Show er q W + + + t + + + t + t + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1 t Tt IAl T f meStudy CifC1e + + + 1 4 Copyright 1 by Seymour Eaton + I Di t d by Prf Seymour Eaton + + + 4 + + + + + + + + + + ee4 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4 + + 44 4 I TE CENTURIES OF FRECH LITERATURE Contributors to this course Brander I Matthews LL D Benjamin W Wels I Ph D Jean Charlemagne Bracq A B Alcee Forter D LL H Morse I Stephens 1 A and other specialists I In romAnce literature 1erXV XV DAUET Alphonse Daudet was born In the city of Nlmc in 184 Hi father hayIng hay-Ing been unfortunate In business the family removed to Lyons Alphonsa studied In the lycee I of that city cherIshing cher-Ishing the memories of the old home memores In the ancient city of Imes and magnifying mag-nifying In his heart through boyish ideal reolCton the beauty of Provencal Pro-vencal life At the death of his father I he went to the college at Aids a little I town of the Ceenne as one of those i unfortunates called piOnshalf tutor half usher There he was 50 wretched 1 that he thought most seriously of the possibility of suicide This experience 1 even during late years appeared to I I T I I I f c4 4 I I > J 0 I ALPHONSE DAUDET him a the great shadow of his early life At the age of 17 he was drawn to Paris whOre his br the Ernest Dudet who has since become a well known man of letters had nreeded him The sum of 15 which Ernest I was earning monthly kept the two brothers until the dawn of better days I Alphonse was happy when he could give himself the luxury of candle to write poHt at night He worked In a little mansard rom without comfort without heat without food but with indomitable courage and boundless hope In iSIS at the age oC 18 he published pub-lished Lea Amouruses a ansall volume vol-ume of verses that weresufcienty noticed no-ticed to give him a start In the literary ary word Some of those who believed in his literary future secured Coxhim secretary to the position of private De lory t hal brother of Napoleon Napo-leon II and president oC the legislative assembly Independently of the knowledge knowl-edge oC men which this position enabled en-abled him to secure It alao meat financial ease During this period he sought fnancial his way either In the light drama or in journalism The hardships of his life during the trying days and the strain or his Parisian Pa-risian existence so endangered his heaLth that he was forced to travel In heath Algeria Sardinia Cotlca and Provence Pro-vence His prosperity and his rapid popularity exercised a bad Influence upon him He was fed from the deterioration de-terioration of bohemlanism by his marriage mar-riage and helped to a higher literary ideal by Ime nudet who remained all through his career a great factor In his succeSS In 186S he issued Le Petit ChoseThe Little Chapa sort of autobiographic novel In 1869 he published his famous Ltres deMon de-Mon MoulIdLettrs From My ll Tile FrancoPrurla war affected him deeply and called forth those short stories which told the tragiC sufferings suffer-ings of the fatherland Seine of these stOre Ing are as touching and as but ful as the war paintings of DE Neule The Last Cartridges of the later Is akin to The Siege of Berlin and The Last Class of Daudet In 18j Tar tarln de Tarascon mad its appear nn h tvns nrenrl U himself for more Important work During I Dur-Ing the net fourteen years he wrote I his best and most endurlg novels Jack Le Nabab Los Hols en Exl The King In Exienot to speak of other works In which he seems to have acted with apparent ethical Indifference in-difference I Is at this time that he felt the influence of naturals which was then S potent as to SWeep everything every-thing in its course Zola and De Gon court left their traces upon him the cur signs of naturalistic methods became visible but Damlc had too much spon tanei to be enslaved by the tenets of a literary school In 1883 he published LEvalgelste and in 18S Lrm morel the former a satire or French Protestantism and the later of the French academy In 1885 an In 1555 he gave to the world two more Tartar InsTtrtarln sur los lpe and PortTrsconthere ending the series se-ries of the Provencal satires I would be Impossible to enumerate all his works without making a very long and wearisome list Like mot French novelists novel-Ists he often endeavored to reap laurels lau-rels upon the stage but without great success However by the quantity of fascinating reading mate which he gave the public he stand second to none of his contewrares His Tartarins are among the most exquisite creations of modern satire Wishing to expose to ridicule the boastful boast-ful and bombastic srlt or southern France he did It in his three Tartarlns Never had French literature Gen finer wit and more bubbling humor at the semlce oC truth than In these fascinating fascinat-Ing extravaganzas His Letres de Mon 10uln La Belle Xlvemalse and his many other short varied poetic tic compositions give him the undisputed undis-puted position of a mast r Iot of them need only rhym s to be the coic cat Idvls of our own times Remarkable Remarka-ble by their variety of subjects elaborate elab-orate by a rich and playful imagine ton they have an exquisite forma form no the fruit of classical training but of a highly gifted nature Among his noels Le Petit Chose would have been alasclnatng bit of literary art had i not been marred by the fictitious miventure otn contemptIble contempt-ible fictitious woman n a bQk which was the stQry of his o1f Daudet always worked from models this time himself He has shown his greatest power in Jack the poor ylctl of a wretched wou1das wrier Le Na l bab a rich adventurer in the midst of the corrupted society of the second empire reduced to abject poverty Les Rols en Exi n study of weak dethroned monarchs In Paris In LEangelste he meant to set forth the harshness of religious propaganda but In r doing he represented the Protestant world which was not familiar fami-liar to him In colors which are false and misleading Sapho is a cruel picture of the worst sphere of the life of Paris fO written that the author to dh Pars criticism dedicated It to his son for his instruction on the threshold of early manhood LImmortel Is an obvious atempt to cast disfavor upon the French academy as if from Its foundation to the present time i had not been represented by the overwhelming over-whelming majority of the great wrier of France In these books as well as in the others which we do not mention there Is not only a careful study of the central figure but of the whole group to which It belongs All through Daudets works one feels I that the literary note Is a personal one I He had hived his books and their history I his-tory Is the history his life although under the influence of naturalism he endeavored to write with absolute oh I jectveness Notwithstanding his ag I nostclsmor the appearance of itand his determinism he is strongly ethical al His thought generally gives the j first place to the moral rather than to the physical deterinatons of his I I characters He frequently asserts his I faith in the Immanent justice oC things I believe absolutely he said In the I formula everything must be paid for I have ever seen man receive the wages I of his works god or bad and that not in the other life which I do not know but In this one In ours sooner or later Again find again he has eloquently asserted the imperativeness I of duty in terms which have not been surpassed either by Emerson of Carlyle Car-lyle His descriptions oC Immoral life and they are not fewalways carry r I with them disapproval and condcmna ton As an observer he Is as sharp as he Is accurate He had an eye for de t lS but he never lost himself in them He showed great originality In his portraiture I por-traiture of characters which by his artistic generalizations becomes types and yet remaIn lving No writer ex I cpt DIkenl perhaps has Isnlayed i more sympathy for his unfortunate heroes ana heroines hIS stYle IS teat oC a consummate artsta style which I has bafed the best efforts of foreign translators By the quantity and the variety of his works by his keenness I as an observer by his large human sympathy by his gifts as a prosepot I by the new fields which he has opened by genuine humor by his contagious cheerfulness and his power oC expres sim he was one oC the men who In I later ten times have honored French let J f e I assar College Selected Studies and Criticism We all know hOw wel Daudet sue ceeded in winning for himself a foremost fore-most place in the ranks of French literature lit-erature There is no doubt that he was I admirably equipped for the great strg I sic on which he was about to enter but i may be also remarked that he had not to fight i out alone and with his own solitary resources but found at the very outset useful and strong I auxiliaries He was to have a powerful power-ful though mewhat selfish and Indolent In-dolent patron In the famous Duke of lorny who admitted him among his I secretaries before he was W years old Then he had the good fortune to attract at-tract the attention and to take the fancY oC the editor or the Figaro who I at first sight ae hIm a place 1n his nursery of young talents He had a kind and devoted brother who cheer I fully shared with him the little money he had to live upon Later on he was still more fortunate in securing a lov ling and Intelligent wife who was nol only to become a help and a comfort but a literary adviser a moral guide and a second conscience farmore strict and exacting than his own a wife who taught him to direct and husband his precious Caculteshow to turn them to the noblest use and highest ends I Augustn Flon At home he and I used to joke at the I eagerness with which each of us tried to get the newspapers away from each I other early In the mornIng He read the papers with remarkable quickness nothing tat was Important escaped him He could not resist the pleasure of writIng at once a word of congratulation congratu-lation to the autfor of some article which pleased him He remembered neW names In the papers as In books he warmed toward every appearance of talent Hc wanted to see the wrier make him talk aid him from his ear lest beginnings It sometimes happened hap-pened Ut he reversed the roles and a reporter sent to receive his own confession con-fession was put by him In the confessional confes-sional Many who are famous today trill recall his encouragements and the genial way In which he reassured timIdity tm idl It is part of the role oC the vender or happiness to give good counsel coun-sel to smaller comrades When I re celve one d these young men who with dlfcuUY gain their bread at so much a line r recall my own beginning and reflect Hat perhaps I have before mo a man of thb future a real talent From Memoirs by his sons Itl gene 1ntiotth istle book so is the man that no author aii wholly conceal his pern1lty Nltnre they say driven way thtougb the 1 door irili eter b the window On this principle one ould lnk e that Zola l d bedp brd and l character formed amid the vIitstdiegs of the Parisian canaUe Yet In fzt t his life has been blameless and pure Al phone Daudet on the other hand was emphatically the novelist of elegant aristocratic society the favorite of the ladles of the drawing room the deple teI of all hat Is of the highest culture In the social system Judging him by his writings one would Imagine that he had spent his whole life leaning In full dress against the mantelpiece of the most rCherche salon In the capital His actual career on the contrary con-trary was one of remarkable ups and downs The society with which he mingled especially during his youth was by no means refined Helved In his earlier years hike a thorough Bohemian Bo-hemian raurlce Iaurls here was not a tinge of pedantry In Daudet nothing that betrayed effort or suggested the dogged labor of the professional pro-fessional author He let his subject take possession of him he showed an affection for his characters and a delight de-light In his theme He wrote with a fever In his veins that was far from unpleasant and a fet hate that made his pen fly and sent a thrill to his fingertips In the exuberance of his nature and overIowlng with the desire to spread his ideas abroad and give them Immediate shape he acted and talked hi scenes before wrIting them The book was lived and lived among the surroundings that suited i bet i so that i seemed to emerge from them spontaneusl Rene Doumlc |