliction of such malignant cruelty. It is not a book that you can easily forget.
Jules Renard's other novels are of no great consequence. They are either fragments of autobiography or are compiled from the careful notes he took of people with whom he was thrown into close contact, and can hardly be counted as novels at all. He was so devoid of the creative power that one wonders why he ever became a writer. He had no invention to heighten the point of an incident or even to give a pattern to his acute observations. He collected facts; but a novel cannot be made of facts alone; in themselves they are dead things. Their use is to develop an idea or illustrate a theme, and the novelist not only has the right to change them to suit his purpose, to stress them or leave them in shadow, but is under the necessity of doing so. It is true that Jules Renard had his theories; he asserted that his object was merely to state, leaving the reader to write his own novel, as it were, on the data presented to him, and that to attempt to do anything else was literary fudge. But I am always suspicious of a novelist's theories; I have never known them to be anything other than a justification of his own shortcomings. So a writer who has no gift for the contrivance of a plausible story will tell you that story-telling is the least important part of the novelist's equipment, and if he is devoid of humour he will moan that humour is the death of fiction. In order to give the glow of life to brute fact it must be transmuted by passion, and so the only good novel Jules Renard wrote was when the passion of self-pity and the hatred he felt for his mother charged his recollections of his unhappy childhood with venom.
I surmise that he would be already forgotten but for the publication after his death of the diary that he kept assiduously for twenty years. It is a remarkable work. He knew a number of persons who were important in the literary and theatrical world of his day, actors like Sarah Bernhardt and Lucien Guitry, authors like Rostand and Capus, and he relates his various encounters with them with an admirable but caustic vivacity. Here his keen powers of observation were of service to him. But though his portraits have verisimilitude, and the lively conversation of these clever people has an authentic ring, you must have, perhaps, some knowledge of the world of Paris in the last few years of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth, either personal knowledge or knowledge by hearsay, really to appreciate these parts of the journal. His fellow writers were indignant when the work was issued and they discovered with what acrimony he had written of them. The picture he paints of the literary life of his day is savage. They say dog does not bite dog. That is not true of men of letters in France.
[…]
Jules Renard was very honest, and he does not draw a pretty picture of himself in his Journal. He was malignant, cold, selfish, narrow, envious and ungrateful. His only redeeming feature was his love for his wife; she is the only person in all these volumes of whom he consistently speaks with kindness. He was immensely susceptible to any fancied affront, and his vanity was outrageous. He had neither charity nor good will. He splashes with his angry contempt everything he doesn’t understand, and the possibility never occurs to him that if he doesn’t the fault may lie in himself. He was odious, incapable of a generous gesture, and almost incapable of a generous emotion. But for all that the Journal is wonderfully good reading. It is extremely amusing. It is witty and subtle and often wise. It is a notebook kept for the purposes of his calling by a professional writer who passionately sought truth, purity of style and perfection of language. As a writer no one could have been more conscientious. Jules Renard jotted down neat retorts and clever phrases, epigrams, things seen, the sayings of people and the look of them, descriptions of scenery, effects of sunshine and shadow, everything, in short, that could be of use to him when he sat down to write for publication; and in several cases, as we know, when he had collected sufficient data he strung them together into a more or less connected narrative and made a book of them. To a writer this is the most interesting part of these volumes; you are taken into an author’s workshop and shown what materials he thought worth gathering, and how he gathered them. It is not to the point that he lacked the capacity to make better use of them. show less
Poil de Carotte a beau se taillader les joues pour qu'elles rosissent, personne ne l'embrasse.
Mme Lepic n'aime pas son petit dernier aux cheveux roux. «Tout le monde ne peut pas être orphelin», se répète Poil de Carotte, et il nous livre ses idées personnelles, «ainsi nommées parce qu'il faut les garder pour soi. Ni la générosité ni la sincérité ne paient dans le monde des adultes. Il faut ruser.
L'existence de Poil de Carotte est un enfer dont il ne s'échappe que par une show more cruelle lucidité.
Jules Renard a écrit là un chef d'oeuvre d'ironie, d'intelligence et de tendresse. « Qui a lu une telle oeuvre ne peut l'oublier», affirme en regard Robert Sabatier.
Source : Le Livre de Poche, LGF
Pauvre Poil de Carotte ! Surnommé ainsi à cause de sa chevelure rousse et de ses taches de rousseur, rien n'est épargné à ce petit garçon... Bien malgré lui, il devient le souffre-douleur d'une famille où il a bien du mal à trouver sa place. Sans cesse raillé ou humilié, tout à tour victime de la cruauté de sa mère, madame Lepic, de la lâcheté de son frère, Félix ou du caractère bourru de son père, il doit encore souffrir de sa maladresse ou de sa malchance. On ne peut s'empêcher d'être ému, révolté ou parfois effrayé devant toutes les épreuves qu'il doit supporter. Mais petit à petit, au fil des chapitres, on s'attache à ce petit garçon renfermé, secret, qui cache au fond de lui-même une tendresse et un coeur énormes et, par-dessus tout, une immense envie d'être aimé. Un grand classique de la littérature enfantine au style riche, illustrant le thème des enfances difficiles. --Xavier Marciniak show less
Mme Lepic n'aime pas son petit dernier aux cheveux roux. «Tout le monde ne peut pas être orphelin», se répète Poil de Carotte, et il nous livre ses idées personnelles, «ainsi nommées parce qu'il faut les garder pour soi. Ni la générosité ni la sincérité ne paient dans le monde des adultes. Il faut ruser.
L'existence de Poil de Carotte est un enfer dont il ne s'échappe que par une show more cruelle lucidité.
Jules Renard a écrit là un chef d'oeuvre d'ironie, d'intelligence et de tendresse. « Qui a lu une telle oeuvre ne peut l'oublier», affirme en regard Robert Sabatier.
Source : Le Livre de Poche, LGF
Pauvre Poil de Carotte ! Surnommé ainsi à cause de sa chevelure rousse et de ses taches de rousseur, rien n'est épargné à ce petit garçon... Bien malgré lui, il devient le souffre-douleur d'une famille où il a bien du mal à trouver sa place. Sans cesse raillé ou humilié, tout à tour victime de la cruauté de sa mère, madame Lepic, de la lâcheté de son frère, Félix ou du caractère bourru de son père, il doit encore souffrir de sa maladresse ou de sa malchance. On ne peut s'empêcher d'être ému, révolté ou parfois effrayé devant toutes les épreuves qu'il doit supporter. Mais petit à petit, au fil des chapitres, on s'attache à ce petit garçon renfermé, secret, qui cache au fond de lui-même une tendresse et un coeur énormes et, par-dessus tout, une immense envie d'être aimé. Un grand classique de la littérature enfantine au style riche, illustrant le thème des enfances difficiles. --Xavier Marciniak show less
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