Literature - Paris - page 689

without censorship. Baudelaire, who moonlighted as a translator in Paris, was obliged to cut
half a dozen poems from his work and fined 300 francs.
The aim of Émile Zola, who came to Paris with his close friend, the artist Paul Cézanne,
in 1858, was to transform novel-writing from an art to a science by the application of exper-
imentation. His theory may now seem naive, but his work influenced most significant
French writers of the late 19th century and is reflected in much 20th-century fiction as well.
His novel Nana (1880) tells the decadent tale of a young woman who resorts to prostitution
to survive the Paris of the Second Empire.
Histoire d'O(Story of O; 1954), Dominique Aury's erotic, sadomasochistic novel written
under a pseudonym, has sold more copies outside France than any other contemporary
French novel. Most believed it to be the work of a man; it was only 40 years after publica-
tion that the author revealed her identity.
Symbolism & Surrealism
Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé created the symbolist movement, which strove to ex-
press states of mind rather than simply detail daily reality. Arthur Rimbaud, in addition to
crowding an extraordinary amount of exotic travel into his 37 years and having a tempestu-
ous sexual relationship with Verlaine, produced two enduring pieces of work: Une Saison en
Enfer (A Season in Hell; 1873) and Illuminations (1874). Verlaine died at 39 rue Descartes,
5e, in 1896.
Marcel Proust dominated the early 20th century with his seven-volume novel À la
Recherche du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past; 1913-27), which explores the
true meaning of past experience recovered from the unconscious by 'involuntary memory'.
In 1907 Proust moved from the family home near av des Champs-Élysées to an apartment
on bd Haussmann famous for its cork-lined bedroom (now in the Musée Carnavalet). André
Gide found his voice in the celebration of gay sensuality and, later, left-wing politics. Les
Faux-Monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters; 1925) exposes the hypocrisy and self-deception to
which people resort in order to fit in with others or deceive themselves.
André Breton wrote French surrealism's three manifestos, although the first use of the
word 'surrealist' is attributed to the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, a fellow traveller of sur-
realism killed in action in WWI. Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette) enjoyed tweaking the
nose of conventionally moral readers. Her best-known work is Gigi (1945) but far more in-
teresting is Paris de Ma Fenêtre (Paris from My Window; 1944), dealing with the German