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Claude et Juliette
Ce livre est une oeuvre du domaine public éditée au format numérique par Ebooks libres et gratuits. L’achat de l’édition Kindle inclut le téléchargement via un réseau sans fil sur votre liseuse et vos applications de lecture Kindle.
48 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 2007
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About the author
Alfred Assollant
131 books3 followersAlfred Assollant, parfois écrit Assolant, né Aubusson (Creuse) le 20 mars 1827 et mort Paris le 3 mars 1886, était un romancier Français, auteur de romans pour la jeunesse. Licencié ès Lettres, après avoir enseigné l'histoire, il s'attire les foudres de son recteur, pour ses opinions républicaines. Il entreprend alors un voyage aux États-Unis, puis réunit ses souvenirs dans les Scènes de la Vie des États-Unis en 1858. Farouche opposant de Napoléon III, il collabore la presse d'opposition, puis s'essaie au roman. Il est l'auteur de romans pour la jeunesse et en 1867, il publie Aventures Merveilleuses Mais Authentiques du Capitaine Corcoran dans la Bibliothèque rose de Louis Hachette. Après plusieurs échecs successifs la députation, il termina sa vie dans l'anonymat.
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July 12, 2012
This 19th-century French story by Alfred Assollant, the author of "The Lion Hunt," is a much darker, tragic work than the latter story --though even here, the author couldn't help lacing it with his satiric humor. It comes to us in an eminently readable modern English translation by my Goodreads friend Krisi Keley, a French major and a writer in her own right, who generously gave me a copy. As she expected, it proved to be interesting to me, but it ranks with works like Heart of Darkness or 1984 as a tale you're not expected to "enjoy" in any usual sense; it "amazes" purely in the clarity of its bleakness, as an unrelieved examination of human folly, selfishness, and shallowness. It can be seen, from a Christian perspective, as a stark portrait of human sin and stupidity and the way they curse and pervert every relationship they touch, unqualified by any note of redeeming grace to break the pattern. (The note of "hope" at the end is basically just an affirmation that better things could have been --but that fact doesn't change what is, and only heightens the tragedy of the latter.)
Despite being written in 1889, the perennial themes of this story of an ill-fated love triangle --actually, "infatuation/lust triangle" would peg it better-- are timeless, as relevant today as they were then: our cult of physical beauty to the exclusion of concern with things that are more important, the devastating effects of feelings of inferiority on the human psyche, our capacity for deluding ourselves and for creating an image on a pedestal of others with no basis in reality, the penchant of some women for blind romantic attraction to sexist jerks who are only interested in one thing, the way that self-centeredness and exploitative lust wrecks the lives it uses or that get in its way. Unlike Claude, I don't see myself as especially ugly in a physical sense, but I've still always had inferiority feelings thick enough to cut with a knife, especially as a teen and a young man; so I could relate to Claude on that level. And we rub shoulders with airheads like Juliette and rotters like Buridan every day. In many ways, one can see this tale as a kind of cynical counter-narrative to conventional romantic fiction, a warning that romantic feelings often just leave you abandoned, broken-hearted and maybe even suicidal. As someone who believes deeply in the miracle of romantic love, and has the privilege of living it every day, I can recognize that the picture this story paints isn't all of reality. But tragically, for an awful lot of people then and now, this story IS the mold (with individual variations of disappointment) in which all of their experience with male-female interaction is cast. It's a sobering reminder that HEA isn't automatic: that it takes an ability to look past face and figure at the quality of character, to tell the difference between physical attraction and love, and above all to put somebody else's well-being and happiness ahead of our own. To be brutally honest, these aren't abilities that a lot of people naturally have. (But that doesn't mean that those who do can't find each other!)
For any serious student of French literature, or any student of the rise of pessimism and cynicism in late 19th-century literature, this story could be a valuable resource (especially since it includes the original French text). I highly recommend it for anyone with those interests (including college French students and teachers!).
Despite being written in 1889, the perennial themes of this story of an ill-fated love triangle --actually, "infatuation/lust triangle" would peg it better-- are timeless, as relevant today as they were then: our cult of physical beauty to the exclusion of concern with things that are more important, the devastating effects of feelings of inferiority on the human psyche, our capacity for deluding ourselves and for creating an image on a pedestal of others with no basis in reality, the penchant of some women for blind romantic attraction to sexist jerks who are only interested in one thing, the way that self-centeredness and exploitative lust wrecks the lives it uses or that get in its way. Unlike Claude, I don't see myself as especially ugly in a physical sense, but I've still always had inferiority feelings thick enough to cut with a knife, especially as a teen and a young man; so I could relate to Claude on that level. And we rub shoulders with airheads like Juliette and rotters like Buridan every day. In many ways, one can see this tale as a kind of cynical counter-narrative to conventional romantic fiction, a warning that romantic feelings often just leave you abandoned, broken-hearted and maybe even suicidal. As someone who believes deeply in the miracle of romantic love, and has the privilege of living it every day, I can recognize that the picture this story paints isn't all of reality. But tragically, for an awful lot of people then and now, this story IS the mold (with individual variations of disappointment) in which all of their experience with male-female interaction is cast. It's a sobering reminder that HEA isn't automatic: that it takes an ability to look past face and figure at the quality of character, to tell the difference between physical attraction and love, and above all to put somebody else's well-being and happiness ahead of our own. To be brutally honest, these aren't abilities that a lot of people naturally have. (But that doesn't mean that those who do can't find each other!)
For any serious student of French literature, or any student of the rise of pessimism and cynicism in late 19th-century literature, this story could be a valuable resource (especially since it includes the original French text). I highly recommend it for anyone with those interests (including college French students and teachers!).
Displaying 1 of 1 review