Fromont and Risler

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Fromont and Risler
Author Alphonse Daudet
Country France
Language French
Publisher Charpentier
Publication date
 1874

Fromont and Risler (French: Fromont jeune et Risler aîné) is a 1874 novel by French author Alphonse Daudet. It is the novel that first made Daudet famous, or as he put it, "the dawn of his popularity."[1] Daudet had won a creditable literary place for himself before its publication with Letters From My Windmill (1869), but when Fromont and Risler appeared in 1874, he was at once hailed as one of the few really great novelists of his time, one of the few who knew how to deal adequately with the mysteries, the complexities, and the subtleties of human nature and human passion.[2]

The novel was crowned by the French Academy with the Prix de Jouy in 1875,[3] but that was a small part of its success.[2] It was everywhere read and talked of, from the highest to the lowest ranks.[2] Countless editions of the book were printed — deluxe editions, library editions, and editions so cheap that the gamins of the streets might buy and read; and demands poured in for the privilege of translation rights in other countries.[2]

Critic Clement Shorter listed Fromont and Risler as one of the "hundred best novels."[4] It has been adapted for the stage and screen several times.

Synopsis

A brave Swiss draughtsman employed at the Fromont wallpaper factory in the rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes, in The Marais district, Guillaume Risler became the partner of the heir to the company, Georges Fromont, and married the ambitious Sidonie Chèbe. Sidonie had only married Guillaume out of self-interest, after rejecting Risler's younger brother Frantz, who was unconditionally in love with poor Désirée Delobelle.

The tragedy is caused by Sidonie's destructive affair with the weak Fromont.

History

In 1872, after the successive failures of the play Lisa Tavernier and the theatrical adaptation of The Arlesian Girl, Julia Daudet convinced her husband to give up the dramatic arts for a while, as they were not working for him, and to abandon southern themes, which Parisian audiences seemed to have tired of. Originally conceived as a drama, Daudet's next story was adapted to the novel form and set in the capital, in the very neighbourhood where the writer and his family lived.

The author drew on memories of his Nîmois childhood, when his father ran a cloth printing factory. On the subject of Risler, Daudet notes: "This tall blond man, a factory designer, worked for my father. Originally from Alsace, I naturalised him as Swiss so as not to mix my book with sentimental patriotism and a tirade of easy applause".[5]

Désirée Delobelle was originally intended to be a doll dresser, but Daudet eventually turned her into a maker of fashion birds and flies after André Gill told the writer that there was already an all-too-similar character, Jenny Wren, in Dickens's Our Mutual Friend.[6]

Published in serial form in Le Bien public from 25 March 1874 to 19 June 1874, the novel was published in volume form by Charpentier at the end of the following October.[7]

The book was very well received by the public and the critics, and relaunched Daudet's career. New print runs followed, as did requests for translations.[8]

Henri d'Ideville wrote: "You have to go back a long way to find a book of this value. The success of this little volume will be dazzling, boisterous, popular even, although the work is very literary, and the book will remain, I affirm, among the best novels of our time".[9] Émile Blémont commented: "It has been a complete success; we are happy to be able to state this without any objections or reservations".[10] Amédée Achard felt that "reading Fromont and Risler reveals in the author of Letters from My Windmill a real talent for observation. If he has the art of highlighting the setting of his action [...], he is no less adept at the skilful and fine analysis of characters, the profound study of feelings and passions, and the motives that bring them into play".[11]

File:P1010746 Paris IV Hotel d'Angoulème Lamoignon plaque historique reductwk.JPG
Commemorative plaque on the Hôtel d'Angoulême Lamoignon, in The Marais district, where Daudet wrote Fromont and Risler

Edmond About, who detected the influence of Dickens, had more reservations than his colleagues: "In [this] novel, which is a huge success, we are looking for a character built from scratch: Fromont and Risler are two plausible enough types, but we would like them to have more body and a more prominent relief. Ancillary characters are better, and there are even a few excellent ones, which is understandable: a figure relegated to the background is pleasing to the eye if it is well sketched. The author excels at sketching; he has not yet exhibited a true full-length portrait, as large as life itself. Most of his work is made up of short, charming stories, like Murano flasks filled with precious essence; one would look in vain for a real novel."[12] Victor Fournel, who also noted the influence of Dickens, as well as that of the Goncourt brothers and Flaubert, was more or less of the same opinion as About, but considered that "it is nonetheless a work of great talent and singular interest, in which even the novelist's new ambitions do not exclude the old qualities of the charming storyteller. This melodramatic picture, painted with a brush that remains disdainful and fine in detail, is full of episodes treated with the same delicacy as before. [...] The chapters entitled The Waiting-Room and A News Item are little masterpieces in which sentiment mingles with realism and which achieve the most intense emotion through the penetrating precision of the description".[13] Marius Topin compared Daudet's novel to Madame Bovary, judging, despite a few stylistic "blemishes" that needed correcting, that the former was worthy of the latter in terms of talent and "far superior in terms of moral value".[14]

On 10 June 1875, Fromont and Risler was awarded the Prix de Jouy by the French Academy.[15] The prize, founded with the help of a bequest from Victorine-Emma de Jouy, daughter of Étienne de Jouy, was awarded for "a work of observation, imagination or criticism on current mores".[16]

Translated into English

Notes

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Public domain text copied verbatim with minor corrections for style, clarity and modernizations
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Shorter, Clement K. (1898). "The Hundred Best Novels," The Bookman, Vol. XIII, No. 77, p. 145.
  5. ↑ Daudet, Alphonse (1888). Trente ans de Paris. Paris: Marpon et Flammarion, p. 304.
  6. ↑ Daudet (1888), pp. 308–10.
  7. ↑ Le Soir (28 octobre 1874), p. 3.
  8. ↑ Daudet (1888), pp. 39.
  9. ↑ Ideville, Henri d' (1er novembre 1874). "Nos Bons Romanciers," Le Soleil, No. 300, p. 3.
  10. ↑ Blémont, Émile (11 novembre 1874). "Les Livres," Le Rappel, No. 1706, p. 3.
  11. ↑ Achard, Amédée (18 mars 1875). "Variétés," Journal des débats, p. 3.
  12. ↑ About, Edmond (10 janvier 1875). "Notes from Paris," Le XIXe siècle, No. 1134, p. 3.
  13. ↑ Fournel, Victor (23 mars 1875). "Les Romans," La Gazette de France, 245e Année, p. 3.
  14. ↑ Topin, Marius (12 juin 1875). "Le Roman Contemporain," La Presse, 40e Année, p. 3.
  15. ↑ "Alphonse Daudet," Académie française.
  16. ↑ Le Moniteur universel (9 juin 1875), p. 5.

References

External links

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