Vladimirka is a big road surrounded by beaten ruts. Vladimir Gilyarovsky friends

(May 13, 1840 Nimes, now the Languedoc-Roussillon region, France - December 16, 1897, Paris)

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Biography

Alphonse Daudet was born on May 13, 1840 in the (Provencal) city of Nimes in the family of the owner of a small silk factory, Vincent Daudet (1806--1875). In 1848, the father went bankrupt, the factory was sold, and the family moved to Lyon. Without the financial opportunity to obtain higher education, the future writer, after graduating from high school, entered the position of assistant teacher at a provincial college, but soon left this occupation and at the age of seventeen, together with his older brother Ernest, moved to Paris to earn a living as a journalist. The autobiographical novel “The Kid” (Le Petit Chose, 1868) tells about this period of his life. However, fame came to the writer earlier - with the publication of the prose collection “Letters from My Mill” (1866).

Alphonse Daudet began collaborating in several newspapers in 1859 as a reporter and theater critic. In 1860 he was introduced to the Duke de Morny, who served as President of the Legislative Corps of the Second Empire. Daudet received the position of one of his secretaries, which did not prevent Alphonse from engaging in journalistic and literary activities. Daudet spent almost five years in the service of de Morny, until the Duke’s death in 1865.

In 1867, the young writer married and began to live exclusively by literary work.

Creation

In the period 1866-1868, his original lyrical short stories about the nature and people of Provence were published regularly in newspapers. They were published in 1869 as a separate book entitled Letters from My Mill. Almost at the same time, the text of Alphonse Daudet’s first novel, “The Kid,” was published in the press, which was published as a separate book in 1868. These two works brought fame and money to the writer.

From December 1869 to March 1870, newspapers published his new novel « Extraordinary Adventures Tartarin from Tarascon,” which was published as a separate book in 1872.

By the age of 30, Alphonse Daudet had become one of the most famous French writers, became close to the circle of leading writers of the country, made friends with Flaubert, Zola, the Goncourt brothers and Turgenev, who was then living in Paris.

The publication of the novels Fromon the Younger and Risler the Elder (1874) and Jack (1876) caused a new surge in his popularity.

The writer's main works, which brought him world fame, were written within one decade (1866-1876), but he lived for more than 20 years (died in 1897) and published a novel almost every year, most of which, although not published to the level of his first books, but had high artistic qualities that made it possible to count him among the top five largest writers in France late XIX century.

IN late period In Daudet's creative work, critical tendencies intensified; he wrote sharp, socially revealing novels (“Nabob” - 1877; “Kings in Exile” - 1879; “Numa Rumestan” - 1881; “Evangelist” - 1883; “Immortal” - 1888). In the 80s, the writer again turned to the image of Tartarin from Tarascon and wrote two more novels about him: “Tartarin in the Alps. New adventures of the Tarascon hero" - (1885) and "Port of Tarascon. The last adventures of the famous Tartarin" (1890).

At the same time, around the mid-80s, Daudet showed an increasingly clear interest in psychological analysis, in depicting not so much social as internal, even purely biological, motivations that push a person to certain actions (“Sappho” - 1884 ); “Rose and Ninetta” - 1891; "Little Parish" - 1895; “Support of the family” - 1897.

Of Daudet’s plays, the most famous is the dramatic adaptation of his own story “The Arlesian Woman” (L’Arlsienne, 1872), which owes much of its success to the music of J. Bizet. But the main thing in Daudet’s work is prose. Here two main directions can be distinguished: one is distinguished by humor, irony and vivid imagination; the other is characterized by naturalistic accuracy of observations and extreme realism. The first category includes the Provencal “Letters from my mill” (Lettres de mon moulin, 1869) and “Tartarin from Tarascon” (Tartarin de Tarascon, 1872) - his most original and famous works. The second group includes mainly large realistic novels, in which he, without showing much imagination, copies characters from real persons, and most often chooses Paris as the location.

"Letters from My Mill"

In this work, Daudet shows that there is a completely different life, that there are people who live according to the natural and fair laws of nature. They do not make money, do not pursue wealth and luxury, do not wallow in vices, but work honestly, know how to love sincerely and passionately, are content with little, rejoice in the beautiful nature of Provence and bravely endure difficulties. Stories about such people are built on the folklore basis of folk legends and tales. The action takes place against the backdrop of the fabulously beautiful nature of the south of France.

The patriarchal, deeply humane world of Provence contrasts with inhumane Paris as a symbol of the brutal progress of civilization, which is what brought millions of readers, especially those who were not successful, to Daudet’s book.

Works

"Fromont jeune et Risler an, 1874"
"Sapho" (Sapho, 1884)
"Jack" (Jack, 1876),
"The Nabob" (Le Nabab, 1877)
"Kings in Exile" (Les Rois en exil, 1879).
"The Extraordinary Adventures of Tartarin of Tarascon" (1872),
"Tartarin in the Alps" (1885),
"Port of Tarascon" (1890).
"Letters from My Mill"

Plays

"Arlesienne" (1872),
"Struggle for Existence" (1889)

Literary memories:

“Memoirs of a Writer” (1888),
"Thirty Years in Paris" (1888).

Biography

DODE Alphonse

Famous French novelist; genus. in Nîmes on May 13, 1840. After graduating from the Lyceum in Lyon, he served for two years as a teacher in Alais. D.'s first poems were published in Lyon newspapers, when the future novelist was still a student at the Lyceum. In 1857 D. arrived in Paris to try his luck in the literary field. In Paris he made his debut with a collection of poems "Les Amoureuses"; one of them, “Les Prunes,” drew the attention of critics to the gifted young man. The essay “Les gueux de province” then appeared in “Figaro”, in which D. outlined the deplorable fate of provincial teachers. This essay has already reflected the main distinctive features D. - observation, ability to give prominence to images and descriptions, brilliant style, great impressionability. In 1859, D. published the second volume of poems: “La double conversion”, in 1861 - a collection of stories under the general title “Le chaperon rouge”. For five years, until 1865, D. served as personal secretary to the Duke de Morny; close contact with many figures of the second empire enriched his stock of observations. During the siege of Paris, he enlisted in an infantry battalion and participated in many skirmishes. In 1874 he began writing critical feuilletons in the Journal Officiel. Since 1862, D. has been working for the theater; His plays, mostly adapted from his own novels and not particularly successful, were staged in the following order: “La Dernière Idole” (1862), “L”Oeillet blanc” (1865), “Les Absents” (1865), “Le Frée ainé" (1868), "Le Sacrifice" (1869), "Lise Tavernier" (1872), "L" Artésienne" (1872), "Fromont jeune et Risler ainé" (1876), "Le Char" (1877) , "Le Nabab" (1880), "Jack" (1881), "Les Rois en exil" (1883), "Sapho" (1885), "Numa Roumestan" (1887), "Tartarin sur les Alpes" (1888) , "La lutte pour la vie" (1889), "L" Obstacle "(1890). Some of them were written in collaboration with other playwrights. In 1866, D. published a series of stories in "Evénement" entitled "Lettres de mon moulin"; these stories, signed with the pseudonym "Gaston-Marie", are among D.'s best works. Irony and humor are successfully shaded with a light haze of mournful feeling, touching the reader and at the same time arousing an involuntary smile. "Le Petit Chose" (1868) - a fantastic autobiography, the first of D.’s novels “Les lettres a un absent”, caused by the war of 1870-71, imbued with patriotic grief. D. describes with indignant pathos the horrors of war and the violence of triumphant enemies. "Aventures prodigieuses de Tartarin de Tarascon" (1872) is an extremely popular work by D. In the person of the hero, the self-praise of French southerners is wittily ridiculed. The funny story is told in a somewhat flowery style; it seems to reflect the properties of Tartarin and his exploits. "Les petits Robinsons des caves ou le siège de Paris raconté par une petite fille de huit ans" (1872), "Contes du lundi" (1873), "Contes et récits" (1873), "Robert Helmont, études et paysages" (1874) and "Les Femmes d'rtistes" (1874) preceded D.'s next great novel, "Fromont jeune et Risler aine" (1874), which had great and well-deserved success. D. was especially successful in the figure of Sidonie - one of those heartless predators who are brought up by the artificial, hectic life of a big city, with its contrasts between tireless work and eternal idleness, between luxury and poverty. "Jack," the story of an abandoned child and a reluctant worker, features a gallery of misfits and misfits. modern culture. "Le Nabab" (1878) gives a bright picture Parisian morals during the Second Empire. This novel caused a lively controversy, because in its main figures it was impossible not to find similarities with the Duke of Morny and one of the deputies of the legislative corps (Bravais). It would be unfair, however, to blame this similarity on D.; Mora and Zhansul reflected only some, and at the same time the most attractive, features of their prototypes. In "The Nabob", as in D.'s other novels, there are no portraits or caricatures; material taken from reality is processed artistically and freely. In "Rois en exil" (1879) it is only with great stretch that one can recognize one or another of the fallen monarchs of our time, in "Numa Roumestan" (1880) - one or another of the southern Frenchmen who made a fast parliamentary career. If there was a possible dispute about who Rumestan was copied from - from Gambetta or from Nyuma Baranyon, then it is from this that one should conclude that neither one nor the other served as a model for D. In "Evangéliste" (1883) and "Sapho" (1884), the scope of D.'s talent is less wide, because the themes he chose are less broad; the last novel is no stranger to a moralizing tendency, even more noticeable in Rose et Ninette (1891). "Tartarin sur les Alpes" (1885) and "Port Tarascon" (1890) are a continuation of the comic epic, which is obviously one of D.'s favorite brainchildren. In "Immortel" (1888), the author's hostile attitude towards the French Academy was expressed with irritability, in general unusual for D. In the development of his talent, from the mid-eighties, there appeared to be stagnation or even regression, depending, perhaps, on his rapidly weakening health. However, the first five or six of his novels are enough to give him a prominent place among modern French. novelists. In some aspects of his writing style, he undoubtedly belongs to the naturalistic school. He strives for a faithful and complete reproduction of reality, carefully notes and collects facts, does not hide or tint anything, does not retreat from the image of the dirty and vulgar, avoiding only its intense emphasis. Another feature that D. has in common with the luminaries of the newest French novel is the pursuit of an apt, picturesque, original word. He is not as demanding in this regard as Flaubert, not as nervously whimsical as Goncourt, not as generous with technical terms as Zola - but just as not disposed, like them, to the beaten path and stereotyped expressions. He differs from his contemporaries in the field of the novel mainly in that he does not at all pretend to be calm and dispassionate, to scientific objectivity or artistic service to form, form alone. Like Dickens, with whom he is often and not without reason compared, he loves or hates his heroes, lives their lives and often speaks not only through their mouths, but directly from his own person, contrary to one of the main rules of the naturalistic code. Much interesting information about D.'s method of work can be found in his book: "Trente ans de Paris" (1887). At the end of the seventies, D. wrote feuilletons for “New Time” at one time. Almost all of D.'s major works have been translated into Russian.

Wed. Zola, "Paris Letters"; article in "Bulletin of Europe", 1882, No. 2; "Daudet and Trollope" (Historical Westic, 1885); J. Lemaitre, "E. Renan and A. Daudet" ("Russian Thought", 1888, No. 4).

F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron. Encyclopedic Dictionary

Biography

DODE Alphonse

French novelist. The son of a manufacturer who was ruined by the revolution of 1848 (the workers set fire to his factory), D. belonged to the provincial trading bourgeoisie. In his family, monarchical views and legitimism were combined with hatred of the revolution. His grandfather, a royalist, was killed during the days of terror. After the death of his father, D. taught in Ale for two years. In the autobiographical novel “The Kid” (Le petit Chose, histoire d enfant, 1868) he talks about this period of his life. As an 18-year-old boy, D. arrived in Paris to seek his fortune in literature. He made his debut with poems (“Les Amoureuses”). He attracted attention with tales in the spirit of Provençal legends (“Letters from the Mill” - “Lettres de mon moulin”). In these short stories, the fairy-tale element gradually gives way to everyday sketches. The siege of Paris awakened D.'s patriotic feelings, and he joined an infantry regiment as a soldier. In "Lettres a un absent" he described his impressions. His “The Extraordinary Adventures of Tartarin of Tarascon” (Les aventures prodigieuses de Tartarin, 1872) was a resounding success - a witty depiction of fanfare, full of sincere humor. A Provencal himself, D. often chooses his heroes among his fellow countrymen and transfers the action to his native south. Tartarin's adventures have grown into a trilogy: part 2 - "Tartarin sur les Alpes" and part 3 - "Port Tarascon, dernieres aventures de l Tartarin". "Fromont the Younger and Risler the Elder" is D.'s first real novel. In the novel "Robert Helmont", pictures of the siege of Paris and the nascent Commune are given without any understanding of what is depicted.

In the era of the Empire, Daudet was the secretary of the Duke de Morny, the favorite of Napoleon III, a loyal monarchist; in the era of the Republic, he was a moderate and indifferent to politics republican, or rather, an intelligent man in the street, not alien to sentimental sympathies for romanticized royalism. Even in his morally descriptive novels, D. does not go beyond the circle of bourgeois views and ideas. The militant social pathos of Zola is alien to him. Depicting certain aspects of contemporary life, D. does not reveal social relations; he remains entirely on the basis of these relations, which in his eyes are legal and normal. D.’s creativity is an expression of conservative psychoideology, in best case scenario moderate-liberal urban middle and petty bourgeoisie. It satisfied their demand for literary good-quality entertaining reading, a little sentimental, a little revealing, but more mildly tingling than seriously wounding. D. does not effectively organize. In just a few works ("Fromont and Risler", two or three stories, and especially "Jacques") he depicts the workers, but does not explain their suffering by capitalist exploitation, does not even try to approach the topic of the relationship between capital and labor. His works contain emotional conflicts, “dramas of the heart,” the life history of individuals, descriptions of morals, without much depth, masterful reproduction of external life, but there is no class struggle in them. Depicting ministers (“Nabab”, “Rumestan”), he draws one or another trait of their character, often with noticeable sympathy, but “does not show them at work, in suppressing the country and in distributing money and honors” (Zola), as agents class power. The novel "Kings in Exile" seems to be a satire on legitimism, but nevertheless, representatives of the fallen royal power enjoy the author's sympathy. Bernard Jansoulet (“Nabab”) is a poor fellow, unhappy with his excessive wealth. The author loves and pities him. “Numa Rumestan” is an atypical portrait of a politician of the Third Republic; it is a kindly written story of the adventures of a southerner who, thanks to his empty eloquence, became a minister; however, he is not shown as a minister. And only with reservations can one call D. an artist public life. Internal social dynamics, driving forces social process- out of his field of vision. His political and social background is only outlined. He observed the life of the working elements of the petty bourgeoisie, saw poverty, but somehow did not notice all this as a social phenomenon. He noted ch. arr. “universal”: love and disappointment, narrowly family or narrowly personal joys and sorrows. Following the example of Dickens, with whom he has so much in common (with the author of "Oliver Twist" he is especially related to his skill in depicting suffering children), D. only wants to correct bourgeois society, but not to change it radically. He contrasts the corruption of individual representatives of the “tops” with the virtue of “inconspicuous people.” He finds purity, selflessness, honesty and hard work in the philistinism. But such positive characters His ideas came out pale, unconvincing, and smacked too much of conventional virtue.

D.'s literary activity dates back to the period of the triumph of naturalism. But he belonged to his right wing. Some critics do not consider D. a naturalist. He optimistically poeticized reality, embellished it, and idealized his characters. He believed that a novel should not disappoint or deprive people of illusions. D. obscured class contradictions and did not completely expose negative phenomena. Despite the class limitations, one-sidedness of the image and the superficiality of D., some of his pages are masterpieces literary prose, written in beautiful, rich language. and full of lyricism and humor.

Bibliography: I. All of D.’s novels have been translated into Russian more than once. and were published not only in separate editions (previously, from the 70s, in “thick” magazines), but were also collected in 12 volumes. "Collected works.", ed. br. Panteleev, "Best Foreign Literature", St. Petersburg, 1894-1895 and in 5 vols. "Complete collected works.", ed. I. Mayevsky, M., 1913; Tartarin, "ZIF", 1926. Since 1927, Guise has published "Collected Works." edited by N. Logrina (so far published: vol. I - "Sappho", vol. II - "Little Man", vol. IV - "Kings in Exile"). ?uvres completes, 8 vv., 1899-1900. II. Lanson G., History of French Literature, vol. II, M., 1898 (and other ed., vol. III, St. Petersburg, 1897); Zola E., My Hatred, St. Petersburg, 1903; His, Novelists-Naturalists, 1904; Veselovsky A., Sketches and Characteristics, vol. II, ed. 4th, M., 1912; Brandes G., Literary characteristics, 1908; Pellissier G., Le mouvement litteraire au XIX-e siècle, P., 1890 (there is a Russian translation, M., 1891); His same, Precis de la litterature francaise; Daudet L., A. Daudet, sein Leben und seine Werke, Berlin, 1900; Burns M., La langue d "Alphonse Daudet, P., 1916; Martino P., Le naturalisme francais, P., 1923; Lalou R., Histoire de la litterature francaise contemporaine, P., 1924.

Literary encyclopedia: In 11 volumes - [M.], 1929-1939.

Biography

A. Andres. ALPHONSE DAUDE (1840-1897)

POET OF PROVENCE

The picturesque windmills that once covered these green hills have long been demolished. Residents of the surrounding villages now transport their grain to a flour mill built by the enterprising “French from Paris” on the road to Tarascon. Only the last, dilapidated mill still stands here, alone, a mute witness to the former prosperity of this sunny region. Her wings, motionless for many years, are entwined with wild grapes. The entrance to it was overgrown with thick grass. Here, in this old mill, a young writer set up a summer “residence” for himself, planning to take a break from the hustle and bustle of the capital in his native place in the south of France. From here he writes half-joking, half-lyrical messages to his Parisian correspondents - pages from the poet’s original diary, where he records everything that he sees and hears around, and everything that only comes to his mind here, in this sweet Provence, “a thousand leagues from newspapers, cabs and fog. . ."

This was the peculiar plot frame of the essays about Provence that appeared in the autumn of 1866 in the Parisian newspapers Evenman and Figaro. The first of them were published under the pseudonym Marie Gaston. Under the rest was the real name of their author - Alphonse Daudet. Three years later, Letters from My Mill was released separate publication and brought resounding success to the young writer.

The reader passes before the landscapes of Provence, either generously bathed in sunshine or permeated through with the harsh mistral - green hills overgrown with lavender; strings of donkeys on roads white with dust, blue alpine distances... As if alive, the simple-minded inhabitants of a quiet province with their difficult working life, with their still preserved patriarchal morals, with their everyday joys and sorrows. And next to these authentic pictures provincial life - crafty folk legends lovingly stylized by the author, reminiscent of the bright past of this region; in them - as if the very soul of a cheerful, free-thinking, slightly careless people, who have long loved a sparkling joke.

But the main charm of “Letters from My Mill” lay, perhaps, in their appearance “ lyrical hero" This Parisian journalist was an amazingly sweet person - young, full of life, childlike. Sometimes he was sad (in fact, there is a lot of sadness in life), but most of all he smiled, and the readers seemed to see this smile - kind and slightly mocking, as if he himself was a little embarrassed for the touching tenderness that he feels for all living things. There was genuine sincerity in his voice, which made us immediately, unconditionally believe that the writer and his hero were one and the same person.

This is how young Alphonse Daudet came to literature, generously giving the readers his whole self - his spontaneity as a southerner, his faithful eye and kind heart. This is how his contemporaries recognized and loved him.

Daudet spoke about his sad childhood and adolescence in his early story “The Kid” and told it so reliably, in such detail that, perhaps, it is not worth retelling this part of the writer’s biography, especially since many of its episodes have long become textbook ones. There are only a few dates left to name.

Alphonse Daudet was born in 1840, in Nîmes; his father belonged to a well-known family of silk manufacturers in Languedoc. In 1855, the Daudet family went bankrupt, and the fifteen-year-old teenager was forced to leave the Lyceum Lyceum, where he studied, and look for work. At the college in the provincial town of Ale, a position as a class supervisor was found for young Dode. After two years of humiliating existence in the stupid, vulgar environment of the provincial philistinism, he decides to try his hand at literature and goes to Paris, where his elder brother settled shortly before and for the same purpose.

This is how the Parisian period of the life of “The Kid” and its author begins... But here, in fact, fiction invades the story, and it ceases to be a reliable biographical source for us. Let us turn further pages of the writer’s life.

With myopic but surprisingly observant eyes, Daudet carefully peers at Paris, which every day reveals its face more and more to him. He peers at the people with whom his life encounters - on the street and in editorial offices, at the second-hand bookseller's counter and in the hairdresser's, in cafes and in tertiary literary salons, in the Odeon gallery and in the Central Market. A tenacious memory will preserve them all - artists and their girlfriends, actors, journalists, poets, reporters, publishers, photographers, clerks, waiters... He will remember the visitors to the tavern on the Central Market, where for three sous you can eat your fill of cabbage soup and where forks and The spoons are attached to the tables with chains. And not only will he remember. It was during these years that Daudet’s famous notebooks appeared, in which he would carefully record his observations all his life, like an artist hastily sketching in an album a silhouette, a pose, an angle, a characteristic gesture... All this would be useful to him later. These people, their conversations, their gestures will subsequently find new life on the pages of his short stories and novels about Paris. In the meantime, he is trying to somehow comprehend and generalize his first impressions. IN Latin Quarter, where he and his brother settled, poor students, artists, poets huddle - a poor but cheerful people, shortly before immortalized by the writer Murger under the name “bohemians”. A motley, absurd world, an eternally hungry existence, an eternal pursuit of casual income, of casual success - and yet there is something attractive in the carefree attitude of these people towards the blessings of life, in their contempt for moral code bourgeois.

Daudet's first literary experiments were devoted precisely to this topic. The hero of his pastoral comedy “The Adventures of the Moth and Ladybug” - a sweet, talented, but dissolute moth (a true representative of bohemia!) lives and dies misunderstood by well-behaved grasshoppers and ladybugs - and yet he is a hundred times happier than them! In his "Little Red Riding Hood" - a new version of Perrault's fairy tale - the heroine resolutely refuses to heed the prudent advice of Shakespeare's Polonius and turns off the safe straight road onto an unknown forest path. True, she risks meeting a wolf there, well, but at least she will enjoy the feeling of freedom.

Ten years later, Daudet would return to this allegory in “Letters from My Mill”: Mr. Seguin’s rebellious goat, like Little Red Riding Hood, would prefer to be eaten by a wolf - death in freedom is better than a bourgeois existence on a leash! And this time, the direct connection of the allegory with the life observations of young Daudet in Paris is no longer in doubt: the story of the freedom-loving goat is given here as a lesson to the modern Gringoire, who prefers the half-starved existence of a free servant of the muses than the secure but dependent position of a chronicler in a reputable Parisian newspaper ...

Oh, without a doubt, he too would prefer the fate of Gringoire! Living from hand to mouth, walking around in winter without a coat - all this is not so scary when you are twenty years old... But what can you do? The fragile organism of a southerner cannot withstand such a life. Dode is coughing more and more. Doctors send him south. For one trip to Algeria, she and her brother scraped together something. Well, what next? The first literary experiments - the collection of poems “Lovers” and essays about provincial teachers - brought, however, some success, but no income. And the Duke de Morny just needs a personal secretary...

However, this time Doda was lucky. One of the “pillars” of the Second Empire, a man with a checkered and far from impeccable biography, the Duke de Morny, during his tenure as chairman of the Legislative Corps, is known as a philanthropist, and he himself willingly devotes his leisure time to writing vaudevilles. He doesn't overburden his secretary with his work. Daudet has plenty of time left and is not wasting it. During his four years of service with de Morny, he managed to establish connections with many Parisian theaters. Several of his plays have been accepted for production.

Meanwhile, Paris appears to him as another, new side. In the ducal chancellery, on the sidelines of the Legislative Corps, in the official reception room of de Morny, behind the scenes of theaters, Daudet sees and observes those who actually decide the destinies of France - political tycoons, businessmen, speculators, their wives, their mistresses. He will remember this too. The relationships of these people, their characters, appearance, gestures, voices, spied, overheard and scrupulously recorded by the writer during his service with de Morny, will appear later in his “historical” novels. They will serve as prototypes for many of his heroes.

Daudet spent the beginning of 1866 in Provence, on a small secluded farm between Nimes and Beaucaire. It is becoming increasingly difficult to write in Paris, this modern Babylon. There is only one thing left to do - from time to time, get into the wilderness of the village, where no one bothers you to work.

In the evenings he wanders through the fields, still covered in snow in some places. How familiar everything is here - these vineyards, this breath of the Mistral. He knows the names of all the surrounding villages... Nearby Nîmes is the city where he spent the first years of his life. An irresistible desire to write suddenly takes possession of him, but not a play for which he actually came here, but a book about his own childhood. And so he writes - he writes with passion, with incredible speed, writing one after another on long sheets of yellow wrapping paper (the stock of writing papers has long been exhausted), which he immediately, without re-reading, sweeps from the table to the floor... “No plan, no preliminary recordings,” Daudet later recalled, “some kind of frantic, non-stop three-month improvisation...”

The book was published two years later. It was the story “Baby, the story of one child.”

Provence, his native Provence, the sweet land of his childhood... These years of hectic Parisian life were needed to truly feel his blood connection with it, to fall in love with its silence, its sun-scorched nature. Now Dode often stays with a friend peasant family, near Arles. In the evenings, in the kitchen, by the huge, hotly blazing fireplace, he listens to the memories of the peasants, writes down local legends, parables; in the afternoon he climbs to the top of the hill, to a dilapidated mill, entwined with wild grapes... From time to time he allows himself a fun “vacation” - he meets with the “felibres” - a group of Provençal poets passionately in love with their land; in a cheerful and noisy company they wander through the picturesque streets of Arles and Avignon. This is how the first essays of “Letters from My Mill” were born. Daudet finally found his topic. He found his voice. A voice that was immediately loved by his contemporaries. A voice that can touch hearts.

THE TIME OF WINDMILLS IS GONE

Touch hearts... In that literary era it seemed somehow anachronistic. In passionate polemics, in heated debates, in the practice of artists and poets, new concepts about the truth of life in art were then born. There was a merciless eradication of the romantic vision of the world. A new code of the artist’s attitude to reality was emerging, which demanded complete “self-elimination” from the artist. The realists of the 50s, on the one hand, Flaubert and the Parnassians, on the other, called the writer to impartiality, to a cold recording of observed facts, to complete objectivity. Literature became more and more harsh towards people.

Against this background, didn’t Daudet’s works, with their lyrical hero, appealing to the reader’s heart at every step, persistently reminding himself in every line of his attitude to the events depicted, a kind of “relapse” of romanticism? Wasn’t turning to the theme of Provence, to its folklore a romantic “escape from civilization”?

No. Daudet's "lyrical hero" was the least reminiscent of a romantic hero. It lacked the main, main feature romantic hero- tragic conflict between ideal and reality. Dode's hero does not feel the slightest desire to escape from reality into the world of a beautiful dream. The only thing he strives for is, within the framework of reality itself, to arrange for himself a life that would best suit his, the lyrical hero’s, spiritual tastes and needs. Even the most “romantic” of Daudet’s heroes - Little Red Riding Hood and M. Seguin’s goat - rush towards danger not in the name of any high ideals, but simply because they are attracted by the feeling of complete freedom, that they would rather frolic in the forest than walk the beaten path or sit behind the narrow fence of bourgeois existence.

There was absolutely nothing romantic in Daudet’s approach to the theme of Provence. The past of this region - a picturesque, vibrant past, embodied in the works of the people's genius, in its traditions and legends, deeply concerns him. He lovingly draws from the treasury of Provençal folklore. But the past is the past. And his hero is not at all inclined to curse historical progress, nor does he express any particular admiration for it. He simply “states” an indisputable fact: the time of windmills is over...

In contrast to Provence with its simple-minded inhabitants and noisy, bustling Paris, there is not even a shadow of a call to return to “natural life.” It’s good to rest in this fragrant silence after the noisy capital - that’s all... And if you carefully read “Letters from My Mill” one after another, it’s easy to discover that from the second half of the book our hero gradually seems to begin to be burdened by this silence. Increasingly, he turns to topics that lie outside the Provençal “promised land.” He remembers his recent trips to Corsica, Algeria... and more and more persistently his thoughts return to distant Paris. And here we have the last short story in the collection - “Longing for the Barracks.”

Early in the morning, at dawn, the narrator is suddenly awakened by some strange sounds. Somewhere very close to his mill, among the green pines, the roar of a drum is heard. Who could it be? Isn't this a playful elf of these places - some Provençal Peck or Ariel, who decided to wake up a sleepy Parisian?

No, this is Guguet Francois, the drummer of the 31st Parisian regiment, who came to visit his parents on leave, beating the drum. He is already bored with life here, far from the barracks, which has become dearer to him than his home, and in order to dispel his melancholy, he wanders through the mountains and valleys, resounding with the sounds of drumming. And it seems to him that he is back in the barracks...

And “our hero suddenly realizes that he is somewhat similar to this funny little drummer... Isn’t he also drawn in the same way to his “native barracks” - Paris, which has long become his second home? “And I, sick with melancholy, lie in the grass, and it seems to me that all my Paris is parading in the pine forest to the receding drumbeat... Ah, Paris! Paris! Forever Paris!

These words, which conclude the short story, and with it the entire cycle of Letters from My Mill, completely remove the question of any romantic motives in this book. However, won’t the image of Tartarin, with which the writer, following Flaubert, debunk the imaginary romance of bourgeois existence, soon become the best proof of Daudet’s “anti-romanticism”?

Thus, despite the “subjective” tone, which was unusual in that literary era, Daudet’s work did not essentially contradict the basic requirements of the new aesthetic code. It developed in the same direction as the work of writers advocating an impartial depiction of the “truth of life.” It is no coincidence that in the 70s Daudet entered the circle of naturalists, who from the very beginning accepted him as “one of their own.” He had an innate gift of observation, a faithful and accurate eye, and the ability to reliably record what he saw. But - and this is where he differs from both the realists of the 50s and the naturalists - he never knew how, and did not try, to “withdraw himself,” to become “impersonal.” Truthfully recording objective reality, Daudet constantly reminds you of his subjective attitude towards it: not for a minute does he leave you without his author’s “I”, forcing you to look at the “truth of life” through his eyes - the impartial, but very kind eyes of a person, loving life and people. “Daudet treats reality honestly,” writes

Zola - he does not slander her, does not embellish her; he simply extracts the best from her and brings this best to the fore..."

In fact, what would, for example, the short story “The Old Men” have turned into under the pen of one of the “impersonal” artists - Chanfleury or the same Zola? A story about pitiful old age, about two helpless old men, almost completely out of their minds, meaninglessly living out their days alone. Daudet makes of them provincial Philemon and Baucis; he does not idealize them, does not hide their limitations, their stupidity; he only “brings to the fore” their human feelings - and the very weaknesses of his heroes suddenly turn into a touching side. And this is undoubtedly the result of the narrator’s “personal” attitude towards them. “He constantly bursts into the story... he doesn’t have the composure to stay behind the scenes,” Zola complains about Dode, and from the point of view of the leader of the naturalistic school, this “violates the harmony of the work.” “And, however,” he is forced to immediately admit, “this is, in essence, the secret of his charm.”

In French literature There was no other writer of that era who would have met with such immediate and unconditional recognition. While the works of Flaubert, Goncourt, Zola provoked attacks, accusations, passionate polemics, literary fate Dode's life was exceptionally happy. Criticism of all directions unanimously recognized the high artistic merit his works; they sold in quantities unprecedented for that time. “Yes, he’s just a universal seducer,” one of his contemporaries jokingly writes about him.

And this is understandable. “The truth of life,” which appeared so harsh and unsightly for many contemporary writers, in Daudet turned out to have a reversed lyrical edge. In this literary era, his works sounded optimistic; they carried within themselves faith in man and compassion for him.

IT'S ALL THE SUN'S BLAME

In 1869, chapters of “The Extraordinary Adventures of Tartarin from Tarascon” appeared in the newspapers Petit Moniteur and Le Figaro. Provence again... But now it looks different. Next to the poetic land of pastures and vineyards, the touching world of Uncles Cornilles and François Mamai, there is, it turns out, another Provence - the funny world of Tarasconians, gambling cap shooters and fans of the fearless Tartarin. And this world is told in a different way.

It seems as if bright sun Provence and its sunny folk legends finally melted the cheerful soul of a Provençal dormant in the visiting Parisian, and now he laughs loudly and infectiously, laughs like a true Provençal at the funny sides of his fellow countrymen. And in order to laugh to his heart’s content, he collected all these funny features of the “Provençal character” in one person - in the image of Tartarin from Tarascon, an undoubted descendant of the funny comic heroes folk legends about liars. This image, as always with Daudet, is copied from life. Its prototype was a certain Provençal bourgeois who was the writer’s companion during his first trip to Algeria in 1861. Doda was familiar with this image of a provincial rentier from childhood - a narrow-minded tradesman, expansive and cowardly, easily imagining himself as a hero, a liar who believes his own lies.

But no matter how loudly Daudet laughs at his hero, his laughter still sounds benevolent. Well, in the end, this funny, pot-bellied bourgeois - the “Provençal Don Quixote” in the body of Sancho Panza - is a victim of his own imagination. He is not a malicious liar at all, this Tartarin. He lies so sincerely, and all the Tarasconians believe him so sincerely... He is a true son of Provence, that’s all, but in Provence even the sun lies, here “the sun itself transforms everything and exaggerates everything.” And while painting this authentic portrait of the Provençal bourgeois, Daudet, perhaps, sometimes admires his model a little...

- "It's nothing you can do! It’s all the sun’s fault...” he seems to be saying.

“The Extraordinary Adventures of Tartarin from Tarascon” was published as a separate publication after the fall of the empire, in 1872. Subsequently, Daudet returned several times to the image of this hero he loved. The second and third parts of the trilogy (“Tartarin in the Alps”, 1885, and “Port of Tarascon”, 1890) belong to a later period of his work. But they still have the same infectious, sly laughter. “And what innocence this enormous joy of life is filled with! - Anatole France admires The Tartarens. - Nothing malicious, nothing reminiscent of the sharp satire of the North; this is a wonderful “joke,” the mocking whistling of birds over black pines in the azure blue sky.”

And, however, satirical notes clearly made their way through the “mocking whistling of birds.” For the story of the misadventures of the unlucky Tarascon, his fantastic projects, his attempt to found a colony in North Africa had a very specific historical basis. In the humorous epic about Tartarin, completely real features of the writer’s contemporary reality appeared. True pictures of colonial morals that the hero faces - the arbitrariness of local authorities, the lack of rights and humiliation of the natives - all this bizarre combination of local “exoticism” with the wretched everyday life of the “civilizers” was sometimes worth the direct denunciation of colonialism.

In his book of memoirs, Thirty Years in Paris, Daudet talks about the feeling of joy that overcomes him whenever he hears the name of one of his heroes mentioned as a household name. He then feels like a father who has heard the crowd repeat the name of his son, and he is tempted to shout with pride: “After all, this is my little boy!”

Had Daudet lived to this day, he could perhaps have added that since his birth his “little boy” Tartarin has “matured” significantly. The image of the boastful Tarasconian has outgrown the intention of its creator. A portrait of a chatty Provençal man in the street entered world literature as a typical image of the French bourgeois with his irrepressible boasting and penchant for political adventure. And more than once in the course of the subsequent history of France, the name Tartarin appears as a common noun, as a bitter characteristic, as a symbol of colonial adventurism.

A benign joke at the expense of fellow countrymen turned into a sharp satire on the bourgeois reality of the Second Empire with its deceitful phrase-mongering, with its empty claims to heroic deeds. Meanwhile, the Second Empire lived out last days... The year 1870 was approaching.

LIGHTNING OF TRUTH

Let's be clear: Daudet was not one of those who looked forward to the fall of the empire. The author of Tartarin was very indifferent to everything that he himself mockingly called “de la politique”. In Daudet's memoirs "Thirty Years in Paris" there is one characteristic episode. In 1858, a year after his arrival in Paris, Daudet, as a result of many ordeals, managed to get his first literary work in the legitimist newspaper "Spectator". Finally, his article was approved, accepted, and submitted for typesetting. And suddenly... “Just think! Paris is shaking - some Italians shot at the emperor... Terror begins, magazines are persecuted, The Spectator is closed! My article was the victim of Orsini’s bomb...”

This is how young Daudet perceives the assassination attempt of an Italian patriot on Napoleon III. What about the assassination attempt, some Orsini, an emperor... He is equally indifferent to both. He is not touched by the rampant reaction, is not interested in the direction of the newspaper, for him all this is just an annoying obstacle to the fulfillment of his dreams, something unnecessary... They only prevent good people from doing their work.

Even years of service in the ducal chancellery could not shake this careless “apolitism” of Daudet. It seems like he hasn’t seen enough of the filth of the Napoleonic regime! But the Duke de Morny's secretary naively believed that “politics” in general, by its very nature, is inseparable from meanness and dirt. These mysterious properties were so convenient to explain the unseemly actions of his boss and patron. But it was no longer possible to treat what he saw now with the same carelessness. What happened around him affected him directly. The difficult trials that befell France, “like lightning, illuminated everything with truth...”

So, in reality, the “valiant musketeers” of little Napoleon turned out to be boastful Tartarens... The shameful day of defeat at Sedan came. “The very next day I felt that my convictions were formed, and finally,” recalls Daudet, “I was indignant at the people who led us to such a shame... and I believed on September 4 in the people who carried out this revolution, and I believed in the revival of republican France." The writer joins the people's militia. Military operations near Paris. The ring of enemies is getting smaller and smaller. The Germans are getting closer. Long, painful days of siege begin.

And again he sees the face of Paris. Oh, how much more severe, how much more defined the features of the great city have become. How clearly light and shadow are now differentiated in it. On one side are the inhabitants of the working outskirts - fathers, mothers, wives of those who fight the enemy, modest, courageous, taciturn, simple people, ready to defend their Paris to the end, on the other - the bourgeoisie, declaiming about patriotism and running away from the besieged city as fast as they can. cities; yesterday's sycophants of the empire, once again prospering under the republic; the new masters of France are indifferent or corrupt... It is no longer possible to talk about all this, as before, with condescending ridicule. This brings out tears of indignation. This is how the series of short stories “Letters to the Absent” is born - hasty sketches of meetings and events of these tragic days, made under fresh impressions. How the writer’s voice has changed in them! What courageous, excited, demanding intonations appeared in him - this is the voice of a contemporary, ringing with indignation and pain.

Pictures of an unrelenting France - outposts, besieged Paris. Images of compatriots that the writer is proud of: the old carpenter Belisarius; Uncle Stan, unwavering in his sense of duty; former member Napoleonic campaigns, General Jouve, falling dead when Prussian troops entered Paris, and angrily drawn portraits of those whom Daudet despises: cowards, phrase-mongers, traitors. But “Letters to an Absent Person” also reflected the deep confusion that gripped the writer more and more every day. For every day he became convinced: “under the republic everything is the same as under the empire - the same inactivity, the same deception.”

And then the day of surrender comes. The government of national defense turns out to be a government of national treason. Paris, the city “that was still able and willing to fight,” surrendered shamefully. Daudet is shocked: “How much wasted energy, how much useless self-sacrifice,” he writes in despair. Initially, he was even ready to see “just retribution” in the events of March 18: “I was on the verge of proclaiming: “Long live the Commune!” - he recalls later. But all this is just in the heat of the moment. Daudet soon becomes “disappointed,” and this is quite natural. Less than any of his contemporaries, he was able to comprehend the meaning of the first proletarian revolution, to understand the high goals for which the communards fought and died. And yet, to the artist’s credit, it must be said: this did not prevent him from truthfully capturing in many “Letters to an Absent Person” the stern, full of high human dignity, tragic image of those who marched under the banners of the Paris Commune.

Violence, bloodshed, “fratricidal war” - all this seems to Doda a fatal delusion, all this horrifies him. He equally condemns the Paris Commune and Thiers; he equally mourns both the Communards shot by the Versailles and the generals executed by the Commune.

Daudet himself understands the helplessness of his position and tries to somehow justify himself: “How the hell do you want my conscience to sort out this whole mess,” he complains. “I saw so much that my head was spinning and I was confused.” eyes... And I involuntarily wanted to close my eyes for a while, until some new lightning illuminated them with truth and forced me to open them again.”

He never managed to step over the traditional prejudices of his environment, to rise above his bourgeois limitations. Until the end of his days, he retained his childish ideas about the possibility of “class peace”, his naive political conservatism; he never understood the meaning of the historical processes he witnessed. The “lightning that illuminated the truth” in his eyes during the difficult time of disaster in France was, perhaps, the brightest in his life. His eyes never opened wider. The “truth” revealed to the artist found its most complete embodiment in his “Monday Stories”, in which Daudet at times comes to broad and intelligent generalizations. The moral characteristics of his heroes most often turn into social characteristics here. These heroes are no longer divided simply into good and evil. No, two social world are opposed to each other here. One is the village moneylender Shashigno, for whom “money has no smell even under the Germans”; indifferent to everything in the world except his own well-being, the judge of the town of Colmar, who swore allegiance to William; a marshal who has forgotten about his duty, about the army, about France, playing billiards among the staff slavishly watching his game. The other is the silent crowds of Alsatian peasants, entire villages leaving their homes so as not to remain with the Germans; and the old sergeant Ornyus, who received the order to hand over to the victors the regimental banner he had carried out of the battle and rushes at the German officer to whom he must present this banner... In a new social aspect, other contrasts now appear to the writer - those that so recently he looked at only with sly mockery: a cynical official of the French administration in Algeria - and a colored soldier dying in the whirlpool of the civil war waged among his enslavers.

The tragic events of 1870-1871 were a significant milestone in Daudet's work. The writer's voice became firmer, more decisive, it was enriched with intonations of anger and sarcasm, so characteristic of him before. His vision of the world became sharper, the themes of his works expanded, new problems powerfully burst into his work. A desire was born to comprehend, to generalize the era that had just passed into the past, of which he was a contemporary, to look at the newly turned page of history through the eyes of a chronicler.

MEETING WITH NATURALISTS

At first, they jokingly called these meetings “dinners of booed authors” - each of them, artists looking for new paths, managed to taste the bitterness of failure. Daudet was the most “lucky” of all, but he, too, had recently experienced the failure of his “Arlesienne.”

They gathered on Sundays in Flaubert's small apartment on Rue Murillo. On summer evenings, from the windows of the dining room overlooking the green bushes of Parc Monceau, there was a breath of coolness, and the voices of children playing were heard... There were four of them at the table: two “masters” - Flaubert and Edmond Goncourt, and two “young people” - Zola and Daudet. The fifth person to come here, unless illness confined him to bed, was Turgenev. Wonderful friendly conversations around the table! In relaxed poses, with their elbows on the table, the friends talked endlessly about literature. Often dinner lasted long after midnight, and then in the silence of the night Murillo Street thunderous sounds were heard from time to time - angry exclamations or exclamations of delight from the indomitable Flaubert.

They argued, consulted, shared ideas and plans. Flaubert read here his “The Temptation of Saint Anthony”, Zola - “The Misdemeanor of Abbot Mouret”, Turgenev retold his just finished “Nove”. Here Daudet read his novel Fromont the Younger and Risler the Elder.

It was a circle of people with different characters, artists with different styles and different visions of the world, but united by a common goal. They were not only passionately in love with literature, but obsessed with it. They were truly fanatics of the pen, burning themselves in a tireless search for new, most accurate means of expressing the “truth of life.” “Flaubert overstrained himself over altering his phrases... Each of us spends several days on one page... The desire for perfection of style will lead us to suicide,” Zola wrote in those years.

The Goncourts and Zola, captivated by the ideas of positivist philosophy, each tried in their own way to enrich art with the help of its methods. They were imbued with a peculiar pathos of knowledge, striving to reproduce the “truth of life” in its smallest manifestations, to become historiographers of their time, doctors writing detailed history diseases of his era. They would, it seems, be ready to drag the entire reality layer by layer into literature, to make from the work the most complete encyclopedia of the “layer” of life that they chose as the object of their depiction.

The meeting with Flaubert, Goncourt, and Zola undoubtedly had great significance for Daudet. Entering this atmosphere literary innovation, he probably felt, to some extent, in the position of Moliere’s hero, who suddenly discovered that he had been speaking in prose all his life. This expansive southerner had some kind of innate ability to see, hear, perceive colors, sounds, smells and a genuine gift of painting - the ability to accurately and vividly record everything that he sees and hears. In the light of the emerging doctrine of naturalism, his own, half-instinctive way of depicting reality appeared to him as a kind of conscious, fundamental artistic method. And all his life he will be proud of this method (“From life! I’ve never had another method of working!”), his notebooks, his role as an observer of life - a role that, before meeting the “naturalists,” he played, essentially, instinctively, only due to the natural attraction of the artist.

By the very nature of his talent, Daudet could not become a consistent “naturalist.” He never even made an attempt, in the name of the notorious “scientific objectivity,” to remain behind the scenes of his works. He often complained about the “repulsive realism” of his naturalist friends. But how majestic and how seductive was the task that these artists set themselves: to embrace reality in all its breadth, to become conscientious historiographers of their morals eras - eras, which he himself only recently experienced for the first time as history! But how to solve such monumental problems while remaining within the confines of an elegant sketch? Large forms are needed here. And Daudet turns to the genre of the novel.

"PARISIAN MORNERS"

Daudet's first social novel, Fromont the Younger and Risler the Elder, published as a separate edition in 1874, was an unprecedented success. And from that time on, he wrote novels for more than twenty years: “Jacques” (1876), “Nabob” (1877), “Kings in Exile” (1879), “Numa Rumestan” (1881), “Evangelist” were published one after another. "(1883), "Sappho" (1884), "The Immortal" (1888), "Rose and Ninette" (1894).

The best of them, such as “The Nabob”, “Numa Rumestan”, “Kings in Exile”, recreate with amazing authenticity the features of modern Daudet historical reality, and Anatole France had, perhaps, reason to call them historical novels. “They,” wrote France, “reveal for us the morals of our contemporaries better than any historical essay" The dark political machinations of Parisian businessmen, the intrigues woven in parliamentary circles, are depicted by the former secretary of the Duke de Morny with excellent knowledge of the matter. It is not for nothing that contemporaries argued about almost each of these novels - which of the statesmen Daudet portrayed in this or that character. However, the obvious sympathy with which Daudet treats many of his rather unsightly heroes undoubtedly softens the satirical pathos of their images (perhaps only once Daudet managed to write real, undisguised satire - this was the novel “Immortal,” an evil pamphlet on the French Academy , which gives a truly damning description of the academic environment with its idle talk, poverty of thought and hypocritical declamation about serving science).

Daudet's novels are not related to each other common heroes, however, they are all to some extent united by the subtitle “Parisian Manners” or “Parisian Novel”, which accompanies almost each of them. All together they are intended to give a broad picture of the life of modern Daudet Paris.

The writer sought to cover in them many aspects of Parisian reality, to give a kind of “scenes of political life” and “scenes privacy", trying to follow the traditions of his beloved Balzac. However, alien to the natural scientific and social thought of his time, Daudet was least able to act as a “doctor of social sciences.” The very concept of “mores” is devoid of broad socio-philosophical content for him.

Contrary to the naivety of Daudet’s social ideas, despite his condescending and forgiving attitude towards his Duke of Maura, Jancel or Roumestan, the objective social reality of the era he depicts, the true Paris of the times of the Second Empire and the Third Republic, in all its historical specificity and authenticity, stands before us at its best. his novels. But let's be honest: we will never say - Daudet's Paris, as we say - Balzac's Paris... Since the mid-80s, didactic, moralizing notes begin to sound more and more clearly in Daudet's works. Gradually, the writer moves on to frank preaching of bourgeois virtues, preaches drab, bourgeois happiness, proves the harm of adultery and divorce, praises family virtues, the quiet joys of the family hearth.

“...The new story... is hypocritical...” writes Chekhov in a letter to Suvorin regarding Daudet’s novel “Rose and Ninette.” “If a schismatic or an Arab had armed himself against divorce, then I understand that, but Daudet is in the role of a moral teacher ", demanding that spouses who are disgusted with each other not separate is terribly comical."

Daudet was an artist with an amazingly faithful eye; the only trouble is that he didn’t see too deeply.

“Great Form” revealed what remained hidden in the short story - the banality of thought, bourgeois narrow-mindedness, political myopia. By the very nature of his talent, Daudet was essentially contraindicated in the genre of the novel, which requires a broad, generalizing image of reality. It is no coincidence that he gravitated so much towards the short story with its fleeting genre or landscape sketch In a short, closed, complete form of a short story, where the truth of life is naturally limited to the framework of one episode, one scene, the reliability of what is depicted was determined primarily by the choice of detail, typical feature, characteristic word. In a novel it was no longer possible to reproduce only one’s own direct, immediate perception of one scene or episode - it was necessary to combine them, construct them, and invent them. And this is precisely what Daudet could not do (“I don’t know how to invent anything,” Goncourt records his words in his diary). That is why, along with living, full-blooded human characters, in almost every Daudet novel there are “gay” characters. When Daudet depicts the rise and fall of his nabob - a simple-minded and vain provincial - the writer is in his element, for he is essentially developing the familiar theme of Tarascon in his clash with Paris. But when, trying to balance vice with virtue, he draws the “ideal” Désirée Delobel or Madame Roumestan, next to the magnificently authentic images of Delobel or Roumestan, the authenticity of life is violated.

However, let's not be ungrateful. Best Novels Daudet, along with his short stories, are firmly established in French literature. They still cry and laugh at them today. The kind, soft, deeply sincere voice of the writer still sounds in them, who, in the words of Anatole France, “loved people and therefore treated them condescendingly.”

Once Anatole France, trying to determine what ultimately is the hallmark of a great artist, came to the unexpected conclusion that such a sign is kindness. The author of Letters from My Mill was not a great artist, but this attribute is perhaps the first thing that comes to mind when we think of Doda. His charm was, first of all, the charm of kindness. “Kindness permeated his books with the spirit of reverent humanism,” Zola rightly said about him in his funeral speech.

Daudet's work falls on one of the most brilliant eras in the history of French literature. He worked alongside such artists as Flaubert, Goncourt, Zola, Maupassant. He witnessed the same historical processes and events, and yet in his best works he managed to tell about it differently than they did - in his own way, and moreover in such a way that, if we did not have his testimony, our ideas about the people of that the pores would be to a certain extent poorer.

Is it possible to imagine French literature without Letters from My Mill, without Monday Stories? Is it possible to imagine world literature without the image of Tartarin from Tarascon?

We remember the harsh, tragic image of enslaved but unconquered France during the Franco-Prussian War from Zola, Maupassant, Cladel. In “Stories on Mondays” we see her also proud, also unconquered, but only turned to us with a different, lyrical side. Next to the images of Uncle Milon, old woman Sauvage, Zola’s heroes, our memory will forever remain the silent demonstration of the inhabitants of an Alsatian village occupied by the Germans, gathered for the last French lesson at school; we cannot forget old Gauser, leafing through a tattered French primer with a trembling hand; little Franz, who bitterly thinks, looking out the window at the pigeons: “Maybe they, too, will be forced to sing in German?”; an old teacher writing in huge letters on the blackboard: “Long live France!”

More than once in French literature we have encountered the tragedy of a little man, mercilessly swept away from the path by the irresistible course of history. But among the many images of this kind, one of the first to appear before us is the figure of the old miller from the short story “The Secret of Uncle Cornille”, shaking in his dry, senile palm the red grain (“Merciful God! Real grain!”), which he and his mill yearned for so much .

From the letters and memoirs of his contemporaries, a charming image emerges of a very expansive, spontaneous, childishly simple-minded person, a wonderful, fascinating storyteller, a talented artist, passionately in love with his art.

There was, apparently, something surprisingly harmonious in this appearance: “All the fairies probably gathered at his cradle,” Zola jokingly wrote about him, “and each endowed him with some rare gift: one with grace, the other with beauty.” , the third - a smile that attracts hearts, the fourth - the subtlety of feelings that ensures success. And what’s most surprising is that the evil fairy never appeared.”

He knew how to inspire people with some special tenderness towards himself. “Mon petit Daudet,” old Goncourt affectionately calls him in his diary.

“We will never see his sweet face again, we will never hear his melodious voice,” laments A. France in December 1897, a few days after the writer’s death. And on these same days, the seriously ill Chekhov, who lives in Nice, sending his last portrait of Dode to his sister in Melikhovo, writes to her with his usual bashful restraint of feelings: “... really, it’s worth putting in a frame, and in my office.”

Biography

Novels

"Fromont Jr. and Risler Sr." (English) Russian (Fromont jeune et Risler aîné, 1874)
"Sapho" (Sapho, 1884)
"Jack" (Jack, 1876)
"The Nabob" (Le Nabab, 1877)
"Kings in Exile" (Les Rois en exil, 1879)
“The Extraordinary Adventures of Tartarin of Tarascon” (Tartarin de Tarascon, 1872)
"Tartarin in the Alps" (Tartarin sur les Alpes, 1885)
"The Immortal" (L'Immortel, 1888)
"Port Tarascon" (Port-Tarascon, 1890)

Collections of stories

"Monday Stories"
"Letters from My Mill"

Plays

"Arlesienne" (1872),
"Struggle for Existence" (1889)

Literary Memoirs

"Memoirs of a Writer" (1888)
"Thirty Years in Paris" (1888).

Bibliography

Dode A. Collected works in 7 volumes. - M.: Pravda, 1965. - (Library "Ogonyok").
Dode A. Baby. - M.: Molotov Book Publishing House, 1957.
Dode A. Last lesson(Tale of an Alsatian boy). - M.-L., 1959.
Dode A. Tartarin from Tarascon. Sappho. - M.: Fiction, 1972.
Dode A. Works in two volumes. - “GOLDEN ALLEY”, 1993. - ISBN 5-7111-0007-6

Film adaptations

Tartarin from Tarascon- a number of film adaptations

Literature

Zola E. Alphonse Daudet // E. Zola. Collection cit.. - M., 1966. - T. 25.
Puzikov A. Alphonse Daudet and realistic traditions // Puzikov A.I. Portraits of French writers. - M., 1967.
Bornecque J.-H., Les années d'apprentissage d'A. Daudet, P., 1951.
Dobie G.-V., A. Daudet, L., 1949.
Sachs M., The career of A. Daudet, Camb. (Mass.), 1965.

Links

Categories:

Personalities in alphabetical order
Born on May 13
Born in 1840
Born in Nimes
Died December 17
Died in 1897
Died in Paris
Writers of France
Playwrights of France
Died from syphilis

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- (Daudet) (1840 1897), French writer. In the trilogy “The Extraordinary Adventures of Tartarin of Tarascon” (1872-90), he created a humorous type of provincial bourgeois, sybarite and fanfaron. Book of stories and essays about Provence “Letters from my... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Daudet, Alphonse- Alphonse Daudet. DODE (Daudet) Alphonse (1840 1897), French writer. In the trilogy “The Extraordinary Adventures of Tartarin from Tarascon” (1872 90), relying on folk traditions, he created a bright humorous type of provincial bourgeois sybarite and... ... Illustrated encyclopedic Dictionary

- (Daudet) Daudet (Daudet) Alphonse (1840 1897) French writer and novelist. Author of the trilogy The Extraordinary Adventures of Tartarin of Tarascon (1872 1890). Aphorisms, quotes How many gentlemen are there on whose libraries one could stick as if on... ... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms

Alphonse Daudet Date of birth: 1840 Place of birth: Nimes ... Wikipedia

Alphonse Daudet (French Alphonse Daudet; 1840–1897) - French novelist and playwright, author of vivid stories from the life of Provence, creator of the iconic image of the romantic and braggart Tartarin from Tarascon.

Alphonse Daudet was born on May 13, 1840 in the (Provencal) city of Nimes in the family of the owner of a small silk factory, Vincent Daudet (1806–1875). In 1848, the father went bankrupt, the factory was sold, and the family moved to Lyon. Lacking the financial opportunity to obtain a higher education, the future writer, upon graduating from high school, entered the position of assistant teacher at a provincial college, but soon left this occupation and, at the age of seventeen, moved to Paris with his older brother Ernest to earn a living as a journalist.

Our era plays dangerously with printing forces, which are worse than explosives.

Daudet Alphonse

The autobiographical novel “The Kid” (Le Petit Chose, 1868) tells about this period of his life. However, fame came to the writer earlier - with the publication of the prose collection “Letters from My Mill” (1866).

In 1867, the young writer married and began to live exclusively by literary work.

It is impossible to sufficiently explain to the public how much effort, how much hidden work goes into the art of an actor, which seems so accessible and easy.

Daudet Alphonse

Creation

In the period 1866–1868, his original lyrical short stories about the nature and people of Provence were published regularly in newspapers. They were published in 1869 as a separate book entitled Letters from My Mill.

Almost at the same time, the text of Alphonse Daudet’s first novel, “The Kid,” was published in the press, which was published as a separate book in 1868. These two works brought fame and money to the writer.

From December 1869 to March 1870, newspapers published his new novel, “The Extraordinary Adventures of Tartarin of Tarascon,” which was published as a separate book in 1872.

Contempt is a mask that covers insignificance, sometimes mental squalor: contempt is a sign of a lack of kindness, intelligence and understanding of people.

Daudet Alphonse

The publication of the novels Fromon the Younger and Risler the Elder (1874) and Jack (1876) caused a new surge in his popularity.

The writer's main works, which brought him world fame, were written within one decade (1866–1876), but he lived for more than 20 years (died in 1897) and published a novel almost every year, most of which, although not published to the level of his first books, but had high artistic qualities that made it possible to count him among the first “five” of the most important writers in France at the end of the 19th century.

In the late period of Daudet’s work, critical tendencies intensified; he wrote sharp socially revealing novels (“Nabob” - 1877; “Kings in Exile” - 1879; “Numa Rumestan” - 1881; “Evangelist” - 1883; “Immortal” - 1888) .

How many gentlemen are there on whose libraries the inscription “For external use” could be pasted, like on pharmaceutical bottles?

Daudet Alphonse

In the 80s, the writer again turned to the image of Tartarin from Tarascon and wrote two more novels about him: “Tartarin in the Alps. New adventures of the Tarascon hero" - (1885) and "Port of Tarascon. The last adventures of the famous Tartarin" (1890).

The first category includes the Provencal “Letters from my mill” (Lettres de mon moulin, 1869) and “Tartarin from Tarascon” (Tartarin de Tarascon, 1872) - his most original and famous works. The second group includes mainly large realistic novels, in which he, without showing much imagination, copies characters from real people, and most often chooses Paris as the setting.

"Letters from My Mill"

O great cup of popularity, it is sweet to drink from it, but how hard it is when it overturns!

Daudet Alphonse

Stories about such people are built on the folklore basis of folk legends and tales. The action takes place against the backdrop of the fabulously beautiful nature of the south of France.

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