La Seconde vie du docteur Albin by “Raoul Gineste,” here translated as The Second Life of Doctor Albin, was originally published by the Librairie des Mathurins in 1902, and reprinted several times in rapid succession as it achieved a success that was, alas, to prove meteoric. It was the author’s first novel, following two collections of poetry associated with the Félibrige—a movement launched in the 1850s by a group of Provençal writers desirous of reviving the Occitan language—although he published more poems in French than in Occitan, and was also been associated with the Parnassians.
Born in 1849 according to the Bibliothèque Nationale, 1852 according to other sources, “Gineste,” whose real name was Adolphe Augier, came rather late to the Félibrige, and La Seconde vie du docteur Albin was a rather belated debut as a novelist, but the success of that first venture led him to follow it up with several more novels before his death in 1914, as well as a volume of mildly satirical reminiscences, Soirs de Paris [Parisian Evenings] (1903). As the subject-matter of the novel suggests, Augier had spent most of his life working as a physician in Paris, although he also frequented the Bohemian literary milieu of the Latin Quarter, being acquainted with Théodore Banville, José-Maria de Heredia, Charles Leconte de Lisle, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, among others; his memoir attests that he was well acquainted with the milieu of “café concerts” described in the novel. Seen in association with his second novel, Le Nègre de Paris [The Negro of Paris] (1903), La Seconde vie du docteur Albin also suggests that he might well have felt something of an outsider, if not an actual outcast, in all the sectors of Parisian society except for “Bohemia.”
As a contribution to the tradition of roman scientifique, La Seconde vie du docteur Albin belongs to a set of fictions that explore the supposed psychology typical of scientists with considerable analytical intensity. The tradition in question had begun in the 1840s in the “fantaisies scientifiques” of S. Henry Berthoud, an archetypal exercise in that vein being the striking “Voyage au ciel” (1841; tr. as “A Heavenward Voyage”), which Berthoud followed up with such further examples as “Le Maître de temps” (1844; tr. as “The Master of the Weather”) and “Le Second Soleil” (periodical publication uncertain; book version 1862; tr. as “The Second Sun”).1 That groundwork had been laid for some time before the phrase roman scientifique—used since the 18th century to refer to scientific theories considered too fanciful by the user—was adapted in the 1870s as a description of a kind of fiction, primarily with reference to the works of Jules Verne, whose fictional scientists closely resembled the model developed extensively by Berthoud in terms of their supposedly distinctive psychological quirks
In the same decade, however, the term was also adopted by a number of critics, led by Édouard Rod, to apply to the “Naturalist” fiction then being ardently promoted by Émile Zola and his followers, on the grounds that Zolaesque examination of human character was a quasi-scientific exercise, a kind of analytic psychology in itself. That label inevitably took on a particularly strong connotation when Zola and other writers in that vein focused their attention of protagonists who were scientists, as in Zola’s Le Docteur Pascal (1893; tr. as Doctor Pascal). Whereas Zola and the first generation of Naturalists tended to focus on supposed hereditary and social determinants of character, the second generation, led by Paul Bourget’s example, took far more inspiration from rapid developments in psychological theory, and their work became more probing as well as more clinical, in such determined analysis of the “scientific mind” as André Beaunier’s L’Homme qui a perdu son moi (1911; tr. as The Man Who Lost Himself), which might conceivably have taken some inspiration from Raoul Gineste’s quintessential account of self-loss.
One of the central planks of the model of the scientific mind—or, or more accurately of scientific genius—constructed by the early writers of roman scientifique who followed where Berthoud led is the notion that a true love of science is essentially incompatible with, and perhaps antithetical to, love between the sexes. It would almost be possible to write “the love of women,” because almost all the scientists represented in roman scientifique are male, but there are female examples, like Geneviève Gasquin in Jean Richepin’s L’Aile (1911)2 and Jeanne Fortin in Félicien Champsaur’s Homo-Deus: Le Satyre invisible (1924),3 whose separation from amorous experience is even more dramatic. Moral tales such as René de Pont-Jest’s “La Tête de Mimer” (1863)4 make much of the supposed incompatibility in question, to the point, in that particular case, of representing the lure of science as a literal diabolical temptation, tragically freezing the heart against the author’s preferred version of true love.
Many scientists featured in roman scientifique are, of course, married, but it is almost invariably taken for granted that they neglect their wives, often to the latter’s chagrin, and always prioritize their work when any conflict of interest arises; sometimes, that neglect became an ironic central theme, as in “Le Microbe de Professeur Bakermann” (1890)5 by “Charles Epheyre” (the physiologist Charles Richet). Often, the scientists of roman scientifique love their daughters far more, the love in question demanding a far less complex reciprocity. It is not necessarily the case that the typical genius of roman scientifique does not love his wife—the protagonist of Berthoud’s “Voyage au ciel,” for instance, loves his wife very dearly and makes considerable sacrifices in her favor—but their love is invariably somehow unorthodox; its truth, when it is true, is not the same truth as that of the traditional poetic image of true love.
Although it is not the only feature of the psychology of scientific genius brought into close and intense focus in La Seconde vie du docteur Albin, the protagonist’s involvements with sexual love are a leading feature of the plot, and perhaps the most interesting one. The novel provides what is perhaps the most searching analysis of that allegedly-perverse emotional involvement to be found in the genre, and, although it is not necessarily accurate—indeed, the fundamental model might be nothing more than a bizarre myth—it is certainly thorough, in terms of the detail of the protagonist’s thought-processes. From a “poetic” viewpoint, its thoroughness might make it seem one of the most damning such analyses—René de Pont-Jest would probably have thought so—but Gineste was a scientist himself as well as a poet, and his attitude is far more balanced than some, infused with a genuine puzzlement and exploratory curiosity as well as a sense of inevitable tragedy.
Other repetitive themes of roman scientifique crop up in Gineste’s novel in various ways, mostly marginally, and to draw up a full list here would constitute a spoiler in one vital instance, but the novel has other interesting features, and has the enormous advantage of setting up a genuinely intriguing situation, whose development maintains a considerable dramatic suspense throughout a long and complex series of events. That dramatic quality is exaggerated to the extent of relentless toying with the elements and clichés of melodrama: a play which is to some extent deliberate teasing but also has a considerable depth of sincere feeling. As in many melodramas, the plot makes use of outrageous coincidences, whose accumulation eventually reaches such proportions that the reader, like the protagonist, will surely come to the conclusion that they cannot be the product of chance, and that Dr. Albin’s alter egos really are being actively pursued by a malevolent fate intent on punishing him for the sin that he initially considers to be venial, but whose cardinality he learns to his cost. The novel remains, however, conscientiously Naturalistic, even taking the trouble to include a digression arguing the nonsensicality of the idea of the supernatural.
The story’s elements of speculative science remain stubbornly marginal; the two significant inventions made by the protagonist are only employed momentarily as inconsequential plot levers, and we are never told what Dr. Albin’s theory of biological chemistry actually asserts, what it crucial flaw is, and how its repair might be effected; that absence is a trifle frustrating, although it is perhaps more honest than the more common science-fictional technique of filling such conceptual gaps with gobbledygook. The story could not refer to an actual theory—all the more so as it begins more than a quarter of a century before its publication date—so the one that it invokes is necessarily symbolic, and the author presumably felt that its symbolic quality made detailed information unnecessary as well as impractical. One consequence of the omission is that, in spite of the tight focus the narrative has on the protagonist’s thought and feelings, the one thing we never overhear him thinking about is the science he loves so dearly—but all fiction of this kind is, and has to be, more interested in the side-effects of a true love of science rather than the object of the amour itself.
Some readers might feel that the absence from the narrative of any detailed scientific or pseudoscientific rhetoric is a flaw, others might think the same about its over-reliance on coincidence, and some might consider that its account of the protagonist’s ten-year odyssey through hell on earth contains too many digressions, but none of these aspects of the text are mistakes, and they have their virtues as well as their irritating aspects. In sum, the book is a bold and original venture whose originality reflects considerable intellectual and literary acumen as well as a certain winning audacity—something the original readers responsible or its initial success evidently realized. It is certainly highly readable, and maintains its dramatic tension to the end.
This translation was made from the copy of the second printing of the Librairie des Mathurins edition reproduced on the Bibliothèque Nationale’s gallica website.
Brian Stableford