Bible Encyclopedias
Maurice Barres

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

Search for…

Enter query below:

or

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

Prev Entry
Maurice

Next Entry
Maurice Block

Resource Toolbox

Print Article

MAURICE BARRES (1862-), French novelist and politician, was born at Charmes (Vosges) on the 22nd of September 1862; he was educated at the lycee of Nancy, and in 1883 went to Paris to continue his legal studies. He was already a contributor to the monthly periodical, Jeune France, and he now issued a periodical of his own, Les Taches d'encre, which survived for a few months only. After four years of journalism he went to Italy, where he wrote Sous l'ceil des barbares (1888), the first volume of a trilogie du moi, completed by Un Homme libre (1889), and Le Jardin de Berenice (1891). He divided the world into moi and the barbarians, the latter including all those antipathetic to the writer's individuality. These apologies for 1 Jedediah Morse American Geography, part ii. p. 334 (Boston, Mass., 2796).

2 Knight's London, vol. i. p. 244.

3 Hone's Every Day Book, i. p. 1248.

4 Collection of all the Dialogues written by Mr Thomas Brown (London, 1704), p. 297.

Hone's Every Day Book, ii. pp. 1452-1453.

s See Catalogue descriptif (Ghent, 1880), Nos. 461 and 462.

7 Breitkopf and Hartel's Critically revised edition of Mozart's Works, series x. no. 20.

individualism were supplemented by L'Ennemi des lois (1892), and an admirable volume of impressions of travel, Du sang, de la volupte et de la mort (1893). His early books are written in an elaborate style and are often very obscure. Banes carried his theory of individualism into politics as an ardent partisan of General Boulanger. He directed a Boulangist paper at Nancy, and was elected deputy in 1889, retaining his seat in the legislature until 1893. His play, Une Journee parlementaire, was produced at the Comedic Frangaise in 1894. In 1897 he began his trilogy, Le Roman de l'energie nationale, with the publication of Les Deracines. The series is a plea for local patriotism, and for the preservation of the distinctive qualities of the old French provinces. The first narrates the adventures of seven young Lorrainers, who set out to conquer fortune in Paris. Six of them survive in the second novel of the trilogy, L'Appel au soldat (1900), which gives the history of Boulangism; the sequel, Leurs figures (1902), deals with the Panama scandals. Later works are: Scenes et doctrines du nationalisme (1902); Les Amities frangaises (1903), in which he urges the inculcation of patriotism by the early study of national history; Ce que j'ai vu et Rennes (1904); Au service de l'Allemagne (1905), the experiences of an Alsatian conscript in a German regiment; Le Voyage de Sparte (1906). M. Barres was admitted to the French Academy in 1906.

See also R. Doumic, Les Jeunes (1896); J. Lionnet, L'Evolution des idees (1903); Anatole France, La Vie litteraire (4th series, 1892).