Théophile Gautier

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Théophile Gautier 1856, photo by Nadar
Théophile Gautier's signature.png

Théophile Gautier (born August 30, 1811 in Tarbes , Hautes-Pyrénées , † October 23, 1872 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris) was a French writer .

Life and work

Gautier was born in Tarbes (south-west France) and grew up in Paris. After graduating from high school, he initially thought of a future as a painter. In 1829 he joined the group of writers around Victor Hugo , the "Cénacle". In 1830 he appeared at the world premiere of Hugo's play Hernani with a provocative red doublet, the legendary “gilet rouge”, because it was unseemly in the theater, and was one of the loudest claqueurs in the legendary bataille d'Hernani .

He then published poems and short stories and became one of the main representatives of the “ bohème ”, that provocatively inappropriate literary and artistic milieu on the fringes of bourgeois Parisian society. He was an admirer of Romanticism and of ETA Hoffmann , about whose fantastic stories he wrote in the Chronique de Paris in 1836 and who inspired him to write fantastic stories of his own (such as La Cafetière 1831, Onuphrius 1832, Le pied de momie 1840).

His first success was the epistolary novel Mademoiselle Maupin (1835), the story of a young woman who, disguised as a man, tries to realize her ideal of love in homo- and hetero-erotic experiences so as not to get lost in the routine of a relationship. From a literary historical point of view, the foreword of the novel is particularly interesting, where Gautier outlines the theory of l'art pour l'art ; H. the doctrine that art has to be completely free of any purpose, must avoid any social or even political engagement and only find meaning in the perfection of its products - a doctrine in which the collective frustration of an entire generation of intellectuals is expressed, created by the July Revolution of 1830 initially set in a spirit of optimism, but was then disappointed by the political repression after 1832.

Théophile Gautier, portrait by Théodore Chassériau ( Musée du Louvre ).

From 1836 on, Gautier earned his living in the rapidly developing press with reports on social events, art exhibitions and new literary publications, but also with travel reports and impressions that were popular with magazines and book publishers, for which he (partly together with his schoolmate Gérard de Nerval ) toured England, Holland, Belgium and the Mediterranean.

Gautier was a supporter of mesmerism . “Animal magnetism is a fact that has long been recognized by science, one must in no way doubt it.” (In a review of the comedy “Tronquette, the sleepwalker” by the Cogniard brothers, around 1838). A reflection of this belief is his Avatar novel from 1856.

In the years after 1839 Gautier tried, rather unsuccessfully, as a dramatist with the plays Une larme du diable (“A tear of the devil”), Le Tricorne Enchanté (“The enchanted tricorn (hat)”) and Pierrot posthumously as well better luck as a librettist . In 1841 the ballet Giselle achieved a resounding success.

He also became known as a co-founder and important participant of the Club des Hachichins , which existed from around 1844 to 1849 and had an important influence in the bohemian world. Gautier founded it with the Parisian psychiatrist Jacques-Joseph Moreau , who experimented there and in his clinic with hashish , which has become known in France since Napoleon's Egyptian campaign , and was the first physician to systematically investigate the effects of intoxicating drugs on the central nervous system . The club met in the Hôtel de Lauzun , where Théophile Gautier, the poet Charles Baudelaire and the painter Fernand Boissard , in whose rooms they met, lived. Gautier wrote some of the most influential descriptions of the hashish rush, with hashish enjoyed in the form of edible confectionery . He published his colorful experiences in 1846 in the short book Le Club des Hachichins .

In addition, he continued to write short stories and above all wrote poems that he chiseled like an artisan. His collection of poems Émaux et camées (“Enamels and Cameos”, 1852) became famous and served as a model for an entire generation of poets, the “ Parnassians ”.

Gautier's late novels, Le Roman de la momie (1858) and Le Capitaine Fracasse (1863) were only moderately successful.

Théophile Gautier is the father of the writer Judith Gautier .

Works

Théophile Gautier 1839, portrait by Auguste de Chatillon

First editions

  • Albertus , prose poem, 1833
  • Les Jeunes-France , short stories, 1833
  • Omphale , novella, 1834
  • Mademoiselle de Maupin , epistolary novel , 1835
  • Fortunio , Roman, 1838
  • Libretto for the ballet Giselle to music by Adolphe Adam , 1841
  • Libretto for the ballet La Péri to music by Friedrich Burgmüller , choreography by Jean Coralli , 1843
  • Une nuit de Cléopâtre , short story, 1845
  • Le Club des Hachichins , Paris 1846. Club of Hashish Eaters . Reprint in: Wiener Zeitschrift für Suchtforschung, 2/3, 2004 (also online).
  • Jean et Jeanette , Roman, 1850 (German Jean and Jeanette , 1926)
  • Émaux et camées (German enamels and cameos ), poems, 1852
  • Avatar , Roman, 1857
  • Jettatura , Roman, 1857
  • Le Roman de la momie. (German Der Roman der Mummy ), Roman, 1858
  • Le Capitaine Fracasse. Roman, 1863 (also edited as an opera)
  • Quand on voyage. Travel reports, 1865 ( digitized version )

Translations

  • The Hashish Club. Fantastic stories. (Nine stories). Translated from the French by Hanns Heinz Ewers, Ilna Wunderwald and Doris Heinemann. Commented and provided with follow-up remarks. Ripperger & Kremers, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-943999-31-0 .
  • Novels and short stories. Ed. And foreword by Dolf Oehler. Fourier, Wiesbaden 2003, ISBN 3-932412-40-0 (based on the 15-volume edition by Avalun-Verlag, Hellerau bei Dresden, 1925 and 1926, translated by Alastair (pseudonym by Hans-Henning von Voigt )).
  • Avatar. Jettatura. Two fantastic stories. From the French by Alastair. Suhrkamp , Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-37661-6 .
  • Jettatura. Novella. Translation and epilogue Holger Fock. Dörlemann , Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-908777-21-6 .
  • The loving undead. Translated from the French, with notes and an afterword by Ulrich Klappstein. JMB , Hannover 2010, ISBN 978-3-940970-77-0 (= Cabinet of Fantastics , Volume 11).
  • The Jeunes-France. Translated from French, with an afterword and additional texts and notes by Melanie Grundmann. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-88221-549-6 .
  • Avatar. From the French and with comments by Jörg Alisch, with an afterword by Michael Roes. Matthes & Seitz , Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-88221-548-9 .
  • Mademoiselle de Maupin. From the French by Caroline Vollmann, afterword by Dolf Oehler. Manesse , Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-7175-2264-5 (= Manesse Library of World Literature ).
  • About the beautiful in art. Translated and commented by Wolfgang Drost and Ulrike Riechers, with a study by Wolfgang Drost on Théophile Gautier's Aesthetica in nuce . universi - Universitätsverlag, Siegen 2011, ISBN 978-3-936533-39-2 (= Image and Art Studies , Volume 6).

Settings

  • Roland Moser: Avatar. Opera, world premiere on May 3, 2003 at the Theater St. Gallen .
  • Fanfreluche. Musical comedy in two acts by Wilhelm Mauke. Text based on a novella by Gautier by Georg Schaumberg . Drei Masken Verlag, Munich 1912
  • In 1841, Hector Berlioz set six poems by Gauthier, a friend of his, to music as Les nuits d'été .

Film adaptations

  • 1928: Capitaine Fracasse ( Le capitaine Fracasse )
  • 1942: Fracasse, the cheeky cavalier ( Le capitaine Fracasse )
  • 1961: Fracass, the cheeky cavalier ( Capitaine Fracasse )
  • 1965: Giselle
  • 1969: Giselle
  • 1990: The Journey of Capitan Fracassa ( Il viaggio di Capitan Fracassa )

Gautier's story La Toison d'or was probably modeled on the crime novel D'entre les morts (1954) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac , which in turn was filmed as Vertigo - From the Realm of the Dead by Alfred Hitchcock .

literature

  • Bernard Delvaille: Théophile Gautier. Seghers, Paris 1968.
  • Wolfgang Drost, Marie-Hélène Girard (ed.): Gautier et l'Allemagne. Contributions by: Alain Montadon, Walburga Hülk , Volker Roloff, co-author. Anne Geisler-Szmulewicz, Paolo Tortonese, Martine Lavaud, Claudine Lacoste. Universitätsverlag, Siegen 2005, ISBN 3-936533-17-2 . (French)
  • Claude-Marie Senninger: Théophile Gautier. Une vie, une œuvre. SEDES, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-7181-1923-3 .
  • Anne Ubersfeld: Théophile Gautier. Paris, Stock 1992, ISBN 2-234-02515-X
  • Britta Madeleine Woitschig: Gautier - Ewers - Lovecraft : "In the wrong body". In: Hans Krah (Ed.): All-Gemeinwissen. Cultural communication in popular media. Ludwig, Kiel 2001, ISBN 3-933598-22-2 , pp. 9–31.

Web links

Wikisource: Théophile Gautier  - Sources and full texts (French)
Wikisource: Théophile Gautier  - Sources and full texts
Wikiquote: Théophile Gautier  - Quotes
Commons : Théophile Gautier  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Alfred Springer: The meaning of the hashish experiments of the 19th century - remarks on the reprint of Theophile Gautier's "Club of hashish eaters". In Wiener Zeitschrift für Suchtforschung, Vol. 27 2004 No. 2/3, pp. 47–52 (also available online)
  2. ↑ Max Nyffeler: The failed body swap. “Avatar”, a new opera by Roland Moser. Review on beckmesser.de.
  3. ^ Edi Zollinger: Hitchcock's "Vertigo" has a previously unknown history . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . ( nzz.ch [accessed on May 24, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Gautier, Théophile
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French poet, storyteller and critic
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1811
PLACE OF BIRTH Tarbes , Hautes-Pyrénées department
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 1872
Place of death Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris