Numa Roumestan

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Numa Roumestan
Author Alphonse Daudet
Translator Virginia Champlin
Charles DeKay
Henry Blanchamp
Illustrator Adrien Marie
Émile Bayard
Pierre-Eugène Vibert
Country France
Language French
Publisher Charpentier
Publication date
 1881

Numa Roumestan (French: Numa Roumestan: Mœurs parisiennes) is an anti-meridionalist novel by Alphonse Daudet published in 1881. It was turned into a play in 1887 at the Odéon in Paris. Numa Roumestan suggested to Henry James the outline of The Liar,[1] a story about a professional liar who has a loyal but honest wife.[2]

Synopsis

Numa Roumestan is a lawyer from Provence who seeks recognition by becoming a politician in Paris. He married Rosalie Le Quesnoy, the daughter of a high magistrate. Roumestan's personality is prone to emphasis and false promises, while his wife's is upright and reserved, bordering on cold. He cheats on his wife after the couple has suffered a miscarriage and then does it again, leading to the break-up of the couple. They reconcile at the end of the novel after the death of Hortense Le Quesnoy, Numa's sister-in-law, who had fallen in love with the drummer Valmajour.

Characters

  • Numa Roumestan — The title character epitomises, in the author's words, "the type of liar who gets drunk on his words, who promises everyone in good faith and thus attracts the most unpleasant stories". He makes this character the embodiment of the people of Provence. An unsuccessful lawyer, he entered politics, which caused a stir in the couple: he returned to Southern France and was elected deputy. He later became Minister of Public Education. As with the other characters, Daudet drew on these notes to create the character: "The author took from all over the place the ridiculousness and vanity he encountered on his way, he drew from very distinct individualities; from this heap of faults, he made a whole, and applying them to a single subject, he created Numa Roumestan". Daudet "personified the entire Midi in Numa Roumestan". One of the main motifs of the novel is the opposition between Numa, embodying the man from the South, and Rosalie, embodying the Parisian woman. Contemporaries recognised Léon Gambetta in Roumestan,[3][4] while modern critics see Émile Ollivier in the character.[5]
  • Rosalie Le Quesnoy — The daughter of an austere public prosecutor. An upright and loyal woman, she is seduced by the smooth-talking Numa, whom she marries. She laments his abandonment of her for politics, and forgives him once after being deceived. The birth of a child saves her marriage from divorce.
  • Hortense Le Quesnoy — Rosalie's younger sister, meets Valmajour because of Numa.
  • Valmajour — The drummer Valmajour was inspired by a real-life Provençal musician, Tistet Buisson. Alphonse Daudet knew him well.
  • Audiberte — a "cuddly, fierce Provençal, all about money, choking with anger at the thought of losing, one of the best figures in the book, with a cruel truth".
  • Alice Bachellery — Numa's lover. A showgirl with a beautiful voice, she is helped by Numa to perform in Parisian theatres. Her antics almost bring down a government ministry.

Reception

In Le Figaro, Émile Zola praised the author's talent, the accuracy of the scenes and the precision of the character descriptions. However, he criticised the portrayal of the Provençal people, who were portrayed "with too much cruelty". On the contrary, Daudet only portrayed a fantasised Provence. Above all, he criticised the author for having invented the love story between Valmajour and Hortense in the midst of fictionalised true stories. He evoked a "malaise" that "hurt him like a false tune".[6]

For Albert Savine, this naturalist novel is Daudet's "denial of his southern homeland", a "pamphlet full of southern verve against the South, written by a man of the Midi, cruel and incisive". He praised the author's style.[7]

Some critics, such as Roger des Fourniels and Dancourt, took a different view, the former expressing surprise at the liberties Daudet allowed himself, whose style had "degenerated", and adding that the novel was littered with errors. He also criticised the excessive caricature of Provençal people: "the Provençal character, as portrayed by Daudet, is false or so distorted that it is unrecognisable".[8]

Others criticise the author for the political undertone of the work: "Numa Roumestan sets out to demonstrate that truth, sincerity, uprightness, disinterestedness and virtue are on the side of republicans and free-thinkers".[9]

The son of the drummer Tistet Buisson, who appears in the novel as Valmajour, published a "reply to Alphonse Daudet" in which he denounced the author's attacks on the musician and the Provençal people.[10]

Translated into English

Notes

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Reprinted as Behind a Mask or, Numa Roumestan in 1890 and 1898.

Citations

  1. ↑ Powers, Lyall H. (1972). "James's Debt to Alphonse Daudet," Comparative Literature, Vol. XXIV, No. 2, pp. 150–62.
  2. ↑ Kane, Robert J. (1950). "Hawthorne's "The Prophetic Pictures and James's The Liar," Modern Language Notes, Vol. 65, No. 4, pp. 257–58.
  3. ↑ Larremore, Wilbur (1889). "Realists in Prose Fiction," The Overland Monthly, Vol. XIII, No. 77, pp. 515.
  4. ↑ Whibley, Charles (1898). "Alphonse Daudet," The Modern Quarterly of Language and Literature, Vol. I, No. 1, pp. 17.
  5. ↑ Court-Perez (2000).
  6. ↑ Zola, Émile (13 septembre 1881). "Alphonse Daudet," Figaro,‎ No. 256, p. 1.
  7. ↑ Savine, Albert (1885). Les étapes d'un naturaliste: impressions et critiques. Paris: E. Giraud & Cie, pp. 124–31.
  8. ↑ Fourniels, Roger des (25 octobre 1881). "Numa Roustan," Le Journal du Midi, No. 297, p. 2.
  9. ↑ Pontmartin, Armand de (1883). Souvenirs d'un vieux critique, Vol. 3. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, pp. 107–22.
  10. ↑ Buisson, Léon (1887). Le roi des tambourinaires, le Valmajour de "Numa-Roumestan": réponse à Alphonse Daudet. Paris: Ph. Toulza.

References

  • Arène, Paul (27 Octobre 1881). "A propos de Numa Roumestan," La République française, No. 3620, pp. 2–3.
  • Bonnin-Ponnier Joëlle (2013). "La question du héros dans Numa Roumestan," Le Petit Chose. Bulletin de l'association des Amis d'Alphonse Daudet, No. 102, pp. 53–65.
  • Court-Perez, Françoise (2000). "Brouillage et mirage: Paris-province dans Numa Roumestan de Daudet." In: Yvan Leclerc & Amélie Djourachkovitch, Production littéraire et situations de contacts interethniques. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, pp. 207–29
  • Giordan, Henri (1974). "Oppositions de classes et relations interethniques dans Numa Roumestan d'Alphonse Daudet." In: Collection IDERIC - études préliminaires. Nice: Institut d'études et de recherches interethniques et interculturelles, Vol. 7 « Production littéraire et situations de contacts interethniques », No. 1,‎ 1974, pp. 31–63.
  • Martinet, Yvonne (1940). Numa Roumestan par Alphonse Daudet: la pièce et le roman. Gap: Imprimérie Louis-Jean.
  • Pianca, Jean-Michel (1974). "Numa Roumestan: Lecture/Critique." In: Colette Bottin-Fourchotte, Jacques Chevrier, Henri Giordan, André Z. Labarrère, Jean-Michel Pianca, Alain Ricard, Stéphane Sarkany, Production littéraire et situations de contacts interethniques. Nice: Institut d'études et de recherches interethniques et interculturelles, pp. 64–73.

External links

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