Les Noces corinthiennes
Presentation copy inscribed by Anatole France to Louis Ulbach: “à M. Louis Ulbach, en témoignage de sympathie & de gratitude, Anatole France.”
From the library of Gabriel de Montvalon (bookplate).
Les Noces corinthiennes is regarded as “one of the dramatic masterpieces of the Parnassian school.” Paradoxically, the young Anatole France’s poetic career, begun with Les Poëmes dorés, came to an end with this second collection: from then on, France chose to write exclusively in prose.
The distinctly secular and republican inspiration of the poems in Les Noces corinthiennes is said to have earned him, in the aftermath of the elections following 16 May, a position as supervising clerk at the Senate library, with a salary of 2,200 francs. In 1876, Leconte de Lisle — to whom France had dedicated Les Poëmes dorés — was chiefly responsible for securing him this post, which he had been awaiting for ten years. France, now settled and content, married Marie-Valérie Guérin de Sauville the following year, on 28 April 1877, and asked Alphonse Lemerre to serve as his witness. Even as he enjoyed a stable situation and the first satisfactions of literary recognition, France continued to write prefaces and other pieces for Lemerre, which he later gathered, late in life, under the title Le Génie latin.