Fromentin’s Dominique

Dominique is a French novel of the late Romantic period, first published by installments in the Revue des deux mondes of 1862. In it, with a painter’s sensibility to the world around him, Eugène Fromentin (1820-76) portrays the unfulfilled love between Dominique de Bray and his young friend’s married cousin, the unattainable Madeleine. Fromentin was a literary craftsman of the first order, as this extract from Chapter III may show:

Chaque saison nous ramenait ses hôtes, et chacun d’eux choisissait aussitôt ses logements, les oiseaux de printemps dans les arbres à fleurs, ceux d’automne un peu plus haut, ceux d’hiver dans les broussailles, les buissons persistants et les lauriers. Quelquefois en plein hiver ou bien aux premières brumes, un matin, un oiseau plus rare s’envolait à l’endroit du bois le plus abandonné avec un battement d’ailes inconnu, très bruyant et un peu gauche, quoique rapide. C’était une bécasse arrivée la nuit; elle montait en battant les branches et se glissait entre les rameaux des grands arbres nus; à peine apparaissait-elle une seconde, de manière à montrer son long bec droit. Puis on n’en rencontrait plus que l’année suivante, à la même époque, au même lieu, à ce point qu’il semblait que c’était le même émigrant qui revenait.

Des tourterelles de bois arrivaient en mai, en même temps que les coucous. Ils murmuraient doucement à de longs intervalles, surtout par des soirées tièdes, et quand il y avait dans l’air je ne sais quel épanouissement plus actif de sève nouvelle et de jeunesse. Dans les profondeurs des feuillages, sur la limite du jardin, dans les cerisiers blancs, dans les troënes en fleur, dans les lilas chargés de bouquets et d’aromes, toute la nuit, pendant ces longues nuits où je dormais peu, où la lune éclairait, où la pluie quelquefois tombait, paisible, chaude et sans bruit, comme des pleurs de joie,—pour mes délices et pour mon tourment, toute la nuit les rossignols chantaient. Dès que le temps était triste, ils se taisaient; ils reprenaient avec le soleil, avec les vents plus doux, avec l’espoir de l’été prochain. Puis, les couvées faites, on ne les entendait plus. Et quelquefois, à la fin de juin, par un jour brûlant, dans la robuste épaisseur d’un arbre en pleines feuilles, je voyais un petit oiseau muet et de couleur douteuse, peureux, dépaysé, qui errait tout seul et prenait son vol: c’était l’oiseau du printemps qui nous quittait.

The best-known translation is by Edward Marsh, made some seventy years ago when Marsh himself was himself counting the cost of social discretion. The devoted secretary of Winston Churchill, with many contacts in the social world of London, was also the sponsor of the Georgian poets, and an excellent translator too – read them, still available from second-hand booksellers – of Horace and La Fontaine.

 Every season brought back its own guests, and each kind immediately chose their lodgings, the birds of the spring in the flowering trees, those of autumn a little higher up, those of winter in the brushwood, the evergreen bushes and the laurels. Sometimes on a morning in the depths of winter, or when the first mists were rising, a rare bird would fly to the most lonely spot in the wood with an unfamiliar way of beating its wings, very noisy but a little clumsy, though extremely rapid. It was woodcock that had arrived by night; it beat the branches as it climbed, and slipped in between the boughs of the great bare trees, visible for a mere second, showing its long straight beak. Then no more was seen of it till the following year, when it returned so exactly at the same time and to the same place that it might have been the identical migrant repeating its visit.

Wood-pigeons came in May at the same time as the cuckoos. They murmured softly, with long pauses, especially on damp evenings, or when the air was filled with an indefinable excitement and a sense of renewed activity in the rising sap and the youth of the year. All through the night – those long nights when I hardly slept, when the moon rode high, and sometimes rain was falling, peaceful, warm and noiseless like tears of joy – all through the night, deep hidden by the leaves, at the far end of the garden, in the white cherry trees and flowering privets or among the heavy sweet-smelling clusters of the lilacs, to my delight and torment, the nightingales were singing. If the weather turned dull they were silent; but when the sun came back, and the wind blew softer, and the hope of summer drew nearer, they began again. Then, when they had finished hatching, they were no longer heard. And sometimes, at the end of June, on a scorching day, in the firm, thick foliage of a full-blown tree, I saw a little dumb bird of no particular colour, timid and lost, hopping about and taking flight. It was the bird of spring departing.

It is worth reading the last paragraph again. It opens with a short descriptive sentence :

Wood-pigeons came in May at the same time as the cuckoos.

The themes of youth and its vague hopes are introduced :

They murmured softly, with long pauses, especially on damp evenings, or when the air was filled with an indefinable excitement and a sense of renewed activity in the rising sap and the youth of the year.

Then comes that long sentence, built up effectively, observation by observation:

All through the night – those long nights when I hardly slept, when the moon rode high, and sometimes rain was falling, peaceful, warm and noiseless like tears of joy – all through the night, deep hidden by the leaves, at the far end of the garden, in the white cherry trees and flowering privets or among the heavy sweet-smelling clusters of the lilacs, to my delight and torment, the nightingales were singing.

There is a pause, when the hopes of summer are renewed:

If the weather turned dull they were silent; but when the sun came back, and the wind blew softer, and the hope of summer drew nearer, they began again.

Then the nightingales no longer sing:

Then, when they had finished hatching, they were no longer heard.

And summer is not what was expected :

And sometimes, at the end of June, on a scorching day, in the firm, thick foliage of a full-blown tree, I saw a little dumb bird of no particular colour, timid and lost, hopping about and taking flight.

Spring was over, and Dominique would now leave his birthplace for Ormesson, meet and fall in love with Madeleine, attempt to make his mark on Paris, and return at last to his birthplace, to quiet resignation and the social duties of his station:

It was the bird of spring departing.

So Fromentin, looking back on an illicit affair of his youth, after he had accomplished more than was expected, but now finding that the sweet cheat of life gone, and fame not a sufficient recompense. There are many such passages in Dominique.

In common with many prose stylists, Fromentin also wrote verse, and it’s that skill in the exact placing of words that makes his prose so rewarding, together with some style innovations of his own. (5) Poetry, I think it should be clear, can be written in prose or verse, but verse has the greater means at its disposal: compression, shaping devices, striking images, a wider frame of reference. I can’t give an exact equivalent, but here is one rough stanza of a long poem I’m currently writing, loosely based on Dominique, which may highlight the different approaches.

I, from the first a country boy, was bred
to hear the bats about the darkling eves,
the rain and wind make music through the head,
the hesitant effusions of the leaves,
and moths that fluttered round the scent-thick air
that long, long afterwards will bring to mind
the lingering perfume of some loved one’s hair –
the lost Elysium we human kind
who drudge in this dark portal know awaits
with certainty, beyond the distant hill,
through evening with its softly glowing states
of golden sovereignty, refulgent still –
that body’s warm sufficiency in breathy sighs
that speaks of gentleness and smiling eyes.

References

1. Eugène Fromentin. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Fromentin

2. Dominique, by Eugène Fromentin. Project Gutenberg. French text. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33808

3. Dominique by Eugène Fromentin. Translated from the French by Edward Marsh. London : Cresset Press, 1948.

4. Edward Marsh (polymath). Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Marsh_(polymath)

5. Evans, A. The Literary Art of Eugene Fromentin: A Study in Style and Motif. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1964.