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INTRODUCTION
ОглавлениеALPHONSE DAUDET
(Nîmes, May 13, 1840; Paris, December 16, 1897)
Alphonse Daudet was born in the ancient Provençal city of Nîmes, near the Rhône, May 13, 1840. In this same year Émile Zola, destined like Daudet to pass his youth in Provence, was born at Paris.
As a resuit of the commercial upheaval which attended the revolution of 1848, Daudet's father, a wealthy silk manufacturer, was ruined. After a hard struggle he was forced to give up his business at Nîmes and moved to Lyons (1849). He was not successful here, and finally, in 1856, the family was broken up. The sons now had to shift for themselves.
These first sixteen years of Alphonse Daudet's life were far from unhappy. He had found delight in exploring the abandoned factory at Nîmes. His school days at Lyons were equally agreeable to the young vagabond. His studies occupied him little; he loved to wander through the streets of the great city, finding everywhere food for fanciful speculation. He would follow a person he did not know, scrutinizing his every movement, and striving to lose his own identity in that of the other, to live the other's life. His frequent days of truancy he spent in these idle rambles, or in drifting down the river. Literary ambition had already seized him; he had written a novel (of which no trace remains) and numerous verses. Notwithstanding his lack of application to study, he had succeeded in completing the course of the lycée.
In 1856 when it became certain that the father could no longer care for the family, the mother and daughter took refuge in the home of relatives; Ernest, the older of the two surviving sons, sought his fortune in the literary circles of Paris; and Alphonse accepted a position as "master of the study hall" (maître d'études, pion) at the college of Alais in the Cévennes. The boy was too young, too delicate, and too sensitive to be able to endure the mental suffering and humiliation to which he was subjected at the hands of the bullies of this school.[1] After a year of martyrdom he set out on his terrible journey to Paris. Here he was welcomed by his brother Ernest.
[Footnote 1: See "Le Petit Chose," "Little What's-His-Name."]
The two brothers had always felt and always continued to feel the closest sympathy for each other. Ernest believed in Alphonse's genius more than in his own, and bestowed on his younger brother the motherly devotion which Alphonse so gratefully and tenderly acknowledges in "Le Petit Chose," his romantic autobiography, where Ernest appears as "ma mère Jacques."
The first years in Paris were the darkest in the brothers' lives. They could earn scarcely enough to satisfy their most pressing needs, but both were happy, since they were in Paris. Before Alphonse's arrival Ernest had secured regular employment on a newspaper. Alphonse was longing for recognition as a poet, but to earn his living he was forced to turn to prose. His contributions to Le Figaro and other newspapers soon made him known. He wrote little and carefully, nor did he forget his literary ideals even when poverty might have excused hurried productions in the style best calculated to sell. His literary conscience was as strong under the trying circumstances of his début as later when success brought independence.[2]
[Footnote 2: See E. Daudet, "Mon Frère et moi," pp. 151-152. Daudet frequently says of himself that he was by nature an improviser, that the labor of meticulous composition to which he forced himself was a torture, yet he remained always true to his ideal.]
During this period he lived among the Bohemians of the Parisian world of letters; but, though he shared their joys and sorrows, he seems to have emerged unscathed from the dangers of such an existence. Zola met Daudet at this time and has left us an attractive picture of him: "He was in the employ of a successful newspaper, he used to bring in his article, receive his remuneration, and disappear with the nonchalance of a young god, sunk in poetry, far from the petty cares of this world. He was living, I think, outside of the city, in a remote corner with other poets, a band of joyous Bohemians. He was beautiful, with the delicate, nervous beauty of an Arabian horse, an ample mane, a silky divided beard, large eyes, a thin nose, a passionate mouth, and, to crown all that, a certain flash of light, a breath of tender voluptuousness, which bathed his whole face in a smile that was both roguish and sensual. There was in him something of the Parisian Street gamin and something of the Oriental woman."[1]
[Footnote 1: "Les Romanciers naturalistes," pp. 256-257.]
Daudet's first volume was a collection of verse, "Les Amoureuses" (1858, published by Tardieu, a Provençal). These simple poems are charming in their freshness and naïveté, and established Daudet's reputation as a writer of light verse. The whole volume, and especially "Les Prunes," attracted the attention of the Empress Eugénie. At her solicitation Daudet was made one of the secretaries of the powerful Duke of Morny, president of the corps législatif (1860). His duties were purely nominal. He now had money enough to keep the wolf from his door and was free to devote himself to literature.
It was at this time that the stage began to attract him. His first play, "La Dernière Idole," was produced at the Odéon in 1862. Almost every other year between 1862 and 1892 a new play, on untried themes, or adapted from one of his novels and usually written in collaboration, appeared at a Parisian theater. Of all these only one, "L'Arlésienne" (1872), is worthy of its author.
Already in 1859, as a result of the suffering of the preceding years and lack of precautions, his health had begun to fail. He spent the winters of 1861-1864 in Algeria, Corsica, and Provence. These voyages were of vital importance in his development. He learned something of the world and became better fitted to study conditions in his own narrow sphere; at the same time he acquired the power of vigorous description and collected material for some of his finest short stories and for the Tartarin series.
A portion of the summer of 1861 he dreamed away in an abandoned mill[1] near Fontvieille, between Tarascon and Arles. From here he sent to the Parisian newspapers L'Evènement and Le Figaro those delightful stories and sketches which were gathered and published in 1869 under the title "Lettres de mon moulin." Of all the many volumes of Daudet's collected works this is the most satisfying: it is here that the distinctive products of his genius are to be sought; and it is on these stories, with a few from later collections, and on "Tartarin de Tarascon," that his claim to immortality will finally rest. It is here that we find several of his most excellent stories: "Le Secret de maître Cornille", "La Chèvre de M. Seguin", "La Mule du pape", "Le Curé de Cucugnan", "L'Élixir du révérend père Gaucher" and others.
[Footnote 1: Daudet did not live in the mill which he has made famous, but he spent there "de longues journées"; he never owned it, but the deed which serves so picturesquely as preface to his book is not entirely apocryphal. See "Trente Ans de Paris", p. 164.]
In 1865, at the death of Morny, he gave up his secretaryship and applied himself exclusively to literature.
In 1866 he met Julie Allard, and early the next year they were married. To his wife, a lady of exquisite taste, Daudet owed unfailing encouragement and competent, sympathetic criticism.
"Le Petit Chose," his first long work, had been begun in 1866 during his stay in Provence; it was published in 1868. The first part, which is of great interest, is largely autobiographical and covers the childhood and youth of the writer up to his first years in Paris; the second part is a colorless romance of no particular merit. Daudet himself confessed that the work had been written too soon and with too little reflection. "I wish I had waited," he said; "something good might have been written on my youth".[1]
[Footnote 1: See "Trente Ans de Paris," pp. 75, 85, and Sherard, "Alphonse Daudet," p. 301.]
"Tartarin de Tarascon" was written in 1869.
Success and happiness had crowned Daudet's efforts. He was spending his time in all tranquility, now at Paris, now at Champrosay, where he occupied the house of the painter Delacroix. Suddenly in July, 1870, the war cloud burst. Daudet lay stretched out on his bed fretfully nursing a broken leg. On his recovery he shouldered his gun and joined in the hopeless defense of Paris.
It was the war that killed the old Daudet and brought into existence the new. Before the war, Daudet himself confesses it, he had lived free from care, singing and trifling, heedless of the vexing problems of society and the world, his heart aglow with the fire of the sun of his native Provence. The war awakened in our sensitive poet a seriousness of purpose which harmonized but little with his native genius. Among his friends he never lost his old-time buoyant gaiety; but his works from now on show only a trace of it. The charming "Belle-Nivernaise" (1886), a few "tarasconades," a gleam here and there in all his works, remind us of our old friend and plead for our sympathy with the new.
During the next few years he added to his reputation as a writer of short stories; to this period belong several collections of tales and sketches: "Lettres à un absent" (1871), "Contes du lundi" (1873), "Les Femmes d'artistes" (1874), "Robert Helmont" (1874). A few of the stories are still more or less in the manner of the "Lettres de mon moulin" ("Le Pape est mort," "Un Réveillon dans le marais," "Les Émotions d'un perdreau rouge"), but all these volumes, except "Les Femmes d'artistes," are inspired by the war. The playfulness of the youthful Daudet is still apparent here and there in the war stories ("La Pendule de Bougival," "Les Petits Pâtés"), but a sterner tone is prevalent.
The great novels which now follow are the fruit of meditation, the ripening process which the war precipitated, and which was fed from the flame of Flaubert, Goncourt, Zola, and others. Neglecting almost entirely those elements of his genius which came to him as his birthright, he devotes himself henceforth to a study of the problems of life. Our Provençal cicada has a purpose now: nothing else than the reformation of all social abuses. He does not single out one and attack it time after time, but he springs restlessly from one to another, directing high and low his relentless inquiry.
"Fromont jeune et Risler aîné" (1874) is the first of Daudet's great novels and one of his strongest studies. Sidonie, the daughter of humble bourgeois parents, is filled with a longing for luxury and social prominence. She succeeds in becoming the wife of Fromont, a simple, honest workman whose talent and industry have brought him wealth. Sidonie's unscrupulousness in the pursuit of her object spreads ruin. Risler, the partner of Fromont, withdraws large sums from the common treasury to satisfy the extravagant desires of Sidonie whom he loves. Fromont's eyes are at last opened; he finds the firm, which had always been his pride, on the verge of bankruptcy; he discovers the perfidy of Sidonie and attempts to force her to beg on her knees the forgiveness of Risler's long-suffering wife. Sidonie flees and becomes a concert-hall singer. Her revenge is complete when by means of a letter she proves to Fromont that she has corrupted his much-loved younger brother. Fromont hangs himself.
Outside the main current of the plot Daudet sketches one of the little dramas of humble life of which he was so fond: the story of Delobelle, an impoverished actor who lives for his art while his devoted wife and daughter Désirée patiently ply the needle to earn bread.
Daudet up to this time had been recognized as the greatest of French short-story writers. The success of "Fromont jeune et Risler aîné" was immediate, and in his succeeding novels he confirmed more and more surely his right to a place in the front rank of French novelists.
From this story of the life of the petite bourgeoisie he turns to a wider field. The Bohemia of Paris, a glimpse of the country, and especially the life of the artisan, fill "Jack" (1876). Daudet had known the real Jack at Champrosay in 1868. In the novel Jack is the illegitimate son of Ida de Barency, a shallow demi-mondaine who is passionately devoted to the boy but brings to him nothing but misfortune. Jack begins his suffering in a wretched school where his mother has placed him after the Jesuits had refused to receive him. This school is supported by the tuition fees of boys from tropical countries, petits pays chauds, as Moronval, the villainous director, calls them. The teachers belong to that class of ratés, artistic and literary failures, whom Daudet learned to know well during his first years in Paris. One of these ratés captivates Ida de Barency, and Jack's life of misery continues. Despite his physical unfitness, he is sent to labor in the shipbuilding yards at Indret, suffers tortures in the stoking room of an ocean steamer, is wrecked, and returns to France in a piteous condition. His love for Cécile, granddaughter of a gentle country doctor, is rapidly making a man of him, when his mother enters again into his life and the poor boy dies miserably in a hospital, killed by despair rather than by disease.
This is perhaps the most powerful of Daudet's novels; it is certainly the most harrowing. The tragedy of the whole is only slightly relieved by the interweaving of the romance of good Bélisaire, the hawker, one of Jack's few friends.
"Le Nabab" (1878) is concerned with politics, the richer bourgeoisie, and the aristocracy. Jansoulet, the "nabob," returns from Tunis with a large fortune and immediately becomes the prey of parasites. He is made the enemy of the banker Hemerlingue through the social rivalry of their wives. He is elected député from Corsica. The legality of the election is questioned. Jansoulet is supported by the prime minister, the duc de Mora, but the latter dies suddenly, Jansoulet's election is declared invalid, and he dies from a stroke of apoplexy.
Despite the protest of the author, contemporaries found originals for a number of the characters of this novel. The duc de Mora is Morny, and several others have been identified with greater or less certainty. Félicia Ruys is perhaps Sarah Bernhardt.
The purely romantic element of the work is found in the story of Paul de Géry and the Joyeuse family, a secondary plot having no vital connection with the main story.
In "Les Rois en exil" (1880) Daudet explores a new vein in contemporary society. He explains that the idea of the work occured to him one October evening when, standing in the Place du Carrousel, he was contemplating the ruins of the Tuileries. The wreck of the Empire brought to his mind a vision of the dethroned monarchs whom he had seen spending their exile in Paris: the Duke of Brunswick, the blind King of Hanover and the devoted Princess Frederica, Queen Isabella of Spain, and others. "This is the work which cost me most effort," Daudet says, and the reason is not far to seek. He had always painted "from life," and the difficulties incident to gaining an entrance into the intimacy of even dethroned monarchs were almost insurmountable. The novelist's acquaintances were appealed to, from house-furnishers to diplomats. The story of the composition of "Les Rois en exil" is an interesting study of Daudet's methods, his inexorable insistence on truth, even to the most minute details.
As usual, the characters are sharply contrasted. Christian, the exiled king of Illyria, is detestably weak; Frédérique, his wife devoting herself completely to the interests of her son, Zara, struggles with the aid of the faithful preceptor, Méraut, to prepare the prince for a throne which he is never to ascend. Of all the characters that appear in Daudet's novels it is perhaps Frédérique whose appeal to the reader is strongest, and Frédérique is almost entirely the product of the author's imagination. We cannot but regret the many visions such as Frédérique which were refused admittance to Daudet's essentially romantic mind by the uncompromising laws of a realism which he had mistakenly accepted as his guide.
The composition of "Les Rois en exil" is defective, but its charm is great. In "Numa Roumestan" (1881) the technique is better. Daudet's first intention was to entitle this work "Nord et midi," his idea being to contrast the north with the south, a theme for which he always had a predilection. Numa is a refined Tartarin; Daudet sends him to Paris, and studies the result. Numa carries all before him by his robust vigor and geniality. The "mirage" effects of the southern sun pursue him to Paris; quick to promise out of the fullness of his hearty enthusiasm, he encourages and disappoints those who trust themselves to him. He deceives his wife, begs her forgiveness with abundant tears, and in a disgusting manner deceives her a second time. The book ends with the picture of Rosalie Roumestan bending over her new-born son. "Will you be a liar too?" She asks. "Will you be a Roumestan, tell me?"
"L'Évangéliste" (1883), a psychological study rather than a novel, is a heartbreaking picture of the inhumanity of religious fanaticism. "Sapho" (1884) is so essentially French in spirit that it can hardly be understood by American readers. Daudet dedicates it "To my sons when they are twenty." It is intended as a lesson, and if naturalistic works ever can carry a lesson this one certainly does. It is a striking picture of the evils of faux ménages. On the whole "Sapho" is disagreeable, yet of the novels it seems to be Daudet's masterpiece, perhaps because it is the most romantic. The truth may be photographed in its most minute realistic details, as in Zola, or it may be colored by poetic fancy; this has happened in "Numa Roumestan" and especially in "Sapho," the two novels of Daudet which appear most likely to live. In "Sapho" there is a tender note which is lacking in "Jack" and in "Fromont jeune et Risler aîné"; Daudet's nature fitted him to inspire pity rather than indignation. And we must remember that while writing "Sapho" he had in mind the future of his own sons. He looks forward, and in hope of a fortunate issue tells frankly, in a kindly manner, a true story which he hopes may be fruitful of good results. If, instead of assuming the rôle of inquisitorial censor, naturalists would show sympathy for erring mankind, if they would look forward with hope instead of fixing their horrified eyes on the present or the past, their judgments would not tend to make us give up in despair, but might encourage and instruct. "Sapho" is the last of the great novels.
"L'Immortel" (1888) is a weak and unjust satire directed against the French Academy. "Rose et Ninette" (1892) is a study of the evils of divorce; "La Petite Paroisse" (1895), the only one of the novels with a happy outcome, is a study of jealousy. In "Soutien de famille" (1898, posthumous) two brothers are contrasted; the older, as a matter of course recognized as the head of the family, is weak, and the younger is the real "prop of the family."
Just after "Sapho" (1884) Daudet's health had begun to decline. Long years of suffering follow, but, although in almost constant pain, the indefatigable worker remains at his desk.
In "Souvenirs d'un homme de lettres" (1888) and "Trente Ans de Paris" (1888) Daudet tells the story of his life and literary activity. It is through these works that we become intimately acquainted with our author, and we are not disillusioned. "Entre les frises et la rampe" (1893) contains studies of the stage and its people.
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Daudet claimed to be an independent,[1] and was indignant when an attempt was made to class him with any school. He was certainly independent in his youth, but in his second period, after the war, he became a realist with Flaubert and Zola and an impressionist with Goncourt.
[Footnote 1: He consistently refused to have his name placed in candidacy before the Academy. In a foreword prefixed to "L'Immortel" he declares: "Je ne me présente pas, je ne me suis jamais présenté, je ne me présenterai jamais à l'Académie."]
It is, however, the southerner in Daudet that remains most pleasing. It is in those works which are directly inspired by his native land of dreams that he is most completely himself, and therefore most charming. It is here that he discloses his kinship with Musset. With all the delicacy of Musset and at the same time a saneness which Musset did not always possess, what might he not have accomplished if he had only continued as he began? Even as it is, the best Daudet is the young Daudet, the brother of Musset. In his so-called great works, the long novels where questions of the day are fearlessly treated yet never solved, the works which are frequently considered his surest claim to immortality, we have an entirely different Daudet, excellent of course, and strong too if you like, but not the Daudet that nature had intended to produce.
Surely it would have been better if he had never gone to Paris, but, like his friend Mistral, had remained in Provence and devoted his essentially poetic genius to an expression of the spirit of the south. His keenly sensitive nature was too delicate for intercourse with the virility of a Zola or the subtlety of a Goncourt. Paris made of him a realist, and the world lost by the transformation.
Daudet's love for his native land was intense. Its images were ever present to him; its poetry haunted him throughout his life. He urged young men ambitious of literary laurels to remain in their native provinces, to draw their inspiration from the soil, confident that something great and beautiful would result. Why did he not take for himself the counsel he so incessantly offered to others? An untiring curiosity which accompanied a remarkable acuteness of all the senses, and an emotional and intellectual receptivity which rendered him quickly and profoundly impressionable, equipped Daudet to express the poetic spirit of the south in its epic as well as its lyric qualities. He was aware of this himself. "I believe that I shall carry away with me," he said, "many curious observations on my race, its virtues, its faults".[1] And in speaking of the "Lettres de mon moulin," the only volume of his works in which his southern nature is given free rein, he says many years after its publication, after he had written his best novels, "That is still my favorite book."
[Footnote 1: Léon Daudet, "Alphonse Daudet," p. 183; read the whole chapter. "En lisant Eugénie de Guérin, je m'écrie: 'Pourquoi n'avoir pas tous vécu chez nous, dans nos coins?' Comme nos esprits y auraient gagné au point de vue de l'originalité au sens étymologique du mot, c'est-à-dire vertu d'origine."--"Notes sur la vie," p. 141.]
Daudet's remarkable power of observation was innate. From his youth he exercised this instinct and carried a notebook in which he set down impressions, studies, and sketches of characters and scenes. These notebooks proved to be of inestimable value to the realist; and the natural inclination to seek the naked truth, to which they bear witness, strengthened the determination of the postbellum Daudet to enter the ranks of the sociological novelists. So far as possible, he borrowed every detail of character and environment from real life; almost all his characters represent real persons whom he studied with a view of using them in his books. Daudet's is a microscopic, notebook realism quite different from the universal verity of Balzac, but there are many pages prompted by an exquisite sympathy or a violent passion in which the indomitable personality of the author breaks through the impassiveness imposed by the accepted masters of the craft. Sadness is the prevailing tone in his work, the sort of sadness that proceeds from pity. Where sadness does not dominate in Daudet, irony takes its place. These two qualities, sadness which is inspired by pity for human suffering and irony which betrays impatience with human folly, these two qualities which are the heart and soul of Daudet's work are the enemies of that impassiveness which is the indispensable attitude of the realist, and which Daudet tried in vain to acquire.
Paris, the war, his intercourse with Flaubert and Goncourt and Zola, were the influences, then, that transformed Daudet, most easily susceptible to impressions from without. The Daudet of the great novels is not the real Daudet, however; the real Daudet is the author of "Les Amoureuses," of the "Lettres de mon moulin," and of "Tartarin de Tarascon."
But even in the "Tartarin" series he is not entirely himself. The pure stream of his native simplicity and naïveté is already tinged with the worldly-wiseness of the Parisian. In the "Lettres de mon moulin" the writer is still in sympathy with his native land, while in the earliest of the "Tartarin" series, "Tartarin de Tarascon," there is already a spirit of disdainful raillery which Daudet learned in Paris. Tarascon was piqued when "Tartarin de Tarascon" appeared. Indeed, there is more than a little in the book that may well offend local pride.
In "Numa Roumestan" the satire is still less sympathetic and less good-natured. Numa is utterly detestable. He is a visionary; we readily forgive such a weakness, and we are amused by this characteristic trait of the south in Bompard and Tartarin. These two are visionaries and liars; they are cowards too, boastful and conceited. But they have never had the happiness of others in their hands. If a true child of the south, such as Tartarin or Bompard, were placed in a position of trust, he would not prove equal to the occasion and the result would be a Numa Roumestan. That is Daudet's verdict, and certainly his decision is not flattering to the south. Is this the decision of the better Daudet? is it not a Parisian Daudet, whose sympathy for his native land has been warped by the play of Parisian mockery on his sensitive, easily convinced nature?
It is precisely in "Numa Roumestan," where he is making his most complete study of the character of the southerner, that Daudet is most pessimistic. Le Quesnoy, the worthy northerner, deceives his wife as does Numa, the lying southerner. The spirit of the novel is epitomized in such sentiments as "Joie de rue, douleur de maison," "Au nord au midi--tous pareils, traîtres et parjures," "Grand homme pour tout le monde excepté pour sa femme." A decided pessimism pervades the great novels. Optimistic Daudet is frequently said to be. He was truly so by nature, he is so in the "Lettres de mon moulin" and in all his work before the war, but his pessimism is unquestionable in the great novels.
Surely nature did not intend Daudet to become a pessimist; he loved mankind, he had many devoted friends and no enemies. He carried happiness wherever he went. The attic of Auteuil, the rendezvous of the Goncourt group, is dark and gloomy. A serious, mirthless band surrounds the armchair of the patriarch. The door opens and Daudet enters. Old Goncourt rises to greet him: "Eh bien! mon petit, ça va?" "Assez bien, mon Goncourt" is the reply. The terrible malady has already seized the younger man, but he still radiates life and cheer: his lightness of heart dispels the gravity of the company; little by little his animation is communicated to them all, and the attic resounds with peals of laughter.
It was always so. The sympathy of Daudet, the man, was unfailing; his pity For the weak, his love for his family and friends, his hatred of villainy, were boundless. He delighted in little acts of charity the source of which remained unknown to the world and even to the recipient.
"My father said to me again and again," Léon Daudet tells us, "I should like, after I have accomplished my task, to set myself up as a merchant of happiness. My reward would be in my success!" This longing, so entirely characteristic of the man, is manifest everywhere in his earlier work, only rarely in the great novels; unfortunately the great novels were his "task."
If only he had continued as he began, if only he had remained the poet of the "Lettres de mon moulin"; if only he had not been led astray by his "task", he might have brought to the world of readers that happiness which he brought to his few friends in the attic of Auteuil.
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We are told the story of the publication of "Tartarin de Tarascon" [1] by Daudet himself in his "Trente Ans de Paris." It began to appear in the Petit Moniteur universel, but did not appeal to the readers of this popular newspaper.
[Footnote 1: The other books of the "Tartarin" series are inferior to "Tartarin de Tarascon" (1872). "Tartarin sur les Alpes" (1885) relates the adventures of the hero while climbing the great mountains of Switzerland in order to prove that he is worthy of remaming P.C.A. (Président du Club Alpin de Tarascon.) In "La Défense de Tarascon" (1886, only a dozen pages long) we have a characteristic picture of the city preparing to resist the German invasion. "Port-Tarascon" (1890) is the last and poorest of the series. Tartarin leads his compatriots in a colonizing expedition to the South Seas, and then brings them home again. Finally, in self-inflicted exile, "across the bridge" in Beaucaire (cf. note to 13 28), the great man dies.]
Publication was interrupted after some ten installments, and the work was carried to the Figaro, by whose more aristocratic clientèle literary irony was not unappreciated. The hero was first called Chapatin, then Barbarin (cf. note to 56 12), and finally Tartarin. "Tartarin de Tarascon" is a galéjado, une plaisanterie, un éclat de rire. Continuing Daudet says: "Only one who was raised in southern France, or knows it thoroughly, can appreciate how frequently the Tartarin type is to be met there, and how under the generous sun of Tarascon, which warms and electrifies, the natural drollery of mind and imagination is led astray into monstrous exaggerations, in form and dimension as various as bottle gourds."
Daudet, like our Dickens, succeeded in producing characters invested with such reality that in the minds of readers they become veritable beings. Of all his creations Tartarin is the most widely known, and the world's conception of a French southerner is derived from the portrait of this hero.
As is usual in the works of Daudet, the character of Tartarin is not wholly fictitious. The home of the cap-hunters was really not Tarascon, but a village five or six leagues away on the other side of the Rhône. It was from this village, and in company with the prototype of Tartarin, that Daudet set out for Africa in 1861, chiefly to recover his health and incidentally to hunt lions. The novel is a souvenir of the author's sojourn in the home of the real Tartarin and of the trip which the two made together[1], the whole being greatly modified by the play of the novelist's Provençal imagination
[Footnote 1: See the following notes of this edition for evidence of the extent to which Daudet used the notes jotted down in Africa in the composition of "Tartarin": 70 21, 73 27, 81 5-6. See also "Souvenirs d'un homme de lettres," p. 44, where he speaks of the notebook from which he extracted "Tartarin" and other works.]
To appreciate "Tartarin de Tarascon" is not easy for a foreigner; and by foreigners is meant all those who have not lived in and do not know Provence. Americans and Parisians (see pages 16-17) look on Tartarin and his compatriots as mere liars.
They are not liars: they are suffering simply from the effects of a mirage. To understand what is meant by a mirage, you must go to the south of France. There you will find a magic sun which transforms everything, which takes a molehill and makes of it a mountain. Go to Tarascon, seek out a man who almost went to Shanghai, look steadfastly at him, and if the southern sun is shining upon him you will soon be convinced that he has actually gone to Shanghai.
In reading "Tartarin de Tarascon," therefore, remember that Tartarin's world is small and his imagination large; that he never lies, though he rarely tells the truth. Do not make the mistake of thinking Tartarin a lunatic. Just as his immortal predecessor Don Quixote was thoroughly sane except in that which touched the realm of chivalry, so Tartarin is a normal Frenchman except when he is under the influence of the southern mirage.
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Daudet says in "Trente Ans de Paris," page 142, that the home of the real Tartarin was five or six miles from Tarascon on the other side of the Rhone. In an article which appeared in "Les Annales," July 6, 1913, Charles Le Goffic tells of a visit to the house in Tarascon known as la maison de Tartarin, and reports a conversation he had with Mistral, the great Provençal poet, an intimate friend of Daudet. Mistral said that the real Tartarin lived at Nîmes, eighteen miles from Tarascon, to the west of the Rhone, and was no other than Raynaud, Daudet's own cousin. "Raynaud," Mistral told Le Goffic, "had travelled among the Teurs and talked about nothing but his lion hunts; he talked about them with his lower lip extended so as to form a terrible pout (moue), which gave a character of good-natured ferocity to the little gentleman's honest face. Raynaud recognized himself in Tartarin and became very angry with Daudet; the reconciliation between the cousins was not effected till toward the end of the novelist's life".
