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Excerpt from Selections From Edmond and Jules De Goncourt: Edited, With Introduction, Bibliography, Notes, and Appendices
There are many interesting dualities in French literary history. There are Rousseau, the versatile poet of the seventeenth century, and Rousseau, the fiery reformer and realist of the eighteenth. There are two great Balzacs. There are, with closer connection, two Corneilles, two Cheniers, and two Mussets. There are, in heredities of fiction, two Dumas; in those of literary philology, two Paris. There are two Thierrys, a brilliant fraternity in fascinating history. There are collabo rations like that of erckmann-chatrian. There are the modern linked lesser lights, two Rosnys and two Marguerittes.1 But not in French nor in any other literature has there been an example of a unity in dual personality like that of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. So true is this, that it has been easy to call them the Siamese twins of literature, with the implication that this involved some mental monstrosity. Yet in reality their relationship has been that of souls extraordinarily adjusted, with the delicacy and sensitized power of exact scientific instruments, with the perceptive range of modern apparatus, with a recording capa bility, in breadth and potency of phrase, covering the compass of present complicated civilization a psychical intimacy which responded remarkably to a community of thought, vision, and expression, and perpetuated a solidarity of soul even after the severance of the broth erhood by the death of its younger member.
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