ALPHONSE DAUDET
Nîmes, 1840--Paris, 1897
Daudet has given the impressions and the experiences of his early life in the two volumes with which he established his reputation: Le Petit Chose and Lettres de Mon Moulin; in the former he describes the struggles of his boyhood, and in the latter the customs and legends of his native Provence. The books which he published later are of a different character, marked by the influence of the Naturalistic School, but unlike the other members of this school, he was endowed with a spontaneous, sympathetic nature, which enabled him to feel what he described. Thus while de Maupassant describes with the greatest art what he observes, Daudet sympathetically describes what he observes and feels. He had too much originality ever to come completely under the influence of the Naturalists. His short stories usually deal with some incident of the Franco-Prussian War (Le Siège de Berlin, La Dernière Classe, La Vision du Juge de Colmar, etc.) or with life in the Midi (Lettres de Mon Moulin). Le Curé de Cucugnan and Le Sous-Préfet aux Champs are taken from Lettres de Mon Moulin (1869), the remaining three stories of the collection are taken from Contes du Lundi (1873). His best novels are given in the following list; in these he has often been compared with Dickens and Thackeray.
Important works (besides the collections of short stories mentioned): Les Amoureuses (verse, 1858), Le Petit Chose (1868), Aventures Prodigieuses de Tartarin de Tarascon (1872), L'Arlésienne (drama, 1872), Fromont Jeune et Risler Aîné (1874), Jack (1876), Le Nabab (1877), Les Rois en Exil (1879), Numa Roumestan (1881), L'Évangéliste (1883), Sapho (1884), Tartarin sur les Alpes (1885), La Défense de Tarascon (1887), L'Immortel (1888), Port Tarascon (1890).
Edition: Flammarion, 13 vols. (illustrated); Charpentier, Dentu, Hetzel and Lemerre have each published portions of his work.
LE CURÉ DE CUCUGNAN
This story is an almost literal translation of Lou Curat de Cucugnan, a Provençal story by Roumanille, published by him under the pseudonym of Lou Cascarelet in the Armana prouvençau (Provençal Almanac) in 1867 (Daudet was in Provence during this year). This Almanac was first published in the year 1855, a little after the foundation of the Félibrige (May 21, 1854). The Félibrige was a brotherhood of modern Provençal poets, its purpose was to revive Provençal as a literary language; the word Félibrige is of unknown origin, it comes from an obscure word found by Mistral in a Provençal text; the members of the brotherhood, which later became a great literary society, were called félibres; the brotherhood was originated by Roumanille, who was followed by a more celebrated poet, Mistral, and five other poets, Aubanel, Brunet, Camille Raybaud, Mathieu and Félix Gras. In regard to the Armana prouvençau, the following quotation from an article by Mistral in Les Annales politiques et littéraires, May 13, 1906, will give an idea of the type of this Almanac: «Et sans parler ici des innombrables poésies qui s'y sont publiées, sans parler de ses Chroniques, où est continue, peut-on dire, l'histoire du Félibrige, la quantité de contes, de légendes, de sornettes, de facéties et de gaudrioles, tous recueillis dans le terroir, qui s'y sont ramassés, font de cette entreprise une collection unique. Toute la tradition, toute la raillerie, tout l'esprit de notre race se trouvent serrés là-dedans.» The dialects of France fall into two great classes: the Langue d'oïl, in the north, and the Langue d'oc, in the south (oïl is the old> northern form for oui, oc the southern form). The difference really dates from Roman colonization, which occurred on the Mediterranean some seventy-five years before Caesar conquered northern Gaul (59--5l B.C.). Provençal is one of the principal dialects of the southern group; during the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries (prior to the Albigensian crusade) it was, at least in lyric poetry, the most important literary language of France. Because of political and literary superiority, the language of Paris, or of the Île-de-France, became the general literary language of France. The dialects, however, still live on, and Provençal has, as described above, been somewhat revived as a literary language by the efforts of Mistral and the other poets of the Félibrige. Many scholars regard the characteristics of the territory embraced by the modern departments of Loire, Rhône, Isère, Ain, Savoie, the old province of Franche-Comté and a part of Switzerland as sufficient to form a third group of dialects known as Franco-Provençal. The dividing line between the Langue d'oc and the Langue d'oïl passes approximately from the mouth of the Gironde to the Alps by way of Limoges, Clermont-Ferrand and Grenoble.
[111.]--1. à la Chandeleur. The article in such constructions is usually explained as equal to la fête de; it should be noticed, however, that in Old French a substantive frequently occurred in the oblique without a preceding de, the construction being equal to the Latin genitive, no preposition having been used (the phrase is thus literally: "on that of Candlemas").
2. en Avignon. En is not now used with cities except in ironical imitation of Provençal style (see Brunot, Précis de grammaire historique de la langue française, sec. 496, 2) or as a poetic and archaic survival of the usage of the seventeenth century, un joyeux petit livre. The Armana prouvençau.
[112.]--3. quel bon vent. The verb is to be supplied (quel bon vent vous amène?).
4. le grand livre et la clef. Cf. Matthew xvi, 19 and Revelation xx, 12.
11. disons-nous. Here = vous dites.
27. faites que je puisse. Faire in the imperative is followed by the subjunctive, elsewhere by the indicative (c'est ce qui fait que cela va mal), but notice that faites attention takes the indicative (faites attention qu'il est là).
[114.]--19. je n'ai pas entendu chanter le coq. See Matthew xvi, 34 ff.
[116.]--9. en l'air. En is never used before les; it is rarely used before the singular definite article, when it is so used the article is usually elided. In those cases where en is not used, dans takes its place; en was more frequently used in former times, it is now largely limited to fixed phrases. The following distinctions should also be observed: je ferai cet ouvrage en deux jours (two days will be required), je ferai cet ouvrage dans deux jours (after two days have elapsed).
[117.]--7. rang par rang... quand on danse. As in the dance called the farandole, where a number of people join bands and dance in a long line.
16. le meunier. The French have always ridiculed the millers; cf. the proverb: il n'y a rien de plus hardi que la chemise d'un meunier, parce qu'elle prend, tous les matins, un fripon au collier; also, il s'est fait d'évêque meunier, said when one bas fallen from a good position to a poorer one.
[118.]--4. le. This pronoun does not refer to histoire, but to all that has been told. This paragraph has not been added by Daudet, but occurs in the Provençal version.
LE SOUS-PRÉFET AUX CHAMPS
[121.]--26. de plus belle. See note to p. 4, l. 7.
LE PAPE EST MORT
[123.]--1. une grande ville de province. Daudet was born at Nîmes, his father was a wealthy manufacturer of silk handkerchiefs, the father lost his money and moved to Lyons when Alphonse was nine years old, it was here that the boy went to school and it is this city that is described in the story.
2. très-encombrée. The hyphen is now omitted after très.
[125.]--32. j'avais beau revenir. Littré explains this idiom as follows: «Avoir beau, c'est toujours avoir beau champ, beau temps, belle occasion; avoir beau faire, c'est proprement avoir tout favorable pour faire. Voilà le sens ancien et naturel. Par une ironie facile à comprendre, avoir beau a pris le sens d'avoir le champ libre, de pouvoir faire ce qu'on voudra, et, par suite, de se perdre en vains efforts.»
[127.]--13. Pie VII. Pius VII was imprisoned by Napoleon (l'empereur, l. 16) at Fontainebleau from 1812 to 1814; the words comediante... tragediante were used by Napoleon to the Pope and by the Pope to Napoleon.
UN RÉVEILLON DANS LE MARAIS
[130.]--23. vieux, vieux. The .repetition of an adjective for emphasis is much more common in Italian than in French.
[132.>]--3. une Diane... avec un croissant au front. A conventional manner of representing the goddess.
4. triolets. In versification this name (triolet) is given to a poem of eight lines, of which the first is repeated after the third, and both the first and second after the sixth, it is a development of the Old French rondeau; in music, as it is here used, the name is given to a group of three notes which, in a measure of 3/4 time, produces the effect of 6/8 time.
LA VISION DU JUGE DE COLMAR
[134.]--1. l'empereur Guillaume. William I, King of Prussia in 1861 and Emperor of Germany from 1871 to 1888; it was during his reign that the Franco-Prussian War occurred.
17. restez assis. In France the judges hold office for life (magistrature assise), while prosecuting attorneys, etc., may be removed from office by the Minister of Justice (magistrature debout); there is thus a double meaning in restez assis "remain seated" or "remain a judge (for life)"; on condition, of course, that Dollinger renounce his allegiance to France and take the oath of allegiance to Germany.
26. le même grand christ. Used in administering oaths, the person who took the oath raised his right hand toward the crucifix.
[136.]--4. aussi n'avancent-ils. Notice that aussi here means "therefore" and that it causes inversion (this occurs also with à peine, encore, peut-être, ici, là, etc.).
[137.]--5. des robes noires, des robes rouges. The former are worn by the judges in the lower courts, the latter by the judges in the courts of appeal.
6. président. The French Department of Justice is now constituted as follows. The Department has at its head a Cabinet Minister (Ministre de la Justice) and it comprises a civil and a criminal jurisdiction. In each canton is a justice of the peace, in each department a civil court, and in sixteen important cities a court of appeal. Criminals are tried in each department in a court of assize, before a jury of citizens and judges of whom the presiding judge is termed the président and the assistant judges conseillers assesseurs. Above all courts is the Court of Appeal (Cour de Cassation, in the Palais de Justice at Paris); this court is charged with looking after the strict observance of the Laws.
[138.]--24. monsieur le comte. Bismarck was given the higher title of Prince in 1871.