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| Ernest Hello | |
|---|---|
| Name | Ernest Hello |
| Birth date | 26 September 1828 |
| Death date | 14 May 1885 |
| Birth place | Tréguier, Côtes-d'Armor |
| Occupation | Essayist, critic, journalist |
| Notable works | La Vie Intérieure; Les Parties du Diable; L'Homme |
| Language | French |
Ernest Hello Ernest Hello was a 19th-century French essayist, literary critic, and journalist whose prolific writing on religion, morality, and literature placed him among influential figures of the French Third Republic intellectual scene. A contemporary of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Charles Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, and Stendhal, Hello engaged with debates involving the Catholic Church, Romanticism, and emergent positivism within the milieu of Normandy and Paris. Known for dense style and theological erudition, he contributed to periodicals and published major essays that influenced later thinkers such as Paul Claudel, Jacques Maritain, and Charles Péguy.
Born in Tréguier in Côtes-d'Armor within Brittany, Hello studied in regional schools before moving to Paris where he entered the circle of French letters. He wrote for journals including L'Univers, Le Correspondant, La Revue des Deux Mondes, and Le Temps, and interacted with editors from Charpentier (publisher), Hetzel and the salons of Madame de Villemessant. Hello's career was shaped by collaborations and polemics involving figures such as Léon Bloy, Joseph de Maistre, Renan (Ernest Renan), and Alphonse de Lamartine. During the era of the Second French Empire and the Franco-Prussian War, his essays addressed controversies touched by politicians like Adolphe Thiers and Jules Ferry and intellectuals associated with Académie Française debates. Health issues curtailed public activity; he continued producing essays from his home in Nantes and later in Saint-Évarzec, maintaining correspondence with writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Émile Zola, Honoré de Balzac, and Alexandre Dumas.
Hello's principal publications include La Vie Intérieure, Les Parties du Diable, L'Homme, and his collected Essais. La Vie Intérieure addresses themes engaged by René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Søren Kierkegaard, and Augustin of Hippo through meditations comparable in ambition to works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, and François-René de Chateaubriand. Les Parties du Diable demonstrates critical engagement with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Milton, Homer, Dante Alighieri, and Miguel de Cervantes, juxtaposing literary history alongside readings informed by Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure. L'Homme synthesizes anthropology influenced by references to Hippocrates, Galen, Charles Darwin, and debates in the wake of Auguste Comte's positivism. His collected Essais and articles for periodicals echo criticism practiced by Sainte-Beuve, George Sand, and Alfred de Vigny.
Hello's philosophical orientation fused Catholicism with a critique of secular modernity; he dialogues with Thomas Aquinas, Blaise Pascal, and the neo-Thomist revival, while opposing aspects of liberalism championed by figures like Benjamin Constant and John Stuart Mill. He addressed epistemological questions in conversation with Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and René Descartes, and his aesthetics conversed with the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, the drama of Victor Hugo, and the symbolism of Paul Verlaine. His moral psychology draws on saints and theologians including Ignatius of Loyola, Francis de Sales, and Thérèse of Lisieux, and engages scientific discourse from Antoine Lavoisier to Claude Bernard. Hello's critical method combines textual exegesis akin to Sainte-Beuve with metaphysical inquiry reminiscent of Étienne Gilson and anticipatory themes later taken up by Maurice Blondel and Édouard Le Roy.
Contemporaries offered polarized responses: conservative Catholic periodicals such as La Croix praised his piety while liberal reviews like Revue des Deux Mondes debated his claims. Critics including Jules Lemaître, Ernest Renan, Gustave Flaubert, and Alphonse de Lamartine engaged his prose, and literary historians link his style to the lineage of Boileau and La Bruyère. His work influenced 20th-century Catholic intellectuals such as Jacques Maritain, Paul Claudel, Charles Péguy, and commentators in Action Française and L'Ordre Nouveau circles, as well as translators and scholars at institutions like The Catholic University of America, Sorbonne University, and Institut Catholique de Paris. International reception found readers in Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Poland where thinkers like G.K. Chesterton and Stefan Żeromski referenced similar debates. Modern scholarship appears in journals tied to Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique projects and dissertations at Université de Paris and Université de Rennes.
Hello's personal life was marked by devout Catholicism and prolonged illness; he remained unmarried and devoted to private study, corresponding with clergy such as Pope Pius IX's era figures and bishops in Nantes and Rennes. His legacy persists in the libraries and archives of institutions like Bibliothèque nationale de France, the collections of Musée de la Vie Romantique, and private archives in Brittany. Generations of readers and critics continue to debate his stylistic density and theological commitments alongside the works of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Léon Bloy, Charles Maurras, and Paul Valéry. His publications are reprinted by presses specializing in classics of French thought and studied in courses at Collège de France and seminaries across France.
Category:French essayists Category:French literary critics Category:19th-century French writers