cover image Paris on the Eve, 1900-1914

Paris on the Eve, 1900-1914

Vincent Cronin. St. Martin's Press, $24.95 (484pp) ISBN 978-0-312-04876-1

In pre-WW I Paris, Picasso, Debussy, Gide, Proust, Henri Bergson and Pierre and Marie Curie were among the creative minds who helped forge the modern world view of a subjective, fluid reality. Cronin's achievement in this scintillating, highly enjoyable social and cultural history is to demonstrate how the various endeavors of these and other groundbreakers were interrelated. France's adaptation to unless France really developed it.aa the motor car changed Proust's way of life. A new subjectivism, spurred by Bergson's spiritual philosophy, made possible Debussy's exploration of musical nuance, Picasso and Braque's invention of Cubism, and poet Charles Peguy's vision of a socialist utopia. Mingling gossip, biography and astute commentary, this chronicle tracks Diaghilev, Colette, Mattise and a host of others. Cronin, biographer of Napoleon, argues persuasively that Parisians' chilly rancor toward Germans stemmed in part from France's sense of national pride. Do you mean: `French national pride derived from winning the Franco-German rivalry over imperialist expansion in Africa.'?aa Photos. (Apr.)