Charles Barbara

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Barbara c. 1854

Louis-Charles Barbara (5 March 1817 – 19 September 1866)[1] was a French writer.

Biography

Louis-Charles Barbara was the son of a violin maker from Dausenau (near Coblence), who settled in Orléans. After attending the school of his home town, he continued his studies in Paris at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, to prepare, theoretically, for the École Polytechnique and undoubtedly to get away from a violent father. He taught briefly at a school in Nantua, then returned to Paris where he accepted a position as tutor in the family of Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys.

In 1841, he made acquaintance with the group of the Drinkers of Water[2]: Henry Murger, the philosopher Jean Wallon, the painters François Tabar and Alexandre Schanne. He provided Murger with the model for the character Carolus Barbemuche in Scenes of Bohemian Life. He never forgive Murger for this unflattering portrait.[3] He then met Baudelaire, Champfleury and Nadar, who would always remain his friends, although he himself was not very expansive.[4] Barbara turned definitively to journalism and literature, even if music had always played a great role in his life[5]. He played the violin himself and, to earn a living, performed in small Parisian theaters.[6][7]

Like his bohemian friends, Barbara had many financial difficulties[8] and was constantly harassed by creditors.[9]

His first publication, a short story entitled "Le Plat de souliers", appeared in La Gazette de la jeunesse in 1844. He then collaborated with Le Corsaire and L'Artiste, edited by Arsène Houssaye.

He returned to Orleans in 1848, as editor of the Journal du Loiret, managing editor of the Démocrate (23 issues), then editor of the daily newspaper La Constitution where he was in charge of the feuilleton. He published Casimir Henricy, Eugène Sue, Georges Guénot-Lecointe, Jules Sandeau, Alfred des Essarts, Joseph Méry, Émile Souvestre, Hippolyte Castille, Victor Doinet, Marc Fournier and a translation of the The Murders in the Rue Morgue. He himself published articles on theater and music.

In 1850, back in Paris, he met, at the Andler brewery, the group of Realists: Max Buchon, Gustave Courbet, Alfred Bruyas, Duranty, Jules-Antoine Castagnary, Honoré Daumier, Alfred Delvau.[10] He published short stories in the Bulletin de la société des gens de lettres, the Revue de Paris, L'Illustration. His debut novel, L'Assassinat du Pont-Rouge, first serialized in the Revue de Paris, was published in July 1855 in Brussels, edited by Hetzel, exiled in Belgium. He then published short stories in the Journal pour tous, a weekly illustrated magazine of Charles Lahure, whose director was Jules Simon, and in La Revue française.

In 1861, he married Marie-Émilie Scherry. The couple had two children. He had finally earned some money thanks to a melodrama that he had drawn from his first novel and which was played at the Théâtre de la Gaîté. But in 1866, his wife and daughter were swept away by a typhoid epidemic.[11] This tragedy altered his mental health and Barbara was interned in the municipal nursing home, known as Maison Dubois,[12] where he committed suicide by throwing himself out of a window.[13]

Writings

Barbara and Baudelaire

Baudelaire appreciated the work of Barbara.[14] He used his influence with the publishers so that Barbara texts could be published.[15] He devoted to him a paragraph of his article: "M. Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary. — La Tentation de saint Antoine" (in L'Artiste, 18 October 1857, reprinted in L'Art romantique under the title: "Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert").[16]

In his novel L'Assassinat du Pont-Rouge (1855), Barbara portrays a reception during which the participants are invited to write in the guestbook of the mistress of the house. A poet writes there "from memory" a sonnet, "Que diras-tu ce soir, pauvre âme solitaire", which is the retranscription of Baudelaire's poem which will become the piece XXXVII of The Flowers of Evil.[17] This poem has the peculiarity of having been quoted in full in a novel before it was even available in bookstores, since it was only published in 1857. The poet, still anonymous, was described as one "whose clear aptitude for the most arduous speculations does not prevent him from creating warm, colourful, essentially human and original poetry."[18]

Barbara and Dostoyevsky

Nori Kameya has noted many similarities between Crime and Punishment and L'Assassinat du Pont-Rouge[19]:

it is poverty that leads the protagonist to commit his crime; the scene of the murder is described at length with great detail; the murderers justify their act by philosophical considerations: it would be a "humanitarian" act; they act with the awareness that they are denying the moral law, which gives them a feeling of power; subsequently, they are subject to hallucinatory dreams in which their victim appears to them; very quickly, they feel the need to confess their crime; relieved after their confession, they do not feel any repentance.

Finally, Nori Kameya notes that Dostoyevsky read French perfectly and that he stayed in Paris between 1855 and 1866.

Barbara and Edgar Poe

In 1847, he discovered Edgar Allan Poe (he had always read a lot and was very cultured). It is likely that it was he who drew Baudelaire's attention to the American poet.[20] He himself was influenced by William Wilson and by The Murders in the Rue Morgue. His Histoires émouvantes, a clear allusion to Poe, appeared at the same date and with the same publisher as the Histoires extraordinaires, Baudelaire's translation of Poe works. His story The Twins also bears witness to this influence.[21]

Barbara and realism

Barbara is often classified as a realist[22] or even a naturalist novelist, which caused him to be attacked by the critics of his time.[23] He often wrote stories as a sociologist, focusing on the lives of the humble and downtrodden. Many of his creations are based on real people more or less thinly disguised as fictional characters. He criticized the society of his time, but was never a rebel like Vallès.[24] Critics have noted the influence that Barbara may have had on Émile Zola.[25]

Barbara and the fantastic

Alongside or parallel to his realistic vein, Barbara cultivated the fantastic. He wrote clearly fantastic tales (collected in Mes Petites-maisons), but most of his realist stories also contain supernatural episodes (in which music plays a very large role).

Barbara and the bizarre

Barbara often described situations or characters that were out of the ordinary. His first story, Le Plat de souliers, histoire gastronomique, depicts the making of a dish from old, mouldy shoes. His heroes are often monomaniacs with repressed passions, loners with strange lives that give way to the marvelous. Major Whittington, in the eponymous tale, lives in the midst of automatons of his own creation who play the role of wife, daughter, servants, friends supposed to represent an ideal society. He treats his androids as living beings. American critics have examined this case of fetishism.[26]

Barbara and science fiction

"Major Whittington" has a scientific and technical background that makes Barbara a precursor of Jules Verne. It features the electric telegraph, the phonograph, skyscrapers, the calculating machine, anaesthesia, the treatment of serious illnesses by atmospheric baths, and automatas.[27]

Barbara and the detective story

Romanzoff stages a criminal case, describes a search and a trial in the Assize Court. But it is above all L'Assassinat du Pont-Rouge that can be qualified as a true detective novel. The main plot is rather psychological, but in the middle of the story there is a "Strange Interlude" which is chapter XI. In it, the investigating judge tells how a mysterious crime gave rise to a scientific investigation based on meticulous observations, rigorous reasoning and the search for clues. This novel precedes by a long way L'Affaire Lerouge (1866) and Monsieur Lecoq (1869), by Émile Gaboriau, generally considered as the first French detective novels.[28]

Works

  • L’Assassinat du Pont-Rouge (1855)
  • Histoires émouvantes (1857; contains: "Les Jumeaux"; "La Leçon de musique"; "Vieille histoire"; "Le Rideau"; "Extraits des rapports d'un agent de police"; "Une Chanteuse des rues"; "Héloïse"; "Les Douleurs d’un nom"; "Le Billet de mille francs")
  • Mes Petites-Maisons (1860; contains: "Esquisse de la vie d'un virtuose"; "Le Major Whittington"; "Romanzoff"; "L'Homme qui nourrit des papillons"; "Irma Gilquin"; "Les Sourds")
    • My Lunatic Asylum (2020; translated by Brian Stableford)
  • Les Orages de la vie (1860; contains: "Thérèse Lemajeur", "Madeleine Lorin")
  • Ary Zang (1864)
  • Mademoiselle de Sainte-Luce (1868)
  • Un Cas de Conscience; Anne-Marie; L'Herboriste; L'Accordeur; L'Officier d'Infanterie (1868)

Notes

  1. ↑ The works that mention Barbara usualy give him as being born in 1822. It was Nori Kameya who rectified this error by publishing Barbara's birth certificate in his thesis defended in Nice in 1983.
  2. ↑ Those who never have enough money to pay for a bottle of wine.
  3. ↑ Samuels, Maurice (2004). "Introduction." In: The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  4. ↑ "The sphinx did not say a word about his past life and did not confide in anyone." — Champfleury (1872). Souvenirs et Portraits de Jeunesse. Paris: E. Dentu, p. 116.
  5. ↑ His father was a violin maker, his brother Pierre a music teacher, his brother Georges a piano tuner.
  6. ↑ "His violin seemed to pour balm on all his wounds; while he played it he forgot earth and its storms. I translate a description of him as a musician: 'Once a week, in 1858 or 1859, we met ina painter’s studio in the Rue de Tournon, where concerts of classical music were given. The orchestra was composed of four amateurs, who executed the quatuors of the great German masters. One of the four amateurs was a painter; another was a sculptor; the third was an architect; the fourth was a literary man. The studio was small, and the easels and canvas were pushed aside for the musicians’ stands. One lamp, which hung from the ceiling, lighted the room, while the guests sat on sofas along the wall. We lighted our cigars and listened. The literary man was the best musician of the four. He understood German music better than his companions; and while they sometimes scraped horribly their instruments, his violin gave constant pleasure. I still see him bending over his music stand. He was still young, but his face expressed profound sorrow. His bright and intelligent eyes shunned others’ glances, lest they might reveal the agony of a lofty soul wrestling with life’s necessities. He was generally the last to make his appearance, and the moment he entered he took his violin and sat down to his music-stand. He was the first to leave. I never saw him laugh once. His name was Charles Barbara'." — American Literary Gazette and Publishers' Circular, Vol. VIII, No. 3 (1866), p. 90.
  7. ↑ Champfleury recounted these episodes in articles published in the Revue de Paris: "Les trios des Chenizelles", "Les quatuors de l'île Saint-Louis" (violin: Barbara and Olivier Métra, cello: Champfleury, viola: Schanne) and dedicated to him his study on Richard Wagner (1860).
  8. ↑ "His life was an atrocious struggle against misery and his work owes to these circumstances a harshness and gravity that are not without grandeur." — Dumesnil, René (1936). Le Réalisme. Paris: J. de Gigord, p. 33.
  9. ↑ "Fearing that I cannot meet you, I am writing to you. I need a hundred francs to avoid a disaster. Can you lend them to me? You will be doing me a service whose extent it is impossible to tell you." — Letter to Nadar, August 1, 1863.
  10. ↑ "Their passion for the truth, the raw truth, earned them the appropriate nickname of 'realists'." — Schanne, Alexandre (1886). Souvenirs de Schaunard. Paris: G. Charpentier, p. 286.
  11. ↑ Du Camp, Maxime (1893). Recollections of a Literary Life, Vol. 2. London and Sidney: Remington & Co., p. 77.
  12. ↑ Today Fernand Widal Hospital, where his friend Murger died.
  13. ↑ His tragic fate inspired Alphonse Daudet to write the tale "The Legend of the Man with the Golden Brain" (Letters from My Windmill).
  14. ↑ Kameya, Nori (1985). "Louis-Charles Barbara, un Ami de Baudelaire", Études de Langue et Littérature Françaises, No 46, pp. 36–51.
  15. ↑ Letter from Baudelaire to Barbara of July 15, 1852: "When you will like to go to Mr. Maxime Du Camp, and to present him a tale, you will be very well received. I don't need to tell you about the warmth I put into preaching your value."
  16. ↑ "More recently still, M. Charles Barbara, that rigorous and logical soul, keenly hunting its intellectual prey, has made some unquestionably distinguished efforts; he has sought — always an irresistible temptation — to describe, to analyze exceptional moral quandaries, and to work out the direct consequences of false situations. If I do not here express all the sympathy I fell for the author of Héloïse and of the Assassinat du Pont-Rouge, the reason is that he impinges on my theme only indirectly, as a kind of historical note." — Baudelaire, Charles (1981). Selected Writings on Art and Artists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 247.
  17. ↑ Vaillant, Alain (2009). "Baudelaire, Artiste Moderne de la «poésie-journal»," Études Littéraires, Vol. XL, No. 3, pp. 43–60.
  18. ↑ Pichois, Claude (1989). Baudelaire. London: Hamish Hamilton, p. 148.
  19. ↑ Kameya, Nori (1993). "Dostoïevski, auteur de Crime et Châtiment, a-t-il lu L'Assassinat du Pont-Rouge de Charles Barbara", Revue de Littérature Comparée, Vol. XXXVII, No. 4, pp. 505–12.
  20. ↑ Lloyd, Rosemary (2002). Baudelaire’s World. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, p. 203.
  21. ↑ Cambiaire, Célestin-Pierre (1927). The Influence of Edgar Allan Poe in France. New York: G. E. Stechert & Co.
  22. ↑ "Why do I seem to ignore the delicate and the sensitive, the Deltuf and the Paul Perret, and the terrible in the real, the Barbara..." — Sainte-Beuve (1866). Les Nouveaux Lundis. Paris: Michel Lévy frères, p. 2.
  23. ↑ "It is always the same challenge that the raw reality throws to the ideal truth, that of the art; — always the pathetic to excess, the one that attacks the nerves and makes shiver the flesh, substituted to the intelligent emotion that penetrates to the bottom of the heart." — Cuvillier-Fleury, Alfred-Auguste (1859). Dernières Études Historiques et Littéraires, Vol. 1. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, p. 289.
  24. ↑ "I believe that man is born to suffer," says one of the characters in his short story The Twins.
  25. ↑ "In Thérèse Raquin, the action is reminiscent of a certain novel by Charles Barbara (L'Assassinat du Pont-Rouge) [...]. It is the same adultery, the same drowning of the husband, the same tragedy of remorse." — Deffoux, Léon & Émile Zavie (1920). Le Groupe de Médan. Paris: Payot, p. 46.
  26. ↑ See Stratton, Jon (2001). The Desirable Body. Cultural Fetishism and the Erotics of Consumption. Urbana: University of Illinois Press; Sipe, Daniel (2016). Text, Image, and the Problem with Perfection in Nineteenth-Century France: Utopia and Its Afterlives. London and New York: Routledge.
  27. ↑ No doubt inspired by Jean-Paul Richter. See Nori Kaméya, ed., Barbara, Charles (1985). Le Major Whittington: avec la traduction par André Souyris de "Éléments d'une biographie de l'homme-machine" de Jean-Paul Richter. Paris: Minard.
  28. ↑ "C. Barbara is in fact the inventor of the genre, since he published L'Assassinat du Pont-Rouge in 1850 [sic for 1855]. It is the first mystery story, with a detective character and an intimate drama." — Olivier-Martin, Yves (1976). "Origines Secrètes du Roman Policier Français", Europe, No 571/572 p. 145.

References

Barbey d'Aurevilly, Jules (1904). "Charles Barbara." In: Romanciers d'hier et d'avant-hier. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, pp. 183–88.
Claretie, Jules (1892). "The Shudder in Literature," North American Review, Vol. CLV, No. 429, pp. 136–48.
Kaméya, Nori (1986). Un Conteur Méconnu, Charles Barbara (1817-1866). Paris: Minard.
Marotin, François (2002). "La Malédiction de Caïn dans L'Assassinat Du Pont-Rouge de Charles Barbara." In: Jacques Wagner, ed., Roman et Religion en France (1713-1866). Paris: Honoré Champion.
Messac, Régis (1929). Le "Detective Novel" et l'Influence de la Pensée Scientifique. Paris: Honoré Champion.
Prince, Nathalie (2002). Les Célibataires du Fantastique. Paris: l'Harmattan.
Ruff, Marcel A. (1955). L’Esprit du Mal et l'Esthétique Baudelairienne. Paris: Armand Colin.

External links

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