Project Gutenberg's Fromont and Risler, Complete, by Alphonse Daudet

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Fromont and Risler, Complete

Author: Alphonse Daudet

Last Updated: March 3, 2009
Release Date: October 5, 2006 [EBook #3980]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROMONT AND RISLER, COMPLETE ***

Produced by David Widger

FROMONT AND RISLER

By ALPHONSE DAUDET

With a Preface by LECONTE DE LISLE, of the French Academy

ALPHONSE DAUDET

Nominally Daudet, with the Goncourts and Zola, formed a trio
representing Naturalism in fiction. He adopted the watchwords of that
school, and by private friendship, no less than by a common profession
of faith, was one of them. But the students of the future, while
recognizing an obvious affinity between the other two, may be puzzled to
find Daudet's name conjoined with theirs.

Decidedly, Daudet belonged to the Realistic School. But, above all, he
was an impressionist. All that can be observed--the individual picture,
scene, character--Daudet will render with wonderful accuracy, and all
his novels, especially those written after 1870, show an increasing
firmness of touch, limpidity of style, and wise simplicity in the use of
the sources of pathetic emotion, such as befit the cautious Naturalist.
Daudet wrote stories, but he had to be listened to. Feverish as his
method of writing was--true to his Southern character he took endless
pains to write well, revising every manuscript three times over from
beginning to end. He wrote from the very midst of the human comedy; and
it is from this that he seems at times to have caught the bodily warmth
and the taste of the tears and the very ring of the laughter of men and
women. In the earlier novels, perhaps, the transitions from episode to
episode or from scene to scene are often abrupt, suggesting the manner
of the Goncourts. But to Zola he forms an instructive contrast, of the
same school, but not of the same family. Zola is methodical, Daudet
spontaneous. Zola works with documents, Daudet from the living fact.
Zola is objective, Daudet with equal scope and fearlessness shows more
personal feeling and hence more delicacy. And i