Novel
Marc Bruno. Profil d'artiste
Not translated into English
Félix Thyes · 1855
Synopsis
A poor commoner from the Ardennes, a medical student in Brussels who paints in his spare time to pay for his studies, Marc Bruno loves Mathilde de Bourgaup, a young aristocrat, whom her mother, Baroness Adélaïde, intends for a marriage of interest with the Marquis de Sorligne. He seeks oblivion in art, political commitment and debauchery, and meets again Marie, a childhood friend who has become a prostitute.
Context
Published in Brussels in 1855, shortly after the author's death, through the care of his teacher Eugène Van Bemmel, the novel blends Romanticism and realism and multiplies echoes of Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Balzac and Hugo. Frank Wilhelm reads in it a critique of the upper bourgeoisie and of economic liberalism; he notes that the Grand Duchy is never named in it and that Luxembourg fully claimed the author only from the centenary of his birth, in 1930.
Who it is for
For reading, in a Romantic coming-of-age narrative, the beginnings of Luxembourg literature in French.
Prizes and reception
Frank Wilhelm judges that its clumsiness and repetitions take nothing away from its freshness.