Biografia (e storia) antica in feuilleton. Memoires d'Horace di Alexandre Dumas

Abstract

Edited as a roman-feuilleton in 1860, Mémoires d’Horace has been collected as a volume for the first time in 2006 by Claude Aziza. It is the last member of a series consisting of novels, essays and theatrical pieces, which Alexandre Dumas devoted to the ancient Roman history. This time, however, the great ‘vulgarisateur’, as the French author often named himself, significantly chooses the genre of the so-called ‘fictional autobiography’. By assuming the authoritative mask of the famous Augustan poet, who is given the role of an internal protagonist-narrator, Dumas manages to enrich his picture of Roman civil wars, and the final fight for power leading to Augustus’s victory, with stimulating thoughts about relevant issues (literature and its social function, the author’s relationship with the public of readers, the political establishment etc.) as well as with the tender evocation of private memories (the beloved figure of his father, in particular). The synthesis of history and biography results from the confluence of precedent novels by Dumas himself (e.g. César, another feuilleton of the series Les grands Hommes en robe de chambre, published on 1855 in Le Mousquetaire) with modern recollections of Horace’s life, e.g. that of Charles-Athanase (Baron) de Walckenaer (firstly edited in 1840), whose monumental erudite bulk seems to be literally animated by the brilliant and colourful style of the great storyteller Alexandre Dumas.