Jules Renard - Work

Work

Some of Jules Renard's works take their inspiration from the countryside he loved in the Nièvre region. His character portraits are sharp, ironic and sometimes cruel (in his Histoires naturelles he humanizes animals and animalizes men) and he was an active supporter of pacifism and anticlericalism (apparent in La Bigote).

His journal (1897 to 1910, published in 1925) is a masterpiece of introspection, irony, humor and nostalgia, and also provides an important glimpse into the literary life.

The British writer Somerset Maugham was influenced to publish his own well-known journals by the example of Renard. In the introduction to his own work A Writer's Notebook, Maugham wrote an apt summary of the virtues of Renard's journal: "The journal is wonderfully good reading. It is extremely amusing. It is witty and subtle and often wise... Jules Renard jotted down neat retorts and clever phrases, epigrams, things seen, the sayings of people and the look of them, descriptions of scenery, effects of sunshine and shadow, everything, in short, that could be of use to him when he sat down to write for publication."

American novelist Gilbert Sorrentino based his 1994 work Red the Fiend on Renard's Poil de carotte.

For a great part, the 2008 memoir Nothing to Be Frightened Of by British novelist Julian Barnes is a homage to Jules Renard.

Renard is one of several popular philosophers whose quotations appear on the roadsigns of Project HIMANK in the Ladakh region of northern India. On one such sign in the Nubra Valley, he is quoted as saying Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.