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Eugène Sue (1804-1857) - real name Marie-Joseph Sue |
Parisian journalist, called the "king of the popular novel," one of the most widely read writers of methe lodramatic fiction in 19th-century France. Eugène Sue was sponsored by Prince Eugène de Beauharnais and the empress Joséphine; he used the prince's name to form his famous pen name. Sue gained fame through the roman-feuilleton, the serial novel which achieved its greatest popularity in the French periodical press in the 1840's. Sue's republican and socialist views are reflected in his best-known novels, Les Mystères de Paris (1842-43), set in the Paris slums, and Le Juif errant (1844-45), published in instalments for Le Constitutionnel in 1842-1843. In the slang of murderers and thieves, a "joint" is the lowest sort of drinking establishment. Ex-cons, called "ogres," generally run these taverns; or, when it is an equally debased woman, she is known as an "ogress." Serving the scum of Paris, inns of this variety are packed with freed convicts, swindlers, thieves, and assassins. Whenever a crime has been committed, the police first cast their nets in this mire, so to speak. And here they almost always find their man. (from The Mysteries of Paris by Eugène Sue, translated with an introduction and notes by Carolyn Betensky and Jonathan Loesberg, foreword by Peter Brooks, Penguin Books, 2015, p. 3) The Mysteries of Paris inspired Karl Marx's only text concerning literature. It was published as part of the polemical The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism (1845). Marx's reaction to the book was negative: "Let it be noted incidentally that Eugene Sue motivates the career of the Countess just as stupidly as that of most of his characters of his novel." (The Holy Family by K. Marx and F. Engels, Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1956, p. 30) But mostly Marx mocked one Herr Szeliga, who had reviewed the novel. In another work Marx also commented on Sue's career as a politician: "The bourgeois were given time to collect their forces and make their preparations. Finally, the significance of the March election was undermined by the outcome of the April election, for the return of Eugène Sue seemed a sentimental and weakening commentary upon the return of Vidal. In a word, the made an April Fool of March 10th." (from The Eighteenth of Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, by Karl Marx, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1943, p. 77; first published in 1852) Eugène Sue was born in Paris into a wealthy upper middle class family. (In some sources Sue's date of birth is January 26, 1804, and in others December 10, 1804.) His father was an army surgeon, and a favorite of Napoleon. Rebelling against his background, Sue left school with no qualifications and joined in 1823 the French Navy as an auxiliary surgeon. He sailed to Asia, Africa, and America, and after his discharge in 1829, he settled in Paris, starting his career in literature and journalism. Having inherited in 1830 a fortune from his father, Sue was economically independent. Modelling his lifestyle upon Lord Byron, he soon gained fame as a dandy. Sue worked as a reporter for the Paris Herald and was later an editor of a Bavarian paper. His long novels, published in instalments, increased the circulation of the newspapers in which they appeared. Eventually he became one of the highest paid writers in France and rose to be Europe's first press baron, owning among other publications the Suddeutsche Zeitung. Sue's early stories, among them Plick et Plock (1831), Atar-Gull (1831), and La Salamandre (1832), were based on his experiences at sea, and attracted readers by their sensational exoticism. In Le Morne-au-diable (1842) the protagonist was a female pirate. Lautréaumont (1837) was a historical novel set in the days of Louis XIV. The French author Isidore Ducasse (1846-1870) took his pen name from it for his notorious work, Les Chants de Maldoror (1869). Sue also wrote a history of French seafaring, Histoire de la marine française (1835-37). In Arthur (1838) and Mathilde (1841) Sue still depicted contemporary 'high life', but then turned his attention to the social ills, which marked the emergence of the Industrial Revolution in France. After the Revolution year of 1848, Sue was elected a Socialist deputy to the National Assembly, where his idleness was criticized. The new constitution lasted only a short time. In 1851, after Louis Napoleon's coup d'état, Sue went into exile in Savoy, then under Italian rule. He died in exile in Annecy, Savoy, on August 3, 1857. As a storyteller Sue was exaggeratedly sentimental, but he had a strong dramatic sense. In the early 1840s, Sue had been converted to socialism under the influence of von Fourier and Proudhom. In the following works Sue did not hide his belief in the social purpose of art, but in spite of the propaganda, his largely bourgeois public devoured his stories about the "cruelties of capitalism." Sue's novels offered a new, exciting glimpse of the Parisian underworld and poorer neighborhoods - it was acclaimed by the progressive press and gave the bourgeoisie a justification for charity. However, Karl Marx did not see anything thrilling in the conditions of the poor in his detailed analysis of a review of Les Mystères de Paris. "In Eugene Sue's novel, the transition from the common world to the refined world is a normal transition for a novel. The disguise of Rudolph, Prince of Geroldstein, gives him entry into the lower sections of society as his title gives him access to the higher sections. On his way to the aristocratic ball he is by no means engrossed in the contrasts of contemporary life: it is the contrasts of his own disguise that he finds piquant. He informs his docile suite how extraordinarily interesting he finds himself in the various situations." (The Holy Family, p. 84) Sue started to write for feuilletons - the word referring originally to the detachable section of a French daily newspaper - to pay off the debts which he had gathered while spending his inheritance. Les Mystères de Paris was printed first in Le Journal des Débats, a pro-government newspaper, from 19 June 1842 to 15 October 1843. Sue's works had appeared also in La Presse, a liberal paper, which published Balzac's stories. The protagonist of Les Mystères de Paris is Rudolphe, the Prince of Gerolstein. Disguised as a painter of fans, he roams on his moral crusade the slums adjoining Notre Dame Cathedral. However, Sue did not care about the Latin Quarter or theaters, and Rodolphe is not even French, but comes from a small German state. Rodolphe represents the forces of good, and fights with his immense physical strength, wealth and intelligence against such neo-Gothic villains as a multiple murderer with a mutilated face and a monstrous whore-mistress. Like the real-life detective François Eugène Vidocq, Rodolphe solves crimes while exposing social injustices. Marx wrote of his character in The Holy Family: "Rudolph makes himself one of those angels. He goes forth into the world to separate the wicked from the just, to punish the wicked and reward the good. The conception of good and evil has so sunk into his weak brain that he really believes in a bodily Satan and wants to catch the devil alive, as Professor Sack once did in Bonn. On the other hand he tries to copy on a small scale the opposite of the devil, God. He likes "to play the role of providence a little." (Ibid., pp. 367-368) Fleur-de-Marie, the beautiful heroine, is trying to survive on the streets among petty thieves, demimondes, and criminals. After many adventures, Rodolphe saves her from the evil notary Jacques Ferrand, and when her true identity is finally revealed, she turns out to be Rodolphe's long-lost daughter. Les Mystères de Paris influenced Victor Hugo's Les
Misérables, and was imitated throughout Europe, creating a wave of
books exploring the "secrets" of metropolises. In America Edgar Allan Poe admired its tense, dramatic
situations, but said in his review in Graham's American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art (November 1846) that Sue's writing was as a "paradox of childish folly and
consummate skill. It has this point in common with all the "convulsive" fictions — that the incidents are consequential
from the premises, while the premises themselves are laughably
incredible. . . . The philosophical motives attributed to Sue are
absurd in the extreme. His first, and in fact his sole object, is to
make an exiting, and therefore saleable book." (The Collected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe: Volume II: The Brevities, edited with introduction and notes by Burton R. Pollin, New York: Gordian Press, 1985, p. 292) After the publication Les Mystères, Sue became one of the best-paid
authors in France. The Constitutionnel offered him 100,000
francs for his Le Juif Errant (The Wandering Jew) and henceforth
this amount was regarded as his standard fee for the next 14 years. The
Wandering Jew increased the circulation of Le Constitutionnel from
5,944 to 24,771 in the course of its publication. In the radical
periodicals Sue was hailed as the chief rival of Alexandre Dumas,
considered a royalist storyteller. But Dumas still had the biggest
income, earning roughly 200,000 francs yearly -
at that time a labourer earned about 2 francs per day, and the average feuilletonist
earned between 75 centimes and 1 franc per line. Along with
the growth of the publishing industry there was demand for translations
for the mass audience. The English novelist Henry William Herbert
(1807-1858) reached more readers by translating into English novels by
Sue and Alexandre Dumas than by his own books. The Wandering Jew was
partly based on an old legend.
According to one version, on his road to Cavalry Jesus Christ condems a
man, sometimes named Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, to wander on the
Earth until the Second Coming. In the standard story, he is a Jewish
shopkeeper or a cobbler. Jesus asks him for some water or just wants to
rest for an instant. "Get off! Away with you!" Ahasuerus says angrily.
Jesus responds either "Truly I go away, but tarry thou until I come
again" or "I sure will reste, but thou shalte walke." ('Wandering Jew' by JC [John Clute], in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, edited by John Clute and John Grant, New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1998, p. 993) Sue's allegorical figure can be classified as a French version of the Gothic Wanderer. Bram Stoker was familiar with Sue's series about Le Juif Errant, perhaps influenced by Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). The character had appeared, among others, in Christian Schubart's Der ewige Jude (1783), Matthew Lewis's The Monk (1796), William Godwin's St Leon (1799), Jan Potocki's Manuscrit Trouvé à Saragosse (1804), George Croly's Salathiel (1828), Caroline Norton's The Undying One (1839), and Edgar Quinet's Ahasvérus (1833). The legend also inspired H.C. Andersen's Ahasveus (1844), and Alexandre Dumas's Isaak Lakadam (1853), which was unfinished. Perhaps the best interpretation of this myth is by Pär Lagerkvist, whose The Death of Ahasuerus (1960) reflected his own fear of death. In this anti-clerical novel of good and evil, Sue's villain is
a scheming Jesuit priest, Pére Rodin, who wants to become the next Pope, and is
after the Wandering Jew's treasure, which has been gathering interest
over the centuries. The seven descendants of Marius de Rennespont, who
once aided the cursed wanderer, are summoned to Paris to be present at
the reading of the will. The Jesuits, who represent the oppression of
Church, conspire to get the fortune in their own hands. In Austria, Sue's novel was forbidden. It has been
said that Sue's The Wandering Jew is a
direct predecessor of many contemporary conspiracy-thrillers. The Order
of
Jesuits is portrayed as an organization which has totally forsaken the
basic principles of Christianity (Cults and Conspiracies by Theodore
Ziolkowski, 2013, pp. 113-115). Thomas M. Disch has noted that "readers of such current melodramatists as Stephen King or Anne Rice ought to be highly receptive to Sue's grand excesses" (Horror: 100 Best Books, edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, Xanadu, 1988, p. 38) Sue employed in this story more cruel episodes than before. He continued to use horror elemests to underline his message in such works as The Gold Sickle, a tale of druids and human sacrifice, The Infant's Skull, and The Iron Pinners, an account of the persecution of the Albigensian heretics. Several of these tales were translated by Daniel De Leon into English and published in New York by Labor News Co. between the years 1904 and 1911. Sue's The Mysteries of the People (1849-1857), a brutal family chronicle spanning twenty centuries, was suppressed by the French government. For further reading: Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, 1789-1897 by Tyler R. Tichelaar (2023); 1857, la littérature en procès: Gustave Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire et Eugène Sue face à la censure by Emmanuel Pierrat (2021); Der "Ewige Jude" von Edgar Quinet und Eugène Sue auf dem Index Librorum Prohibitorum: Zerrbild seiner selbst und Spiegelbild der Zeit by Tobias Lagatz (2020); Mastering the Marketplace: Popular Literature in Nineteenth-century France by Anne O'Neil-Henry (2017); Eugène Sue: chirurgien de la marine et écrivain maritime by Michel Sardet (2011); Karl Marx und Eugène Sue: Facetten einer einzigartigen Kulturberührung by Helga Jeanblanc (2004); Le Juif Errant D'Eugene Sue: Du Roman-Feuilleton Au Roman Populaire by Maria Adamowicz Hariasz (2002); French Fiction Writers: Romanticism and Realism 1800-1850, edited by Catharine Savage Brosman, Bruccoli Clark Layman (1992); Le Monde d'Eugène Sue III. Si les riches savaient! by Brynja Svane (1988); Le Monde d'Eugène Sue I: Bibliographie des oeuvres d'Eugène Sue by Brynja Svane (1986); Le Monde d'Eugène Sue II. Les lecteurs d'Eugène Sue by Brynja Svane (1986); 'Structures narratives et tendances idéologiques. Une étude d'Eugène Sue: Mathilde' by Brynja Svane, in Actes du VIIIe Congrès des Romanistes Scandinaves (1983); Materialen zur Kritik des Feuilletons-Romans, ed. by Helga Grubitzsch (1977); Eugène Sue by Jean Louis Bory (1962); Les idées sociales D'Eugène Sue by J. Moody (1938) Selected works:
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