Abraham Catulle Mendès (French pronunciation: [katyl mɑ̃dɛs]; 22 May 1841 – 8 February 1909) was a French poet and man of letters. He was associated with the Parnassianist school.
Of Portuguese Jewish extraction, Mendès was born in Bordeaux. After childhood and adolescence in Toulouse, he arrived in Paris in 1859 and quickly became one of the protégés of the poet Théophile Gautier. He promptly attained notoriety with the publication in the La Revue fantaisiste (1861) of his Roman d'une nuit, for which he was condemned to a month's imprisonment and a fine of 500 francs. He was allied with Parnassianism from the beginning of the movement and displayed extraordinary metrical skill in his first volume of poems, Philoméla (1863). His critics have noted that the elegant verse of his later volumes is distinguished rather by dexterous imitation of different writers than by any marked originality. The versatility and fecundity of Mendès' talent is shown in his critical and dramatic writings, including several libretti, and in his novels and short stories. His short stories continue the French tradition of the licentious conte.
In his early period, Mendès sometimes published under the pseudonym Jacques Rollin.
For his contributions and understanding of French literature, Catulle Mendès was nominated by the Minister of Public Instruction and of the Fine Arts to write the history of French poetry from the years 1807-1900. A similar opportunity was previously given to Theophile Gautier.
Mendès and The Parnassian Movement
Catulle Mendès was a prominent figure in the Parnassian movement, known for his precise style and devotion to the aesthetic ideals that this movement established. He was deeply aligned with the Parnassians’ emphasis on “art for art’s sake” as well as taking on the role of the movement’s chief publicizer and historian. He was able to do this by publishing La Revue fantaisiste in 1861 which published works by Charles Baudelaire and Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, who were prominent Parnassian writers. Mendès also founded the literary journal Le Parnasse contemporain in 1866, which was the flagship anthology of the movement and helped popularize many other Parnassian writers. His poetry exemplified the movement's proclivity for classical themes and emotional restraint, rejecting the elements of Romanticism. He used his influence in the movement to promote its principles and style. Mendès helped define and sustain the Parnassian aesthetic, making him a key figure of the movement and its legacy in French Literature.
In 1866, Mendès married Judith Gautier, the younger daughter of his mentor Théophile, but later separated.
In 1869, Mendès met the composer Augusta Holmès. Holmès and Mendès later lived together and had three daughters and possibly two sons. The couple's daughters are the subject of the 1888 painting "The Daughters of Catulle Mendès" by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. By 1885, Holmès and Mendès had separated and the children remained in his care. The couple's youngest daughter, Helyonne, married Henri Barbusse in 1898.
Mendès later married the poet Jeanne Mette, who was to be his last companion.
Relations and interactions with contemporaries
As a central figure in 19th-century French literature, Catulle Mendès garnered a wide network of relationships with the major artists and thinkers of his time. His involvement in overlapping literary movements put him in the middle of aesthetic and ideological innovation. Some of these connections were defined by admiration and collaboration, while others were marked with tension.
Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (1838–1889) and Catulle Mendès were colleagues who interacted and influenced one another within the French literary scene. Within his literary journal, La revue fantaisiste (The Fanciful Review), Mendès would cover the works of his contemporaries, including Villiers. Both were devoted to promoting recognition and the excellence of Richard Wagner, often accompanying each other on visits to Wagner's Swiss retreat at Tribschen. The two also shared interest within the literary movements such as Parnassianism, Decadence, and other aesthetic movements.
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), a leading figure in shaping modern French and English art and literature, served as an inspiration to many of the rising writers of the time, including Catulle Mendès. Mendès often published and addressed Baudelaire's content within his literary article. While Baudelaire's magnum opus, Les Fleurs du mal, explores themes of eroticism, beauty, addiction, and death with moral ambiguity and aesthetic complexity, Mendès recycles these same themes through a different lens. He imposes a moralistic and judgmental stance rather than embracing decadence in the same tone as Baudelaire did.
Jules Huret (1863-1915) was a prominent french journalist who was recognized for his interviews with writers. A duel took place between journalist Jules Huret and writer Catulle Mendès. The conflict arose following a paragraph published under Huret's signature in the Petite Chronique des Lettres, in which the names of Mendès and Oscar Wilde were mentioned in connection. The duel was fought with swords, and Mendès sustained a slight wound. In total, Mendès had fought in an estimated 13 duels.
Richard Wagner (1813-1883), the revolutionary German composer and artist, left a lasting impact not only on music, but also on 19th-century literature and aesthetics. His dramatic operas, being his most renowned artistic contributions, inspired a generation of writers across Europe, including Catulle Mendès. Mendès was one of the first and most prominent devoted French literary Wagnerians, who worked alongside Villiers de I'lsle-Adam to expose his work and establish it's exceptionality. In 1869, Mendès traveled to Wagner's Swiss retreat at Tribschen, marking the transition from admirer to a friendship. However, the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War (1870) interrupted their bond. Wagner's resentful anti-French rhetoric during this conflict would offend Mendès, leading to a temporary split. As Mendès later stated in his memoirs, it would take time for the conflict to settle between the two.
Early on the morning of 8 February 1909, the body of Mendès was discovered in the railway tunnel of Saint Germain. He had left Paris by the midnight train on the 7th, and it is supposed that, thinking he had arrived at the station, he had opened the door of his compartment while still in the tunnel, although some biographers have suggested suicide. Other speculations about his death came from newspaper articles claiming it had been a robbery-homicide. His body was interred at the Montparnasse Cemetery.
Number 56 and Other Stories (1895), which contains the novellas Number 56, A Wayside Village, The Cough, and his infamous Luscignole, a grotesque thriller concerning a sadistic dwarf and his young hostage. Number 56 is a thought-provoking detective tale based on a real life murder case, while the remaining stories are dark fantasies, nightmarish and hallucinatory, told in the fashion of Edgar Allan Poe of whom Mendès was greatly enamored. To this day, Luscignole is considered Mendès' finest, most original work of fiction. First English translation 1928.
The Fairy Spinning Wheel and the Tales it Spun (1899), a collection of fairy-tales rewritten in Mendès' own style.