'The Journal of Jules Renard' edited and translated by Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget

Jules Renard

Jules Renard

Edited and translated by Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget

Tin House Books: 304 pp., $16.95 paper

FIRST translated into English in 1964 and long since out of print, Jules Renard's endlessly amusing journals are available again, and, whether read straight through or dipped into at random, they're a marvel to behold. Renard was part of a glittering fin de siècle milieu of Parisian artists (sculptors, painters, actors, writers) that included Rodin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Mallarmé, Bernhardt and Verlaine, for starters. (The volume, expertly edited by Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget, includes a handy index of proper names.) He achieved renown in France for plays, novels and stories -- most notably "Poil de Carotte" ("Carrot Top" -- Renard had red hair), a collection of brief autobiographical sketches he later turned into a hit at the Comédie-Française -- and steadily accrued such distinctions as the Legion of Honor and a place at the Académie Goncourt. But he's little known today outside of his homeland.

Despite Renard's successes, the journals give the impression of a fairly level-headed man when it came to applying himself as an artist, one who, although he liked to dwell on praise (he almost never mentions criticism of his work), was not given over to the personal excesses for which his age is so well known. His upbringing was severe: His father, François, was the deeply anticlerical mayor of Chitry, a small town about 140 miles southeast of Paris. After Renard's birth, he refused to speak to his wife again. ("It is thirty years since he has said a word," his son notes. Desperate for attention, she is a source of annoyance and consternation; the kindest words Renard has for her are: "When the impression she makes on me is least disagreeable, she strikes me as a child."

The journals are a hodgepodge of brief scenarios, character sketches and aperçus -- all containing hints (or, in some cases, double doses) of acidity: "I present my book to a schoolteacher. 'What do I owe you?' he asks." "Maupassant. A man who is never caught short. He teaches nothing, and the nature of his feelings does not earn him our affection. Good morning, good-night. There can be no intimacy with him." "Every time I want to settle down to work, literature gets between."