(1823-1891)
Théodore Faullain De Banville is best known as a very skillful maker of
polished artificial verse. His poetry stands high; but it is the poetry
not of nature, but of elegant society. His muse, as Mr. Henley says, is
always in evening dress. References to the classic poets are woven into
all of his descriptions of nature. He is distinguished, scholarly, full
of taste, and brilliant in execution; never failing in propriety, and
never reaching inspiration. As an artist in words and cadences he has
few superiors.
[Illustration: De Banville]
These qualities are partly acquired, and partly the result of birth.
Born in 1823, the son of a naval officer, from his earliest years he
devoted himself to literature. His birthplace, Moulins, an old
provincial town on the banks of the Allier, where he spent a happy
childhood, made little impression on him. Still almost a child he went
to Paris, where he led a life without events,--without even a marriage
or an election to the Academy; he died March 13th, 1891. His place was
among the society people and the artists; the painter Courbet and the
writers Mürger, Baudelaire, and Gautier were among his closest friends.
He first attracted attention in 1848 by the publication of a volume of
verse, 'The Caryatids.' In 1857 came another, 'Odes Funambulesque,' and
later another series under the same title, the two together containing
his best work in verse. Here he stands highest; though he wrote also
many plays, one of which, 'Gringoire,' has been acted in various
translations. 'The Wife of Socrates' also holds the stage. Like his
other work, his drama is artificial, refined, and skillful. He presents
a marked instance of the artist working for art's sake. During the
latter years of his life he wrote mostly prose, and he has left many
well-drawn portraits of his contemporaries, in addition to several books
of criticism, with much color and charm, but little definiteness. He was
always vague, for facts did not interest him; but he had the power of
making his remote, unreal world attractive, and among the writers of the
school of Gautier he stands among the first.