Lucien Daudet

{{Short description|French writer (1878–1946)}}

{{More citations needed|date=August 2007}}

{{Infobox writer

| image = Portrait de Lucien daudet par Léon Gard.jpg

| caption = Lucien Daudet in 1943

| birth_date = {{birth date|1878|6|11|df=y}}

| birth_place = Paris, France

| death_date = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1946|11|16|1878|6|11}}

| death_place =

| resting_place =

| nationality = French

| spouse = {{marriage |Marie-Thérèse Daudet|1943}}

| children =

| influences =

| occupation = Novelist and painter

| notableworks =

| signature = Lucien Daudet signature.svg

| awards =

}}

Lucien Daudet (11 June 1878{{cite book |first=S.B. |last=Kennedy |title=Paul Henry |year=2003 |publisher=Yale University Press |page=21 |isbn=978-0-300-09945-4}} – 16 November 1946) was a French writer, the son of Alphonse Daudet and Julia Daudet. He was never really able to trump his father's greater reputation and is now primarily remembered for his romantic ties{{cite web|url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/w/white-proust.html|title=Marcel Proust }} to fellow novelist Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time). Daudet was also friends with Jean Cocteau.

Biography

File:Marcel Proust et Lucien Daudet.jpg (seated), Robert de Flers (left), and Lucien Daudet (right), ca. 1894]]

The Daudet family was composed of the father, Alphonse, the mother Julia (née Allard), Léon, the older brother, Edmée, and Lucien. Every member of the family wrote books: father, mother, brother, sister, sister-in-law (Marthe Allard under the pseudonym of “Pampille”) and uncle (Ernest Daudet). Lucien himself published about fifteen books.

{{French literature sidebar}}

Cultivated, “very beautiful, very elegant, a thin and frail young man, with a tender and a somewhat effeminate face”, according to Jean-Yves Tadié, Daudet lived a fashionable life which made him meet Marcel Proust. In 1897, Jean Lorrain publicly questioned the nature of Proust's relationship with Lucien Daudet. Proust challenged Lorrain to a duel over the implication that Proust and Daudet were lovers. Both duelists survived.{{cite web|website=Dandyism|title=Dueling Dandies: How Men Of Style Displayed a Blasé Demeanor In the Face of Death|author=Hall, Sean Charles| date=12 February 2012|url=http://www.dandyism.net/2012/02/12/dueling-dandies/}}

Lucien Daudet was also a painter. After having taken lessons at the Académie Julian, he was a pupil of Whistler and had an exposition together with Bernheim-Jeune in 1906. His tableaux are not known anymore except by literary allusions to them (correspondence of Proust; catalogue by Anna de Noailles).(fr)[http://www.appl-lachaise.net/appl/article.php3?id_article=4243 appl Lachaise, Lucien Daudet]

All his life, Daudet was overshadowed by his father in literature ("I am the son of a man whose celebrity and talent count for several generations, I remain under his shade"), and by Whistler in painting ("He gave me a certain taste in painting, but also very great contempt for that which is not of first rank... and I apply this contempt to what I make.")

Towards the end of his life, in 1943, he married Marie-Thérèse, the younger sister of Pierre Benoit.

Works

  • Le Chemin mort, 1908
  • La Fourmilière, 1909
  • Le Prince des cravates, 1910
  • L’Impératrice Eugénie, Fayard, 1911
  • Calendrier, Ed. De La Sirène, 1922
  • L’Inconnue, Flammarion, 1923
  • Autour de 60 lettres de Marcel Proust, 1928
  • Dans l’ombre de l’impératrice Eugénie, Gallimard, 1935
  • Vie d’Alphonse Daudet, 1941

Sources

{{reflist}}