TÉLÉMAQUE RAVAGÉ PAR L'AMOUR. En dépit de Mentor qui le grognait sans cesse Il butinait chaque matin Les plus brillantes fleurs pour sa tendre maîtresse, Fleurs dont la piquante drolesse Ornait sa gorge de satin. (Cigarette par Mr. Alfred de Musset).

Trustman, Benjamin A., Trustman, Julia M. · 1842

H. Nehr in "Das Sentimentalische Objekt" Heidelberg 2007, p. 40ff draws an interesting parallel from Flaubert’s first version in 1845 of "L’Education Sentimental" to Daumier’s Telemachos shown here. According to history, Telemachos was supposed to be a strong young hero full of energy and awakening feelings of love and passion (ravagé par l’amour). Daumier’s hero however is characterized with a tilting bunch of flowers, the counterpoint to virulence. The entire image shows the end of the once powerful pseudo-Greek bourgeois way of thinking, a message conveyed in Daumier’s entire "Histoire Ancienne" series. During the 1840's, a quarrel between painters of the classic and romantic schools had fully flared up. Delacroix asked the "loaded" question: "Who is going to liberate us from the old Greeks?" Daumier succeeded to answer it his own way by showing historic personalities such as Hercules, Pygmalion or Agamemnon in absurd situations.