'Les Philosophies de la vapeur et des allumettes chimiques': littérature, sciences et Industrie en 1855 (review)

Despite its curiously misleading title, this book is in fact an edited anthology of writings published between 1852 and 1867 that contributed to the great nineteenth-century debate about the relationship between art and industry. Marta Caraion's clear and informative introduction traces the debate back to its saint-simonian roots in the 1830s, and follows its progress as it evolves through Verne and Zola to the surrealists. At its core is the figure of Maxime Du Camp, whom Caraion values 'pour sa qualité de symptôme' (p. 13) – she rightly sees him as an exceptionally sensitive mirror of the shifting uncertainties and aspirations of his time, and it is around him that the collection revolves. The first section of the anthology reprints in its entirety Du Camp's famous 1855 preface to Les Chants modernes, in which he argues that art must shake off its preoccupation with the past and seek reinvigoration in a new golden age of science and industry. His preface is followed by a number of poems from Les Chants modernes – poems such as 'La Bobine' and 'La Locomotive', whose interest today lies not in any poetic distinction but in their cultural resonances. The second section is based on articles from La Revue de Paris by Louis de Cormenin, Achille Kauffmann, Hippolyte Castille and Du Camp himself. As Caraion points out in her introduction, in the 1850s the Revue de Paris introduced regular columns on scientific and industrial topics alongside its usual articles on literature and the fine arts. Although many of its contributors (including Gautier, Flaubert and Baudelaire) were openly hostile to l'art industriel, Caraion shows that the journal also drew together advocates of an artistic renewal through industry: these articles by Cormenin, Kauffmann and Castille from 1852 – 1853 share and in some ways preempt the ideas expressed in Du Camp's preface. Stoking the debate, of course, was the Universal Exhibition of 1855 , and the volume's third section is devoted to essays (some truncated) about the exhibition and its relation to the arts by Baudelaire, Renan, Laprade, Claudin and, once again, Du Camp. The final section offers a collection of extracts from critical reactions to Les Champs modernes by poets (Leconte de Lisle, Ménard, Gautier), major critics (Sainte-Beuve, Planche) and a series of less-known commentators. There are some oddities and inconsistencies – the biographical notes at the end, for example, provide information about most but by no means all of the writers anthologised, as well as details of two writers whose work has not been included. Léon de Laborde merits four pages of biographical note and is described as 'une figure exemplaire' (p. 348) for our understanding of the debate, yet his writings do not feature in the anthology even though Caraion acknowledges they caused Du Camp to reformulate his ideas on the relationship between art and industry. But it is all too easy to quibble about anthologies, and this volume will be an invaluable starting-point for anyone interested in one of the key literary debates of nineteenth-century France.