Gide and ‘L’ermitage’ 1896-1906

LATE in 1895, ['Ermitage, threatened with extinction, was taken over by the poet Edouard Ducote, who wrote to Gide. honeymooning at the time in Switzerland, and invited him to contribute. Flattered by this unexpected invitation from a writer he had never met. Gide produced in all haste the Recit de Menfllque (which later became part of the Nourritures terrestres), and it duly appeared in the opening number of the new series. in January 1896. The review had been founded in 1890 by Henri Mazel, who soon had Rene Boylesve and Stuart Merrill, and a little later Hugues Rebell, as his 'secretaires generaux'. The early numbers were not very promising; many of the first collaborators, it seems, were medical students, and student humour was much in evidence. According to the preface of the first number, the review sought to 'combattre par des lenitifs sceniques et d'exhilarantes chansons Ie comateux avachissement OU sommeillait la jeunesse des ecoles'. Though it published mostly poetry, it did in fact show a sustained interest in the theatre, and several plays appeared in its pages. But it followed no definite line in criticism. In its early years~ it in no way represented a 'school' or a doctrine; it rather sought to be 'un vrai miroir de l'esprit et des tendances de l'epoque'l. It published mostly 'symbolists' (Verlaine, Maeterlinck, Valery, Charles Morice, etc.), but also 'Romanistes' (like Moreas and Maurras), Mercure de France writers (Gourmont, Jules Renard, Rachilde. Louis Dumur), and a mixed bag that included Heredia, Pierre Louys, Adolphe Rette. Laurent Tailhade, etc. Its early symbolist bias remained, but its increasing eclecticism led to its decline in the mid-1890s, at a time when the Mercure and the Revue blanche, which had been founded within months of l'Ermitage and with which it maintained a fairly close association, were consolidating their positions, the first largely through the critical writings of Remy de Gourmont, the second through those of Lucien Muhlfeld and Leon Blum. Gide's collaboration saved 1'Ermitage, and it became the only 'symbolist' review, apart from the Mercure, to survive uninterruptedly beyond 1903. It published his Promethee mal enchalne, Le Roi Candaule, most of Bethsabi and A myntas, and in its 'Petite Collection', three of his 'conferences'. When he began to write sustained criticism for the first time, his most important work

French Literature and Criticism · Geology · Historical and Literary Analyses · Literature and Culture Studies

• Intellectual Anarchy and Imaginary Otherness

  Open Access•Christopher E Forth•Sociological Quarterly•1996

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