Alphonse Allais (1854-1905) was a French writer, journalist, and humorist, a major figure of absurd humor and *fumisme*. A regular at the “Le Chat Noir” cabaret, he is famous for his puns, his short tales, and his paradoxical aphorisms.
Frequently asked questions
Famous Quotes
« You have to take money where it is, that is to say, from the poor. True, they don't have much money, but there are a lot of poor people.»
« Logic leads to everything, provided you leave it behind.»
« Coffee is a drink that helps you sleep when you don't drink it.»
Key Facts
- Born in 1854 in Honfleur, the son of a pharmacist, he abandoned his pharmacy studies for the Parisian literary life.
- Became a figure of the “Le Chat Noir” cabaret and contributed to its magazine starting in the 1880s.
- Published *À se tordre* (“In Fits of Laughter,” 1891), a collection of humorous tales that established his reputation.
- A pioneer of conceptual and monochrome art with his absurd “paintings” (e.g. *Harvesting Tomatoes by the Shore of the Red Sea by Apoplectic Cardinals*, a red monochrome) presented around 1883-1897.
- Died in Paris in 1905.
Works & Achievements
Collection of short humorous tales that established his reputation as a master of absurd humor and the twist-ending story.
Collection of tales continuing his humorous and paradoxical vein.
Collection whose paradoxical title illustrates his taste for absurd logic.
Collection of humorous short stories marking his output from the Chat Noir period.
A series of captioned monochrome pictures, a pioneering work that foreshadowed abstract art through parody.
An entirely silent score, a conceptual gesture ahead of its time, justified by the idea that “great sorrows are mute.”
A comic novel, one of his longest works, later adapted for the theater and cinema.
Anecdotes
Alphonse Allais is regarded as a forerunner of abstract and monochrome art: in 1883, he exhibited an entirely black rectangle of paper titled “Nighttime Fight of Black Men in a Cellar,” followed by a white square (“First Communion of Anemic Young Girls in the Snow”) and a red rectangle. These humorous “monochromes” anticipated the pictorial experiments of the 20th century by several decades.
In 1897, Allais composed a “Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Great Deaf Man”: a musical score made up entirely of empty measures and silences. He justified this emptiness with the idea that “great sorrows are mute” — a gesture that would later be compared to the musical experiments of the 20th century.
The son of a pharmacist in Honfleur, Allais was meant to take over the family shop and studied pharmacy in Paris. He abandoned that profession for journalism and literature, but kept a lifelong taste for far-fetched experiments and inventions.
A regular at the “Le Chat Noir” cabaret in Montmartre, Allais was editor-in-chief of the magazine of the same name. It was in this world of *fumistes* — artists who cultivated hoaxes and the absurd — that he forged his style of paradoxical humor.
Allais is the inventor of a famous prank device, the holorhyme: two complete lines of verse that are pronounced identically but spelled differently, such as “Par les bois du djinn, où s'entasse de l'effroi, / Parle et bois du gin, ou cent tasses de lait froid.”
Primary Sources
Collection of short humorous tales published by Allais, showcasing his taste for the twist-ending story and everyday absurdity.
“You have to take money where it is, that is to say, from the poor. They don't have much money, it's true, but there are a great many of them who each have a little.”
Collection of monochrome pictures accompanied by humorous captions, including the black rectangle “Negroes fighting in a cellar at night.”
Collection of tales whose paradoxical title sums up the spirit of absurd logic so dear to the author.
Key Places
Port in Normandy where Alphonse Allais was born in 1854, in the family pharmacy.
Famous Parisian cabaret founded in 1881, the heart of the artistic bohemia where Allais became a figure of the *fumisme* movement.
Capital city where Allais pursued his career as a journalist and writer and where he died in 1905.
Parisian hilltop of artists and cabarets at the end of the 19th century, Allais's living environment.