Which writer insisted on writing despite illness in his later years?
Alphonse Dodd (1840- 1897) was a French realistic writer in the second half of the 9th century.
He was born in a shabby silk merchant family in Nimes, southern France. Forced by poverty, he worked as an invigilator in a primary school at the age of fifteen (similar to a self-taught counselor) and earned his own living.
1857, when he was 17 years old, he came to Paris with his own poem "The Woman Lover" (1858) and started literary and artistic creation. 1866 published a collection of essays and stories, Letters from the Mill, which brought him a reputation as a novelist.
This is an excellent collection of essays. The author takes the human feelings, customs, legends and anecdotes of his hometown Provence as the theme, and expresses deep local feelings with poetic style. Some of them are beautiful fairy tales, such as "Mr. Segan's Goat", which tells the story of a gentle and beautiful little goat of Mr. Segan, who loves freedom and is not satisfied with the grass in the backyard. He fled to the nearby hills and fought bravely with wolves until he was exhausted and swallowed by wolves.
The Secret of Master Gonier describes that after the opening of the flour mill in Tarascon City, the windmill of the local mill stopped running, but the windmill of Master Gonier's mill still kept running. It turned out that he used quicklime to pretend to be wheat and ground it into powder. His hard work won the sympathy of the residents.
Two years after The Mill's Letter was published, Dodd's first novel Little Things was published (1868).
"Little Things" semi-autobiographically describes the author's experience of having to make a living in adolescence because of family decline, and depicts the cold relationship between people in capitalist society with a playful and humorous style. This novel is Dodd's masterpiece, which embodies the author's artistic style, without malicious irony and implicit sadness, that is, the so-called "tearful smile". Therefore, Dude is known as "Dickens of France".
1870 When the Franco-Prussian War broke out, Dude was drafted into the army. War life provided him with a new creative theme. Later, he wrote many patriotic short stories with the theme of war life. 1873, he published a famous collection of short stories, most of which were set in this war. Among them, "The Last Lesson" and "The Surrounding of Berlin" are well-known for their profound patriotic content and exquisite artistic skills, and they have become masterpieces of the world's short stories.
The Last Lesson describes a rural primary school in Alsace province, which was ceded to Prussia after the Franco-Prussian War. "Farewell to the Last French Class of the Motherland Language" vividly shows the French people's suffering from foreign rule and their love for the motherland through the self-narration of an innocent primary school student. Although the theme of the work is small, it is carefully cut, properly described and deeply explored. Little Franz's psychological activities are described in a delicate and touching way. As a typical patriotic intellectual, Mr. Hamel, a teacher, has a vivid image.
The Last Lesson has been translated into languages all over the world, and is often selected as a Chinese textbook for primary and secondary school students, and there are also translations in China. The novel is set in the event that Prussia forcibly annexed Alsace and Lorraine after defeating France. Through what a pupil saw, heard and felt in the last French class, he deeply expressed the deep patriotic feelings of the French people. Dude's short stories have a unique style of euphemism, twists and turns and hints. 1878 and 1896 successively published Selected Stories and Winter Stories.
After the Franco-Prussian War, Du De's novels were prolific. A total of 12 novels were written, including Dai Darren (1872) who satirized the bourgeois mediocrity, Romon and Risley (1874) who exposed the decadent bourgeois family life and portrayed Numa, a bourgeois politician who was good at making money.
Dodd created a typical image of a boastful and mediocre man in Dadaland, Tarascon. The novel satirized the bravado "heroism" of some bourgeois people with cartoons.
Jacques described the life experience and struggle process of a poor boy, similar to Little Things.
In The Rich, the author wrote a story of a nouveau riche who went bankrupt or even died after arriving in Paris, which vividly outlined the ugly social fashion during the Second Empire.
Nouma Lumes Dang is about how a politician who is good at finding a job climbed to the high position of a minister and successfully created a typical image of a bourgeois politician.
Immortals satirize the highest scientific institution, the French Academy. The protagonist in the book is just a mediocre pedant. He worked hard all his life and finally got into the French Academy and became an academician known as a fairy. However, his works were found to be pseudoscience.
Sappho is a vulgar love novel about the romantic woman Sappho, which was criticized by French Marxist critic lafayette. Dodd is a prolific writer. In addition to a large number of novels, 1888 also published two memoirs, Memories of a Writer and Thirty Years of Paris. His play The Girl in Alai City (1872) was once composed as an opera by French musicians.
He wrote thirteen novels, one drama and four short stories in his life. Besides Little Things, other famous novels include Dai Darren, the Duke of Dallas, which satirizes the bourgeois mediocrity (1872) and My Little Brother Fromond and My Prospect Leslie, which expose the bourgeois life (1874). Dude agrees with Zola's naturalistic creation theory, but he is not indifferent to describing reality.
His nearly 100 short stories, each of which is generally two or three thousand words, are concise and vivid, with rich and colorful themes, novel and ingenious ideas and elegant and light style.
In literary theory, Dodd agrees with Zola's many naturalistic creative viewpoints. However, in his creative practice, he did not record human activities objectively and describe social reality indifferently in the laboratory like a scientist. As he said in Little Things, "My story just borrowed Lafontaine's fable and added my own experience". Dude's works "add" his own experience, from which we can see his joy, sadness, anger and tears. He humorously mocked and gently criticized the decadent world situation of French capitalism at that time, and the basic tendency of his works was progressive.
Generally speaking, his creative tendency is to criticize the capitalist reality. But his social vision is not broad enough and his criticism is not deep enough. His exposure is often limited to the social world and human customs, while his sympathy for the unfortunate ordinary people under the capitalist system is close to compassion. He often describes the little people he is familiar with and observes them with a kind and humorous eye. His observation is meticulous, and he is good at digging out some unique things from his life, expressing them in a natural style, and deeply injecting his feelings between the lines. Therefore, his works often have soft poetry and touching charm.
Attached is an anecdote about a dude.
The world-famous novel Madame Bovary was written by19th century French critical realist Flaubert. At that time, his home was in Mori Road, and contemporary French writers Goncourt, Dodd, Zuo Mo Bosang and Merimee often met on Sundays.
One day, when Du De, the author of The Last Lesson, came to Flaubert's house as usual, he came across Turgenev, a Russian critical realist writer living in France and the author of Smoke. So, with a frank heart, Dude told him his infinite admiration for his talent and character, as well as his high appreciation of The Hunter's Notes.
From then on, they forged a deep friendship, and Turgenev even became a frequent visitor of Tudor family. Nevertheless, Turgenev did not change his evaluation of Duddeck's works because of his high evaluation of Duddeck's works and the deep friendship between them. In his view, Dude is the "lowest-skilled one" in their circle, but he just kept this view as a secret and never revealed it to anyone.
Turgenev died of fatal spinal cord cancer in 1833. After his death, when Du Deyi discovered this long-hidden secret from his diary, he felt extremely surprised, as if he had been punched in the face with a sap, and he didn't know what to say. ...