Ximénès Doudan

File:Ximénès Doudan Portrait.png

Ximénès Doudan

Ximénès Doudan (1800 – 20 August 1872) was a French journalist, critic and moralist, whose work was only discovered posthumously.

Biography

During his youth in Paris, and after a stay in Cambrai, he became a tutor at the Lycée Henri-IV, and had for comrades Saint-Marc Girardin and Silvestre de Sacy. He collaborated in La Revue française and in the Journal des débats. In the mid-1820s, Girardin recommendedhim to Abel François Villemain, who in turn presented it to Victor de Broglie.

He became intimate with Albertine de Staël-Holstein, daughter of Madame de Staël, who had married the Duke of Broglie, and was appointed tutor to Louis-Alphonse (1812-1838), son of Albert de Rocca and Germaine de Staël, a child who was orphaned in 1818.

Doudan became the chief of staff of several ministries of the Duke of Broglie between 1830 and 1836, then remained his private secretary, before being appointed master of requests to the Council of State.

An extensive reader, admirer of Sainte-Beuve, he published literary reviews in newspapers and corresponded with a circle of friends, including Eugénie de Guérin and Théobald Piscatory. His preserved correspondence runs from 1823 to 1872.

None of Doudan's books were published during his lifetime. After his death, it was mainly Cuvillier-Fleury who published his Mélanges et Lettres (1876-1877), Lettres (1879), Pensées et fragments, followed by Révolutions du gout (1881). In October 1876, Cuvillier-Fleury gave a conference at the Institut de France, concerning "the amiable Doudan", whom he presented as "an author unknown to all, a free-thinker in the world", and that the literary press soon qualifies as an "unprecedented moralist". It was read by Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Marie Guyau, and Marcel Proust, among others.

Pasteur gave Doudan an certain notoriety, by quoting him in his Reception speech at the French Academy, in a passage from Doudan which begins with the sentence: "I have been thinking for a long time that whoever had only clear ideas would certainly be a fool."

He was the model for Eça de Queirós' character "Fradique Mendes", in Correspondência de Fradique Mendes (1900) and Cartas Inéditas de Fradique Mendes (1929).

According to Antoine Compagnon, after 1910 he fell back into relative obscurity.

Works

• Mélanges et Lettres (1877)
• Pensées et Fragments Suivis des Révolutions du Goût (1881)

Quotes

• "An excellent precept for writers: have a clear idea of all the phrases and expressions you need, and you will find them."
• "Everything without tells the individual that he is nothing; everything within persuades him that he is everything."
• "The man of letters properly so called is a rather singular being: he does not look at things exactly with his own eyes, he has not impressions of his own, we could not discover the imagination with which he started. 'Tis a tree on which have been grafted Homer, Virgil, Milton, Dante, Petrarch; hence have grown peculiar flowers which are not natural, and yet which are not artificial. Study has given to the man of letters something of the reverie of René; with Homer he has looked upon the plain of Troy, and there has remained in his brain some of the light of the Grecian sky; he has taken a little of the pensive lustre of Virgil, as he wanders by his side on the slopes of the Aventine; he sees the world as Milton saw it, through the grey mists of England, as Dante saw it, through the clear and glowing light of Italy. Of all these colours he composes for himself a colour that is unique and his own; from all these glasses by which his life passes on its journey to the real world, there is formed a special tint, and that is what makes the imagination of men of letters."
• "The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke."

References

• France, Peter (Ed.) (1995). The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-866125-8.

External links

• Works by Ximénès Doudan at Gallica
• Works by Ximénès Doudan at Hathi Trust