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    Letters From My Windmill
    Letters From My Windmill
    Letters From My Windmill
    Ebook181 pages5 hours

    Letters From My Windmill

    By Alphonse Daudet

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The stories are all told by the author in the first person, typically addressing a Parisian reader. The author, having relocated his home from Paris, recounts short bucolic tales about his new life in Provence as well as his trips to Corsica and French Algeria. Considered to be light-hearted, and often a bit tongue-in-cheek, the stories vary from day-to-day events in southern France to Provençal folk-tales, and often feature professions and faunal references characteristic of Provence.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStart Publishing LLC
    Release dateJan 24, 2013
    ISBN9781625584410
    Letters From My Windmill
    Author

    Alphonse Daudet

    Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) novelist, playwright, journalist is mainly remembered for the depiction of Provence in Lettres De Mon Moulin and his novel of amour fou, Sappho. He suffered from syphilis for the last 12 years of his life, recorded in La Doulou which has been translated into English by Julian Barnes as The Land of Pain.

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    Reviews for Letters From My Windmill

    3.5/5

    7 ratings7 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Sympathieke kleine verhalen over kleine mensen uit het zuiden. Soms pareltjes, meestal erg melancholisch. Accent op het menselijke.
    • 3/5
      Sympathieke kleine verhalen over kleine mensen uit het zuiden. Soms pareltjes, meestal erg melancholisch. Accent op het menselijke.
    • 4/5
      Alphonse Daudet (1840-97) was one of the most popular French authors of the last decades of the 19th century. He was a peer of Emile Zola and read and appreciated by Charles Dickens and others. Today he is almost entirely forgotten. Soon after his death his work suffered some serious criticisms, and it has only been recently that scholars have begun to restore his reputation. He was from Provence in southern France and before he became an accomplished writer he was as a charismatic oral storyteller with a looming presence, long fingers and thick beard that could entrance an audience. Thus reading him today his style can seem antiquated but when heard through the voice of a storyteller it has more resonance. Apparently his writing is very difficult to translate because of his heavy use of poetic styles and slang terms, and I do believe much has been lost in translation. Lettres de Mon Moulin (1869) is one of his earliest and considered one of his best. It is an anthology of newspaper pieces he wrote in his 20s about life in Provence. Mostly it is recounting local legends, ghost stories, humor and encounters with local characters, embedded with extra flourishes to give the tales a little more punch to make up for what would have been more dramatic told in person. They are framed by the first story which tells how Daudet found an old abandoned wind mil and set up there in a picturesque surrounding to write the stories. The stories are generally short, enchanting, naive and innocent bliss that captures some of the romance of Provence and 19th century life before modernization.
    • 5/5
      Exceptionally a review in English for a book I read in French, simply because I feel that Alphonse Daudet and his Lettres de mon moulin (Letters from My Windmill) should be better known abroad.I hadn't read them since, in my childhood, my mother read them to me while I was in bed, ready to sleep. A Proustian atmosphere. I heard tens of times what happened to la Chèvre de monsieur Seguin (The Brave Little Goat and Monsieur Seguin), probably one of my favourite tales. It is incredible how phrases used by Daudet are engraved in my memory. I re-discovered them along this book.Construction of sentences is so simple, Daudet's descriptions so accurate and using such a minimum of words, that I would recommend the Lettres to any reader with a minimum competence in French. All right, there are also, from time to time, old-fashioned words—after all, Daudet wrote this 150 years ago—but the overall is a delicate poesy smelling of the odourous bushes of Provence.
    • 3/5
      One of the first books I ever read in French. So, a youth book, very naïf but beautiful countryside descriptions and folk-tales style.
    • 3/5
      The episodes in Lettres de mon moulin by Alphonse Daudet are not to be seen as short stories, but rather as a precursor of the column, short contributions depicting little anecdotes and characterizations of rustic life, mainly in the countryside. The people portrayed are often curates and priests. Some of the little stories are set in Paris, for example Le portefeuille de Bixiou. All stories excel in detailed descriptions of the characters and the landscape.
    • 4/5
      Reading this book is like taking a little vacation in southern France in the mid 1800's. Not a bad place or time to be. Daudet had the ability to make the countryside come alive in his pages. His descriptions of the environment and his surroundings were beautifully rendered. This is a book of observations, folk tales, daily comings and goings as told from his windmill.If you have ever passed the night in the open under the stars, you will know that while we are sleeping a mysterious world awakens in the solitude and in the silence. Then the streams sing even more clearly, and on their pools dance little lights like flames. All the spirits of the mountains come and go as they will, and the air is filled with faint rustlings, imperceptible sounds, as if one were hearing the branches burgeoning and the grass growing. The day gives life to the world of humans and animals, but the night gives life to the world of things.

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    Letters From My Windmill - Alphonse Daudet

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