Georges Ohnet
(Paris, 1848-1918) French narrator and playwright.An enormously successful author among French readers of the second half of the 19th century, he left an interesting narrative production printed that, on many occasions, was also presented on Parisian theatrical stages, transformed into dramatic material by Ohnet himself.
Always attentive to the tastes of the public of his time, Georges Ohnet took advantage of the formal channels of the romantic serial to create complex passionate plots that soon made him one of the favorite authors of those readers who liked sentimental vicissitudes (in general, the female cast).Encouraged by this relative prestige, he did not pay much attention to refining his style-considered too elementary by the critics of his time-, since he verified that the amenity of his folkloric novels (and of his subsequent theatrical versions) lay in the passionate clash between the protagonists , a circumstance that he knew how to perfectly recreate in all his works, without the need to offer greater samples of expressive virtuosity.
For the rest, it should be noted that, within the archetypal models of a genre as corseted as the romantic serial, the Parisian narrator was able to introduce a singular touch of originality that, with the passage of time, perhaps constitutes the most valuable of his writings: the sketch, in the midst of the sentimental tension subject to the typical patterns of the genre, of a social tension generated by the contrast between an aristocratic class in full decline and a thriving bourgeoisie that, little by little, He is occupying the positions of privilege held until then by the nobility.
All this is evident in what is perhaps his best novel, Le maître des forges (The owner of la herrería, 1882), a work that enjoyed great acceptance not only among French readers at the end of the 19th century, but also among the public in many other European countries, as evidenced by its immediate appearance in Spain, in the version of the Filipino-born writer Julia Codorn u.
Thanks to the translation of this illustrious descendant of Félix María Samaniego, who signed his works as "Baroness de Argeniere", Spanish readers were able to follow, throughout a series of deliveries that appeared in La Correspondencia, Georges Ohnet's original novel, titled in Spanish Las fraguas de Pont-Avesnes and accompanied-in that serialized edition-by some original poems by the aforementioned translator.Since Ohnet's text was as successful in Spain as in the author's homeland, Julia Codorníu also published its translation (made "in romancescos") in book format (1882).
Other works of Ohnet who earned him great literary prestige in his day are La comptesse Sarah (Countess Sarah, 1882), Lise Fleuron (1884), Les dames de Croix-Mort (The Ladies of Croix-Mort, 1886), Volonté (Will, 1888), Le docteur Rameau (Doctor Rameu, 1889) and Au fond du gouffre (At the bottom of the abyss, 1899), the latter (together with the aforementioned Le maître des forges ) considered his masterpiece.The Parisian writer himself encompassed all these narratives under the generic title of Batailles de la vie (Battles of life), with the intention of highlighting the veracity and everyday life of the passionate sentimental stories that make them up.
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