Alexandre Dumas, ogre of letters and life

With Emile de Girardin as an ingenious press boss, Dumas was therefore the successful inventor of the fire novel who swelled newspaper sales.

In his book, Jean-Christophe Rufin wants to return to Dumas all its dimension. Moreover, Prolific writer with 200 pounds (he wrote up to 24,000 signs per day!). However, Helped often from “Negroes”, author of theater and travel impressions that Rufin holds “For the most beautiful part of his work”, He was also an ogre of life. Meanwhile, A crazy lover of women he seduced to the chain but then lost because of his inconstancy.

He was also keen on cooking. Meanwhile, Rufin finished his book with strange recipes due to Dumas, including that to cook a paw of bear. Moreover, Dumas is the flamboyant the spender. Nevertheless, If he gained fortunes, if he had built a castle where he organized sumptuous parties, he died ruined.

“Dumas, it’s life”wrote Georges Sand.

Exile in Belgium

This little book very pleasant to read. allows you to discover all the facets of the alexandre dumas, ogre letters life one whose body entered the Pantheon in 2002 for the bicentenary of his birth. Alexandre Dumas, the prolific, the most read French writer in the world joined his friend Victor Hugo there.

He was born in Villers-Cotterêts. son of a general, the Marquis de la Pailleterie, who died when Alexandre was four years old, and grandson of a black slave from Saint-Domingue. His ruffled hair and her darker skin were the subject of sarcasm of his enemies. He was also the father of Alexandre Dumas fils, the author of The Lady with Camélias.

Rufin tells the infinite cheek of the one who. “mounted” in Paris at 23 to escape poverty and humiliations, replied when questioned, “That he couldn’t do anything.”

But quickly he demonstrated the opposite. He first discovers the theater, “Romantics” and triumph with Henri III Presented at the Comédie-Française.

The alexandre dumas, ogre letters life life of Dumas was also dotted with desires of revolutionary struggles in 1830. in 1848 and until his enthusiasm for Garibaldi with which he committed, from Naples, from 1860 to 1864.

But back to its beginnings and its rapid triumphs. “He dressed with extravagant elegance, paraded in the salons with a dandy outfit. His triumph in the theater will introduce the young ambitious a new world, that of the actresses”, writes Rufin.

Régis Debray paints a portrait of Paul Valéry. Poet, thinker, whistleblower, joker …

But Dumas cannot resist too much, to pour into the melodrama claimed by theater directors.

Impossible to summarize such a life which had him built his own theater. create his newspaper which he titled “The musketeer “but which had to go into exile in Belgium, in 1851, fleeing less from Napoleon III than his creditors.

His frequent journeys alexandre dumas, ogre letters life have given rise to these “travel impressions” which. for Rufin, are his writings which “Most directly speak to us today”.

“To spend a vacation with Alexandre Dumas is to visit a friend”still writes Rufin.

⇒ A summer with Alexandre Dumas | Biography | Jean-Christophe Rufin | Éditions des Ecreurs, 187 pp. € 14.50

EXTRACT

“Dumas has always dreamed of entering action but has never been able to find its place. His chivalrous aspirations. his fascination for the characters of the 16th century, his penchant for heroic commitments, he postponed them on his novels. In short, he lived everything in imagination and never recovered.”