Tartarin de Tarascon | Page 8

French southerner is derived from the portrait of this hero.
As is usual in the works of Daudet, the character of Tartarin is not wholly fictitious. The home of the cap-hunters was really not Tarascon, but a village five or six leagues away on the other side of the Rh?ne. It was from this village, and in company with the prototype of Tartarin, that Daudet set out for Africa in 1861, chiefly to recover his health and incidentally to hunt lions. The novel is a souvenir of the author's sojourn in the home of the real Tartarin and of the trip which the two made together[1], the whole being greatly modified by the play of the novelist's Proven?al imagination.
[Footnote 1: See the following notes of this edition for evidence of the extent to which Daudet used the notes jotted down in Africa in the composition of "Tartarin": 70 21, 73 27, 81 5-6. See also "Souvenirs d'un homme de lettres," p. 44, where he speaks of the notebook from which he extracted "Tartarin" and other works.]
To appreciate "Tartarin de Tarascon" is not easy for a foreigner; and by foreigners is meant all those who have not lived in and do not know Provence. Americans and Parisians (see pages 16-17) look on Tartarin and his compatriots as mere liars.
They are not liars: they are suffering simply from the effects of a mirage. To understand what is meant by a mirage, you must go to the south of France. There you will find a magic sun which transforms everything, which takes a molehill and makes of it a mountain. Go to Tarascon, seek out a man who almost went to Shanghai, look steadfastly at him, and if the southern sun is shining upon him you will soon be convinced that he has actually gone to Shanghai.
In reading "Tartarin de Tarascon," therefore, remember that Tartarin's world is small and his imagination large; that he never lies, though he rarely tells the truth. Do not make the mistake of thinking Tartarin a lunatic. Just as his immortal predecessor Don Quixote was thoroughly sane except in that which touched the realm of chivalry, so Tartarin is a normal Frenchman except when he is under the influence of the southern mirage.
* * * * *
Daudet says in "Trente Ans de Paris," page 142, that the home of the real Tartarin was five or six miles from Tarascon on the other side of the Rhone. In an article which appeared in "Les Annales," July 6, 1913, Charles Le Goffic tells of a visit to the house in Tarascon known as _la maison de Tartarin_, and reports a conversation he had with Mistral, the great Proven?al poet, an intimate friend of Daudet. Mistral said that the real Tartarin lived at N?mes, eighteen miles from Tarascon, to the west of the Rhone, and was no other than Raynaud, Daudet's own cousin. "Raynaud," Mistral told Le Goffic, "had travelled among the Teurs and talked about nothing but his lion hunts; he talked about them with his lower lip extended so as to form a terrible pout (moue), which gave a character of good-natured ferocity to the little gentleman's honest face. Raynaud recognized himself in Tartarin and became very angry with Daudet; the reconciliation between the cousins was not effected till toward the end of the novelist's life."

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
A definitive edition of the works of Daudet has been published by Houssiaux, in octavo, 1899 ff. (18 volumes). Convenient editions of most of them are published by Flammarion, Lemerre, Fasquelle, and others.
The best sources for the study of Daudet's life and works are his _Trente Ans de Paris, Souvenirs d'un homme de lettres, Notes sur la vie_ (Paris, 1899), his brother Ernest's Mon Fr��re et moi (Paris, 1882), and his son L��on's Alphonse Daudet (Paris, 1898).
The following may also be consulted:
J. BRIVOIS, Essai de bibliographie des oeuvres de M. Alphonse Daudet, Paris, 1895. H. C��ARD, introduction to the definitive edition. B. DIEDERICH, Alphonse Daudet, Berlin, 1900. R. DOUMIC, in Portraits d'��crivains and _��tudes sur la litt��rature fran?aise_, Vol. III. HENRY JAMES, in Partial Portraits. J. LEMA?TRE, in Les Contemporains, Vol. II. R. H. SHERARD, Alphonse Daudet, London, 1894. B. W. WELLS, in A Century of French Fiction, New York, 1903. E. ZOLA, in Les Romanciers naturalistes.
The illustrations in the following articles are of interest:
J. A. HAMMERTON, "The Town of Tartarin," in The Critic, vol. 47, pp 317 ff. A. B. MAURICE, "The Trail of Tartarin," in The Bookman, vol. 14, pp. 128 ff.; vol. 15, pp. 520 ff.
WORKS OF ALPHONSE DAUDET
POEMS, NOVELS, TALES, AND SKETCHES
Les Amoureuses, po��mes et fantaisies (including La Double Conversion, Le Roman du Chaperon rouge, and other poems) 1857-1861. Le Petit Chose, 1868. Lettres de mon moulin, 1869. Lettres �� un absent, 1871. Aventures prodigieuses de Tartarin de Tarascon, 1872.