Novel
Dominique
Eugène Fromentin · 1863
Opening lines
CERTAINEMENT je n'ai pas à me plaindre—me disait celui dont je rapporterai les confidences dans le récit très simple et trop peu romanesque qu'on lira tout à l'heure—car, Dieu merci, je ne suis plus rien, à supposer que j'aie jamais été quelque chose, et je souhaite à beaucoup d'ambitieux de finir ainsi.
“Certainly I have nothing to complain of,” I was told by the man whose confidences I shall relate in the very simple and all too unromantic story you are about to read, “for, thank God, I am no longer anything, supposing I ever was anything, and I wish many an ambitious man such an end.”
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
A hunter befriends a provincial notable, Dominique de Bray, mayor of his village, who lives on his estate of Les Trembles, near La Rochelle, with his wife and children. Dominique tells him of his youth. An orphan, brought up in the country by an aunt and a tutor, then sent to the collège d'Ormesson, he became friends there with Olivier d'Orsel and with his cousin Madeleine, whom he began to love without a word. Madeleine married the Count of Nièvres; later, in Paris, Dominique tried to see her again.
Context
The novel first appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes, from 15 April to 15 May 1862, then in volume form from Hachette in 1863; its author had dedicated it to George Sand. It is the only novel by this painter, and it draws in large part on his own memories. The narrative is framed: a mature man confides to a visitor the passion of his youth. The action is divided between Les Trembles, Villeneuve, Ormesson and Paris, in the second third of the nineteenth century.
Who it is for
A novel of inner analysis, slow by design, whose landscapes are described by a painter; no difficulty of language.
Prizes and reception
The only novel by a famous painter, it has become a classic; Edward Marsh translated it into English in 1948.
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