Lucien Daudet (11 June 1878[1] – 16 November 1946) was a French writer, the son of Alphonse Daudet and Julia Daudet. Although a prolific novelist and painter, he was never really able to trump his father's greater reputation and is now primarily remembered for his romantic ties[2] to fellow novelist Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time). Daudet was also friends with Jean Cocteau.
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Biography
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.
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.[3]
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).[4]
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
External links
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