The Life and Writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)F. A. Stokes Company, 1902 - 382 pages A. History and fiction: a comparison.--B. Chronology of Dumas's life.--C. Tabular analysis of Dumas's writing.--D. List of books, consulted. |
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actors adds admiration adventures Alexandre Dumas Alexandre Dumas fils amusing Antony Blaze de Bury Brander Matthews characters Charles Charles X charm collaborator Comédie Française Comte Comtesse confrère critics D'Artagnan death declared dialogue drama dramatist Duke of Orleans Dumas fils Dumas took Dumas's English famous father Fiorentino France French gaiety gave genius heart Henri Trois hero honour Hugo La Reine Margot laugh Les Trois Mousquetaires letter literary literature Louis Philippe Louis XIV man's Maquet Marie Dorval master Mémoires Molière Monte Cristo mother NAME OF Book Naples Napoleon nature never night Nodier novel novelist once Parigot Paris passion play plot poet Porthos possessed qualities Quérard reader REMARKS re AUTHENTICITY Revolution romance Royalist San Felice says Scott sequel Shakespeare Soissons Souvenirs story style success talent tells theatre tion told translation travels Trois Mousquetaires Villers-Cotterets volumes writing written wrote
Fréquemment cités
Page 193 - Here, and throughout, if I am to choose virtues for myself or my friends, let me choose the virtues of d'Artagnan. I do not say there is no character as well drawn in Shakespeare ; I do say there is none that I love so wholly...
Page 248 - J'aime à me voir dans le cristal des eaux. Dans vos jardins quelquefois je voltige, Et, m'enivrant de suaves odeurs, Sans que mon poids fasse incliner leur tige, Je me suspends au calice des fleurs. Dans vos foyers j'entre avec confiance, Et, récréant son œil clos à demi, J'aime à verser des songes d'innocence Sur le front pur d'un enfant endormi.
Page 266 - ... to the chance associate of the hour, as to the characters, all so burly and fullblooded, who flocked from your brain. Thus it was that you failed when you approached the supernatural. Your ghosts had too much flesh and blood, more than the living persons of feebler fancies. A writer so fertile, so rapid, so masterly in the ease with which he worked, could not escape the reproaches of barren envy. Because you overflowed with wit, you could not be
Page 183 - No : he used to beat me." " Your brothers and sisters ?" " I have none." " Then why are you so eager to be back in Spain ? * " To finish a book I began in the holidays.
Page 270 - If there is anywhere a thing said in two sentences that could have been as clearly and as engagingly and as forcibly said in one, then it's amateur work.
Page 177 - Chastre,' in which he depicts the trials and perils into which a worthy professor of music is hurried by the reckless pursuit of a field-fare. He best can paint it who has felt it most, and Dumas is confessedly the chronicler of his own sensations in this book. Although he rose in time to the dignity of a regular poacher, and made unlawful prize of any stray hare or partridge that came within range, he dwells with unrestrained rapture upon...
Page 265 - brief " — and wrote the novel. He gave it life, he gave it the spark, l'étincelle ; and the story lived and moved. It is true that he "took his own where he found it," like Molière, and that he took a good deal.
Page 268 - I rejoice that Dumas was not one of these. He told a plain tale, in the language suited to a plain tale, with abundance of wit and gaiety, as in the reflections of his Chicot, as in all his dialogues. But he did not gnaw the end of his pen in search of some word that nobody had ever used in this or that connection before. The right word came to him, the simple straightforward phrase. Epithet-hunting may be a pretty sport, and the bag of the epithet-hunter may contain some agreeable epigrams and rare...
Page 206 - Le Vicomte de Bragelonne'); and, beside these two trilogies — a lonely monument, like the sphinx hard by the three pyramids — 'Monte Cristo.' In these romances how easy it would have been for you to burn incense to that great goddess, Lubricity, whom our critic says your people worship. You had Branto'me, you had Tallemant, you had Re'tif, and a dozen others, to furnish materials for scenes of voluptuousness and of blood that would have outdone even the present natumlistes. From these alcoves...
Page 265 - If his writing is not intended for boys and maidens, that is one quality which he has in common with such playwriters as, for instance, Shakespeare, Racine, and Moliere, and such novelists as Goethe, Fielding, and Le Sage. His method was at any rate like that of the playwriter quoted by Hamlet, ' an honest method ' — he did not palter, as the modern French school of playwriting does, with vice and virtue, keeping one foot in the domain of each, and casting a false glamour of splendour around corruption.