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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
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Théophile Gautier
From Abécédaire du Salon de 1861
His success has been great, and that reflects well upon the public, as Puvis de Chavannes does not belong to the fastidious school. His mind dwells in the highest sphere of art, and his ambition even surpasses his talent. The various aspect of his two large compositions, War and Peace, challenges the onlooker…
The subject of War is conceived in the synthetic sense, outside the contingencies of time, place, or any particularity. It is the idea itself, rendered perceptible to the senses with a singular poetic power. War has swept through a country; the work of conquest has been accomplished; three horse-borne trumpeters, impassive, similar in their poses, sound the victory fanfare, like angels sounding the call of the Last Judgment…
Peace transports us to…a vale of large green trees, irrigated by running water. The warriors have laid down their arms; they rest or exercise their horses. The women devote their leisure to the innocent industries of peace…One could imagine oneself in the Golden Age, such is the calm, the freshness, the repose of a composition so tranquil as the other is furious. Even its color is less abstract and more human…
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