Leconte de Lisle : Charles-Marie-René (1818-94), French poet, leader of the Parnassians; acknowledged as the foremost French poet (1865-95) apart from Hugo.
... dare to say that the literature of the ancient peoples was unrefined or insignificant? A Turgeniev, an Amiel, a Leconte de Lisle or a Pierre Loti can take birth only. in the present age. Dante, Homer, Valmiki or the most ancient Vedic sages – none of them, like Turgeniev, Amiel, Leconte de Lisle or Pierre Loti, sought for the tales of various other ages and countries, and yet have these modern poets and... aeiernitatis – even a little of this saving factor saves us from a great peril. In the stark realism of a Balzac or in the winging romanticism of a Victor Hugo, or in the poised classicism of a Leconte de Lisle we get a glimpse of this very thing. That is why with all the defects we feel that the sleeping Brahman is, as it were, astir in them; that a cosmic life-force, a generous universal breath sways ...
... recognised, is always an act of reflection of the subjective changes of his personality, a history of the development of his own soul in the guise of objective creation. From the work of a poet like Leconte de Lisle who attempted with the most deliberate conscientiousness a perfect fidelity to the ideal of an impersonal artistic objectiveness, there disengages itself in the mass an almost poignant impression ...
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