*Les Épreuves* is noted as the volume where "the note of melancholy which was to dominate through the whole work of his life was first clearly discernible." How might this early manifestation of melancholy be interpreted not just as an emotion, but as a philosophical framework that integrated his scientific mind with his aspiring soul?

From the book

for a time in the Schneider factory at Creuzot, but he soon abandoned an occupation to which he was eminently unsuited. He subsequently decided to read law, and entered a notary's office at Paris. It was during this period that he composed those early poems which were not long in acquiring celebrity among an ever-widening circle of friends. In 1865 he published his first volume of poems, which had for sub-title Stances et poèmes . This volume was favourably reviewed by Sainte-Beuve, to whose notice it had been brought by Gaston Paris. It was at this moment that the small circle of which…

is the extreme sensibility of soul, the profoundly melancholy note which we find in his love lyrics and his meditations. Sully-Prudhomme is above all things introspective; he penetrates into the hidden corners of his heart; he lays bare the subtle torments of his conscience, the shifting currents of his hopes and fears, belief and disbelief in face of the riddle of the universe to an extent so poignant as to be sometimes almost painful. And to render the fugitive phases and tremulous adventures of his spirit he finds incomparably delicate shades of expression, an exquisite and sensitive…

early discernible. In 1869 he published a translation of the first book of Lucretius with a preface, and Les Solitudes . In 1870 a series of domestic bereavements and a serious paralytic illness resulting from the strain and fatigue of the winter of 1870, during which he served in the Garde Mobile, shattered his health. In 1872 he published Les Écuries d'augias, Croquis italiens, Impressions de la guerre (1866–72) and Les Destins , La Révolte des heurs in 1874, in 1875 Les Vaines tendresses , in 1878 La Justice , in 1886 Le Prisme , and in 1888 Le Bonheur . All these poems were collected and…

Le Lien social , which was a revision of an introduction which he had contributed to Michelet's La Bible de l'humanité . What strikes the reader of Sully-Prudhomme's poetry first and foremost is the fact that he is a thinker; and moreover a poet who thinks, and not a thinker who turns to rhyme for recreation. The most strikingly original portion of his work is to be found in his philosophic and scientific poetry. If he has not the scientific genius of Pascal, he has at least the scientific habit of mind and a delight in mathematic certainties. In attempting to interpret the universe as…

Title: Les Épreuves by Sully Prudhomme --- Metadata --- Title: Les épreuves by Sully Prudhomme --- Text ---