QUINET Edgar (1803-1875). - Lot 187

Lot n° 187
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200 - 300 EUR
QUINET Edgar (1803-1875). - Lot 187
QUINET Edgar (1803-1875). 2 autograph MANUSCRITS signed "Edgar Quinet", Hygiène de l'Esprit and Condition de l'écrivain en France. Les Académies; 10 pages in-fol. and 10 pages and a half in-fol. Essays from the end of Quinet's life, after the fall of the Empire. They bear the numbers XIX and XX. In Hygiène de l'Esprit, Quinet recalls the concerted efforts of the Germans to recover from the Napoleonic conquests: reinforcement of the armies, search for knowledge, patriotism carried to the point of physical gymnastics. Quinet recommends to France a gymnastics of the intelligence to rise from its ruins: "Cultivate the man and not only the profession. Routine, which is a numbness, a petrification of the spirit, has lost you. The special bodies have found themselves completely unaware of the specialty in which they had confined themselves. Those who had never seen anything in the world but their cannons, had ended up ignoring what a cannon is, in the year 1870"... It is thus necessary to leave one's specialty, to avoid fixed ideas, to maintain the power of creation: "Dare. Death can do nothing to a people who continue to create, for the benefit of all, something useful or beautiful"... In Conditions de l'écrivain en France, Quinet shows how academies are detrimental to national regeneration. "The writer feels alone, almost always alone, in France. His life is a fight against the public which, even conquered by him, refuses to love him as a weakness. He is truly recognized and safe only if he carries an official seal"... The academies thus appear as places of refuge, and the writer who is received there gains a position which makes the merit of his works. However, in the academies "what the naturalists call stops of development are formed. These are traditions that have had their moment of usefulness and brilliance. But the moments have passed, and the academies seek to perpetuate them. What was a spirit of creation becomes an impediment to life"... He wonders about the future of these institutions whose motto is the literary and scientific status quo... An autograph manuscript (incomplete) on the epic poetry, with sketches of verses on the back (13 p. in-fol.) is joined.
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