Alphonse Daudet

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Alphonse Daudet (credit: H. Roger-Viollet)

(born May 13, 1840, Nîmes, France — died Dec. 16, 1897, Paris) French short-story writer and novelist. Daudet wrote his first novel at age 14. Unable to finish his schooling after his parents lost all their money, he took a position in a duke's household. He later joined the army but fled the terrors of the Paris Commune of 1871. His health was long undermined by poverty and by the venereal disease that eventually cost him his life. He is remembered for his humorous, sentimental portrayals of the life and characters of southern France, inspired by his experiences at several social levels. His many works include the story collection Monday Tales (1873), the play L'Arlésienne (1872), the novels The Nabob (1877) and Sappho (1884), and several volumes of memoirs. His son, Léon Daudet (1867 – 1942), edited with Charles Maurras the reactionary review L'Action Française and was a virulent satirist and polemicist on the subjects of medicine and psychology as well as public affairs.

For more information on Alphonse Daudet, visit Britannica.com.

The French novelist, dramatist, and short-storywriter Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) is remembered chiefly for his regionalist sketches of Provence and for his transitional role in the evolution of 19th-century theater.

Born in Nîmes, as a child Alphonse Daudet experienced the heady delights of a sun-drenched Provence and the darkening contrasts of his family's steadily worsening financial condition. His father, a silk manufacturer, had to abandon business there in 1849, moving the family north to Lyons; never fully recovering from the depression which followed the Revolution of 1848, the Daudets finally lost everything in 1857. The family became scattered, and Alphonse - never an enthusiastic student - found himself miserably placed as a pion, or monitor, in a provincial Collège. After a few months he was rescued by his elder brother Ernest, who brought him to Paris and generously encouraged the boy's already evident literary talents. A collection of undistinguished love verses, Les Amoureuses, represented a most traditional debut for Alphonse, but again through his brother's influence he was directed by the opportunities of journalism to contribute prose chroniques, stylish social sketches, which won him entry to the prestigious Figaro (1859); already in these early compositions, a mixture of what critics have called "rose-water fantasy" and often sharp satire reveals Daudet's most characteristic modes: sentimentality and imaginative flight.

Early Career

Until 1865 the young Daudet enjoyed financial security as a comfortable undersecretary to the Duc de Morny - a position accorded, in almost fairy tale manner, by a chance notice of the Empress Eugénie. In these years he collaborated in writing a number of one-act plays (La Dernière idole, 1862; Les Absents, 1864; L'Oeillet blanc, 1865), helped toward the stage by the Duc de Morny's influence. Daudet decided to live solely by his pen after the duke's death, and in 1866 the first of his regionalist sketches, or Lettres de mon moulin (Letters from My Mill), based on Provençal folklore began appearing in Paris papers.

Two years later Daudet's first long work, Le Petit chose (The Little Good-for-nothing), was completed; largely autobiographical, this early novel speaks of boyhood joys and travails but in the end leads its hero to the failure and obscurity which Daudet's recent successes were to forestall. The serial publication of his Aventures Prodigieuses de Tartarin de Tarascon (1869) assured Daudet a place in Parisian literary circles, and today - with Lettres and Le Petit chose - it represents his most lasting contribution to French letters. Full of boisterous good humor and the vitality of southern climes, Daudet's picaro Tartarin nevertheless stands in sharp contrast to the young hero of L'Arlésienne, originally one of the Provençal tales related in Lettres, and adapted for the stage as Daudet's most serious dramatic effort in 1872. Here somber passion and jealousy lead to suicide - a thematic shift typical of Daudet's search for personal and artistic maturity in these years. L'Arlésienne failed miserably before the theatergoers of 1872, and this reversal of fortune turned Daudet resolutely back to novel writing. The play remains important, however, for the transformation Daudet there attempted in established theatrical formulas. Augustin Scribe's "well-made play" and the "comedy of manners" fostered by Alexandre Dumas and Émile Augier had for 20 years held dominion over the French stage. The seemingly plotless, moody, sequential arrangement of L'Arlésienne (with incidental music by Georges Bizet) produced shock and laughter, reactions of a prejudiced public erased only by a second, successful production in 1885, when émile Zola's campaign for naturalistic reform in the theater as well as the novel had begun to condition audiences to a genre less dependent on formal contrivance, closer to the unconnected sequences of life.

Later Works

Married in 1867, a father the following year, Daudet felt that the press of family responsibilities made success imperative; the shock of defeat and occupation after the Franco-Prussian War (1870) turned his imagination to a more serious vein, and it was at this time as well that he met regularly with Gustave Flaubert, Ivan Turgenev, Edmond de Goncourt, and Zola - all diversely arguing for an art expressive of nature in all its determinisms, of man in his natural milieu. Zola's formulation of "naturalism," weighted with scientific analogies, would not come until 1880, but Daudet followed the author of Les Rougon-Macquart as closely as his temperament permitted and over the next 20 years produced 10 long novels of his own (Froment jeune et Risler aîné, 1874; Jack, 1876; Le Nabab, 1877; Les Rois en exil, 1879; Numa Roumestan, 1881; L'évangéliste, 1883; Sapho, 1884; L'Immortel, 1887; La Lutte pour la vie, 1889; Le Soutien de famille, 1896). Perhaps the most accomplished of the early, more determinedly objective works is Jack, the story of an illegimate son reared below his station, forced to become a laborer, and eventually destroyed by the brutalizing world of industrial society. The novel contains one of the first protests heard in France against the dehumanizing effects of child labor.

As in all these realistic novels of manners, however, Daudet undermines both the force of Jack's social protest and the novel's very artistic integrity with lacrimonious appeals to reader sentiment and verbose developments. Sentimentality is perhaps the hallmark of Daudet's fictional world. Daudet died after an apoplectic attack on Dec. 16, 1897.

Further Reading

Daudet's works, particularly his novels, have found many translators; a version of Letters from My Mill is by John P. Macgregor (1966). Studies of Daudet in English include the early but still valuable book by R. H. Sherard, Alphonse Daudet: A Biographical and Critical Study (1894), and the general treatment by Murray Sachs, The Career of Alphonse Daudet: A Critical Study (1965). Daudet's theatrical works are studied by Guy Rufus Saylor in Alphonse Daudet as a Dramatist (1940).

Additional Sources

Hare, Geoffrey E., Alphonse Daudet, a critical bibliography, London: Grant & Cutler, 1978.

Daudet, Alphonse (1840–97), French writer, known for his novels of bohemian Paris and traditional Provence. Daudet wrote Le Roman du Chaperon‐Rouge (Novel of Red‐Riding Hood, 1859) and ‘Les sept pendues de Barbe‐bleue’ (‘Bluebeard's Seven Hanged Wives’, 1861). These and other marvellous tales like ‘La Légende de l'homme à la cervelle d'or’ (‘The Man with the Golden Brain’, 1868) twist conventional stories to fit contemporary mores. Playing on misogynistic attitudes, Daudet depicts Little Red Riding Hood as a free spirit condemned by pedantry and provincialism while his Bluebeard is portrayed as a victim of feminine wiles. In ‘Les Fées de France’ (‘The Fairies of France’, 1873), he deals with the Franco‐Prussian War and presents the fairy Mélusine as a Prussian war patriot.

— Amy Ransom

Daudet, Alphonse (1840-97). French novelist and story-teller. He was born in Nîmes and died in Paris after a long illness. He began his writing career in 1858 with a collection of poems, Les Amoureuses, followed by a short story in verse, La Double Conversion (1861), and theatrical sketches, but he finally established himself as a writer of prose fiction and succeeded in becoming a popular author who also appealed to more discriminating readers. His most lasting works are Le Petit Chose (1868), a partly autobiographical novel of which the first section is quite closely related to his own boyhood, his Lettres de mon moulin (1869), evoking scenes of life in Provence, and the Contes du lundi (1873) and Contes et récits (1873), primarily patriotic tales related to his experiences during the Franco-Prussian War. He is remembered particularly for his larger-than-life, ambitious, and cowardly provençal character Tartarin, in Tartarin de Tarascon (1872) and subsequent novels, and for Numa Roumestan (1881), dwelling on the contrast between méridional and Parisian life. His later novels of Parisian manners are less known. Although he is commonly associated with Naturalist realism, his most memorable works are delicate transpositions and subtle evocations of human suffering.

— Bernard Swift

Quotes:

"Hatred -- The anger of the weak."

Alphonse Daudet
Born	13 May 1840(1840-05-13) Nîmes, France
Died	16 December 1897 (aged 57) Paris, France
Occupation	Novelist, Short story writer, Playwright, Poet
Literary movement	Naturalism
Influences Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Frédéric Mistral, Émile Zola

Alphonse Daudet (13 May 1840 – 16 December 1897) was a French novelist. He was the father of Léon Daudet and Lucien Daudet.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Literary career 3 Works 4 References 5 External links

Early life

Alphonse Daudet was born in Nîmes, France. His family, on both sides, belonged to the bourgeoisie. The father, Vincent Daudet, was a silk manufacturer — a man dogged through life by misfortune and failure. Alphonse, amid much truancy, had a depressing boyhood. In 1856 he left Lyon, where his schooldays had been mainly spent, and began life as a schoolteacher at Alès, Gard, in the south of France. The position proved to be intolerable. As Dickens declared that all through his prosperous career he was haunted in dreams by the miseries of his apprenticeship to the blacking business, so Daudet says that for months after leaving Alès he would wake with horror, thinking he was still among his unruly pupils.

On 1 November 1857, he abandoned teaching and took refuge with his brother Ernest Daudet, only some three years his senior, who was trying, "and thereto soberly," to make a living as a journalist in Paris. Alphonse took to writing, and his poems were collected into a small volume, Les Amoureuses (1858), which met with a fair reception. He obtained employment on Le Figaro, then under Cartier de Villemessant's energetic editorship, wrote two or three plays, and began to be recognized, among those interested in literature, as possessing individuality and promise. Morny, Napoleon III's all-powerful minister, appointed him to be one of his secretaries — a post which he held till Morny's death in 1865 — and showed Daudet no small kindness. Daudet had put his foot on the road to fortune.

Literary career

Daudet's Mill

In 1866, Daudet's Lettres de mon moulin, written in Clamart, near Paris, and alluding to a windmill in Fontvieille, Provence, won the attention of many readers. The first of his longer books, Le petit chose (1868), did not, however, produce popular sensation. It is, in the main, the story of his own earlier years told with much grace and pathos. The year 1872 brought the famous Aventures prodigieuses de Tartarin de Tarascon, and the three-act play L'Arlésienne. But Fromont jeune et Risler aîné (1874) at once took the world by storm. It struck a note, not new certainly in English literature, but comparatively new in French. His creativeness resulted in characters that were real and also typical.

Jack, a novel about an illegitimate child, a martyr to his mother's selfishness, which followed in 1876, served only to deepen the same impression. Henceforward his career was that of a very successful man of letters, publishing novel on novel, Le Nabab (1877), Les Rois en exil (1879), Numa Roumestan (1881), Sapho (1884), L'Immortel (1888), and writing for the stage at frequent intervals, giving the world his reminiscences in Trente ans de Paris (1887) and Souvenirs d'un homme de lettres (1888). These, with the three Tartarins, Tartarin de Tarascon, Tartarin sur les Alpes, Port-Tarascon, and the admirable short stories, written for the most part before he had acquired fame and fortune, constitute his life work.

Though Daudet defended himself from the charge of imitating Dickens, it is difficult altogether to believe that so many similarities of spirit and manner were quite unsought. What, however, was purely his own was his style. It is a style that may rightly be called "impressionist," full of light and colour, not descriptive after the old fashion, but flashing its intended effect by a masterly juxtaposition of words that are like pigments. Nor does it convey, like the style of the Goncourts, for example, a constant feeling of effort. It is full of felicity and charm, "un charmeur," Zola called him. An intimate friend of Edmond de Goncourt (who died in his house), of Flaubert, of Zola, Daudet belonged essentially to naturalism. His own experiences, his surroundings, the men with whom he had been brought into contact, various persons who had played a part, more or less public, in Paris life, all passed into his art. But he vivified the material supplied by his memory. His world has the great gift of life. L'Immortel is a bitter attack on the Académie française, to which august body Daudet never belonged.

Daudet wrote some charming stories for children, including "La Belle Nivernaise," the story of an old boat and her crew.

In 1867 Daudet married Julia Allard, who is known for her Impressions de nature et d'art (1879), L'Enfance d'une Parisienne (1883), and some literary studies written under the pseudonym "Karl Steen."

Daudet was far from faithful, and was among the literary syphilitics. Having lost his virginity at age twelve, and then having slept with his friend's mistresses throughout his marriage, Daudet would undergo several painful treatments and operations for his subsequently paralyzing disease.

Daudet died in Paris on 16 December 1897, and was interred at that city's Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Works

Major works, and works in English translation (date given of first translation). For a complete bibliography see Alphonse Daudet Bibliography

• Les Amoureuses (1858; poems, first published work)
• Le Petit Chose (1868; English: Little Good-For-Nothing (1885) or Little What's-His-Name (1898))
• Lettres de Mon Moulin (1869; English: Letters from my Mill (1880), short stories)
• Tartarin de Tarascon (1872; English: Tartarin of Tarascon (1896))
• L'Arlésienne (1872; novella originally part of Lettres de Mon Moulin made into a play)
• Contes du Lundi (1873; English: The Monday Tales (1900); short stories)
• Les Femmes de Artistes (1874; English: Artists' Wives (1896))
• Robert Helmont (1874; English: Robert Helmont: the Diary of a Recluse (1896))
• Fromont jeune et Risler aîné (1874; English: Fromont Junior and Risler Senior (1894))
• Jack (1876; English: Jack (1897))
• Le Nabab (1877; English: The Nabob (1878))
• Les Rois en Exil (1879; English: Kings in Exile (1896))
• Numa Roumestan (1880; English: Numa Roumestan: or, Joy Abroad and Grief at Home (1884))
• L'Evangéliste (1883; English: The Evangelist (1883))
• Sapho (1884; English: Sappho (1886))
• Tartarin sur les Alpes (1885; English: Tartarin on the Alps (1896))
• Le Belle Nivernaise (1886; English: Le Belle Nivernaise (1892); juvenile)
• L'Immortel (1888; English: One of the Forty (1888))
• Port-Tarascon (1890; English: Port Tarascon (1890))
• Rose and Ninette (1892; English: Rose and Ninette (1892))

References

• The story of Daudet's earlier years is told in his brother Ernest Daudet's Mon frère et moi. There is a good deal of autobiographical detail in Daudet's Trente ans de Paris and Souvenirs d'un homme de lettres, and also scattered in his other books. The references to him in the Journal des Goncourt are numerous.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alphonse Daudet

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• Works by or about Alphonse Daudet at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• Works by Alphonse Daudet at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Persondata
NAME	Daudet, Alphonse
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	writer
DATE OF BIRTH	May 13, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH	Nîmes, France
DATE OF DEATH	December 16, 1897
PLACE OF DEATH	Paris, France

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