Sully Prudhomme elected to the Académie française in 1881. Another distinction, "Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur", was to follow in 1895. After, "Le Bonheur", Prudhomme turned from poetry to write essays on aesthetics and philosophy. He published two important essays: "L'Expression dans les beaux-arts" (1884) and "Réflexions sur l'art des vers" (1892), a series of articles on Blaise Pascal in "La Revue des Deux Mondes" (1890), and an article on free will ("La Psychologie du Libre-Arbitre", 1906) in the "Revue de métaphysique et de morale". The first writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (given "in special recognition of his poetic
Paul Prudhomme a summer residence in New York in 1985, Prudhomme's pop-up restaurant was reported to the Board of Health, which visited the restaurant and closed it before it opened, reporting 29 violations of the city's health code. Prudhomme ignored the order and opened the restaurant anyway, resulting in the Board of Health threatening Prudhomme with time in jail if he continued to operate the restaurant. The city's mayor Ed Koch appeared with Prudhomme at the restaurant to declare an end to what the media reported as the "Gumbo war". The restaurant was quite successful during the five weeks it was open,