modern life essay in english

• Craft and Criticism
• Fiction and Poetry
• News and Culture
• Lit Hub Radio
• Reading Lists

• Literary Criticism
• Craft and Advice
• In Conversation
• On Translation
• Short Story
• From the Novel
• Bookstores and Libraries
• Film and TV
• Art and Photography
• Freeman’s
• The Virtual Book Channel
• Behind the Mic
• Beyond the Page
• The Cosmic Library
• The Critic and Her Publics
• Emergence Magazine
• Fiction/Non/Fiction
• First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
• The History of Literature
• I’m a Writer But
• Lit Century
• Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
• Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
• Write-minded
• The Best of the Decade
• Best Reviewed Books
• BookMarks Daily Giveaway
• The Daily Thrill
• CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

The 10 Best Essay Collections of the Decade

Ever tried. ever failed. no matter..

Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. We’ll take our silver linings where we can.

So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website—though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task—in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was. We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists. We began with the best debut novels , the best short story collections , the best poetry collections , and the best memoirs of the decade , and we have now reached the fifth list in our series: the best essay collections published in English between 2010 and 2019.

The following books were chosen after much debate (and several rounds of voting) by the Literary Hub staff. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten—so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans. As ever, free to add any of your own favorites that we’ve missed in the comments below.

The Top Ten

Oliver sacks, the mind’s eye (2010).

Toward the end of his life, maybe suspecting or sensing that it was coming to a close, Dr. Oliver Sacks tended to focus his efforts on sweeping intellectual projects like On the Move (a memoir), The River of Consciousness (a hybrid intellectual history), and Hallucinations (a book-length meditation on, what else, hallucinations). But in 2010, he gave us one more classic in the style that first made him famous, a form he revolutionized and brought into the contemporary literary canon: the medical case study as essay. In The Mind’s Eye , Sacks focuses on vision, expanding the notion to embrace not only how we see the world, but also how we map that world onto our brains when our eyes are closed and we’re communing with the deeper recesses of consciousness. Relaying histories of patients and public figures, as well as his own history of ocular cancer (the condition that would eventually spread and contribute to his death), Sacks uses vision as a lens through which to see all of what makes us human, what binds us together, and what keeps us painfully apart. The essays that make up this collection are quintessential Sacks: sensitive, searching, with an expertise that conveys scientific information and experimentation in terms we can not only comprehend, but which also expand how we see life carrying on around us. The case studies of “Stereo Sue,” of the concert pianist Lillian Kalir, and of Howard, the mystery novelist who can no longer read, are highlights of the collection, but each essay is a kind of gem, mined and polished by one of the great storytellers of our era.  –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Managing Editor

John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead (2011)

The American essay was having a moment at the beginning of the decade, and Pulphead was smack in the middle. Without any hard data, I can tell you that this collection of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s magazine features—published primarily in GQ , but also in The Paris Review , and Harper’s —was the only full book of essays most of my literary friends had read since Slouching Towards Bethlehem , and probably one of the only full books of essays they had even heard of.

Well, we all picked a good one. Every essay in Pulphead is brilliant and entertaining, and illuminates some small corner of the American experience—even if it’s just one house, with Sullivan and an aging writer inside (“Mr. Lytle” is in fact a standout in a collection with no filler; fittingly, it won a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize). But what are they about? Oh, Axl Rose, Christian Rock festivals, living around the filming of One Tree Hill , the Tea Party movement, Michael Jackson, Bunny Wailer, the influence of animals, and by god, the Miz (of Real World/Road Rules Challenge fame).

But as Dan Kois has pointed out , what connects these essays, apart from their general tone and excellence, is “their author’s essential curiosity about the world, his eye for the perfect detail, and his great good humor in revealing both his subjects’ and his own foibles.” They are also extremely well written, drawing much from fictional techniques and sentence craft, their literary pleasures so acute and remarkable that James Wood began his review of the collection in The New Yorker with a quiz: “Are the following sentences the beginnings of essays or of short stories?” (It was not a hard quiz, considering the context.)

It’s hard not to feel, reading this collection, like someone reached into your brain, took out the half-baked stuff you talk about with your friends, researched it, lived it, and represented it to you smarter and better and more thoroughly than you ever could. So read it in awe if you must, but read it.  –Emily Temple, Senior Editor

Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives (2013)

Such is the sentence-level virtuosity of Aleksandar Hemon—the Bosnian-American writer, essayist, and critic—that throughout his career he has frequently been compared to the granddaddy of borrowed language prose stylists: Vladimir Nabokov. While it is, of course, objectively remarkable that anyone could write so beautifully in a language they learned in their twenties, what I admire most about Hemon’s work is the way in which he infuses every essay and story and novel with both a deep humanity and a controlled (but never subdued) fury. He can also be damn funny. Hemon grew up in Sarajevo and left in 1992 to study in Chicago, where he almost immediately found himself stranded, forced to watch from afar as his beloved home city was subjected to a relentless four-year bombardment, the longest siege of a capital in the history of modern warfare. This extraordinary memoir-in-essays is many things: it’s a love letter to both the family that raised him and the family he built in exile; it’s a rich, joyous, and complex portrait of a place the 90s made synonymous with war and devastation; and it’s an elegy for the wrenching loss of precious things. There’s an essay about coming of age in Sarajevo and another about why he can’t bring himself to leave Chicago. There are stories about relationships forged and maintained on the soccer pitch or over the chessboard, and stories about neighbors and mentors turned monstrous by ethnic prejudice. As a chorus they sing with insight, wry humor, and unimaginable sorrow. I am not exaggerating when I say that the collection’s devastating final piece, “The Aquarium”—which details his infant daughter’s brain tumor and the agonizing months which led up to her death—remains the most painful essay I have ever read.  –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks Editor

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

Of every essay in my relentlessly earmarked copy of Braiding Sweetgrass , Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s gorgeously rendered argument for why and how we should keep going, there’s one that especially hits home: her account of professor-turned-forester Franz Dolp. When Dolp, several decades ago, revisited the farm that he had once shared with his ex-wife, he found a scene of destruction: The farm’s new owners had razed the land where he had tried to build a life. “I sat among the stumps and the swirling red dust and I cried,” he wrote in his journal.

So many in my generation (and younger) feel this kind of helplessness–and considerable rage–at finding ourselves newly adult in a world where those in power seem determined to abandon or destroy everything that human bodies have always needed to survive: air, water, land. Asking any single book to speak to this helplessness feels unfair, somehow; yet, Braiding Sweetgrass does, by weaving descriptions of indigenous tradition with the environmental sciences in order to show what survival has looked like over the course of many millennia. Kimmerer’s essays describe her personal experience as a Potawotami woman, plant ecologist, and teacher alongside stories of the many ways that humans have lived in relationship to other species. Whether describing Dolp’s work–he left the stumps for a life of forest restoration on the Oregon coast–or the work of others in maple sugar harvesting, creating black ash baskets, or planting a Three Sisters garden of corn, beans, and squash, she brings hope. “In ripe ears and swelling fruit, they counsel us that all gifts are multiplied in relationship,” she writes of the Three Sisters, which all sustain one another as they grow. “This is how the world keeps going.”  –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Hilton Als, White Girls (2013)

In a world where we are so often reduced to one essential self, Hilton Als’ breathtaking book of critical essays, White Girls , which meditates on the ways he and other subjects read, project and absorb parts of white femininity, is a radically liberating book. It’s one of the only works of critical thinking that doesn’t ask the reader, its author or anyone he writes about to stoop before the doorframe of complete legibility before entering. Something he also permitted the subjects and readers of his first book, the glorious book-length essay, The Women , a series of riffs and psychological portraits of Dorothy Dean, Owen Dodson, and the author’s own mother, among others. One of the shifts of that book, uncommon at the time, was how it acknowledges the way we inhabit bodies made up of variously gendered influences. To read White Girls now is to experience the utter freedom of this gift and to marvel at Als’ tremendous versatility and intelligence.

He is easily the most diversely talented American critic alive. He can write into genres like pop music and film where being part of an audience is a fantasy happening in the dark. He’s also wired enough to know how the art world builds reputations on the nod of rich white patrons, a significant collision in a time when Jean-Michel Basquiat is America’s most expensive modern artist. Als’ swerving and always moving grip on performance means he’s especially good on describing the effect of art which is volatile and unstable and built on the mingling of made-up concepts and the hard fact of their effect on behavior, such as race. Writing on Flannery O’Connor for instance he alone puts a finger on her “uneasy and unavoidable union between black and white, the sacred and the profane, the shit and the stars.” From Eminem to Richard Pryor, André Leon Talley to Michael Jackson, Als enters the life and work of numerous artists here who turn the fascinations of race and with whiteness into fury and song and describes the complexity of their beauty like his life depended upon it. There are also brief memoirs here that will stop your heart. This is an essential work to understanding American culture.  –John Freeman, Executive Editor

Eula Biss, On Immunity (2014)

We move through the world as if we can protect ourselves from its myriad dangers, exercising what little agency we have in an effort to keep at bay those fears that gather at the edges of any given life: of loss, illness, disaster, death. It is these fears—amplified by the birth of her first child—that Eula Biss confronts in her essential 2014 essay collection, On Immunity . As any great essayist does, Biss moves outward in concentric circles from her own very private view of the world to reveal wider truths, discovering as she does a culture consumed by anxiety at the pervasive toxicity of contemporary life. As Biss interrogates this culture—of privilege, of whiteness—she interrogates herself, questioning the flimsy ways in which we arm ourselves with science or superstition against the impurities of daily existence.

Five years on from its publication, it is dismaying that On Immunity feels as urgent (and necessary) a defense of basic science as ever. Vaccination, we learn, is derived from vacca —for cow—after the 17th-century discovery that a small application of cowpox was often enough to inoculate against the scourge of smallpox, an etymological digression that belies modern conspiratorial fears of Big Pharma and its vaccination agenda. But Biss never scolds or belittles the fears of others, and in her generosity and openness pulls off a neat (and important) trick: insofar as we are of the very world we fear, she seems to be suggesting, we ourselves are impure, have always been so, permeable, vulnerable, yet so much stronger than we think.  –Jonny Diamond, Editor-in-Chief 

Rebecca Solnit, The Mother of All Questions (2016)

When Rebecca Solnit’s essay, “Men Explain Things to Me,” was published in 2008, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon unlike almost any other in recent memory, assigning language to a behavior that almost every woman has witnessed—mansplaining—and, in the course of identifying that behavior, spurring a movement, online and offline, to share the ways in which patriarchal arrogance has intersected all our lives. (It would also come to be the titular essay in her collection published in 2014.) The Mother of All Questions follows up on that work and takes it further in order to examine the nature of self-expression—who is afforded it and denied it, what institutions have been put in place to limit it, and what happens when it is employed by women. Solnit has a singular gift for describing and decoding the misogynistic dynamics that govern the world so universally that they can seem invisible and the gendered violence that is so common as to seem unremarkable; this naming is powerful, and it opens space for sharing the stories that shape our lives.

The Mother of All Questions, comprised of essays written between 2014 and 2016, in many ways armed us with some of the tools necessary to survive the gaslighting of the Trump years, in which many of us—and especially women—have continued to hear from those in power that the things we see and hear do not exist and never existed. Solnit also acknowledges that labels like “woman,” and other gendered labels, are identities that are fluid in reality; in reviewing the book for The New Yorker , Moira Donegan suggested that, “One useful working definition of a woman might be ‘someone who experiences misogyny.'” Whichever words we use, Solnit writes in the introduction to the book that “when words break through unspeakability, what was tolerated by a society sometimes becomes intolerable.” This storytelling work has always been vital; it continues to be vital, and in this book, it is brilliantly done.  –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends (2017)

The newly minted MacArthur fellow Valeria Luiselli’s four-part (but really six-part) essay  Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions  was inspired by her time spent volunteering at the federal immigration court in New York City, working as an interpreter for undocumented, unaccompanied migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Written concurrently with her novel  Lost Children Archive  (a fictional exploration of the same topic), Luiselli’s essay offers a fascinating conceit, the fashioning of an argument from the questions on the government intake form given to these children to process their arrivals. (Aside from the fact that this essay is a heartbreaking masterpiece, this is such a  good  conceit—transforming a cold, reproducible administrative document into highly personal literature.) Luiselli interweaves a grounded discussion of the questionnaire with a narrative of the road trip Luiselli takes with her husband and family, across America, while they (both Mexican citizens) wait for their own Green Card applications to be processed. It is on this trip when Luiselli reflects on the thousands of migrant children mysteriously traveling across the border by themselves. But the real point of the essay is to actually delve into the real stories of some of these children, which are agonizing, as well as to gravely, clearly expose what literally happens, procedural, when they do arrive—from forms to courts, as they’re swallowed by a bureaucratic vortex. Amid all of this, Luiselli also takes on more, exploring the larger contextual relationship between the United States of America and Mexico (as well as other countries in Central America, more broadly) as it has evolved to our current, adverse moment.  Tell Me How It Ends  is so small, but it is so passionate and vigorous: it desperately accomplishes in its less-than-100-pages-of-prose what centuries and miles and endless records of federal bureaucracy have never been able, and have never cared, to do: reverse the dehumanization of Latin American immigrants that occurs once they set foot in this country.  –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads Editorial Fellow

Zadie Smith, Feel Free (2018)

In the essay “Meet Justin Bieber!” in Feel Free , Zadie Smith writes that her interest in Justin Bieber is not an interest in the interiority of the singer himself, but in “the idea of the love object”. This essay—in which Smith imagines a meeting between Bieber and the late philosopher Martin Buber (“Bieber and Buber are alternative spellings of the same German surname,” she explains in one of many winning footnotes. “Who am I to ignore these hints from the universe?”). Smith allows that this premise is a bit premise -y: “I know, I know.” Still, the resulting essay is a very funny, very smart, and un-tricky exploration of individuality and true “meeting,” with a dash of late capitalism thrown in for good measure. The melding of high and low culture is the bread and butter of pretty much every prestige publication on the internet these days (and certainly of the Twitter feeds of all “public intellectuals”), but the essays in Smith’s collection don’t feel familiar—perhaps because hers is, as we’ve long known, an uncommon skill. Though I believe Smith could probably write compellingly about anything, she chooses her subjects wisely. She writes with as much electricity about Brexit as the aforementioned Beliebers—and each essay is utterly engrossing. “She contains multitudes, but her point is we all do,” writes Hermione Hoby in her review of the collection in The New Republic . “At the same time, we are, in our endless difference, nobody but ourselves.”  –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays (2019)

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an academic who has transcended the ivory tower to become the sort of public intellectual who can easily appear on radio or television talk shows to discuss race, gender, and capitalism. Her collection of essays reflects this duality, blending scholarly work with memoir to create a collection on the black female experience in postmodern America that’s “intersectional analysis with a side of pop culture.” The essays range from an analysis of sexual violence, to populist politics, to social media, but in centering her own experiences throughout, the collection becomes something unlike other pieces of criticism of contemporary culture. In explaining the title, she reflects on what an editor had said about her work: “I was too readable to be academic, too deep to be popular, too country black to be literary, and too naïve to show the rigor of my thinking in the complexity of my prose. I had wanted to create something meaningful that sounded not only like me, but like all of me. It was too thick.” One of the most powerful essays in the book is “Dying to be Competent” which begins with her unpacking the idiocy of LinkedIn (and the myth of meritocracy) and ends with a description of her miscarriage, the mishandling of black woman’s pain, and a condemnation of healthcare bureaucracy. A finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction, Thick confirms McMillan Cottom as one of our most fearless public intellectuals and one of the most vital.  –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Dissenting Opinions

The following books were just barely nudged out of the top ten, but we (or at least one of us) couldn’t let them pass without comment.

Elif Batuman, The Possessed (2010)

In The Possessed Elif Batuman indulges her love of Russian literature and the result is hilarious and remarkable. Each essay of the collection chronicles some adventure or other that she had while in graduate school for Comparative Literature and each is more unpredictable than the next. There’s the time a “well-known 20th-centuryist” gave a graduate student the finger; and the time when Batuman ended up living in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, for a summer; and the time that she convinced herself Tolstoy was murdered and spent the length of the Tolstoy Conference in Yasnaya Polyana considering clues and motives. Rich in historic detail about Russian authors and literature and thoughtfully constructed, each essay is an amalgam of critical analysis, cultural criticism, and serious contemplation of big ideas like that of identity, intellectual legacy, and authorship. With wit and a serpentine-like shape to her narratives, Batuman adopts a form reminiscent of a Socratic discourse, setting up questions at the beginning of her essays and then following digressions that more or less entreat the reader to synthesize the answer for herself. The digressions are always amusing and arguably the backbone of the collection, relaying absurd anecdotes with foreign scholars or awkward, surreal encounters with Eastern European strangers. Central also to the collection are Batuman’s intellectual asides where she entertains a theory—like the “problem of the person”: the inability to ever wholly capture one’s character—that ultimately layer the book’s themes. “You are certainly my most entertaining student,” a professor said to Batuman. But she is also curious and enthusiastic and reflective and so knowledgeable that she might even convince you (she has me!) that you too love Russian literature as much as she does. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist (2014)

Roxane Gay’s now-classic essay collection is a book that will make you laugh, think, cry, and then wonder, how can cultural criticism be this fun? My favorite essays in the book include Gay’s musings on competitive Scrabble, her stranded-in-academia dispatches, and her joyous film and television criticism, but given the breadth of topics Roxane Gay can discuss in an entertaining manner, there’s something for everyone in this one. This book is accessible because feminism itself should be accessible – Roxane Gay is as likely to draw inspiration from YA novels, or middle-brow shows about friendship, as she is to introduce concepts from the academic world, and if there’s anyone I trust to bridge the gap between high culture, low culture, and pop culture, it’s the Goddess of Twitter. I used to host a book club dedicated to radical reads, and this was one of the first picks for the club; a week after the book club met, I spied a few of the attendees meeting in the café of the bookstore, and found out that they had bonded so much over discussing  Bad Feminist  that they couldn’t wait for the next meeting of the book club to keep discussing politics and intersectionality, and that, in a nutshell, is the power of Roxane. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Associate Editor

Rivka Galchen, Little Labors (2016)

Generally, I find stories about the trials and tribulations of child-having to be of limited appeal—useful, maybe, insofar as they offer validation that other people have also endured the bizarre realities of living with a tiny human, but otherwise liable to drift into the musings of parents thrilled at the simple fact of their own fecundity, as if they were the first ones to figure the process out (or not). But Little Labors is not simply an essay collection about motherhood, perhaps because Galchen initially “didn’t want to write about” her new baby—mostly, she writes, “because I had never been interested in babies, or mothers; in fact, those subjects had seemed perfectly not interesting to me.” Like many new mothers, though, Galchen soon discovered her baby—which she refers to sometimes as “the puma”—to be a preoccupying thought, demanding to be written about. Galchen’s interest isn’t just in her own progeny, but in babies in literature (“Literature has more dogs than babies, and also more abortions”), The Pillow Book , the eleventh-century collection of musings by Sei Shōnagon, and writers who are mothers. There are sections that made me laugh out loud, like when Galchen continually finds herself in an elevator with a neighbor who never fails to remark on the puma’s size. There are also deeper, darker musings, like the realization that the baby means “that it’s not permissible to die. There are days when this does not feel good.” It is a slim collection that I happened to read at the perfect time, and it remains one of my favorites of the decade. –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Charlie Fox, This Young Monster (2017)

On social media as in his writing, British art critic Charlie Fox rejects lucidity for allusion and doesn’t quite answer the Twitter textbox’s persistent question: “What’s happening?” These days, it’s hard to tell.  This Young Monster  (2017), Fox’s first book,was published a few months after Donald Trump’s election, and at one point Fox takes a swipe at a man he judges “direct from a nightmare and just a repulsive fucking goon.” Fox doesn’t linger on politics, though, since most of the monsters he looks at “embody otherness and make it into art, ripping any conventional idea of beauty to shreds and replacing it with something weird and troubling of their own invention.”

If clichés are loathed because they conform to what philosopher Georges Bataille called “the common measure,” then monsters are rebellious non-sequiturs, comedic or horrific derailments from a classical ideal. Perverts in the most literal sense, monsters have gone astray from some “proper” course. The book’s nine chapters, which are about a specific monster or type of monster, are full of callbacks to familiar and lesser-known media. Fox cites visual art, film, songs, and books with the screwy buoyancy of a savant. Take one of his essays, “Spook House,” framed as a stage play with two principal characters, Klaus (“an intoxicated young skinhead vampire”) and Hermione (“a teen sorceress with green skin and jet-black hair” who looks more like The Wicked Witch than her namesake). The chorus is a troupe of trick-or-treaters. Using the filmmaker Cameron Jamie as a starting point, the rest is free association on gothic decadence and Detroit and L.A. as cities of the dead. All the while, Klaus quotes from  Artforum ,  Dazed & Confused , and  Time Out. It’s a technical feat that makes fictionalized dialogue a conveyor belt for cultural criticism.

In Fox’s imagination, David Bowie and the Hydra coexist alongside Peter Pan, Dennis Hopper, and the maenads. Fox’s book reaches for the monster’s mask, not really to peel it off but to feel and smell the rubber schnoz, to know how it’s made before making sure it’s still snugly set. With a stylistic blend of arthouse suavity and B-movie chic,  This Young Monster considers how monsters in culture are made. Aren’t the scariest things made in post-production? Isn’t the creature just duplicity, like a looping choir or a dubbed scream? –Aaron Robertson, Assistant Editor

Elena Passarello, Animals Strike Curious Poses (2017)

Elena Passarello’s collection of essays Animals Strike Curious Poses picks out infamous animals and grants them the voice, narrative, and history they deserve. Not only is a collection like this relevant during the sixth extinction but it is an ambitious historical and anthropological undertaking, which Passarello has tackled with thorough research and a playful tone that rather than compromise her subject, complicates and humanizes it. Passarello’s intention is to investigate the role of animals across the span of human civilization and in doing so, to construct a timeline of humanity as told through people’s interactions with said animals. “Of all the images that make our world, animal images are particularly buried inside us,” Passarello writes in her first essay, to introduce us to the object of the book and also to the oldest of her chosen characters: Yuka, a 39,000-year-old mummified woolly mammoth discovered in the Siberian permafrost in 2010. It was an occasion so remarkable and so unfathomable given the span of human civilization that Passarello says of Yuka: “Since language is epically younger than both thought and experience, ‘woolly mammoth’ means, to a human brain, something more like time.” The essay ends with a character placing a hand on a cave drawing of a woolly mammoth, accompanied by a phrase which encapsulates the author’s vision for the book: “And he becomes the mammoth so he can envision the mammoth.” In Passarello’s hands the imagined boundaries between the animal, natural, and human world disintegrate and what emerges is a cohesive if baffling integrated history of life. With the accuracy and tenacity of a journalist and the spirit of a storyteller, Elena Passarello has assembled a modern bestiary worthy of contemplation and awe. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019)

Esmé Weijun Wang’s collection of essays is a kaleidoscopic look at mental health and the lives affected by the schizophrenias. Each essay takes on a different aspect of the topic, but you’ll want to read them together for a holistic perspective. Esmé Weijun Wang generously begins The Collected Schizophrenias by acknowledging the stereotype, “Schizophrenia terrifies. It is the archetypal disorder of lunacy.” From there, she walks us through the technical language, breaks down the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ( DSM-5 )’s clinical definition. And then she gets very personal, telling us about how she came to her own diagnosis and the way it’s touched her daily life (her relationships, her ideas about motherhood). Esmé Weijun Wang is uniquely situated to write about this topic. As a former lab researcher at Stanford, she turns a precise, analytical eye to her experience while simultaneously unfolding everything with great patience for her reader. Throughout, she brilliantly dissects the language around mental health. (On saying “a person living with bipolar disorder” instead of using “bipolar” as the sole subject: “…we are not our diseases. We are instead individuals with disorders and malfunctions. Our conditions lie over us like smallpox blankets; we are one thing and the illness is another.”) She pinpoints the ways she arms herself against anticipated reactions to the schizophrenias: high fashion, having attended an Ivy League institution. In a particularly piercing essay, she traces mental illness back through her family tree. She also places her story within more mainstream cultural contexts, calling on groundbreaking exposés about the dangerous of institutionalization and depictions of mental illness in television and film (like the infamous Slender Man case, in which two young girls stab their best friend because an invented Internet figure told them to). At once intimate and far-reaching, The Collected Schizophrenias is an informative and important (and let’s not forget artful) work. I’ve never read a collection quite so beautifully-written and laid-bare as this. –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor

Ross Gay, The Book of Delights (2019)

When Ross Gay began writing what would become The Book of Delights, he envisioned it as a project of daily essays, each focused on a moment or point of delight in his day. This plan quickly disintegrated; on day four, he skipped his self-imposed assignment and decided to “in honor and love, delight in blowing it off.” (Clearly, “blowing it off” is a relative term here, as he still produced the book.) Ross Gay is a generous teacher of how to live, and this moment of reveling in self-compassion is one lesson among many in The Book of Delights , which wanders from moments of connection with strangers to a shade of “red I don’t think I actually have words for,” a text from a friend reading “I love you breadfruit,” and “the sun like a guiding hand on my back, saying everything is possible. Everything .”

Gay does not linger on any one subject for long, creating the sense that delight is a product not of extenuating circumstances, but of our attention; his attunement to the possibilities of a single day, and awareness of all the small moments that produce delight, are a model for life amid the warring factions of the attention economy. These small moments range from the physical–hugging a stranger, transplanting fig cuttings–to the spiritual and philosophical, giving the impression of sitting beside Gay in his garden as he thinks out loud in real time. It’s a privilege to listen. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Honorable Mentions

A selection of other books that we seriously considered for both lists—just to be extra about it (and because decisions are hard).

Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings (2010) · Joyce Carol Oates, In Rough Country (2010) · Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (2011) · Christopher Hitchens, Arguably (2011) ·  Roberto Bolaño, tr. Natasha Wimmer, Between Parentheses (2011) · Dubravka Ugresic, tr. David Williams, Karaoke Culture (2011) · Tom Bissell, Magic Hours (2012)  · Kevin Young, The Grey Album (2012) · William H. Gass, Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts (2012) · Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey (2012) · Herta Müller, tr. Geoffrey Mulligan, Cristina and Her Double (2013) · Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams (2014)  · Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable (2014)  · Daphne Merkin, The Fame Lunches (2014)  · Charles D’Ambrosio, Loitering (2015) · Wendy Walters, Multiply/Divide (2015) · Colm Tóibín, On Elizabeth Bishop (2015) ·  Renee Gladman, Calamities (2016)  · Jesmyn Ward, ed. The Fire This Time (2016)  · Lindy West, Shrill (2016)  · Mary Oliver, Upstream (2016)  · Emily Witt, Future Sex (2016)  · Olivia Laing, The Lonely City (2016)  · Mark Greif, Against Everything (2016)  · Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood (2017)  · Sarah Gerard, Sunshine State (2017)  · Jim Harrison, A Really Big Lunch (2017)  · J.M. Coetzee, Late Essays: 2006-2017 (2017) · Melissa Febos, Abandon Me (2017)  · Louise Glück, American Originality (2017)  · Joan Didion, South and West (2017)  · Tom McCarthy, Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish (2017)  · Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until they Kill Us (2017)  · Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power (2017)  ·  Samantha Irby, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (2017)  · Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (2018)  · Alice Bolin, Dead Girls (2018)  · Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here? (2018)  · Lorrie Moore, See What Can Be Done (2018)  · Maggie O’Farrell, I Am I Am I Am (2018)  · Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race (2018)  · Rachel Cusk, Coventry (2019)  · Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror (2019)  · Emily Bernard, Black is the Body (2019)  · Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard (2019)  · Margaret Renkl, Late Migrations (2019)  ·  Rachel Munroe, Savage Appetites (2019)  · Robert A. Caro,  Working  (2019) · Arundhati Roy, My Seditious Heart (2019).

Emily Temple

Previous article, next article.

• RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

Sign Up For Our Newsletters

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

Become a member for as low as $5/month

50 Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

Liberty Hardy

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

View All posts by Liberty Hardy

I feel like essay collections don’t get enough credit. They’re so wonderful! They’re like short story collections, but TRUE. It’s like going to a truth buffet. You can get information about sooooo many topics, sometimes in one single book! To prove that there are a zillion amazing essay collections out there, I compiled 50 great contemporary essay collections, just from the last 18 months alone.  Ranging in topics from food, nature, politics, sex, celebrity, and more, there is something here for everyone!

I’ve included a brief description from the publisher with each title. Tell us in the comments about which of these you’ve read or other contemporary essay collections that you love. There are a LOT of them. Yay, books!

Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

They can’t kill us until they kill us  by hanif abdurraqib.

“In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib’s is a voice that matters. Whether he’s attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown’s grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly.”

Would Everybody Please Stop?: Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas  by Jenny Allen

“Jenny Allen’s musings range fluidly from the personal to the philosophical. She writes with the familiarity of someone telling a dinner party anecdote, forgoing decorum for candor and comedy. To read  Would Everybody Please Stop?  is to experience life with imaginative and incisive humor.”

Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds  by Yemisi Aribisala

“A sumptuous menu of essays about Nigerian cuisine, lovingly presented by the nation’s top epicurean writer. As well as a mouth-watering appraisal of Nigerian food,  Longthroat Memoirs  is a series of love letters to the Nigerian palate. From the cultural history of soup, to fish as aphrodisiac and the sensual allure of snails,  Longthroat Memoirs  explores the complexities, the meticulousness, and the tactile joy of Nigerian gastronomy.”

Beyond Measure: Essays  by Rachel Z. Arndt

“ Beyond Measure  is a fascinating exploration of the rituals, routines, metrics and expectations through which we attempt to quantify and ascribe value to our lives. With mordant humor and penetrating intellect, Arndt casts her gaze beyond event-driven narratives to the machinery underlying them: judo competitions measured in weigh-ins and wait times; the significance of the elliptical’s stationary churn; the rote scripts of dating apps; the stupefying sameness of the daily commute.”

Magic Hours  by Tom Bissell

“Award-winning essayist Tom Bissell explores the highs and lows of the creative process. He takes us from the set of  The Big Bang Theory  to the first novel of Ernest Hemingway to the final work of David Foster Wallace; from the films of Werner Herzog to the film of Tommy Wiseau to the editorial meeting in which Paula Fox’s work was relaunched into the world. Originally published in magazines such as  The Believer ,  The New Yorker , and  Harper’s , these essays represent ten years of Bissell’s best writing on every aspect of creation—be it Iraq War documentaries or video-game character voices—and will provoke as much thought as they do laughter.”

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession  by Alice Bolin

“In this poignant collection, Alice Bolin examines iconic American works from the essays of Joan Didion and James Baldwin to  Twin Peaks , Britney Spears, and  Serial , illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories. Smart and accessible, thoughtful and heartfelt, Bolin investigates the implications of our cultural fixations, and her own role as a consumer and creator.”

Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life  by Jenny Boully

“Jenny Boully’s essays are ripe with romance and sensual pleasures, drawing connections between the digression, reflection, imagination, and experience that characterizes falling in love as well as the life of a writer. Literary theory, philosophy, and linguistics rub up against memory, dreamscapes, and fancy, making the practice of writing a metaphor for the illusory nature of experience.  Betwixt and Between  is, in many ways, simply a book about how to live.”

Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give by Ada Calhoun

“In  Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give , Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which ‘the first twenty years are the hardest.'”

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays  by Alexander Chee

“ How to Write an Autobiographical Novel  is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing—Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley—the writing of his first novel,  Edinburgh , and the election of Donald Trump.”

Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays  by Durga Chew-Bose

“ Too Much and Not the Mood is a beautiful and surprising exploration of what it means to be a first-generation, creative young woman working today. On April 11, 1931, Virginia Woolf ended her entry in A Writer’s Diary with the words ‘too much and not the mood’ to describe her frustration with placating her readers, what she described as the ‘cramming in and the cutting out.’ She wondered if she had anything at all that was truly worth saying. The attitude of that sentiment inspired Durga Chew-Bose to gather own writing in this lyrical collection of poetic essays that examine personhood and artistic growth. Drawing inspiration from a diverse group of incisive and inquiring female authors, Chew-Bose captures the inner restlessness that keeps her always on the brink of creative expression.”

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy  by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“‘We were eight years in power’ was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s ‘first white president.'”

Look Alive Out There: Essays by Sloane Crosley

“In  Look Alive Out There,  whether it’s scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, playing herself on  Gossip Girl,  befriending swingers, or squinting down the barrel of the fertility gun, Crosley continues to rise to the occasion with unmatchable nerve and electric one-liners. And as her subjects become more serious, her essays deliver not just laughs but lasting emotional heft and insight. Crosley has taken up the gauntlets thrown by her predecessors—Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, David Sedaris—and crafted something rare, affecting, and true.”

Fl â neuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London  by Lauren Elkin

“Part cultural meander, part memoir,  Flâneuse  takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she’s lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such  flâneuses  as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis.”

Idiophone  by Amy Fusselman

“Leaping from ballet to quiltmaking, from the The Nutcracker to an Annie-B Parson interview,  Idiophone  is a strikingly original meditation on risk-taking and provocation in art and a unabashedly honest, funny, and intimate consideration of art-making in the context of motherhood, and motherhood in the context of addiction. Amy Fusselman’s compact, beautifully digressive essay feels both surprising and effortless, fueled by broad-ranging curiosity, and, fundamentally, joy.”

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture  by Roxane Gay

“In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are ‘routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied’ for speaking out.”

Sunshine State: Essays  by Sarah Gerard

“With the personal insight of  The Empathy Exams , the societal exposal of  Nickel and Dimed , and the stylistic innovation and intensity of her own break-out debut novel  Binary Star , Sarah Gerard’s  Sunshine State  uses the intimately personal to unearth the deep reservoirs of humanity buried in the corners of our world often hardest to face.”

The Art of the Wasted Day  by Patricia Hampl

“ The Art of the Wasted Day  is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of ‘retirement’ in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne—the hero of this book—who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay.”

A Really Big Lunch: The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life  by Jim Harrison

“Jim Harrison’s legendary gourmandise is on full display in  A Really Big Lunch . From the titular  New Yorker  piece about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to pieces from  Brick ,  Playboy , Kermit Lynch Newsletter, and more on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews,  A Really Big Lunch  is shot through with Harrison’s pointed aperçus and keen delight in the pleasures of the senses. And between the lines the pieces give glimpses of Harrison’s life over the last three decades.  A Really Big Lunch  is a literary delight that will satisfy every appetite.”

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me  by Bill Hayes

“Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.”

Would You Rather?: A Memoir of Growing Up and Coming Out  by Katie Heaney

“Here, for the first time, Katie opens up about realizing at the age of twenty-eight that she is gay. In these poignant, funny essays, she wrestles with her shifting sexuality and identity, and describes what it was like coming out to everyone she knows (and everyone she doesn’t). As she revisits her past, looking for any ‘clues’ that might have predicted this outcome, Katie reveals that life doesn’t always move directly from point A to point B—no matter how much we would like it to.”

Tonight I’m Someone Else: Essays  by Chelsea Hodson

“From graffiti gangs and  Grand Theft Auto  to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing.”

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.: Essays  by Samantha Irby

“With  We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. , ‘bitches gotta eat’ blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making ‘adult’ budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette—she’s ’35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something’—detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms—hang in there for the Costco loot—she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.”

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America  by Morgan Jerkins

“Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality. In  This Will Be My Undoing , Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.”

Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays  by Fenton Johnson

“Part retrospective, part memoir, Fenton Johnson’s collection  Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays  explores sexuality, religion, geography, the AIDS crisis, and more. Johnson’s wanderings take him from the hills of Kentucky to those of San Francisco, from the streets of Paris to the sidewalks of Calcutta. Along the way, he investigates questions large and small: What’s the relationship between artists and museums, illuminated in a New Guinean display of shrunken heads? What’s the difference between empiricism and intuition?”

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays  by Scaachi Koul

“In  One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter , Scaachi Koul deploys her razor-sharp humor to share all the fears, outrages, and mortifying moments of her life. She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Whether it’s a shopping trip gone awry; enduring awkward conversations with her bikini waxer; overcoming her fear of flying while vacationing halfway around the world; dealing with Internet trolls, or navigating the fears and anxieties of her parents. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of color: where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision, or outright scorn; where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, leaving little room for a woman not solely focused on marriage and children to have a career (and a life) for herself.”

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions  by Valeria Luiselli and jon lee anderson (translator)

“A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the U.S. Structured around the 40 questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation,  Tell Me How It Ends  (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman’s essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear—both here and back home.”

All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers  by Alana Massey

“Mixing Didion’s affected cool with moments of giddy celebrity worship, Massey examines the lives of the women who reflect our greatest aspirations and darkest fears back onto us. These essays are personal without being confessional and clever in a way that invites readers into the joke. A cultural critique and a finely wrought fan letter, interwoven with stories that are achingly personal, All the Lives I Want is also an exploration of mental illness, the sex industry, and the dangers of loving too hard.”

Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish: Essays  by Tom McCarthy

“Certain points of reference recur with dreamlike insistence—among them the artist Ed Ruscha’s  Royal Road Test , a photographic documentation of the roadside debris of a Royal typewriter hurled from the window of a traveling car; the great blooms of jellyfish that are filling the oceans and gumming up the machinery of commerce and military domination—and the question throughout is: How can art explode the restraining conventions of so-called realism, whether aesthetic or political, to engage in the active reinvention of the world?”

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America  by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding

“When 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump and 94 percent of black women voted for Hillary Clinton, how can women unite in Trump’s America? Nasty Women includes inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented women writers who seek to provide a broad look at how we got here and what we need to do to move forward.”

Don’t Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life  by Peggy Orenstein

“Named one of the ’40 women who changed the media business in the last 40 years’ by  Columbia Journalism Review , Peggy Orenstein is one of the most prominent, unflinching feminist voices of our time. Her writing has broken ground and broken silences on topics as wide-ranging as miscarriage, motherhood, breast cancer, princess culture and the importance of girls’ sexual pleasure. Her unique blend of investigative reporting, personal revelation and unexpected humor has made her books bestselling classics.”

When You Find Out the World Is Against You: And Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments  by Kelly Oxford

“Kelly Oxford likes to blow up the internet. Whether it is with the kind of Tweets that lead  Rolling Stone  to name her one of the Funniest People on Twitter or with pictures of her hilariously adorable family (human and animal) or with something much more serious, like creating the hashtag #NotOkay, where millions of women came together to share their stories of sexual assault, Kelly has a unique, razor-sharp perspective on modern life. As a screen writer, professional sh*t disturber, wife and mother of three, Kelly is about everything but the status quo.”

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman  by Anne Helen Petersen

“You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In  Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud , Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of ‘unruliness’ to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis,  Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud  will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.”

Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist  by Franchesca Ramsey

“In her first book, Ramsey uses her own experiences as an accidental activist to explore the many ways we communicate with each other—from the highs of bridging gaps and making connections to the many pitfalls that accompany talking about race, power, sexuality, and gender in an unpredictable public space…the internet.”

Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls  by Elizabeth Renzetti

“Drawing upon Renzetti’s decades of reporting on feminist issues,  Shrewed  is a book about feminism’s crossroads. From Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign to the quest for equal pay, from the lessons we can learn from old ladies to the future of feminism in a turbulent world, Renzetti takes a pointed, witty look at how far we’ve come—and how far we have to go.”

What Are We Doing Here?: Essays  by Marilynne Robinson

“In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.”

Double Bind: Women on Ambition  by Robin Romm

“‘A work of courage and ferocious honesty’ (Diana Abu-Jaber),  Double Bind  could not come at a more urgent time. Even as major figures from Gloria Steinem to Beyoncé embrace the word ‘feminism,’ the word ‘ambition’ remains loaded with ambivalence. Many women see it as synonymous with strident or aggressive, yet most feel compelled to strive and achieve—the seeming contradiction leaving them in a perpetual double bind. Ayana Mathis, Molly Ringwald, Roxane Gay, and a constellation of ‘nimble thinkers . . . dismantle this maddening paradox’ ( O, The Oprah Magazine ) with candor, wit, and rage. Women who have made landmark achievements in fields as diverse as law, dog sledding, and butchery weigh in, breaking the last feminist taboo once and for all.”

The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life  by Richard Russo

“In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain’s value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery,  The Destiny Thief  reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America’s most beloved authors. Warm, funny, wise, and poignant, the essays included here traverse Russo’s writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the prospective of one of our greatest writers.”

Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race by Naben Ruthnum

“Curry is a dish that doesn’t quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn’t properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta’s  Karma Cola  and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford’s  Heat , Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters.”

The River of Consciousness  by Oliver Sacks

“Sacks, an Oxford-educated polymath, had a deep familiarity not only with literature and medicine but with botany, animal anatomy, chemistry, the history of science, philosophy, and psychology.  The River of Consciousness  is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.”

All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom (Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God)  by Deborah Santana and America Ferrera

“ All the Women in My Family Sing  is an anthology documenting the experiences of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It is a vital collection of prose and poetry whose topics range from the pressures of being the vice-president of a Fortune 500 Company, to escaping the killing fields of Cambodia, to the struggles inside immigration, identity, romance, and self-worth. These brief, trenchant essays capture the aspirations and wisdom of women of color as they exercise autonomy, creativity, and dignity and build bridges to heal the brokenness in today’s turbulent world.”

We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America  by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page

“For some, ‘passing’ means opportunity, access, or safety. Others don’t willingly pass but are ‘passed’ in specific situations by someone else.  We Wear the Mask , edited by  Brando Skyhorse  and  Lisa Page , is an illuminating and timely anthology that examines the complex reality of passing in America. Skyhorse, a Mexican American, writes about how his mother passed him as an American Indian before he learned who he really is. Page shares how her white mother didn’t tell friends about her black ex-husband or that her children were, in fact, biracial.”

Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

“Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world’s preeminent fiction writers, but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to  The New Yorker  and the  New York Review of Books  on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.”

The Mother of All Questions: Further Reports from the Feminist Revolutions  by Rebecca Solnit

“In a timely follow-up to her national bestseller  Men Explain Things to Me , Rebecca Solnit offers indispensable commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. In characteristic style, Solnit mixes humor, keen analysis, and powerful insight in these essays.”

The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays  by Megan Stielstra

“Whether she’s imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra’s work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. The result is something beautiful—this story, her courage, and, potentially, our own.”

Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms  by Michelle Tea

“Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, this is Tea’s first-ever collection of journalistic writing. As she blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own, she turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career—memoir—and considers the price that art demands be paid from life.”

A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause  by Shawn Wen

“In precise, jewel-like scenes and vignettes,  A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause  pays homage to the singular genius of a mostly-forgotten art form. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and meticulously observed performances, Wen translates the gestural language of mime into a lyric written portrait by turns whimsical, melancholic, and haunting.”

Acid West: Essays  by Joshua Wheeler

“The radical evolution of American identity, from cowboys to drone warriors to space explorers, is a story rooted in southern New Mexico.  Acid West  illuminates this history, clawing at the bounds of genre to reveal a place that is, for better or worse, home. By turns intimate, absurd, and frightening,  Acid West  is an enlightening deep-dive into a prophetic desert at the bottom of America.”

Sexographies  by Gabriela Wiener and Lucy Greaves And jennifer adcock (Translators)

“In fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swingers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris in the company of transvestites and prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle—all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes. Fortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives.  Sexographies  is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind.”

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative  by Florence Williams

“From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to eucalyptus groves in California, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Delving into brand-new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.”

Can You Tolerate This?: Essays  by Ashleigh Young

“ Can You Tolerate This?  presents a vivid self-portrait of an introspective yet widely curious young woman, the colorful, isolated community in which she comes of age, and the uneasy tensions—between safety and risk, love and solitude, the catharsis of grief and the ecstasy of creation—that define our lives.”

What are your favorite contemporary essay collections?

You Might Also Like

30,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today

Meet top uk universities from the comfort of your home, here’s your new year gift, one app for all your, study abroad needs, start your journey, track your progress, grow with the community and so much more.

Verification Code

An OTP has been sent to your registered mobile no. Please verify

Thanks for your comment !

Our team will review it before it's shown to our readers.

• School Education /

Essay on Life for Students in English: 100 Words, 200 Words, 350 Words

• Updated on  
• Apr 12, 2024

Life is a culmination of moments, a blend of laughter and tears, victory and challenges. From the moment we take our first breath to the day, we draw our last. It is a journey filled with countless experiences, lessons, and emotions. From the tiniest of creatures to the tallest of trees, every living being is a part of this incredible journey. In this blog, we will explore the multifaceted essence of life through three unique essays.

Also Read : Essay on My Aim in Life

Table of Contents

• 1 Sample Essay on Life in 100 words
• 2 Sample Essay on Life in 200 words
• 3 Sample Essay on Life in 350 words

Sample Essay on Life in 100 words

Life is a collection of stories etched in time, each page filled with lessons that have been learned. The journey of life is a rollercoaster, with peaks of joy and valleys of despair. It teaches us self-reliance, adaptability, and the importance of cherishing every passing second.

As we navigate through unknown paths, we discover the true essence of our being – the passions that fuel us and the relationships that sustain us. Life is a gift, a canvas upon which we paint our purpose. Let us embrace each passing day, for they collectively make the masterpiece that is our life.

Sample Essay on Life in 200 words

Life is a river that flows with an ever-changing current, carrying us through seasons of growth and moments of introspection. It presents us with opportunities to evolve, to change ourselves, and emerge as a new. Life is a precious gift that surrounds us with wonders every day. We wake up to the warmth of the sun, the chirping of birds, and the love of our family. Each moment teaches us something valuable – to be kind, to learn, and to grow. 

As we play, study, and share, we make memories that become the colours of our life’s canvas. Life is about enjoying the little things – a smile, a hug, a blooming flower. The challenges we face are sometimes difficult but are also stepping stones that move and motivate us toward self-discovery. Life’s journey is not about reaching a destination, but about following the purpose and the richness of the path itself.

Also Read: Essay on My Hobby

Sample Essay on Life in 350 words

Life is a journey of discovery, where we encounter moments both big and small that shape our identity. From the joyful laughter of childhood to the trials of adolescence, each phase of life imparts unique lessons.

Each chapter unveils a new facet of our identity, inviting us to delve deeper into the essence of who we are. As we grow, we learn that life isn’t just about happiness; it’s about resilience in the face of difficulties. Challenges, like puzzles, help us develop problem-solving skills and the ability to adapt. Friends and family accompany us on this journey, providing companionship, support, and love.

Life, a masterpiece painted by time, is about making choices, experiences, and opportunities. In the early years, life is a playground of curiosity, where we explore the world with wonder-filled eyes. Learning becomes our companion, and mistakes are stepping stones to growth. 

Adolescence brings a whirlwind of change – physical, emotional, and psychological. It’s a time of self-discovery, as we unfold our passions, talents, and values. Amidst this transformation, friendships blossom, leaving an indelible mark on our hearts. Responsibilities increase, and we navigate through the maze of choices, from careers to relationships. Life becomes full of ambitions , dreams, setbacks, and achievements. Failures and successes become part of our narrative, driving us to strive harder and reach higher. 

In the sunset years, life’s pace may slow, but its essence deepens. Memories become treasures, and experiences turn into life lessons. Family becomes a stronghold of support, and the wisdom garnered over the years becomes a guiding light. Reflection becomes a companion, and gratitude fills our hearts as we look back on the incredible journey we’ve travelled.

In conclusion, life is a journey that encompasses the spectrum of human existence. From the innocence of childhood to the wisdom of old age, every phase contributes to our growth and understanding. Through challenges and triumphs, connections, and solitude, we weave a tale unique to ours. So, let’s embrace life’s twists and turns, for they shape us into the individuals we are meant to be.

Also Read: 100+ Rumi Quotes on Love, Life, Nature & the Universe

Ans. When children and students write a life essay, they have the opportunity to contemplate the wonder and significance of their being.

Ans. The pursuit of happiness is so connected in entirety that it is woven into our life, as we seek fulfillment. It is in the phase of low that we often find the strength to rise, and in the quiet moments of being ourselves, we hear our truest desires. 

Ans. A life story is a valuable personal account of both personal and professional experiences that are shared by the individual.

Related Reads

For more information on such interesting topics, visit our essay writing page and follow Leverage Edu.

Rajshree Lahoty

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Contact no. *

Connect With Us

30,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today.

Resend OTP in

Need help with?

Study abroad.

UK, Canada, US & More

IELTS, GRE, GMAT & More

Scholarship, Loans & Forex

Country Preference

New Zealand

Which English test are you planning to take?

Which academic test are you planning to take.

Not Sure yet

When are you planning to take the exam?

Already booked my exam slot

Within 2 Months

Want to learn about the test

Which Degree do you wish to pursue?

When do you want to start studying abroad.

January 2024

September 2024

What is your budget to study abroad?

How would you describe this article ?

Please rate this article

We would like to hear more.

Have something on your mind?

Make your study abroad dream a reality in January 2022 with

India's Biggest Virtual University Fair

Essex Direct Admission Day

Why attend .

Don't Miss Out

Essay on Science in Everyday Life

500 words essay on science in everyday life.

Science is a big blessing to humanity. Furthermore, science, in spite of some of its negativities, makes lives better for people by removing ignorance, suffering and hardship. Let us take a look at the impact of science in our lives with this essay on science in everyday life.

                                                                                                                   Essay On Science In Everyday Life

Benefits of Science

Science very efficiently plays the role of being a faithful servant of man. In every walk of life, science is there to serve us. We require the benefits of science whether in our home, in office, in a factory, or outside.

Gone are the days when only wealthy people could afford luxuries. Science has made many luxurious items of the past cheaper in price and has brought them within the reach of everybody.

Computer technology is one huge benefit of science. Nowadays, it would be unimaginable to consider living without computing technology.

A huge number of professions now rely totally on the computer and the internet. Besides, the computer and the internet have become our biggest source of entertainment in our everyday life.

Automobiles, an important scientific invention, has made our lives easy by significantly reducing everyday commuting time. The air conditioner is another scientific invention that has made our lives bearable and comfortable in the face of extreme weather conditions. Also, in the field of medical science, high-quality medicines are available that quickly remove any ailment that can happen in everyday life like headache, sprain, cough, allergy, stomach ache, fatigue etc.

Dark Side of Science

In spite of its tremendous benefits, there is a negative side to science. Science, unfortunately, has also done some disservice to humanity due to some of its inventions.

One of the biggest harms that science has brought to humanity is in the field of armament. Although some hail the invention of gunpowder as a great achievement, humanity must rue the day when this invention happened.

Steadily and relentlessly, the use and perfection of gunpowder have taken place in many new and more destructive weapons. As such, humanity now suffers due to weapons like shells, bombs, artillery, and guns. Such weapons threaten the everyday life of all individuals.

Another disservice of science has been the emission of pollution. A huge amount of radioactive pollution is emitted in various parts of the world where nuclear energy production happens. Such pollution is very dangerous as it can cause cancer, radioactive sickness, and cardiovascular disease.

Of course, who can ignore the massive amount of air pollution caused by automobiles, another scientific invention. Furthermore, automobiles are an everyday part of our lives that emit unimaginable levels of carbon monoxide in the air every year. Consequently, this causes various lung diseases and also contributes to global warming and acid rain.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of the Essay on Science in Everyday Life

There is no doubt that science has brought about one of the greatest benefits to mankind, in spite of some of its negativities. Furthermore, science certainly has made the most impact in adding comfort to our everyday lives. As such, we must always show utmost respect to scientists for their efforts.

FAQs for Essay on Science in Everyday Life

Question 1: What is the most important or main purpose of science?

Answer 1: The most important or main purpose of science is to explain the facts. Furthermore, there is no restriction in science to explain facts at random. Moreover, science systematizes the facts and builds up theories that give an explanation of such facts.

Question 2: Explain what is a scientific fact?

Answer 2: A scientific fact refers to a repeatable careful observation or measurement that takes place by experimentation or other means. Furthermore, a scientific fact is also called empirical evidence. Most noteworthy, scientific facts are key for the building of scientific theories.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

Talk to our experts

1800-120-456-456

• Essay on ‘Life’ for Students in English

About the Topic

Life is a single word with many different connotations and meanings. Above all, life is about more than just being; it's also about how one defines that existence. As a result, it's vital to think about life from several angles. Philosophers, academics, poets, and authors have written extensively about what it means to live and, more significantly, what are the essential elements that characterize one's existence. This exercise has, of course, been done in a variety of ways. While philosophers sought to understand the meaning and purpose of people's lives, poets and authors recorded the diversity of life at various times. As a result, life is likely to be more than exciting.

Life- Essay- Introduction

The adventure of living in the path of life. We are born, live our lives, and eventually pass away with time. We are attempting to shape our lives in this way. Everyone's life is different. Some people have a lot of problems in life, while others do not. Those who have never faced adversity in their lives have one perspective on life. Those that struggle in life have a different perspective. Life is frequently described as priceless. The various ways in which people seek to save lives reveal this even more clearly.

Every day, doctors and scientists try to discover innovative treatments that will help people live longer lives. Life is full of both joys and disasters. The ups and downs of life are what they're called. Without them, life is just a never-ending war that can be won at any time. To overcome one's grief, it is necessary to find happiness in one's life. Only then does life appear to be lovely? 

Students in Classes 1-6 can utilize this essay for their respective exams.0

FAQs on Essay on ‘Life’ for Students in English

1. What are tips to write a good essay on Life in English for students?

What is the best way to compose an essay? This is quite a difficult and important question asked by many students. For a variety of reasons, many different types of writing are considered "excellent." There is no such thing as a writing formula or programme. For students and expository writing, the traits listed above are very crucial.

Another attribute that isn't on this list yet is extremely significant is inventiveness. The best writing carries part of the author's personality and uniqueness. Follow the rules below, but always strive to make your writing your own.

An essay’s center should concentrate on a single obvious primary theme. Each paragraph should have a different core theme or topic sentence.

The main point of the work should be supported or expanded upon in each paragraph. The essential point of each paragraph should be identified and proven using examples, facts, and descriptions.

Each paragraph in an essay should be related to the main theme. A single point should be the focus of each paragraph.

An essay or paper that is properly organized should flow smoothly and "stick" together. To put it another way, the reader should be able to understand the text.

A paper should be written in whole sentences with few errors in grammatically correct standard English.

2. What is the importance of writing essays on life?

Writing essays helps students develop important abilities and functions in their education, making them more useful. One, writing essays allows students to practise and improve abilities that they can apply throughout their academic careers and into their careers. For example,

One can improve their reading and writing skills, as well as their capacity to think, organize thoughts, and communicate effectively.

Two, it enables students to develop a formal and orderly writing style that reliably conveys information. 

Three, it aids in the organization of your thoughts on what you're learning, the development of vocabulary, and the development of a distinct writing style.

Improving writing skills also aids in the development of the writing skills required to complete additional writing projects.

Writing about life will help students to understand the importance of life and it will lead them to do self retrospection and they can bring positive change in their life.

3. What lesson do students get about the quality of life by writing life essays?

Above all, optimism is the most effective strategy to improve one's quality of life. Job performance, self-confidence, creativity, and abilities all improve when people are optimistic. A positive individual may undoubtedly overcome significant obstacles.

Meditation is another effective approach to improve the quality of one's life. Meditation almost certainly allows a person to reflect on his or her past experiences. This way, one can avoid making the same mistakes as before. It also provides an individual with peace of mind.

Having a hobby is a great way to add meaning to your life. A person's life would be dull if they did not have a passion or interest. A fresh lease on life can be obtained by engaging in a hobby. It gives people fresh reasons to live and experience life.

4. What is the importance of living according to the essay?

One of the most significant aspects of Life is that it continues to move forward. This signifies that nothing is everlasting. As a result, there should be some justification for remaining gloomy. A joyous occasion will pass, just as a sad one will. Above all, no matter how bad things go, one must remain positive. This is so because we all are aware of the fact that nothing lasts forever. Every circumstance, occasion, and event will come to an end. This is unquestionably one of Life's wonders.

Probably a large percentage of people grumble that life is difficult. Many individuals mistakenly feel that pain is a synonym for life. Pain, on the other hand, makes us stronger. Pain is unquestionably a wonderful way to boost mental toughness. Pain, above all, enriches the mind.

5. Why should students consider essays on Life available on Vedantu?

Our English subject specialists wrote the life essay on the Vedantu website. It is grammatically correct, with simple and correct language usage. Because the format of the essay is designed in such a way that students do not find it complex, students will find it extremely easy to recall. Vedantu tries to provide all available assistance to students for them to do well in exams as well as study and understand. The essays on Vedantu are prepared with the goal of piquing students' interest in writing and encouraging them to write more and improve their skills.

Modern Technology’s Impact on Society Essay

Introduction, disadvantages and advantages of technology.

Modern technology has changed the world beyond recognition. Thanks to technology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, advances have been made that have revolutionized our lives. Modern man can hardly imagine his life without machines. Every day, new devices either appear, or existing ones are improved. Technology has made the world a better place, bringing people additional conveniences and opportunities for healthy living through advances in science. I believe that the changes that technology has brought to our lives are incredibly positive in many areas.

One of the fields where computing and the Web have introduced improvements is education. Machines can keep large volumes of information in a tiny space, reducing entire library shelves of literature to a single CD-ROM of content (Garsten & Wulff, 2020). The Web also acts as a huge learning tool, linking together data sites and enabling inquisitive individuals to seek out just about any subject conceivable. A single personal computer can hold hundreds of instructional programs, visual and audio tutorials, and provide learners with exposure to an immense quantity of content. In the classroom, virtual whiteboards are replacing conventional whiteboards, allowing teachers to provide interactive content for students and play instructional movies without the need for a projector.

Advanced technology has also dramatically and favorably changed the medical care sector. Developments in diagnostic instruments allow doctors to detect hidden diseases, improving the likelihood of successful therapy and saving lives. Advances in drugs and vaccines have been extremely influential, nearly eradicating diseases such as measles, diphtheria, and smallpox, which once caused massive epidemics (Garsten & Wulff, 2020). Modern medicine allows patients to treat chronic diseases that were once debilitating and life-threatening, such as diabetes and hypertension. Technological advances in medicine have helped improve the lives of people around the world. In addition, the latest technology has dramatically increased the productivity of various techniques.

The computers’ capability to resolve complicated mathematical calculations enables them to accelerate any problem that involves metrics or other calculations. Simulating physical processes on a computer can save time and money in any production situation, giving engineers the ability to simulate any design. Modern technology in transportation allows large distances to be traveled quickly. Electric trains, airplanes, cars, and even rockets are used for this purpose (Garsten & Wulff, 2020). In this way, technology brings positive change for people who love to travel.

Despite all the positive changes, there are also disadvantages to the active development of technology. For example, more and more people are becoming dependent on the computer, TV, or cell phone. They ignore their household chores, studies, or work and spend all their time in front of a laptop or TV screen (Garsten & Wulff, 2020). Because of this, people may become inactive and less willing to work, hoping that technology will do everything for them.

In conclusion, I believe that despite some of the disadvantages, the advantages of gadgets are much more significant. Modern technology saves time and allows people to enjoy life. Moreover, new technologies in medicine also contribute to a longer life expectancy of the population and the cure of diseases that were previously beyond the reach of doctors. In addition to medicine, technology has brought significant positive changes to the fields of communication, education, and engineering. Therefore, I believe that the positive impact of technological progress on human lives cannot be denied.

Garsten, C., & Wulff, H. (2020). New technologies at work: People, screens, and social virtuality . Routledge. Web.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, May 30). Modern Technology's Impact on Society. https://ivypanda.com/essays/modern-technologys-impact-on-society/

"Modern Technology's Impact on Society." IvyPanda , 30 May 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/modern-technologys-impact-on-society/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Modern Technology's Impact on Society'. 30 May.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Modern Technology's Impact on Society." May 30, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/modern-technologys-impact-on-society/.

1. IvyPanda . "Modern Technology's Impact on Society." May 30, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/modern-technologys-impact-on-society/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Modern Technology's Impact on Society." May 30, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/modern-technologys-impact-on-society/.

• Interactive Smartboard: Advantages & Disadvantages
• Quality Improvement Initiative
• Integration of the Modern Technological Solutions Into the Academic Field
• The Covid-19 Registry Importance
• Impact of Computer Technology on Economy and Social Life
• Technology Effect on the Disappearance of Specific Jobs
• Modern Communication Impacted by Technology
• Human Existence in Age of Informational Knowledge Work

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Modern Love

25 Modern Love Essays to Read if You Want to Laugh, Cringe and Cry

The popular column, which began in 2004, has become a podcast, a book and an Amazon Prime streaming series. Here are some of its greatest hits.

By Daniel Jones

Whether you’re new to Modern Love or a longtime fan, we think you’ll enjoy this collection of some of our most memorable essays. You’ll find some of our most read and most shared of all time, and others that really got readers talking (and tweeting, and sharing). We present, in no particular order, the quirky, the profound, the head scratching and the heartbreaking. (A handful of these essays and dozens more of our most memorable columns can also be found in the Modern Love anthology .)

To keep up on all things Modern Love — our weekly essays, podcast episodes and batches of Tiny Love Stories, along with other relationship-based reads from The Times — sign up for Love Letter , a weekly email. And check out the “Modern Love” television series , based on this column, on Amazon Prime Video.

1. No Sound, No Fury, No Marriage

By Laura Pritchett

After her peaceful marriage quietly dissolves, a woman comes to appreciate the vitality of conflict and confrontation.

2. Sometimes, It’s Not You, or the Math

By Sara Eckel

He didn’t care that I was 39 and hadn’t had a serious boyfriend in eight years.

3. Am I Gay or Straight? Maybe This Fun Quiz Will Tell Me

By Katie Heaney

A young woman seeks answers to her sexual orientation online, where the endless quizzes she takes deliver whatever label she wants.

4. First I Met My Children. Then My Girlfriend. They’re Related.

By Aaron Long

A former sperm donor, searching online, finds both offspring and love. 

5. What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage

By Amy Sutherland

I wanted — needed — to nudge my husband a little closer to perfect.

6. The 12-Hour Goodbye That Started Everything

By Miriam Johnson

A spurned woman confronts the question: When you lose love, should you even try to get over it?

7. During a Night of Casual Sex, Urgent Messages Go Unanswered

By Andrew Rannells

On one of the most consequential evenings of his life, a young man still finding himself wishes he had picked up the phone.

8. Let’s Meet Again in Five Years

By Karen B. Kaplan

They thought college was too soon for lifelong love, so they scheduled their next date for a little later — 60 months.

9. My Body Doesn’t Belong to You

By Heather Burtman

A young woman who finds herself being catcalled, followed and grabbed at wonders why some men seem to think a female body is public property.

10. Making a Marriage Magically Tidy

By Helen Ellis

At her husband’s suggestion (and with the wisdom of Marie Kondo), a recovering slob discovers the sexiness of cleanliness.

11. Loved and Lost? It’s O.K., Especially if You Win

By Veronica Chambers

It’s O.K. to fall deeply for one loser after another. It’s O.K. to show up at a guy’s house with a dozen roses and declare your undying affection.

12. To Stay Married, Embrace Change

By Ada Calhoun

It’s unrealistic to expect your spouse to forever remain the same person you fell in love with.

13. After 264 Haircuts, a Marriage Ends

By William Dameron

He acknowledged he was gay and left his wife, but he kept returning home for their monthly ritual.

14. In the Waiting Room of Estranged Spouses

By Benjamin Hertwig

An ex-soldier, rocked by infidelity, finds hope in a chance meeting with a mother and her young son.

15. What Sleeping With Married Men Taught Me About Infidelity

By Karin Jones

A divorced woman seeking no-strings-attached liaisons learns a sobering lesson about men and marriage.

16. Sharing a Cab, and My Toes

By Julia Anne Miller

During a taxi ride home a co-worker makes a surprising request.

17. On Tinder, Off Sex

By Ali Rachel Pearl

Living a life where secondary abstinence isn’t exactly a first choice.

18. No Labels, No Drama, Right?

By Jordana Narin

The winner of the 2015 Modern Love college essay contest, who was then a sophomore at Columbia University, writes about her generation’s reluctance to define relationships.

19. Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear

By Laura A. Munson

“I don’t love you anymore,” my husband said, but I survived the sucker punch.

20. You May Want to Marry My Husband

By Amy Krouse Rosenthal

After learning she doesn’t have long to live, a woman composes a dating profile for the man she will leave behind.

21. Somewhere Inside, a Path to Empathy

By David Finch

A man learns to deal with Asperger’s syndrome, with the help of his wife.

22. My Husband Is Now My Wife

By Diane Daniel

He took the first step in becoming a woman: surgery to help his face look more feminine.

23. Would My Heart Outrun Its Pursuer?

By Gary Presley

How might a woman love the millstone I believed myself to be?

24. When Eve and Eve Bit the Apple

By Kristen Scharold

A Christian woman’s identity is challenged by her love for church and another woman.

25. To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This

By Mandy Len Catron

What happens if you decide that falling in love is not something that happens to you, but something that you do?

Daniel Jones is the editor of Modern Love.

Modern Love can be reached at [email protected] .

Want more? Watch the trailer for the Modern Love TV show ; read past Modern Love columns and Tiny Love Stories ; listen to the Modern Love Podcast on iTunes , Spotify or Google Play Music ; check out the updated anthology “ Modern Love: True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption ;” and follow Modern Love on Facebook .

Stories of Love to Nourish Your Soul

After the Affair, the Reckoning:  While a mother takes care of her new baby, her husband takes up with another woman .

This Is Not the Relationship I Ordered:   Divorce leaves a woman with a surprising realization  about who has been the love of her life.

My Husband Is Two Years Older Than My Son:  A woman’s 19-year marital age gap feels treacherous — and is the best thing that’s ever happened to her .

Please Stay, Baby. Please?: The grief of miscarriage is largely invisible. And with each loss, the longing multiplies .

My Bad-Times-Only Boyfriend: Why is a woman’s long-ago fling suddenly acting as if he’s her husband ?

A Family Dinner With My Wife and Girlfriend: Learning to love two women at once  — one living with Alzheimer’s — is a challenge and a blessing.

Our Last, Impossible Conversation: Artificial intelligence gives a widow another chance to talk to her long-lost husband .

To tag bookmarks of specific page-positions, login or register for a free account.

To save notes, login or register for a free account.

Charles Baudelaire

The painter of modern life (le peintre de la vie moderne).

‘Meeting in the Park’ - Constantin Guys (French, 1802 – 1892) The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved

This work may be freely reproduced, stored and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose . Conditions and Exceptions apply.

• Introduction.
• The Painter of Modern Life.
• I. Beauty, Fashion and Happiness.
• II. The Portrayal of Manners.
• III. The Artist: A Denizen of the World, a Denizen of the Crowd, yet a Child.
• IV. Modernity.
• V. The Art of Memory (Mnemonic Art).
• VI. The Annals of War.
• VII. Pomp and Circumstance.
• VIII. The Military Man.
• IX. The Dandy.
• XI. In Praise of Adornment.
• XII. Women and ‘Girls’.
• XIII. Conveyances.

Introduction

‘The Painter of Modern Life’, Baudelaire’s essay, written in 1860 and published in instalments in Le Figaro in 1863, is his ‘manifesto’ of Modernity, a word that in French was first employed by Chateaubriand, though there are examples of prior use in English and elsewhere. Baudelaire’s poetry, often addressing the swiftly-changing and intense nature of contemporary, in particular urban, life, drew further attention to the term. An art critic of considerable note, Baudelaire in this essay uses Constantin Guys (his Monsieur G.) as an embodiment of the modern approach in the pictorial arts, as he ranges over various aspects of Modernity, a term hard to define but readily apparent in its manifestations including rapid commercial and technological development, the alienation of the individual amidst the crowd, and the questioning of inherited wisdom and practice. Baudelaire’s central importance is as the lightning-conductor of such ideas, and in particular the set of troubling emotions, associated with Modernity. His work reinforced the advent, in the pictorial arts, of Impressionism, and presaged that of Post-Impressionism, and Surrealism, while in poetry establishing the path which the Symbolist, and later the Surrealist, poets followed. The essential elements of Modernity that Baudelaire articulated in his complete works remain with us, not as a label for an artistic movement, but as fundamental aspects of secular, commercial, and technological urbanised society, with its practical and spiritual issues and challenges, the majority of which are as yet unresolved.

The Painter of Modern Life

I. beauty, fashion and happiness.

There are people in this world, even the world of artists, who go to the Louvre, pass, swiftly, before a host of paintings, full of interest though of a lower order, without giving them a glance, and plant themselves in reverie before a Titian or a Raphael, one of those popularised by the art of the engraver; then depart, satisfied, more than one saying ‘I know my Louvre,’ just as there are others who once having read Bossuet and Racine think they comprehend the history of literature.

Happily, righters of wrongs, critics, amateurs, the curious, appear from time to time to affirm that Raphael is not everything, Racine is not everything, that the minor poets contain things which are good, solid, pleasurable; and finally that however much we admire beauty in general, as expressed by the classical poets and artists, we are no less wrong in neglecting specific beauty, the beauty of circumstance and the play of manners.

I have to say that, for some years now, the world has shown itself somewhat improved in this respect. The value that amateur collectors attach these days to the pleasant coloured engravings of the last century proves that a much-needed reaction in public taste has occurred; Debucourt, the brothers Saint-Aubin, and many others have been entered in the dictionary of artists worthy of study. Yet they represent the past; it is to the painting of modern manners that I wish to address myself today. The past is interesting not only for the beauty extracted from it by those artists for whom it was their present, but also, being past, for its historical value. It is the same with the present. The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due not merely to the beauty with which it can be invested but also to its essential quality of being present.

I have before my eyes a series of fashion plates, commencing with the Revolution and ending, more or less, with the Consulate. Those modes of dress which appear ridiculous to unreflective people, serious people without true seriousness, have a dual charm, both artistic and historical. They are often very fine, and executed with spirit, but what to me is every bit as important, and what I am pleased to find in all or almost of them, is the morality and aesthetic of their age. The idea of beauty Humanity creates for itself, imprints itself on all its attire, rumples or stiffens its clothing, rounds out or aligns its gestures, and even, in the end, penetrates, subtly, its facial features. Humanity ends by resembling that which it aspires to be. Those engraved forms can be viewed as works of beauty or ugliness, of ugliness as caricatures, of beauty as ancient statues.

The women dressed in those costumes resembled one or the other, to a greater or lesser degree, according that is to the degree of poetry or vulgarity by which they were marked. Living flesh rendered flowing what to us seems too rigid. The spectator’s imagination can even today impart a stir or rustle to this tunic and that shawl . One day, perhaps, a play will be performed in some theatre, in which we shall see the resurrection of those costumes dressed in which our ancestors found themselves every bit as enchanting as we ourselves in our poor garments (which possess their own grace, in truth, but rather of a moral and spiritual nature), and if they are then worn and brought to life by intelligent actors and actresses we will be astonished that we mocked them so foolishly. The past, without losing a pleasing air of fantasy, will recover the light and movement of life, and become the present.

If an impartial person were to leaf through in turn all the modes of fashion from the first age of France to the present day, they would find nothing to shock or surprise. The transitions would be as abundantly evidenced as they are in the ranks of the animal kingdom. Not a single gap, thus, not a single surprise. And if to the vignette representing each epoch were added the philosophical thought with which it was most occupied, and by which it was most agitated, the memory of which thought the vignette inevitably invokes, it would be seen that a profound harmony reigns in all the elements of its history, and that even in those centuries that seem to us the most monstrous and insane, the undying appetite for beauty, has always found its satisfaction.

This grants us a fine opportunity, in fact, to establish a rational and historically-grounded theory of beauty, as opposed to the theory of a unique and absolute beauty; to demonstrate that beauty is always, inevitably, of a dual composition, even though the impression it produces is unified; for the difficulty of discerning the varying elements of beauty within the unity of impression in no way obviates the need for variety in its composition. Beauty is formed of an eternal and invariable element which is exceedingly difficult to quantify, and a relative and circumstantial element which will embody, if you like, aspect by aspect or all at once, the epoch, its manners, its morality, its passion. Without this second element which is like the delightful, seductive, appetising icing on the divine cake, the first element would be indigestible, beyond our appreciation, neither adapted nor suited to human nature. I defy anyone to reveal a single instance of beauty that does not contain these two elements.

I shall select, if you wish, two extreme instances in our history. In hieratic art the duality is visible at first glance; the element of eternal beauty only reveals itself with the permission and under the rule of the religion to which the artist adheres. In the most frivolous work of a refined artist, belonging to one of those epochs which we denote, in our immense vanity, as civilised, the duality is equally revealed; the eternal element of beauty will be, at the same time, hidden and expressed, if not by the fashion of the age, at least by the particular temperament of the artist. The duality of art is a fatal consequence of the duality of humankind. Consider, if you will, that the eternal element exists as the soul of art, and the variable element as its body. That is why Stendhal, an impertinent spirit, teasing, repugnant even, but one whose impertinences are a useful spur to reflection, approached the truth more closely than many another, in saying: ‘ Beauty is no more than the promise of happiness. ’ Doubtless that definition overshoots the mark. It renders beauty excessively subject to the infinitely variable ideal of happiness. It strips beauty too readily of its aristocratic quality; but it possesses the great merit of separating itself decisively from the errors of the academicians.

I have explained these things more than once before; these lines will have said enough on the subject, for those who enjoy these diversions of abstract thought. But I know that my French audience have, for the most part, little taste for these, and I myself am impatient to embark upon the positive and substantial elements of my subject.

II. The Portrayal of Manners

For the portrayal of manners, the representation of bourgeois life, and the spectacle of fashion, the most expeditious and least costly means are evidently the best. The more beauty the artist instils in it, the more precious will be his work; but there is in the trivialities of life, in the daily metamorphosis of external things, a rapid movement that demands from the artist an equal speed of execution. The multi-coloured engravings of the eighteenth century have once more attracted the attention of the fashionable, as I was saying but now; pastels, etchings, aquatints have, one by one, contributed their contingents to that immense dictionary of modern life distributed throughout the libraries, among the portfolios of collectors, and behind the windows of the meanest of shops. And then lithography appeared, instantly showing itself as most aptly suited to this enormous task, so trivial at first sight. We have some veritable monuments in this genre. The works of Gavarni and Daumier have rightly been named as complementary to the Comédie Humaine . Balzac himself, I am more than convinced, was not far from adopting this idea, which is all the more valid, in that the genius of the painter of manners is of a mixed nature, that is say one into which there enters a strong element of the literary spirit. Observer, flâneur (saunterer), philosopher; call such a one what you will, you will certainly be led, in characterising this artist, to employ an epithet that you would not apply to the painter of eternal, or at least more long-lasting subjects, those of a heroic or religious nature. Sometimes he is a poet, more often he is closer to being a novelist or moralist; he is the painter of the circumstantial, and all which it suggests of the eternal. Every country, to its delight and glory, has possessed such artists. To Daumier and Gavarni, in our present epoch, being the first names that come to mind, one may add Devéria, Maurin, and Numa, historians of the more questionable charms of the Restoration, Wattier, Tassaert, and Eugène Lami, the latter almost English in his love of aristocratic elegance, and even Trimolet and Traviès, those chroniclers of poverty and the humble life.

III. The Artist: A Denizen of the World, a Denizen of the Crowd, yet a Child

Today I would like to tell the public about a singular man, of an originality so decided and powerful that it is sufficient to itself and requires no approbation. Not one of his drawings is signed, if by a signature you mean the few, readily imitated, letters that spell a name, and which so many other artists add, ostentatiously, to the base of their most trivial sketches. But all his works are signed with his brilliant spirit, and collectors, having viewed and appreciated them, easily recognise them from the description I am about to give. A great lover of crowds and incognitos, Monsieur C.G. ( Constantin Guys ) takes originality to the furthest point of modesty. Mr. Thackeray, who, as is known, is deeply interested in works of art, and who himself designs the illustrations for his novels, mentioned Monsieur G. one day in a lesser-known London journal. This enraged him, as though it were an attack upon his virtue. More recently, when he learnt that I intended to pen an appreciation of his spirit and talent, he begged me, in a most imperious manner, to suppress his name, and to speak of his works as if they came from an anonymous hand. I shall bow, humbly, to this strange request. We shall feign to believe, the reader and I, that Monsieur G does not exist, and concern ourselves with his drawings and watercolours, for which he professes a patrician disdain, as do those scholars who pass judgement on rare historical documents, preserved by chance, whose authors remain eternally unknown.  We will even suppose, to satisfy my conscience completely, that all I have to say regarding his nature, so strangely and mysteriously brilliant, is more or less genuinely suggested by the works in question; pure poetical hypothesis, conjecture, the work of my imagination.

Monsieur G. is old. Rousseau, it is said, started writing at forty-two years of age. It was at about that age, perhaps, that Monsieur G. obsessed with all the images crowding his brain, had the audacity to fling ink and colour onto a blank sheet of paper. To tell the truth, he drew like a barbarian, like a child, impatient with the clumsiness of his fingers, and the disobedience of his implement. I have viewed a large number of these primitive barbarous scribbles, and I declare that the majority of those who understand, or pretend to understand art, are blameless for not having divined the latent genius inhabiting those shadowy preliminaries. Today, Monsieur G. who has discovered, by his own sole efforts, all the little tricks of his trade, and who has undertaken, without guidance, his own education, has become a powerful master, in his own manner, and has retained of his own initial artlessness only that which was needed to add an unexpected seasoning to his rich gifts. When he encounters one of these youthful attempts of his, he tears it to bits, or burns it, with a most assuming display of embarrassment.

For ten years I desired to make Monsieur G’s acquaintance, who is, by nature, a great traveller and cosmopolitan. I knew he had long been employed by an English illustrated journal, and that he had published therein engravings of his travel-sketches (done in Spain, Turkey, the Crimea). Since then I have seen a considerable quantity of such drawings, improvised in those same places, and thus been able to read a minutely detailed account of the Crimean campaign, preferable indeed to any other. The same journal also published numerous compositions by the same hand, always unsigned, depicting new ballets and operas. When, at last, I met him, I saw at once that I had to do not with an artist exactly, but rather a denizen of the world . Understand here, I beg you, the term artist in a very restricted sense, and the term denizen of the world in a very broad one. Denizen of the world , that is to say denizen of the whole world, one who understands the world and the mysterious and legitimate reasons for its many behaviours; artist , that is but to say specialist, a man attached to his palette as a serf is to the soil. Monsieur G. does not like to be called an artist. Is he not right, in a sense? He is interested in the whole world; he wishes to know, understand, appreciate all that takes place on the surface of our globe. The artist lives little of his life in the world of politics and morals. He who lives in the Breda quarter ignores what comes to pass in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Save for two or three exceptions, whom it is pointless to name, most artists are, it must be said, highly-skilled brutes, mere artisans, village intellects with the brains of peasants. Their conversation, necessarily limited to a very small circle, proves quickly unbearable to the denizen of the world; in spirit, a citizen of the universe.

Thus, to enter into an understanding of Monsieur G. take note, at once, of this: that curiosity may be considered the starting-point for his genius.

Do you recall a picture (it is a picture, in truth!), drawn by the most powerful pen of this era ( that of Edgar Allan Poe ), which has for its title ‘ The Man of the Crowd ’? Behind a café window, a convalescent, contemplating the crowd with pleasure, mingles, in thought, with all the thoughts stirring about him. Recently returned from death’s shadow, he breathes in, with delight, all the essences and odours of life; since he has been on the point of total oblivion, he remembers and wishes, ardently, to remember everything. Finally, he flings himself into the crowd, in pursuit of some unknown, whose physiognomy, glimpsed in the blink of an eye, has bewitched him. Curiosity has become a fatal, irresistible passion!

Imagine an artist who was always, spiritually, in that convalescent’s state, and you will hold the key to Monsieur G’s character.

Now, convalescence is like a return to childhood. The convalescent, like the child, enjoys, in the highest degree, the ability to interest himself keenly in things, even those which appear the most trivial. Let us return, if possible, by means of a retrospective effort of the imagination, to our earliest, most youthful impressions, and we will recall that they had a singular relationship to those impressions, so vividly coloured, which we later received following a physical illness, provided that illness left our mental faculties pure and intact. The child sees everything as novelty ; he is forever intoxicated. Nothing more closely resembles what we call inspiration than the joy with which a child absorbs form and colour. I dare to go further; I affirm that inspiration is somewhat akin to convulsion , and that every sublime thought is accompanied by a nervous shock, more or less violent in nature, which strikes the deepest part of the brain. The man of genius has strong nerves; those of the child are weak. In the former, reason occupies a significant place; in the latter, sensibility occupies almost the whole being. But genius is simply childhood recovered at will, a childhood now equipped for self-expression, with mature faculties and an analytic spirit which permit him to set in order the mass of raw material he has involuntarily accumulated. It is to this profound and joyous curiosity that one must attribute the fixed and animalistically ecstatic gaze of children confronted by the new , whatever it might be, a face or a landscape, light, gilding, colour, lustrous materials, or the enchantment of beauty enhanced by cosmetics. One of my friends told me that, when he was a small child, he was often present when his father dressed himself, and that, with a mixture of amazement and delight, he would contemplate the muscular arms, the transitions of colour in the pink and yellow tints of the skin, and the bluish network of veins. The tableau of external life, had already filled him with awe, and seized his brain. Already, form obsessed and possessed him. Destiny had already revealed, precociously, the tip of its nose. His damnation was certain. Need I add that the child is today a celebrated painter?

I begged you, a moment ago, to consider Monsieur G. as an eternal convalescent; to complete your conception of him, consider him also as a man-child, a man possessed at each instant with the genius of infancy, that is to say a genius for whom no aspect of life has been rendered dull .

I have said that I was reluctant to call him simply an artist, and that he himself declined that title, with a modesty touched with aristocratic reserve. I would willingly name him a dandy , and own to several good reasons for that; since the word dandy implies a quintessence of character and a subtle understanding of the whole moral mechanism of this world; yet on the other hand the dandy aspires to insensitivity, and it is in this that Monsieur G. dominated himself by an insatiable passion, that of seeing and feeling, parts company, forcefully, from dandyism.

‘ Amabam amare: I love to love’ , said Saint Augustine. ‘I love passion, passionately’ Monsieur G. might choose to say. The dandy is blasé, or pretends to be so, for reasons of policy and caste. Monsieur G. has a horror of blasé people. He is a master of that most difficult art (refined spirits will comprehend me) of being sincere without appearing ridiculous. I would happily award him the title of philosopher, to which he has more than one right, if his excessive love of things visible, tangible, condensed to their plastic state, did not inspire in him a certain repugnance to all that forms the impalpable realm of the metaphysician. Let us be content to consider him then as a purely pictorial moralist, akin to La Bruyère.  

The crowd is his domain, as the air is that of the birds, and the water the fishes. His passion, and profession, is to espouse the crowd . For the perfect flâneur ( saunterer ), for the passionate observer, it is an immense joy to take up one’s dwelling among the multitude, amidst undulation, movement, the fugitive, the infinite. To be absent from home and yet feel oneself everywhere at home; to view the world, to be at the heart of the world, and yet hidden from the world, such are some of the least pleasures of those independent spirits, passionate and impartial, that language can only inadequately define. The spectator is a prince who rejoices everywhere in his incognito. The lover of life makes the world his family, like the lover of the fair sex who makes a family from all those beauties found, or to be found, or never to be found; or, like the picture-lover, lives in the enchanted company of dreams painted on canvas. Thus, the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as into an immense reservoir of electrical energy. One might compare him, also, to a mirror, immense as that crowd; to a kaleidoscope endowed with consciousness which, with its every movement, conveys the multiplicity of life, and the grace in motion of every element of that life. He is an ‘I’, insatiable in his appetite for the ‘not-I’, who at every instance renders it, and expresses it in images more vibrant than life itself, which is forever unstable and fugitive. ‘Any man’, Monsieur G. said one day, in the midst of one of those conversations which he illuminates with intense gaze and evocative gesture, ‘any man, not crushed by one of those sorrows so great as to rob him of all his faculties, who can be bored at the heart of a multitude is an idiot! An idiot! And one whom I despise!’  

When Monsieur G. on waking opens his eyes to see the sun making its assault, beating on his window-pane,

he cries, remorsefully and regretfully: ‘What an imperious command! What a fanfare of light! Several hours of light, everywhere, already gone! Light, lost to my sleep! How many brightly-lit things I might have seen that I have failed to see! And he goes out! And he watches the river of life in its flow, so majestic, so brilliant. He admires the eternal beauty and the amazing harmony of life in capital cities, a harmony so providentially maintained amidst the tumult of human liberty. He contemplates the landscapes of the great metropolis, landscapes of stone, caressed by the fog, or struck by gusts of sunlight. He delights in fine carriages, proud horses, the dazzling smartness of the grooms, the dexterity of the footmen, the flowing movement of the women, the beautiful children, happy to be alive and finely-dressed; in a word, in universal life. If a fashion, the cut of a garment, has been slightly altered, if ribbon in bows, if curls have been dethroned by cockades, if the bavolet ( the neck-hanging at the back of a bonnet ) has been enlarged, if the chignon ( a coil of hair at the back of the head ) is a fraction nearer the nape of the neck, if the waist is raised, the skirt fuller, believe that his eagle eye will already have divined it, from an enormous distance. A regiment passes by, on its way perhaps to the ends of the earth, sending into the air of the boulevards its fanfares, as light and lively, as hope; and behold, the eye of Monsieur G. has already inspected the arms, the allure, the physiognomy of that troop. Glittering harnesses, determined glances, heavy solemn moustaches, all this enters into him, pell-mell; and in a few moments the resulting poem is virtually composed. Behold how his soul is alive with the soul of that regiment marching like a single creature, a proud image of joy in obedience!

But now evening has fallen. It is that strange and uncertain hour when the curtains of the heavens are drawn and the cities are illumined. The gas-light stains the purple of sunset. Honest or dishonest, rational or mad, all say to themselves: ‘At last, the day is done!’ The wicked and the wise think of pleasure, and each hastens to their chosen place to drink the cup of forgetfulness. Monsieur G. will be the last to linger, wherever may be a gleam of light, an echo of poetry, a tremor of life, a vibration of music; wherever a passion may pose for his eye, wherever the natural and the conventional reveal themselves in a peculiar beauty, wherever the sun lights the brief joys of the depraved creature ! ‘Behold, a day well-employed, indeed!’ a certain reader, whom we all know, remarks to himself ‘every one of us has sufficient genius to fill his day in the same fashion.’ No! Few are gifted with the ability to see; even fewer possess the power of expression. Now, at a time when others sleep, he is bowed over his table, darting the same look at a sheet of paper he directed a moment ago towards external things, skirmishing with his crayon, his pen, his brush, splashing his glass of water towards the ceiling, wiping his pen on his shirt, urgent, violent, active, as if he fears the images might escape him, contentious though alone, elbowing himself on. And those external things are reborn on paper, lifelike and more than lifelike, beautiful and more than beautiful, singular and endowed with the liveliness of their creator’s soul. The phantasmagoria has been drawn from nature. All the material that the memory has burdened itself with is ranked, arranged, harmonised, and subjected to that imposed idealisation which is the result of a childlike perception, that is to say an intense and magical perception, by reason of its innocence!  

IV. Modernity

So away he goes, hastening, searching. What does he seek? Of a surety, this man, such as I have depicted him, endowed with an active imagination, endlessly voyaging over the great desert of humanity , has a loftier aim than that of the mere flâneur, a more general aim than the fleeting pleasures of circumstance. He is in search of something that we may be permitted to call modernity , since there seems no better word to express the idea in question. He strives, for his own part, to extract from the fashionable whatever it may contain of the poetical within the historical, to draw the eternal from the transitory. If we cast a glance over our contemporary art exhibitions, we are struck by the general tendency among artists to dress all their subjects in the costumes of the past. Almost all of them employ the fashions and furnishings of the Renaissance, as David employed the fashions and furnishings of ancient Rome. There is this difference however, that David, having chosen specifically Greek or Roman subjects, could do no other than dress them in the ancient manner, while the painters of today, choosing subjects of a general nature applicable to all epochs, insist on clothing them in the costumes of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the Orient. This is evidently the sign of great idleness; since it is easier to decide, at the outset, that everything about the modes of dress of an epoch is ugly, rather than applying oneself to extracting from it the mysterious beauty it might perhaps contain, however minimal or slight that might be. Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, that half of art of which the other is the eternal and immutable. Every old master possessed his own modernity; the vast majority of fine paintings left to us by former generations are clothed in the costumes of their era. They are perfectly harmonious because costumes, coiffures, and even the gestures, glances, smiles (every epoch has its own bearing, glance and smile) form a whole filled with vitality. This element, transitory and fugitive, whose metamorphoses are so frequent, you must on no account despise or ignore. In supressing it, you fall, unavoidably, into the depths of an abstract and undefinable beauty, like that of the sole woman before the primal fall. If you substitute for the costume of the age that necessity requires, an alternative, you create a nonsense, which is only excusable in the case of some masquerade demanded by fashion. Thus, the goddesses, the nymphs, the sultanas, of the eighteenth century, are still convincing portraits, morally speaking.

It is doubtless excellent to study the old masters so as to comprehend the art of painting, but it can be no more than a superfluous exercise if your aim is to understand the nature of present-day beauty. The draperies of Rubens or Veronese will not teach you how to depict moire antique , satin à la reine , or any other fabric of our age, supported, balanced upon, crinoline or starched muslin petticoats. The texture and weave are not the same as those of the materials of ancient Venice, or those worn at Catherine’s court. In addition, the cut of the skirt and bodice is completely dissimilar, the pleats are arranged according to a different system, and finally the gesture and carriage of a woman of today gives her dress a life and appearance unlike those of a woman of the past. In short, for any modernity to prove worthy of becoming antiquity it is necessary for the mysterious beauty which human life accidentally sets there to be extracted. It is to this task, in particular, that Monsieur G. applies himself.

I have said that every age has its own bearing, glance, and gesture. It is above all in a vast gallery of paintings (such as Versailles, for example) that this proposition may readily be verified. But the principle may be taken further. Within the entity we call a nation, the professions, classes, and centuries introduce variety, not only in gestures and manners but also in the actual shape of the face. Certain types of nose, mouth, forehead, will be found to represent a period of time which I do not pretend to determine but which could certainly be subject to calculation. Such considerations are not sufficiently familiar to our portrait-painters; and the great failing of Monsieur Ingres, in particular, is that he seeks to impose on every type that poses before his eyes a perfection, more or less despotic, derived from the repertoire of classical ideas.

In a matter of this nature, it would easy, and indeed legitimate, to argue a priori . The perpetual correlation between what we term the soul and what we term the body explains, most clearly, how everything which is material, or flows from the spirit, represents, and will always represent, the spirit from which it derives. If a patient and scrupulous painter, but one of limited imagination, having to paint a present-day courtesan, is inspired (such is the consecrated word) by a courtesan of Titian’s or Raphael’s, it is all too likely that he will produce a work which is false, ambiguous, obscure. By the study of a masterwork of that period and genre he will learn neither the attitude, nor the glance, nor the smile, nor the vital aspect of any one of those creatures whom the dictionary of fashion has successively classified under the coarse or playful titles of impures , kept women , lorettes and biches .

The same criticism may be applied rigorously to the study of the soldier, the dandy, even animals, dogs or horses, all that composes the external life of an age. Woe to any who study the antique for anything other than the artistry itself, the logic, the general method! By immersing in it too thoroughly, they will lose all memory of the present, and renounce the rights and privileges afforded by circumstance, for almost al our originality comes from the stamp which the age imprints on our sensations. The reader will comprehend that I could readily prove my assertions with reference to many other instances than women. What say you, for example, to a marine painter (I take the hypothesis to its extreme) who, required to reproduce the sober and elegant beauty of a modern ship, wearied his eyes in studying the over-burdened, involved shape, the monumental stern of the antique vessel and complex rigging of the sixteenth century? What, again, would you think of an artist you had charged with painting a thoroughbred, celebrated in the sacred annals of the turf, if he had restricted his observations to museums, if he had been content to view the horse in the galleries of the past, in Van Dyck, Bourguignon, or Van der Meulen?

Monsieur G., guided by nature, tyrannised by circumstance, has followed an altogether different path. He began by contemplating life itself, and only later concerned himself with acquiring the means of expressing life. This has resulted in a striking originality in which what remains of the barbarous or naive appears as a new proof of his faithfulness to the impression, as a flattering compliment paid to truth. For the majority of us, especially people involved in business affairs, in whose sight nature exists not, unless it is useful as applied to those affairs, the marvellous reality of life is singularly diluted. Monsieur G. absorbs it endlessly; with it, his memory and his sight are filled.   

V. The Art of Memory (Mnemonic Art)

That word barbarous which has emerged too often, perhaps, from my pen, might lead some people to believe that we are concerned here with unfinished drawings which only the spectator’s imagination can transform to perfect things. That would be to misunderstand me. I am speaking of an inevitable barbarousness, a childlike synthesis, which is often visible in perfect art (such as that of Mexico, Egypt, Nineveh), and which derives from the need to view things broadly, and to consider them, above all, in their combined effect. It is not superfluous to observe here that all those artists whose vision creates synthesis by abridging have been accused of being barbarous, for example Monsieur Corot, who first applies himself to tracing the principal lines of a landscape, its bones, its physiognomy. Thus, Monsieur G. faithfully transmits his true impressions, marking, with instinctive energy, the salient or luminous features of an object (salient or luminous perhaps from the dramatic point of view), or its principal characteristics, sometimes even with a degree of exaggeration that aids human memory; and the spectator’s imagination, submitting in turn to this most despotic of mnemonic devices, sees, with great clarity, the impression produced on Monsieur G.’s mind by external things. The spectator is here the translator of a translation always clear and intoxicating.

There is one circumstance which adds greatly to the vital force of this legendary translation of external life. I speak of Monsieur G.’s method of drawing. He draws from memory, and not from the model, save for those instances (his drawings of the Crimean War, for example) where he has urgent need of taking immediate and hasty note of the principal lines of his subject, in order to capture them. In fact, all good and true artists draw from the image imprinted on their brains, and not from nature. If one presents us with the admirable sketches of Raphael, Watteau, and many another, as counter-examples, we would reply that those are notes, very detailed ones, it is true, but simply notes. When the true artist embarks on the definitive execution of a work, its model would be more an embarrassment than an aid. It may even be that artists like Daumier and Monsieur G., long accustomed to exercising their memory and filling it with images, confronted with the model and the multiplicity of details which comprise it, find their primary faculty stunned, and likewise paralysed.  

Thus, a duel is initiated between the desire to grasp every detail, to forget nothing, and the faculty of memory which has formed the habit of absorbing, in a lively manner, the general colour and outline, the arabesque of contours. Artists possessing a perfect feeling for form, but accustomed to exercising their memory and imagination above all, will find themselves assailed by a riot of details, all clamouring for justice with the fury of a crowd enamoured of absolute equality. Justice is everywhere trampled underfoot; all harmony is destroyed, sacrificed; many a triviality becomes an enormity; many a trifle a usurper. The more the artist thinks to treat the details with impartiality, the greater the anarchy. Whether myopic, or long-sighted, all sense of hierarchy or subordination vanishes. It is an outcome often present in the works of one of our most fashionable painters, whose faults moreover are so well suited to the faults of the masses that they have served his fame in a singular manner. The analogy may likewise be divined in the art of acting, an art so mysterious, so profound, yet fallen today into a mire of confusion. Monsieur Frédérick-Lemâitre builds a role with the breadth and amplitude of genius. However bright with luminous details his performance, it is always sculptural, a work of synthesis. While Monsieur Bouffé creates his roles with a precision myopic and bureaucratic. With him all is lightning, but nothing makes itself visible, nothing demands retention in the memory.

Thus, two things are revealed in Monsieur G.’s execution of his works: the first an intense effort of memory that resurrects and evokes, a memory that says to each thing: ‘Lazarus, arise!’ the other a fire, an intoxication of the pencil or the brush, seeming almost a frenzy. It is the fear of not working swiftly enough, of letting the phantom escape before the synthesis can be extracted and seized upon; the dreadful fear that grips all great artists, and drives them to appropriate, so passionately, all the means of expression so the mind’s commands may never be perverted by the hand’s hesitations, and that above all the execution, the ideal execution, of the work may be as unconscious as sp ontaneous as is the process of digestion to the mind of a healthy man who has dined. Monsieur G. begins with a few light indications in pencil, which do no more than mark the position objects must occupy in space. The principle planes are then indicated in tinted wash, vague masses, lightly coloured at first, but revisited later and charged, repeatedly, with more intense colours. At the last moment, the contours of objects are outlined, definitively, in ink. Without seeing them, one could not imagine the surprising effects he attains by this method, so simple, and almost elementary. It possesses this incomparable advantage, that no matter at what stage of its execution it may be, each design has a sufficiently finished air; call it a study if you will, but it is a perfect study. All the values are in complete harmony, and if he wishes to develop them further, they will march in unison towards the degree of perfection desired. He prepares, thus, twenty drawings at a time, with an impatience and a delightful joy, amusing even to himself. The sketches pile up, heaped in tens, hundreds, thousands. From time to time he reviews them, leafing through them, examining them, and then selects a few, whose intensity he more or less augments, deepening the shadows and progressively heightening the lights.

He attaches enormous importance to his backgrounds, which, vigorous or slight, are always of a quality and nature suited to the figures. The tonal scale and general harmony are strictly observed, with a genius that derives rather from instinct than study. For Monsieur G. possesses, by nature, that mysterious talent of the colourist, a true gift that study may augment but which it is, of itself, I think, powerless to create. To say all in a single word, our singular artist expresses at once the gestures and attitudes, solemn or grotesque, of living things, with their luminous explosion in space.

VI. The Annals of War

Bulgaria, Turkey, the Crimea, Spain, have provided a grand feast for the eyes of Monsieur G. or rather of that imaginary artist we have agreed to call Monsieur G. For I am reminded, from time to time, that I have promised myself to maintain, the better to preserve his modesty, the pretence that he does not exist. I have pored over his archives of the Eastern War (battlefields littered with funereal debris, baggage trains, shipments of cattle and horses), astonishing tableaux vivants , traced from life itself, precious elements. picturesque in nature, that many a renowned painter, in the same circumstances, would have foolishly neglected; though, in that regard, I would willingly make an exception of Monsieur Horace Vernet, in truth a reporter rather than essentially a painter, with whom Monsieur G., a more subtle artist, has manifest affinities, if you choose to consider him simply as an archivist of life. I can affirm that no newspaper, no written account, no book has so readily expressed in all its painful detail and grim entirety, this great military epic of the Crimea. The eye wanders, in turn, from the banks of the Danube to the shores of the Bosphorus; to Cape Kherson; over the plain of Balaclava; over the fields of Inkerman; into the encampments of the English, French, Turks and Piedmontese; through the streets of Constantinople; among the hospital wards, and amidst every religious and military ceremonial.

One of these compositions most deeply imprinted on my mind, represents: The Consecration of a Burial-Ground at Scutari by the Bishop of Gibraltar . The picturesque character of the scene, which lies in the contrast between the Eastern setting and the Western attitudes and uniforms of those taking part, is realised in a striking manner, evocative, and pregnant with dreams. The soldiers and officers possess the ineradicable air of gentlemen , resolute and yet reserved, that they bear with them to the ends of the earth, as far as the garrisons of the Cape colony, and the cantonments of India: the English clergymen give the vague impression of being beadles or money-changers who have dressed themselves in caps and gowns.

Here we are at Schumla, with Omar Pasha: Turkish hospitality, pipes and coffee; the guests all disposed on divans, holding pipes the length of speaking-tubes, whose bowls rest on the ground at their feet, to their lips. Here we view The Kurds at Scutari , strange-looking troops, whose aspect makes one dream of some invading barbarian horde; her are the Bashi-bazouks, no less singular, with their European officers, Hungarian or Polish, whose dandified physiognomies contrast oddly with the baroque Oriental character of their men.

I recall a magnificent design, showing a lone standing figure, a large and robust man, with an air at once pensive, unconcerned, and bold; in top-boots extending above his knees; his uniform hidden beneath a vast, heavy, tightly-buttoned greatcoat. Through the smoke from his cigar, he gazes at the threatening, mist-bound horizon; one arm, wounded, is bound in a sling. At its base I read these words, in English, inscribed in pencil: Canrobert on the battlefield of Inkerman. Taken on the spot .

And who is this cavalryman with the white moustaches, his expression so vividly depicted, who, head raised, has the air of savouring all the dread poetry of the battlefield, while his horse, picks its way, sniffing the ground, among the corpses with shrunken faces, piled, feet in the air, in strange attitudes? At the foot of this drawing, in one corner, can be read these words, again in English: Myself at Inkerman .

I perceive Monsieur Baraguay d’Hilliers, with the Seraskier, reviewing the artillery at Beshiktash. I have rarely seen a more lifelike military portrait engraved by a bolder or more spirited pen.

A name, of sinister repute since the Syrian disasters, offers itself to my view: Ahmed Pasha, General in Chief to the Caliphate, standing with members of his staff in front of his hut, receiving two European officers. Despite the amplitude of his Turkish paunch, Ahmed Pasha displays, in face and attitude, the grand aristocratic air that generally applies to the dominant races.

The Battle of Balaclava is represented several times in this intriguing collection, and under varying aspects. Among the most striking here is that historic cavalry-charge celebrated by the heroic trumpet of Alfred Tennyson, the English poet laureate; a horde of cavalry galloping at prodigious speed towards the horizon amidst dense clouds of artillery smoke. In the background, the landscape is barred by a line of verdant hills.

From time to time, religious scenes relieve the eye saddened by all this chaos of gunpowder and turbulent slaughter. In the midst of a varied group of English soldiers, among whom the picturesque uniforms of the kilted Scots are most striking, an Anglican priest conducts the Sunday service; three drums, the one supported by two others, serve him for a pulpit.  

In truth, it is difficult, simply with a pen, to translate this poem made of a thousand sketches, a poem so vast and so complicated, or express the intoxication released by all this picturesque detail, often melancholy but never sentimental, gathered on several hundred pages, whose stains and lacerations reveal, in their own way, the confusion and tumult, amidst which the artist set there his memories of the day. Each evening, the courier would carry Monsieur G.’s notes and drawings to London, and often he would entrust thus to the post more than ten sketches drawn on the thinnest of paper, which the engravers and the journal’s subscribers eagerly awaited.

Now, ambulances appear, in sketches where the very atmosphere seems sick, sad and heavy; each litter therein seems a bed of pain; now, the hospital at Pera, where in conversation with two nuns, tall, pallid, and erect like figures by Le Sueur, I see a visitor in casual dress, identified by this curious legend in English: My humble self . And now along rough, twisting paths, strewn with debris from a battle already long past, beasts of burden, mules, donkeys, horses, pass by slowly, bearing on their backs, in pairs of crudely-made chairs, the pale and inert wounded. Amidst the snowy waste, camels, of majestic bearing, heads high, led by Tartars, bear provisions or munitions of every kind: it is a whole world of warfare, alive, busy, silent; a world of encampments, bazaars displaying samples of every kind of ware, like barbarous towns improvised for the occasion. Among these barracks, along these stony or snow-packed tracks, through these ravines, circulate the uniforms of several nations, more or less damaged by battle, or transformed by the addition of large greatcoats and heavy boots.

It is unfortunate that this album, now scattered in several places, precious pages of which have been retained by the engravers charged with reproducing them or by the editors of the Illustrated London News , has not passed before the Emperor’s eyes. I am sure he would have been pleased to peruse, and not without emotion, the deeds and affairs of his soldiers, all minutely depicted, day by day, from the most dazzling of military actions to the most trivial occupations of life, by the firm and intelligent hand of this military artist.

VII. Pomp and Circumstance

Turkey also provided our beloved Monsieur G. with some admirable motifs for composition: the Bayram or holiday festivals, gloomy rain-soaked splendours, in the midst of which, like a pale sun, appeared the late Sultan’s permanent ennui; ranged on the Sultan’s left all the officers of the civil service; on the right all those of the military service, of whom the commander was Said Pasha, Sultan of Egypt, at that time present in Constantinople; solemn cavalcades and processions filing towards the little mosque neighbouring on the palace, and, among the crowds, Turkish functionaries, veritable caricatures of decadence, overwhelming their magnificent steeds with the weight of their fantastic bulk; great heavy carriages, like Louis XIV coaches, gilded and decked out with oriental caprice, from which, now and then, dart forth glances of feminine curiosity, from the restricted gap allowed the eyes by the bands of muslin wound about them; frenetic dances of the acrobats of the third sex (never has Balzac’s amusing expression proved more applicable than in the present case, for beneath the palpitations of trembling light, beneath the agitation of their ample garments, beneath the ardent cosmetics lining those cheeks, eyes and eyelids, in those hysterical convulsive gestures, in the floating waist-long hair, it would prove difficult not to say impossible to divine the marks of virility); and finally the femmes galantes (if one can even employ the word gallantry in connection with the Orient), generally composed of Hungarians, Wallachians, Jewesses, Poles, Greeks and Armenians; for, under a despotic government, it is the oppressed races, and among them those above all that suffer the most, who provide most of the women subjected to prostitution. Of these, some keep their national costume, short-sleeved embroidered jackets, flowing sashes, full trousers, turned-up slippers, striped or spangled muslins, and all the tinsel of their native land; others, and they are the most numerous, have adopted the principal mark of civilisation, which, for a woman, is invariably the crinoline, yet always preserving, in some corner of their attire, some small, characteristic memory of the East, so that they have the air of Parisian ladies seeking to adopt fancy-dress.

Monsieur G. excels in depicting the splendour of official functions, the national pomp and circumstance, yet not coldly, didactically, like those painters who see in such work no more than lucrative drudgery. He works with all the ardour of a man revelling in space, perspective, sheets of light or its explosive clinging, in droplets or gleams, to the roughness of unforms, and court dress.   The Commemoration of Independence in the Cathedral at Athens furnishes an interesting example of his skill. All those little figures, each taking its true place, renders more profound the space that contains them. The cathedral is immense and decorated with ceremonial hangings. King Otto and the Queen, both standing on a dais, are clothed in traditional costume, which they wear with marvellous ease, as if in witness to the sincerity of their adoption and a most refined Hellenic patriotism. The King’s waist is belted tight like that of the most elegant of palikars, and his kilt spreads with all the exaggeration of the national style of dandyism. Towards them walks the patriarch, an old man with bowed shoulders and a great white beard, whose little eyes are protected by a pair of green spectacles, exhibiting, in his whole being, the signs of a consummate Oriental impassivity. All the figures that people this composition are portraits; one of the most curious, by reason of the alien physiognomy, which is as little Hellenic as could be, being that of a German lady, placed at the Queen’s side, and attached to her service.

In the collected works of Monsieur G., one often comes across the Emperor of the French, whose figure he has reduced to an unerring sketch, without impairing the likeness, which he executes with the self-assurance of a signature. Sometimes the Emperor is reviewing his troops, on horseback and at the gallop, accompanied by officers whose features are easily recognisable, or by foreign princes, European, Asiatic, or African, to whom he is, so to speak, doing the honours of Paris. Sometimes he is immobile on a steed whose hooves are as firmly planted as the four feet of a table, with, on his left, the Empress riding side-saddle and, on his right, the little Prince Imperial, wearing a grenadier’s cap, and holding himself, in a military manner, on a little horse as shaggy as the ponies that English artists love to send careering over their landscapes. Sometimes the Emperor disappears, amidst a whirlwind of dust and light, along one of the rides in the Bois de Boulogne. At other times he is walking slowly through cheering crowds on the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. One, especially, of these water-colours has dazzled me with its magical character. At the front of a theatre-box of massive and princely opulence, the Empress appears, in an attitude of tranquil repose. The Emperor is leaning forward slightly, to obtain a better view of the stage; below him two bodyguards stand, in military, almost hierarchic, immobility, receiving on their brilliant uniforms the lightning-splashes of the footlights. Behind this arc of fire, within the ideal atmosphere of the stage, the actors sing, declaim and gesticulate in harmony; on the near side yawns an abyss of dim light, an encircling space crowded with tier on tier of human figures: it is the chandelier’s glow, and the audience.

The popular movements, Republican clubs and pageantry of 1848 equally furnished Monsieur G. with a series of picturesque compositions of which the majority were engraved for the Illustrated London News . A few years ago, after a sojourn in Spain that proved most fruitful for his genius, he also composed an album, of a like nature, of which I have seen only a portion. The carelessness with which he gifts or lends his drawings, often exposes him to irreparable losses.

VIII. The Military Man

To define, once more, the kind of subjects preferred by our artist, we might say that it is the pageantry of life , such as offers itself to the eye in the capital cities of the civilised world, the pomp of military life, fashionable life, the life of gallantry. Our observer is always at his proper post, wherever deep and impetuous desires flow, those Orinocos of the human heart; war, love, gaming; wherever the feasts and fictions are celebrated that represent those great elements of happiness or misfortune. Yet he shows a marked predilection for the military man, the soldier, and I think this affection derives not only from the qualities and virtues that pass, inevitably, from the warrior’s soul into his physiognomy and bearing, but also from the outward splendour with which his profession clothes him. Monsieur Paul de Molènes has written a few pages, as sensible as they are charming, on military coquetry and the moral significance of those glittering costumes in which all governments are pleased to dress their troops. Monsieur G. would willingly sign his name to those lines.

We have already spoken of the idiomatic beauty specific to each epoch, and have observed that each century has, so to speak, its own particular grace. The same remark applies to the various professions; each derives its external beauty from the moral laws to which it is subject. In some this beauty will be marked by energy, in others it will bear visible signs of idleness. It seems an emblem of character; it is the stamp of fate. The military man, taken as a class, has his beauty, just as the dandy and the courtesan have theirs, though of an essentially different flavour. You will note that I naturally ignore those professions in which exclusive and violent exercise distorts the muscles and mars the face with the signs of slavery. Accustomed to being surprised by events, the military man is hard to confound. The characteristic mark of beauty here will thus be a martial nonchalance, a singular mixture of calmness and audacity; it is a beauty that derives from the necessity of being prepared for death at any moment. And the face of the military man will, of necessity, be marked by great simplicity; for living a communal life, like monks or schoolboys, and accustomed to shift the daily cares of life onto an abstract paternity, soldiers are, in many ways, as simple as children; and like children, their tasks being done, they are easily amused and given to rowdy entertainment. I exaggerate not, I believe, in affirming that all these moral considerations readily flow forth from Monsieur G.’s sketches and watercolours. No military type is absent, and all are seized upon with a kind of enthusiastic joy; the old cavalry-officer, serious and sad, weighing his horse down with his bulk; the handsome staff officer, trim in the waist, arching his shoulders and bending unabashed over ladies’ chairs, who when seen from behind brings to mind the slimmest and most elegant of insects; the zouave and the sharpshooter, whose allure derives from an exceptional strain of boldness and independence which seemingly bestows a livelier sense of responsibility; the agile and joyous nonchalance of the light cavalrymen; the vaguely professorial and academic appearance of the special corps, the artillery or the engineers, often confirmed by the unwarlike addition of spectacles; not one of these models, not one of these nuances, is neglected, and all are assessed, defined with the same love and intelligence.

I have, in actuality, before my eyes one of these compositions, whose general character is truly heroic, which depicts the head of a column of infantry; perhaps these men are returned from Italy, and have been brought to a halt on the boulevard amidst the acclamations of the crowd; perhaps they have just completed a seemingly endless march along the roads of Lombardy; I know not. What is visible, and plainly intelligible, is the bold and resolute character, even in repose, of all those faces scorched by the rain, wind, and sun.

Here, that uniformity of expression is clearly evident created by obedience and suffering mutually endured, that resigned air of courage tested by long labour. Trousers tucked into, and imprisoned by gaiters; greatcoats stained with dust, and much discoloured; all their equipment, in sum, has itself taken on the appearance of these indestructible beings who return from afar having encountered strange adventures. One might say that all these men are more solidly set on their legs, more squarely planted on their feet, with more aplomb, than other men could be. Charlet, who was always in search of this kind of beauty and often found it, would have been singularly struck by it, had he seen this design.

IX. The Dandy

A man who is rich and idle, and who, even though blasé, has no other occupation than to pursue the road of happiness; a man, raised amidst luxury, and accustomed from his youth to others’ obedience; he, in short, who has no other occupation than elegance; will never cease to possess, at all times, a distinctive physiognomy, one wholly his own. Dandyism is a strange institution, as bizarre as that of the duel; ancient indeed, since Caesar, Catiline, and Alcibiades furnish us with striking examples of the type; widespread, also, since Chateaubriand discovered its presence among the forests and beside the lakes of the New World. Dandyism, which is an institution outside the laws, has rigorous laws of its own that all its subjects must strictly obey, however fiery and independent of character they may otherwise be.  

The English novelists have cultivated, more than others, the novel of high life , and the French who, like Monsieur de Custine, have made it their speciality to pen love-stories, have at once, and most judiciously, taken care to endow their characters with fortunes vast enough to cover, without hesitation, all their fantasies; they have then dispensed with any sort of profession. These beings have no other role than to cultivate the idea of beauty in their persons, to satisfy their passions, to feel and to think. They thus possess, at their disposal and in ample measure, the time and money without which fantasy, reduced to a state of mere passing reverie, can scarcely be translated into action. It is, sadly, all too true that without money and leisure love can be no more than a plebeian orgy or the fulfilment of conjugal duty. Instead of a passionate or dreamlike caprice, it proves merely a repugnant utility .

If I speak of love with regard to dandyism, it is because love is the natural occupation of the idle. But the dandy does not see love as a particular aim. If I have spoken of money, it is because money is indispensable to those who make a cult of their passions; but the dandy does not aspire to money as to something essential, he leaves that gross passion to vulgar mortals; endless credit suffices him. Dandyism does not even consist of, as many thoughtless people seem to believe, an immoderate taste for fashion and material elegance. To the perfect dandy these things are no more than the symbols of his aristocratic superiority of spirit. Moreover, to his eyes, preoccupied above all by distinction , perfect elegance resides in absolute simplicity, which is, in effect, a finer way of distinguishing himself. What then is this passion, become a doctrine, which has produced such tyrannical adherents, this unofficial institution which has formed so haughty a caste? It is a burning need, above all, to display an originality bounded only by the limits of propriety. It is a kind of cult of the self, that can nonetheless endure the search for a happiness to be found in another, in a woman for example; that can even endure all that goes by the name of illusion. It is the pleasure derived from astonishing others, and the proud satisfaction gained by never oneself being astonished. A dandy may be blasé, or he may be a man who suffers; but in the latter case, he will smile like the Spartan lad though bitten by the fox beneath his tunic.  

It can be seen that, at certain points, dandyism borders on the spiritual and stoical. But a dandy can never be a common man. If he were to commit a crime, though he might not be ruined yet, if the crime arose from a trivial source, the dishonour would be irreparable. Let not the reader be scandalised by this gravity amidst the frivolous, recalling that there is a grandeur in all folly, an energy in all excess. A strange spirituality! For those who are both its priests and its victims, all the complex material conditions to which they submit themselves, from their irreproachable standards of dress, at every hour of the day or night, to the most perilous sporting feats, are no more than a kind of gymnastics designed to strengthen the will and discipline the soul. In truth, I was not wholly wrong in treating dandyism as a kind of religion. The strictest monastic rule, the inexorable order of the Old Man of the Mountain ( the order of Assassins ), who demanded suicide of his disciples if they became inebriated, was no more despotic nor more rigorously obeyed than this doctrine of elegance and originality, which imposes, it too, upon the ambitious yet humble members of its sect, men often full of fire, passion, courage, restrained energy, the terrible formula: Perinde ac cadaver: compliant as the dead! ( Ignatius of Loyola )  

Whether such men are called exquisites, incroyables, beaux, lions or dandies, all issue from the same source; all partake of the same characteristic of opposition or revolt, all are representatives of what is best in human pride, of that need, only too rare these days, to combat and destroy triviality. From this is born, among dandies, the haughty attitude of their caste provocative, even, in its coldness. Dandyism appears in periods of transition in particular, where democracy is not yet all-powerful, and aristocracy is only partially weakened and debased. Amidst the disorder of such times, certain men, rootless, restless, idle, but rich in native energy, may conceive the idea of establishing a new kind of aristocracy, all the more difficult to dislodge because founded on the most precious, the most indestructible of qualities, and on the divine gifts that toil and wealth are unable to confer. Dandyism is the last lightning-flash of heroism in an age of decadence; and the type of dandy discovered by our explorer ( Chateaubriand ) in North America does nothing to diminish this idea: for nothing prevents us from supposing that those tribes we call savage are the remains of great but vanished civilisations. Dandyism is a setting sun; like the declining star, it is brilliant, without heat, and fills the mind with melancholy. But, alas! the rising tide of democracy which invades and levels all, overwhelms, day by day, those last representatives of human pride, and pours its waves of oblivion over the footprints of those prodigious Myrmidons. Dandies are becoming rarer and rarer in our country, whereas amongst our neighbours, in England, the social order and the constitution (the true constitution, revealed by behaviour) will leave, for a long time yet, a place for the heirs of Sheridan, Beau Brummel, and Byron, as long as men worthy of filling it, present themselves.

What may have seemed a digression, to the reader, is not one, in truth. The moral reflections and considerations which are aroused by an artist’s drawings are, in many cases, the best interpretation of them the critic can produce: such suggestions are part of the originating idea, which may be divined by revealing them, one after another. Is it necessary to say that when Monsieur G. sketches one of his dandies on paper he always grants him his historical character, his legendary character, I would dare to say, if we were not speaking of the present time, and of things generally considered frivolous? It is all there, the lightness of step, the composed manner, the simplicity with an air of authority, the manner of wearing a coat, and managing a horse, those attitudes outwardly calm but revealing an inner energy, which makes one think, when ones gaze discovers one of these privileged beings, in whom the attractive and the formidable are so mysteriously blended: ‘Behold a man, wealthy perchance, yet more likely a Hercules lacking employment.’

The characteristic beauty of the dandy consists above all in that air of coldness that derives from an unshakeable determination not to be moved; a latent fire, one might say, hinting of the ability but not the desire to shine forth. This it is which is expressed, perfectly, in these drawings.

X. Woman  

That being who is, for the majority of men, the source of the liveliest and even, be it said to the shame of the philosophical pleasures, the most lasting delights; that being towards whom, or to whose benefit, all their efforts are directed; that being as dread and incommunicable as the Deity (with this difference, that the infinite fails to communicate because to do so would dazzle and overwhelm the finite, while the being of which we speak is only incomprehensible, perchance, because it has nothing to communicate to us); that being in whom Joseph de Maistre saw a beautiful animal whose graces enlivened and eased the serious game of politics; for whom, and through whom, fortunes are made and unmade;  for whom, but above all through whom, artists and poets create their most exquisite gems; from whom derive the most enervating pleasures and the most productive pains – Woman, in a word, for the artist in general, and Monsieur G. in particular, is not simply the female of man. Rather she is a divinity, a star, that presides over all the conceptions of the male brain; she is the glittering reflection of all the graces of nature condensed in a single being; she is the object of the liveliest admiration and curiosity that the tableau of life can offer to our contemplation. She is a species of idol, dumb perchance, but dazzling and bewitching, who holds willpower and destiny suspended by her glance. She is not, I may say, an animal whose members, correctly assembled, furnish a perfect example of harmony; she is not even a model of pure beauty, such as the sculptor dreams of in his most profound meditations; no, that would still prove insufficient to explain her mysterious and complex power of enchantment. We are not concerned here with Winckelmann in regard to Raphael, and I am certain that Monsieur G., despite the breadth of his intelligence (this may be said without doing him injury) would neglect a fragment of ancient statuary if it cost him an opportunity to savour thus her portrait by Reynolds or Lawrence. All that adorns woman, all that serves to illustrate her beauty, is a part of herself; and the artists who apply themselves particularly to the study of this enigmatic being, adore all of the mundus muliebris ( feminine world ) as much as they do the woman herself. Woman is doubtless a light, a glance, an invitation to happiness, a word, on occasion; but above all she is a general harmony, not only in the allure and movement of her members, but also in the muslins, the gauzes, the vast, iridescent clouds of fabric in which she envelops herself, which are the attributes and pedestal of her divinity; in the metals and minerals that wind about her arms and neck, add sparks of fire to her glance, or whisper gently at her ears. What poet, in depicting the pleasure caused by such an apparition of beauty, would dare to separate the woman from her costume? Where is there a man who has not, in the street, at the theatre, in the park, enjoyed, in the most disinterested manner, a skilfully composed attire, and carried away an image of it, inseparable from the beauty of her to whom it belonged, making thus of the two, the woman and her dress, an indivisible whole? This is the moment, it seems to me, to return to certain questions regarding fashion and finery, which I merely touched upon at the commencement of this study, and to vindicate, given the inept slanders with which certain equivocating lovers of nature have attacked it, the art of adornment.

XI. In Praise of Adornment

I recall a popular song, so trivial and inept that it should scarce be cited in a work that has pretensions to seriousness, but which expresses quite well, in vaudeville style, the aesthetics of unthinking people. ‘ Nature embellishes Beauty! ’ Presumably the poet , if he had been able to write French, might have said: ‘ Simplicity embellishes Beauty! ’ which is equivalent to the following truth , of a kind startling and unknown: ‘ Nothing embellishes what is.’

Most of the errors regarding beauty are born of a false premiss of the XVIII century regarding ethics. Nature was considered, at that time, to be the ground, source, and type of all good, and all possible beauty. The denial of original sin played no small part in the general blindness of the epoch. If, nonetheless, we simply agree to refer to facts evident to all the ages, no less than to readers of the Law Reports , we will see that Nature teaches us nothing, or virtually nothing; that is to say she constrains human beings to sleeping, drinking and eating, and protecting themselves from the inclemency of the weather. She also compels them to murder their like, cannibalise, incarcerate, and torture them; for as soon as we depart from the realm of needs and necessities, to enter that of luxury and pleasure, we see that Nature advises nothing but crime. It is this infallible Nature which has engendered patricide and cannibalism, with a thousand other abominations that shame and modesty prevent us from naming. It is philosophy (I speak of sound philosophy) and religion that command us to care for our parents if they are poor or infirm. Nature (which is nothing more than the voice of our own self-interest) would have us slaughter them. Contemplate, analyse all that is natural, all the actions and desires of the natural human being, you will find nothing that is not dreadful. Everything beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation. Crime, for which the human creature has acquired a taste in its mother’s womb, is natural in origin. Virtue, on the contrary, is artificial , unnatural since, at all times and among all nations, gods and prophets were necessary to teach virtue to animalistic humanity, which humanity alone was unable to discover. Evil occurs without effort, naturally , through fatality; good is always the product of artifice. All that I say of Nature as an ill counsellor in matters of morality, and of reason as a true redeemer and reformer, can be applied to the realm of beauty. I am thus led to view adornment as one of the marks of primitive nobility as regards the human spirit. Those races that our civilisation, confused and perverse, with laughable pride and fatuousness, is pleased to treat as savage, comprehend, as does a child, the noble spirituality of adornment. The savage, and the infant, through their naïve aspiration towards what is brilliant, such as multi-coloured feathers, iridescent fabrics, the superlative majesty of artificial forms, bear witness to their disgust for the real, and thus prove, in their unknowingness, the immateriality of the spirit. Woe to one who, like Louis XV (the product not of true civilization but of a revival of barbarism) carries his degeneracy to the point of no longer possessing a taste for anything except unadorned nature . (We know that Madame Dubarry, when she wished to avoid meeting the king, made a point of employing rouge. It was a sufficient deterrent. In this manner she shut the door on him. It was by adorning herself that she would frighten away that royal disciple of nature.)

Fashion should thus be considered as a symptom of the taste for the ideal, floating in the human mind above all that natural life accumulates of the gross, terrestrial, and loathsome; as a sublime deformation of Nature, or rather a permanent and continuous attempt at the reformation of Nature. And it has been pointed out, quite sensibly, (though without discovering the reason) that every fashion is charming, that is to say relatively charming, each being a fresh, and more or less happy effort, aimed at beauty, some sort of approximation to the ideal, the desire for which endlessly titillates the unsated human spirit. But fashions, if one would appreciate them, should not be considered as dead things; one might as well admire the garments suspended, slack and lifeless as the skin of Saint Bartholomew, in a clothes-dealer’s wardrobe. One must imagine them vitalised, vivified, by the beautiful women who wore them. Only thus will one comprehend the sense and spirit within them. If the aphorism: All fashions are charming , shocks you, by seeming too absolute, then say, for you will be certain of perpetrating no error: All were once truly seen as charming.

Woman is quite within her rights, and even performs a kind of duty, in devoting herself to appearing magical and beyond Nature, it is necessary for her to astonish and charm; an idol, she must adorn to be adored. She must borrow from all the arts the means to raise herself above Nature, the better to conquer hearts and captivate minds. It matters little that her ruses and artifices are known to all if their success is certain and their effects always irresistible. It is by means of such considerations that the philosopher-artist will find an easy justification for all the practices employed in every age to consolidate and render divine, one might say, their fragile beauty. To enumerate these would be an endless task; but to confine ourselves to what in our day is commonly called maquillage ( the application of cosmetics ), who does not see that the use of rice-powder, so foolishly anathematised by our naturalistic philosophers, has, as its aim and result, the ridding from the complexion of all the blemishes that Nature has outrageously scattered there, and thus to create an abstract unity of skin in texture and colour, which unity, similar to that created by a dancer’s tights, immediately likens the human being to a statue, that is to say a being superior and divine? As for the black mascara that outlines the eye, and the rouge that paints the upper cheek, though their use derives from the same principle, the need to surpass Nature, the result is made to satisfy a wholly opposite need. Red and black represent life, a supernatural and excessive life; that black surround renders the glance more penetrating and singular, grants the eye a more decided look of a window opening on the infinite; the rouge, that lends fire to the cheekbone, augments still more the brightness of the pupil and adds to the lovely feminine face the mysterious passion of the priestess.

Thus, if I am to be understood aright, adorning one’s face should not be employed with the vulgar and unavowable aim of imitating fair Nature and rivalling youth. Moreover, it has been observed that artifice fails to embellish ugliness and is only capable of serving beauty. Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating Nature? Maquillage has no need to hide itself, or seek to evade being divined; let it, on the contrary, display itself, if not without affectation, at least with a sort of candour.

I willingly permit those whose burdensome gravity prevents them seeking out beauty in its most minute manifestations, to laugh at these reflections of mine and to accuse them of a puerile solemnity; their austere judgement touches me not; I will content myself with appealing to true artists; as well as to women who have received at birth a spark of that sacred fire with which they would illumine themselves entirely.

XII. Women and ‘Girls’

Thus, Monsieur G., setting himself the task of seeking out and expounding the beauty in modernity , happily represents women elaborately dressed and embellished with every display of artifice, to whatever order of society they appertain. Moreover, in the collections of his works, no less than in the swarming ant-heap of life itself, differences of race and class, in whatever luxurious apparel the subjects present themselves, spring immediately to the spectator’s eye

Here, bathed in the diffuse glow of an auditorium, receiving and reflecting the light with their eyes, their jewels, their shoulders, there appear, splendid as portraits, in theatre-boxes that serve to frame them, young girls of the finest society. Some grave and serious, others blonde and giddy. Some flaunt a precocious bosom with aristocratic unconcern, others, frankly, display the chest of a young boy. Fans to their lips, eyes vacant or set, they are as solemnly theatrical as the opera or drama they pretend to follow.

There, we see elegant families nonchalantly strolling along the walks of some public park, wives leaning with a tranquil air on the arms of their husbands whose solid and complacent air reveals a fortune well-made and their own self-contentment. Here comfortable affluence has replaced sublime distinction. Meanwhile scrawny little girls, with billowing skirts, resembling little women in figure and gesture, skip, or play with hoops, or make social visits in the open air, thereby repeating the comedy performed at home by their parents.

Emerging from an inferior world, proud of appearing in the limelight at last, the girls from the minor theatres, frail, slender, as yet still adolescent, flaunt absurd travesties of fashion on their puny and virginal shoulders, travesties which belong to no particular era, and which are their delight and joy.

At a café doorway, lounging against a window lit without and within, one of those imbeciles spreads himself, whose elegance is created by his tailor, and his head by his barber. Beside him, her feet supported by one of those indispensable footstools, his mistress sits, a gross hussy, who lacks virtually nothing (the virtually nothing being virtually everything: true distinction, that is) that would make her a great lady. Like her elegant companion the whole orifice of her little mouth is filled with an enormous cigar. These two beings possess not a thought. Is it certain they can even see? Unless each, like some Narcissus of imbecility, contemplates the crowd as if it were a flood reflecting their own image. In truth they exist more for the pleasure of the observer than their own.

Behold, now, they are throwing open the arcades, full of light and movement, at Valentino’s, Prado, the Casino (as once it would have been Tivoli, Idalie, the Folies and the Paphos) those shambolic places where the exuberance of idle youth is given full rein. Women who exaggerate fashion to the point of altering its charm and destroying its intent ostentatiously sweep the floor with their trains and the fringes of their shawls. They come, they go, pass and repass, opening astonished eyes like those of animals, with an air of seeing nothing, yet examining everything.

Against a background of infernal light, or that of an aurora borealis, red, orange, sulphur, pink (the pink expressing the idea of ecstasy amidst frivolity) and sometimes purple (the favourite colour of canonesses, dying embers behind a blue curtain), against these magical backdrops, imitating the diversity of Bengal Lights, arises the varying image of wanton beauty. Now majestic, now playful; now slender even scrawny, now cyclopean; now small and sparkling, now heavy and monumental. She has invented an elegance provocative and bizarre, or aspires, with more or less success, towards a simplicity customary in a higher world. She advances upon us, glides, dances, sways the burden of her embroidered petticoats, which play the role of both pedestal and balancing-rod; her glance darts from beneath her hat, as from a framed portrait. She perfectly represents savagery within the civilised. She has a beauty granted her by Evil, always devoid of spirituality, but sometimes tinged with a weariness that pretends melancholy. She gazes at the horizon like a beast of prey, with the same wildness, the same idle distraction, and also, at times, the same fixity of attention. A kind of bohemian wanderer on the borders of acceptable society, the triviality of her life, one of cunning and conflict, fatally reveals itself through its envelope of pretence. One might justly apply to her the words of that inimitable master La Bruyère: ‘In some women there is a false nobility associated with the movement of her eyes, a tilt of her head, her way of walking, yet which goes no further.’

These reflections regarding the courtesan can, to a certain degree, be applied to the actress also; for she too is a creature of pretence, an object of public pleasure. But here the conquest, the prize, is of a nobler and more spiritual nature. She seeks to win general favour, not only by sheer physical beauty, but also through talent of the rarest order. If in the one aspect she touches on the courtesan, on the other she is close to being a poet. Let us not forget that apart from natural and even artificial beauty there is in all human beings the mark of their trade, a characteristic that can translate into physical ugliness, yet also into a kind of professional beauty.

In that vast gallery which is Parisian life or London life, we will encounter all the different types of errant womanhood, women in rebellion at every level; first the courtesan in her early flowering, striving after patrician airs, proud at once of her youth and that luxury into which she puts all her genius and all her soul; delicately, with two fingers, tucking in a wide panel of silk, satin or velvet that  billows around her, or pointing a toe whose over-ornate shoe would be enough to denounce her for what she is, if that were not already achieved by the somewhat unnecessary extravagance of her whole attire; then, to descend the scale, reaching the slaves confined to those stews often decked out as cafés; wretches subject to the most avaricious of ‘guardians’, and possessing nothing of their own, not even the eccentric finery which serves to spice up their beauty.

Some among these latter, instances of a monstrous yet innocent self-conceit, express in their faces, and their bold uplifted glances, an evident joy at being alive (why, in all verity?). Sometimes they find, without seeking, poses of a daring and nobility that might enchant the most sensitive of sculptors, had the sculptors of today the courage and spirit to find nobility wherever it might be, even in the mire; at other times they show themselves, prostrated, in attitudes of desperate boredom, bar-room apathy, masculine cynicism, smoking cigarettes to kill the time, with a resignation oriental in its fatalism; sprawled out on settees, skirts hooped up before and behind in a double fan, or balanced precariously on stools and chairs; sluggish, mournful, stupid, extravagant, eyes glazed with brandy, brows swollen with stubborn pride. We have descended to the last turn of the spiral, to Juvenal’s femina simplex (Woman, plain and simple) . Now we see depicted, in the depths of an atmosphere where tobacco and alcohol have mingled their vapours, the emaciated flush of the consumptive, or the rounded contours of adiposity, that hideously healthy state of the slothful. In a misted and gilded chaos, unsuspected by the chaste and the indigent, macabre nymphs and living dolls stir and convulse, whose eyes betray a sinister glitter, while behind a counter charged with bottles of spirits, a gross old harridan presides whose head, wrapped in a dirty kerchief, casts a satanically-pointed shadow on the wall, to remind us that everything consecrated to Evil is condemned to bear horns.

Truly, it is no more to gratify my readers than to scandalise them that I bring such images before their eyes; in either case that would betray a lack of respect. What renders these portraits precious, and sanctifies them, are the innumerable thoughts to which they give rise, thoughts generally sombre and severe. But if, by chance, someone should be so ill-advised as to seek an opportunity, amongst these quite widely disseminated compositions of Monsieur G., for satisfying an unhealthy curiosity, I must charitably warn them that they will find nothing here to stir a perverse imagination. They will find nothing but the inevitable marks of vice, that is to say the Demon’s gaze ambushed among the shadows, or Messalina’s shoulder gleaming neath the gaslight; nothing but pure art, that is to say the particular beauty of evil, beauty amidst what is dreadful. The general feeling that arises from all this chaos, I repeat in passing, contains more of sorrow than of drollery. What gives these drawings their particular beauty is their moral fecundity. They are pregnant with suggestion, harsh suggestion, which my pen, accustomed though it is to grappling with the plastic arts, has been able only partially to convey.

XIII. Conveyances

Thus, they continue, in their endless branching, these extensive galleries of high life and low life . Let us leave them for a few moments to consider a world which if not pure is at least more refined; let us breath perfumes no healthier perhaps but more delicate. I have already noted that Monsieur G.’s brush, like that of Eugène Lami, is marvellously skilful in depicting the pomp of dandyism and the elegance of foppery. The physical attitudes of the rich are familiar to him; he knows how to represent, with a light stroke of the pen, and a certainty of touch that never deserts him, that assurance of glance, gesture and pose, which among privileged beings is the result of monotonous good fortune. In this particular series of drawings are shown, in their thousand aspects, incidents of sport, the hunt, the races, drives through the woods, proud ladies and frail misses managing mounts of an admirable purity of shape with a sure hand, steeds themselves of a flightiness, brilliance, capriciousness akin to that of their mistresses. For Monsieur G. is not only knowledgeable about horses in general, but has a happy gift for expressing their individual beauty. Here are halts, encampments so to speak, of numerous conveyances, from which, hoisted on cushions, seats, the roof, elegant young men and women, dressed in the eccentric costumes authorised by the season, assist at some solemnity taking place in the distance; there, a horseman rides, gracefully, at the gallop, beside an open caleche, his horse seeming, in its bowing and prancing, to be paying respect in its own way. The carriage drives on at a brisk trot, along an alley barred with light and shade, its bevy of beauties couched indolently as in a cradle, half-listening to the gallantries that meet their ears, and idly yielding themselves to the passing breeze.

Furs and muslins mount to their chins, and billow in waves over the carriage-doors. Their servants are stiff and erect, motionless, and all alike; always the same endless monotonous effigies of punctual, disciplined servility; their distinction that of having none. In the background, the woodland is green or russet, dusty or gloomy according to the hour and the season. The glades are filled with autumnal mist, bluish shadows, golden rays, an effulgence of pink, or sudden flashes of light slicing the darkness like sabre slashes.

If his innumerable water-colours depicting the war in the East had not already revealed Monsieur G.’s powers as a landscape-artist, these would suffice to persuade us. Here, however, we are not dealing with the torn countryside of the Crimea, or the dramatic shores of the Bosphorus; we are once more amidst the familiar, intimate scenery that forms the setting surrounding a great city, where the light creates effects that no truly Romantic artist can ignore.

Another merit worth the observer noting, at this point, is his remarkable knowledge of harness and coachwork. Monsieur G. sketches and paints a conveyance, every sort of carriage, with the same care and the same ease as a skilled marine-painter captures every kind of vessel. All the coachwork is perfectly correct; each detail in its place and no fault to be found. In whatever attitude it may be seized, at whatever speed it may be making, a carriage, like a vessel, grants its motion a mysterious and complex grace most difficult to set down in shorthand. The pleasure the artist’s eye receives seems to derive from the series of geometrical figures which this object, already so intricate, whether vessel or carriage, engenders successively and swiftly in space.

We can doubtless be sure that, in a few years’ time, Monsieur G.s drawings will take their place as precious archives of civilised life. His work will be sought after by collectors, as much as those of Debucourt, Moreau, Saint-Aubin, Carle Vernet, Lami, the brothers Devéria, Gavarni, and all those other exquisite artists, who, while depicting only the familiar and charming, are, in their own way, no less serious as historians. Several of them even sacrificed too much to charm, and introduced, sometimes, to their compositions a classical style alien to the subject. Some have deliberately smoothed the angles, planed the rough edges of life, toned down the brilliant highlights. Less adroit than they, Monsieur G. possesses a profound worth wholly his own. He has deliberately fulfilled a function that other artists have scorned, and which demands, above all, a man of the world for its fulfilment. He has sought, everywhere, the passing beauty of present-day life, the fleeting character of that which the reader has allowed us to term modernity . Often bizarre, violent, excessive, but always poetic, he has succeeded in concentrating, in his drawings, the flavour, be it bitter or heady, of the wine of Life.

The End of Baudelaire’s ‘The Painter of Modern Times’

IELTS Mentor "IELTS Preparation & Sample Answer"

• Skip to content
• Jump to main navigation and login

Nav view search

• IELTS Sample

IELTS Writing Task 2/ Essay Topics with sample answer.

Ielts writing task 2 sample 566 - modern life style is completely different from the way people lived, ielts writing task 2/ ielts essay:, modern lifestyle is completely different from the way people lived in the past. some people think that the changes have been very positive while some others believe they have negative..

IELTS Materials

• IELTS Bar Graph
• IELTS Line Graph
• IELTS Table Chart
• IELTS Flow Chart
• IELTS Pie Chart
• IELTS Letter Writing
• IELTS Essay
• Academic Reading

Useful Links

• IELTS Secrets
• Band Score Calculator
• Exam Specific Tips
• Useful Websites
• IELTS Preparation Tips
• Academic Reading Tips
• Academic Writing Tips
• GT Writing Tips
• Listening Tips
• Speaking Tips
• IELTS Grammar Review
• IELTS Vocabulary
• IELTS Cue Cards
• IELTS Life Skills
• Letter Types

• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Copyright Notice
• HTML Sitemap

• Literature & Fiction
• History & Criticism

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } $28.00 $ 28 . 00 FREE delivery Tuesday, May 28 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35 Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select the return method

Save with Used - Good .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } $16.01 $ 16 . 01 FREE delivery Wednesday, May 29 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35 Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Piper's Products

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Follow the author

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire Paperback – November 15, 2006

Purchase options and add-ons.

Walter Benjamin's essays on the great French lyric poet Charles Baudelaire revolutionized not just the way we think about Baudelaire, but our understanding of modernity and modernism as well. In these essays, Benjamin challenges the image of Baudelaire as late-Romantic dreamer, and evokes instead the modern poet caught in a life-or-death struggle with the forces of the urban commodity capitalism that had emerged in Paris around 1850. The Baudelaire who steps forth from these pages is the flâneur who affixes images as he strolls through mercantile Paris, the ragpicker who collects urban detritus only to turn it into poetry, the modern hero willing to be marked by modern life in its contradictions and paradoxes. He is in every instance the modern artist forced to commodify his literary production: "Baudelaire knew how it stood with the poet: as a flâneur he went to the market; to look it over, as he thought, but in reality to find a buyer." Benjamin reveals Baudelaire as a social poet of the very first rank. The introduction to this volume presents each of Benjamin's essays on Baudelaire in chronological order. The introduction, intended for an undergraduate audience, aims to articulate and analyze the major motifs and problems in these essays, and to reveal the relationship between the essays and Benjamin's other central statements on literature, its criticism, and its relation to the society that produces it.

• Print length 320 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
• Publication date November 15, 2006
• Dimensions 5.5 x 0.87 x 8.25 inches
• ISBN-10 0674022874
• ISBN-13 978-0674022874
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may deliver to you quickly

Editorial Reviews

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press; n edition (November 15, 2006)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0674022874
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0674022874
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.9 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.87 x 8.25 inches
• #174 in German Literary Criticism (Books)
• #3,609 in Essays (Books)
• #3,810 in Literary Criticism & Theory

About the author

Walter benjamin.

Walter Bendix Schonflies Benjamin (1892 -- 1940) was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and was also greatly inspired by the Marxism of Bertolt Brecht and Jewish mysticism as presented by Gershom Scholem.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

The painter of modern life and other essays

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

This book contains pen marking

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

466 Previews

26 Favorites

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

No suitable files to display here.

PDF access not available for this item.

IN COLLECTIONS

Uploaded by station04.cebu on June 1, 2022

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

English Essay on “Stress – The Curse of Modern Life” English Essay-Paragraph-Speech for Class 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 CBSE Students and competitive Examination.

Stress – The Curse of Modern Life

The man of today leads a fast-paced competitive life. Ambition is the buzzword and success, money, affluence—the ultimate goals everyone strives for. This rat race for a comfortable and well-heeled lifestyle surely takes its toll by generating ‘stress’ which is an inevitable outcome of burning the candle at both ends.

What is stress? It may be defined as pressure, anxiety syndrome or strain. In layman’s language, it is generally referred to as ‘tension’. An inability to cope with the hectic lifestyle generates emotional, physical and mental stress. Stress is often generated by a high degree of commitment to one’s goal—vis-a-vis the time available at one’s disposal, and the fear that one is likely to be left behind. People hasten their pace, inevitably leading to a lot of stress. The lure of money often tempts one to work more than one’s capacity, breeding stress and strain. Moreover, in today’s world, money and prestige have become synonymous with each other. It is a matter of prestige to do better than one’s relations and friends, to earn more money, even if it wreaks havoc with your emotional and physical well-being.

A mechanical lifestyle further aggravates stress. Lack of exercise or being confined to one’s `workstation’ for long, results in obesity and stress. Not having balanced meals and compounding this lack of proper nutrition by consuming endless cups of tea and coffee makes one more prone to stress.

It’s time we think about how to overcome stress. Perhaps following a disciplined lifestyle and managing one’s time better can help one to overcome stress to some extent. It is also necessary to priorities as to which areas need more attention than others. One can counter stress to some extent by taking breaks while working. Regular holidays provide the much-needed relief from monotony of daily life. Treks in the mountains bring you closer to nature as well as your own heart. Meditation, yoga or other such spiritual forms of relaxation enables one to counter the stress generated by everyday routine. ‘Meditate—don’t devastate your peace of mind,’ should be the maxim one should follow. Diet control and physical exercise are other ‘ways to minimize if not eliminate stress completely. Yet, another way of overcoming stress is spending quality time with near and dear ones that promotes the sense of emotional well being. Though taking recourse to all these measures may not completely remove stress, it might make stress more manageable.

Related Posts

Absolute-Study

Hindi Essay, English Essay, Punjabi Essay, Biography, General Knowledge, Ielts Essay, Social Issues Essay, Letter Writing in Hindi, English and Punjabi, Moral Stories in Hindi, English and Punjabi.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.