Charles Didier

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Charles Didier
George Sand (1838)

Charles-Emmanuel Nicolas Didier (born September 15, 1805 in Geneva , † March 7, 1864 in Paris ) was a Swiss French-speaking poet , journalist and travel writer who influenced Karl May , among others .

life and work

Charles Didier initially pursued classical literary studies in Geneva, where he published the two poetry collections La Harpe helvétique (1825) and Mélodies helvétiques (1828). Towards the end of the 1820s he traveled to Italy as far as Sicily . In 1830 he settled in Paris, where Béranger , Chateaubriand , Hugo , Dumas welcomed him and where he was successful with his novel Rome souterraine (1833) about the Carbonari , befriended Sainte-Beuve , George Sand and Félicité de Lamennais and pursued a journalistic and literary career that was interrupted by numerous trips. He spent the winter of 1853/54 in Cairo, where he described bazaars, pyramids, mosques and the justice and health systems. He traveled part of the way with Richard Burton (1821-1890) and began his journey in Arabia with a visit to the Grand Sherif (Grand-Chérif) of Mecca in Ta'if and Jeddah , then he went over to Africa and explored the desert from Sawakin to Khartoum in Sudan , gave news of the mission on the White Nile and returned home via Egypt . His travelogues are almost forgotten today, they live on in the stories of Karl May, who found models in Didier's works. Didier's main success was his novel Rome souterraine (1833). He also wrote for the Revue encyclopédique and the Revue des Deux Mondes . Disappointed with life, confronted with poor health and financial problems, Didier finally committed suicide in Paris on March 8, 1864 after he was completely blind.

His two works Rome souterraine and Campagne de Rome were placed on the index of forbidden books by the Roman Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1835 and 1844, respectively .

Works (selection)

lyric poems

  • 1825: La Harpe helvétique
  • 1828: Mélodies helvétiques ( limited preview in Google book search)

Novels

  • 1833: Rome souterraine (digital copies : I , II )
  • 1838: Chavornay
  • 1844-45 Caroline en Sicile
  • 1859: Les amours d'Italie

Helmut Lieblang has put together a number of his novels translated into German:

«› Anselmo ‹(Braunschweig 1835),› Chevalier Robert ‹(Zwickau 1839),› The Secrets of Rome ‹(Halberstadt 1846). Under the series title ›Complete Writings‹, ›Caroline in Sicily‹, ›Thekla or the Consul in Morocco‹, ›As Beloved, as Mother‹ and ›Ritter Robert or the life and end of a modern do-gooder‹ appeared in Nordhausen from 1845–1847.

Travel works

  • Séjour chez le Grand-Chérif de la Mekke . Hachette, Paris, 1857. Digitized - German translation by Helene Lobedan under the title A stay with the Grand Sherif of Mecca . Schlicke, Leipzig, 1862. Digitized - An English translation was published in 1985 in the series Arabia past and present , an Arabic in 2006.
Further:
  • 1837: Une année en Espagne
  • 1842: Campagne de Rome
  • 1844: Promenade au Maroc
  • 1857 Cinquante jours au désert (Ger. 50 days in the desert , Bergson-Sonenberg, Leipzig 1862 (= Bergson's railway books ); describes the journey through the desert from Souakin to Kassala in Sudan )
  • 1858 Cinq cents lieues sur le Nil (German: 120 miles on the Nile , Bergson-Sonenberg, Leipzig 1866 (= Bergson's railway books ))
  • 1860 Les nuits du Caire. Librairie de la Hachette et Cie., Paris 1860

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Charles Didier  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Charles Didier  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual references and footnotes

  1. ↑ a b c cf. Helmut Lieblang: In the shadow of the grand lord: Karl May, Charles Didier, von der Berswordt. Karl May Society
  2. ↑ Alexandre Dumas: Lettres à mon fils. Mercure de France, 2008 (Claude Schopp, éd.), P. 346
  3. ↑ Whose lover he was in 1836 (Alexandre Dumas: Lettres à mon fils.Mercure de France, 2008, Claude Schopp, éd.), P. 346
  4. ^ Daniel Maggetti: Didier, Charles. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  5. ↑ Charles Didier is mentioned in Burton's Mecca work ( Personal narrative of a pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah , 1855, digitized: I II ).
  6. ↑ Didier, Charles. In: Jesús Martínez de Bujanda , Marcella Richter: Index des livres interdits: Index librorum prohibitorum 1600–1966. Médiaspaul, Montréal 2002, ISBN 2-89420-522-8 , p. 290 (French, digitized ).
  7. ↑ His poem La Voix de l'onde ("Voice of the Flood"), for example, was included in the anthology of Emanuel , along with poems by Chateaubriand , Lamartine , Victor Hugo , Sainte-Beuve , Vigny , Musset , Béranger , Gautier , Henri Durand and others Geibel and Heinrich Leuthold [transl.]: Five books of French poetry from the age of the revolution to our days in translations. Cotta, Stuttgart 1862, p. 264 f. Digitized
  8. ↑ cf. Prince Ibrahim-Hilmy: The Literature of Egypt and the Soudan from the earliest times to the year 1885 inclusive. A bibliography, comprising printed books, periodical writings, and papers of learned societies, maps and charts, ancient papyri, manuscripts, drawings & c. London 1886, I, 188 (digitized). (The second volume was published in 1887: digitized .)
  9. ^ Sojourn with the Grand Sharif of Makkah. WorldCat
  10. ↑ Riḥlah ila riḥāb al-Sharīf al-Akbar: Sharīf Makkah al-Mukarramah fī al-niṣf al-thānī min al-qarn al-tāsiʻ ʻashar al-Mīlādī 1854 M. WorldCat
personal data
SURNAME Didier, Charles
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Didier, Charles-Emmanuel Nicolas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss French-speaking poet, journalist and travel writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1805
PLACE OF BIRTH Geneva
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1864
Place of death Paris