Leon Daudet

See also: Daudet

Leon Daudet , born the November 16th 1867 with Paris, dead on June 30th, 1942 with Saint-Rémy-of-Provence, is a writer, a Journaliste and a man Politique French.

Medicine with the antidreyfusism

Leon Daudet is the oldest son of Alphonse Daudet. Not only his/her father is a famous writer, but it is a enjoué and cordial man who has many friends and of which Thursdays attract many personalities of the world of the culture. Also Leon attends it as of his childhood of the writers and the journalists, the ones, like Gustave Flaubert episodical, visitors, the others, like Edmond de Goncourt, almost family members. Maurice Bars, Emile Zola, Edouard Drumont, Guy of Maupassant, Ernest Renan, Arthur Meyer, Gambetta, inter alia, will mark its memories of childhood.

In 1885, it starts studies of medicine in the hope to relieve his/her sick father. He sees interior the medical world and frequent celebrities like Charcot until his failure with the contest of the boarding school, in 1891. This experiment enables him to write morticoles the , satire caricatural and bitter on the medical world, which makes known it.

It thus begins a career from writer and journalist whom it will continue at intervals enfiévré until his death: it will leave approximately 9000 articles and 128 pounds whose epigraph could be: " There is of interesting only the sliced judgment, strong syntax, the expressive term or the image hardie".

In 1891, he marries Jeanne Hugo, grand-daughter of the poet, which he divorces in 1894. At the time of its civil wedding (Victor Hugo had defended with its descent the practice of the church wedding), Victor Schoelcher was besides in the assistance. This marriage, like its friendship with Georges Hugo, make him discover interior the world which revolves around the national poet: its family and the republican party .

The revision of the lawsuit of Alfred Dreyfus in 1898 the fact of choosing, like its family, for the camp of the order and the army. Butted as much as carried, he will never admit the innocence of the captain and pours consequently in a Antisémitisme which associates the Jew with the Germany, anti-semitism to which the friendship of his/her father with Edouard Drumont had undoubtedly prepared.

The polemist of the French Action

See also: the French Action

Although he knew already Charles Maurras and Henri Vaugeois, it is its meeting, in 1904, with the duke of Orleans which decides its vocation Monarchiste, vocation reinforced by its marriage, in 1903, with its cousin Marthe Allard, who shares her ideas and finance.

The Business of the cards (1904), followed business Syveton in which it will be obstinated to see an assassination, reinforce its engagement in the policy Réactionnaire and unparliamentary. In 1908, it is one of the founders, with Charles Maurras, Henri Vaugeois and Maurice Pujo, of the daily newspaper the French Action , where it exerts the function of editor association, then of deputy manager starting from 1917, and of which he will remain the leader-writer until in 1941.

It consequently becomes a figure of the cultural life and policy: polemical articles carting the insults, even the calls to the murder, percussion and comic style, but also tests, books of history and novels follow one another at an intensive pace. The character is enormous, with moral as with the physique, eating, drinking, writing, discoursing unceasingly. That which one calls “the large Leon” defrays the chronicle, as much in its writings that by the duels which are worth to him its insults and the blows that it gives or receives during demonstrations which often finish at the station.

Starting from 1912, it starts a campaign denouncing the infiltration of the mediums of the businesses and the policy by agents (obviously Juif S) with the pay of the Germany, countryside from which it will see the result with the arrest of Miguel Almereyda (business of the red Bonnet ) in 1917, followed those of Louis Malvy and Joseph Caillaux, shown breach and which it would have liked to see shot in company of Aristide Briand.

Deputy of Paris, died of Philippe Daudet and imprisonment

Of 1919 with 1924, it is appointed National union with Paris, principal spokesperson of the Nationaliste S, and even there if it will estimate later to have lost four years and half of his life, the occasions do not fail to him to animate the debates by the jokes and the invectives.

In 1923, his/her son Philippe dies in mysterious circumstances. Admittedly, the tormented teenager had several times running away, certainly, of testimonys and a posthumous letter carries to accept the thesis officially selected of the suicide, but of the bizarreries in the investigation, coincidences and the climate of political violence of the time (Marius Plateau, a collaborator of the French Action, was assassinated a few months earlier by a Anarchiste) always leave the place to the doubt. Leon, as for him, suspects the police force of the republican capacity, deposits felt sorry for against several senior officials and, at the end of an investigation published day after day in the French Action, shows false-testimony one of the principal witnesses, which is worth to him to be condemned, in 1925, in five months of imprisonment.

Into 1927, having exhausted all the recourse and always persuaded to be victim of a police machination, it transforms during a few days the buildings of the French Action into Fort Chabrol before going. Imprisoned with the Health, it is released two months later by the Camelots of the King which arrived, diverting the telephone calls of the prison and deploying gifts of imitateurs, to make accept its director whom the government ordered to him to widen discreetly the journalist monarchist and, to make good measure, the communist deputy Pierre Sémard.

Two years of exile follow to Brussels, during which it continues its collaboration with the daily newspaper monarchist and the unrestrained publication of tests, lampoons, memories and novels.

The Thirties and Vichy

Of return to Paris after it had been pardoned, it takes again its place with the newspaper and takes an active part in the political life: he denounces the corruption of the mode, predicted the war, supports the Fascisme Mussolini but fears the raising of the Germany, and hopes, at the time of the manifestation of the February 6th, 1934, the fall of the “Pig mould”, denouncing Camille Chautemps (outgoing of the presidency of the council since a few days because of the Affaire Stavisky), like the " chief of a band of robbers and assassins".

It had wished for several years the arrival of Pétain to the capacity when the defeat brings, to take again the expression of Charles Maurras, “the divine surprised one”. But the German occupation afflicts this resolutely Latin patriot and viscéralement Antigermanique, which has since the years 1920 much moderate sound Antisémitisme. He dies in 1942 with Saint-Rémy-of-Provence, in the country of the “Lettres of my mill”.

Assessment of its career

“How may it be that a man with the so low heart can have talent as much? ” was astonished in this connection Paul Léautaud.

If the novels of Leon Daudet, like many its tests, aged at the point to be become illegible, if the insults of which it waters his adversaries, being caught some as much with their physics and their manners that with their ideas, seem to us of a poor spirit, and if its policy options hardly any more cause enthusiasm, its work of memorialist and portraitist, started in 1914, with “Phantoms and alive”, remains an inexhaustible mine. It indeed, throughout a life filled well, will have côtoyé of the writers (Executor of Edmond de Goncourt with died of Alphonse Daudet, it took part in the creation of the Académie and sat in the jury of the Prix as of its creation), of the scientists, the politicians, the journalists, the men of theater, and will have been near to number of them. Its direction of the observation, its removed style and its ferocity enabled him to engrave with the strong water of the thousands of pages of portraits and anecdotes which one would say seized on the sharp one.

Its judgments with the punches and its parties taken often dictated by its political hatreds do not prevent original opinions, and a nonconformism which sometimes made it classify in anarchistic the “of right-hand side” even enabled him to defend of works or the authors to which its entourage traditionalist was hostile. Thus it made obtain the Prix Goncourt with Marcel Proust (however of Jewish mother and especially Dreyfusard) which read it and will remain his/her friend (it dedicates “to him the side of Guermantes”), will try it without success to make it allot to Céline for “Voyage at the end of the night”, work then honni by the patriots, thus will write it, to the great displeasure its clan, an eulogistic article on André Gide, will rent it Picasso and will entrust it (the roof for an anti-semite) which it does not have " not known of idealist more complete than Marcel Schwob ".

Each year Radio Courtesy gives the Prix Daudet to the personality which has, according to the listeners of this radio, best served the French language, price decreed in the honor of Leon Daudet and his father Alphonse. This practice is however compromised, since the heir to the Daudet family has, on March 31st, 2007, publicly revoked the authorization to use its name which it had given to this radio.

Works

The bibliography of works of Leon Daudet is immense (by counting the various editions of the same work, it comprises more than 300 notes to the BNF). In addition to the Memories (see higher), one will quote:
  • Morticoles (1894)
  • Suzanne (1896)
  • the Two pressures (1901)
  • the Disagreement (1911)
  • Fantômes and alive (1914)
  • Hérédo (1916)
  • the love is a dream (1920)
  • At the time of Judas (1920)
  • the stupid 19th century - Exposed fatal insanities which have fallen down on France for 130 years (1922)
  • the voyage of Shakespeare (in 2 volumes) (1943)
  • Memories and polemical . Contains: " Phantoms and alive, In front of the pain, the Inter-war period, Living rooms and newspapers, At the time of Judas, Towards the king, Deputy of Paris, lived Paris, stupid the 19th siècle" , Paris, Robert Laffont, coll Books, 1992.

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