Sully Prudhomme

Sully Prudhomme, real name René François Armand Prudhomme (1839-1907), French poet and Nobel laureate, of the Parnassian school. He was born in Paris and trained in engineering, law, and philosophy. His early poems, such as Stances et poèmes (1865), Les Destins (1872; The Destinies), and Les vaines tendresses (1875; The Empty Endearments), are lyrical and melancholic. Later work was Parnassian in its antiromantic striving for aesthetic, objective expression of philosophical truth. “La justice” (1878) and “Le bonheur” (1888; Happiness) are considered masterpieces of analytic subtlety. He was admitted to the Académie Française in 1881 and received the first Nobel Prize for Literature in 1901.