At our French class a few weeks ago, I talked about going to
see the windmill of French nineteenth century author Alphonse Daudet in
Fontvieille. We had gone there with Daniel and Irène after our wonderful
Christmas dinner.
Our French instructor then suggested that we ought to read more
of Daudet’s stories as they are not long and are well-written. Ellen and I had
already read “Les trois messes basses” (The
three low masses) which I described in this blog in December. Our French
instructor asked us to read other stories from his book Lettres de Mon Moulin (Letters from my Windmill). Last week, we read La Chèvre de Monsieur Seguin (Mr.
Seguin’s goat). The story – told to his friend – indirectly poses the
question: freedom at what cost?
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| The Billy-goat weather vane |
Alphonse Daudet is a well-known French author. Daniel told
us that most of the school children in France read his stories. I guess we
would call his stories ‘fables’ or at least ‘moral stories’. The tales are humorous
and always about the people of Provence .
Daudet’s descriptions of the people of Provence
and the land itself make his stories worth reading.
Daudet was from Provence .
He was born and grew up in Nîmes, taught in Alès and then worked at Le Figaro as a journalist in Paris . He was close
friends with Emile Zola and Guy de Maupassant. He apparently never lived at the
windmill – writing most of the stories on the train (according to Frederick
Davies who translated Lettres de Mon
Moulin for Penguin books). Alphonse Daudet has been called “the French
Dickens”.
The film director Marcel Pagnol, also from Provence (Marseille), made short movies of Daudet’s
tales in the 1950s. (You can watch several of these movies on “YouTube”.)
