The Legend of the man to the gold brain

the Legend of the man to the gold brain is one of the new exits of the Lettres of my Mill of Alphonse Daudet; it goes back to 1869.

Summary

“He was once a man who had a gold brain”. Small, it did not know anything of its strange brain; his/her parents teach him the news only at age the eighteen years. It then decides to leave the paternal house after having given their had with his parents, and, taken then insane intoxication, it starts to waste its Or; becoming aware of the devastations which its expenditure causes on its body, it becomes miserly and withdraws world. Its misfortune comes then from its love interfered worship which it suddenly has for a small woman, compared by the author with a bird with three recoveries. This one dies without reason, and the man uses of what remains to him of gold to pay its burial. Passing after the ceremony in front of a shop, it emulously to buy a pair of boots for its wife, forgetting that he is widowed. The commercial one hears a great cry: the man presents with a hand the boots, and other, ensanglantée, “gold scrapings at the end of the nails”. they have a child.

Analyzes

Kind

The text at first sight seems to belong to the epistolary kind. The author makes appear in heading one addressed, With the lady who asks for merry stories. , then starts with “By reading your letter, Madam”, and the marks of the direct speech are regular: “yes, Madam” or “Such is, Madam, the legend of the man to the gold brain”.

But actually, it is strongly attached to the Romance , more precisely with the Nouvelle and the Conte all at the same time (Daudet employs this last term besides). The narration itself starts with the sempiternal one “It was once”; the advertisement of the “monstrous gift” to the young man is the event release; the unit is closed by a morals, with the manner of the tales of Perrault for example. This alleged letter was written besides to only be published in the collection of the Lettres of my Mill ; the correspondence that Daudet would have tied with one of its readers is most probably invented and is used as pretext.

At the same time narrative and with argumentative range , it can also be regarded as a Apologue, and can point out the Fable S of the Fountain. Those seek to inform and like through animal references, characteristic which one finds here by the picturesque description of the introduction and the use of expressions as “this nice creature - half bird, half headstock -” and the “small blue bird” to designate the loved woman.

Morals

Daudet installs at the reader a certain doubt when it begins his morals by affirming that “this legend is true from one end to another… ”. But is not as well to mystify its reader as to push it with the reflection and to pre-empt the following sentences: if this legend is not true with the direction where the facts that she reports are not proven, she describes in fact a reality that Daudet knows well, that of the intellectuals who pay of their brain to live. Their life is a long suffering, because as the man who went râcler the bottom of his cranium to pay, they must extract from their grey matter what to pay “in beautiful fine gold”. Daudet describes in fact in filigree its own rather miserable condition, obliged which it is to write without slackening of the tales. This element thus makes it possible to suppose that it is not very probable that Daudet really wrote this news in a private letter, since it is its only source of revenue.

Style

Daudet shows well in this tale its Lyrisme. In the beginning of the text, it describes the charming decoration in which it lives, and which should give him joy to the daily newspaper; the portrait of the “fair small woman”, “nice creature - half bird, half headstock” is filled up of tenderness and almost seems to be carried out according to the point of view of the man, in worship in front of his wife.

It can however make emerge the tragedy as skilfully as had done it to its negro Paul Arène in the Goat of Mr Seguin : by expressions such as “it would have been said that its brain was inexhaustible… It became exhausted however” or “fell in love, and this time all was finished… ”, the reader sees taking shape the inexorable conclusion of this “legend melancholic person”. There are then some force of the destiny which is with work. Daudet, finally, uses the pathetic register, concluding its news by one “It is for them a pain of each day; and then, when they are tired to suffer…”

Daudet exploits also skilfully the ambivalence of the Sentiment S of the mother of the man to the gold brain, which while explaining the insulation of the child by exclamation “One would steal you, my beautiful treasure! ” shown its natural affection for his/her son but also his cupidity announces. The flight in middle of the night of part of the gold brain by a “friend” of the man and the attitude of his love which certainly “also liked it”, but “still preferred the pompoms” complete to draw up a cynical portrait of the company, impresses of a Pessimisme some.

Anecdotes

the Legend of the man to the gold brain was the single text of the corpus of the subject of the session 2006 of the Épreuve Anticipated of French for the series S and ES.

See too

Internal bonds

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