Tartarin de Tarascon. Alphonse Daudet
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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.