GOURMONT, REMY DE (1858-1915), French critic, essayist and novelist, was born on April 4, 1858, at the Château de la Motte, Bazoches-en-Houlme (Orne). He went to Paris in 1883, after having studied at Caen and entered the Bibliotheque Nationale, where he remained for eight years ; he was obliged to leave in 1891 in consequence of having published an article which was considered anti-patriotic. In 1890 he founded, with several friends—including J. Renard and others—the Mercure de France, of which he was one of the chief collaborators for about 20 years. In his critical works, a distinction must be made between (1) notes on contemporary life published in the Mercure under the title of Epilogues (1903-13) ; (2) the series of Promenades Lit teraires and Promenades Philosophiques (1904-13) which are sometimes comparable with the Causeries du Lundi of St.-Beuve ; (3) the series of studies dealing with pure literature, style and versification (Le Latin Mystique, 1892; L'Esthetique de la Langue Francaise, 1899 ; La Culture des Idees, ; Le Chemin de Velours, 1902; Le Probleme du Style, 1907). As a critic, he had the great merit of drawing attention to the intellectual im portance of Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, Huysmans, Mallarme, Nie tzsche, etc., when the work of these authors was still little known.
He also had an original and precise conception of style. He was always on the alert to break up ideas or images associated by tradition or custom and to analyse them separately in order to set up' new associations which, in their turn, might eventually be broken. From the philosophical point of view, Remy de Gour mont agreed, in principle, with the symbolists, in admitting that there exist other realities than those of the mind; but this idealism tended in his case to be sceptical and, at times, even cynical.
Like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, with whose works he was so fully conversant, he owed much to the French moralists of the i8th century, and to Montaigne. This quality of cynicism is clearly apparent in his Physique de l'Amour (19o3), in which he attempts to eliminate from the philosophy of love all mystical and romantic elements and to bring it into line with biology.
Remy de Gourmont was also the author of plays and symbolist poems which are no longer interesting except to the student, and various novels, of which the most important are Sixtine, a roman de la vie cerebrale (189o) ; Les Chevaux de Diomede (1897) ; Le Songe d'une Femme (1899) ; Une Nuit au Luxembourg (1906) and Un Coeur Virginal (1907) . His gift for creating living char acters is lacking in these books, but those of his works inspired by the philosophical romances of the i8th century, especially Diderot, are noteworthy for their lucidity, and are marked by a fantastic and alert individuality. Remy de Gourmont wrote on many subjects, and with Anatole France was one of the last repre sentatives of the "grande culture generale" in France.