I don't want to make a survey of the French literature, but from my confrontation during my study of the French language during the Fifties in a Belgian Dutch language Roman-Catholic college with the authors of French literature selected by the Roman-Catholic education network. And I would be grateful, if other members could share with me their experiences in their particular circumstances. And I could understand that that experience could be quite otherwise for a native from France, in comparison with ours, those from abroad.

I  have a vague rememberance about "Le Cid", which we had to read and comment compulsary...
And if I recall it well from LiR, compulsary reading can give a reaction of no interest, especially when one is already biased against such genre of writing. When we had, much later a free choice, I was much impressed by "Vol de Nuit" de Saint d'Exupéry...
Not to say that I wasn't bored by Shakespeare too. Much obliged as the only worthwhile one while we had only one hour a week English and four hours French. It was only the Hamlet with parallel Dutch translation that I appreciated, because of in my opinion its transcendency (good word?).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gravediggers


But back to French literature:

I was much impressed by the couple Rimbaud/Verlaine
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rimbaud
because in my opinion they tried to express their inner feelings (expressionists?) via a language, which trough the choice of the words and the sounds of the vowels, alliterations, enfin via all kind of tricks with the words, and seek to give this feeling through to the reader or listener.
It was the same as my favourite poems that I had that time read in the Dutch literature.
I mentioned already two of them on this forum: "a new spring a new sound" and "I am ages and ages too late born"
For instance from Verlaine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanson_d%27automne



I will go further with my message in an addendum, while it gives trouble to reload each time the youtube, when I add something to the message.

Kind regards, Paul.

It was also obliged literature and I wonder why things as the vendetta and all that had had a "nihil obstat" in our Catholic college.
But I appreciated "Colomba" from Prosper Mérimée.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosper_M%C3%A9rim%C3%A9e
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colomba_(novella)


As it let me compare with the inner struggle of the main personage to chose between right duty and feelings as in another French author appreciated by me: Jean Anouilh
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Anouilh
his Antigone
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigone_(Anouilh)
And his
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becket_ou_l%27Honneur_de_Dieu

Two of my other modern favourites were:
I found in English only from the Britannica and one had to subscribe and this:
https://www.biography.com/people/antoine-de-saint-exupery-030816
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry
and:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Malraux
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Malraux

 I see now that my Jean Anouilh is in French. I will tomorrow seek for the English equivalents and futher comments

Kind regards, Paul.

I didn't dislike everything I studied in literature (French or English) at school though Paul might be  thinking of my stating that I can happily never read another Joseph Conrad novel in my life.

I may have mentioned this before but we were told at school that at the time Racine wrote his plays there were rules that duels were not to be depicted on stage in France because the upper echelons of French society was losing a lot of its potential officer class to injuries, fatalities even, in duels.  So, within the confines within which he was allowed to write, Racine did pretty well - I remember there was a battle scene in Mithridate which was described taking place off stage, but as he was forbidden by law to have a battle take place on stage he did the best he could in the circumstances and he coped well with the "Alexandrine" type of rhyme that if I recall correctly governed the way French playwrights were supposed to write at the time.  Then again (and I have no connection with how theatres are run or how plays are produced) I've heard that plays such as Shakespeare's Coriolanus are not put on that often because it has quite a few battle scenes.  Julius Caesar by he termed Master Wobbleweapon by nordmann is staged fairly frequently - though I think that just has the Battle of Philippi.

Last year I never managed to get down to London to see a version of Le Tartuffe by Moliere which had some scenes in French and some in English.  It had mixed reviews from the critics.  Audrey Fleurot was in it (I like her from Engrenages (Spiral)).

Lady,

perhaps I have made a wrong picture of my attitude towards our literature lessons in the two Catholic colleges that I atttended in the Fifties. As every serious student   I was nearly interested in everything, but preferred some things more than others and so I had my preferences in literature also. In Dutch literature as it was our own language, we had a more in depth study, but there too the emphasis was only on three periods, the Medieval Dutch, the Dutch of the Dutch Golden Age and the period of the 100 years around 1900, perhaps because that were the highlights of the Dutch language literature. And as already mentioned, there too I had my preferences and during a search yesterday and today in both the French and the Dutch literature, I found it described as "l'art pour l'art", the individual, who tries to express what the impressions of the real world "bring about?" on his inner consciousness and that in a language which is only an instument to express these feelings and where every part of that language is used to come to that goal, as vowels, alliterations, the sound of a vowel and so on, in one word everyting in the language that can be used to express the desired feeling..

But I digress...(but as we two are known as such on this board, nobody will be surprized)
Lady, am I wrong that you had French literature above you 18? I said 4 hours a week French, but that was then the whole French in depth and in French! and literature was only a small part of it. Or it has to be that the schools in England were better than over here in that time? And as I explained we had only one hour a week English and one hour German...and it stopped all at 18 then in the scientific direction no languages anymore. When I speak fluently German and a reasonable English it has alll to do with specific later circumstances of my life...

And I digress again ...further to my above paragraph...
Do poems still exist today? Is the era of the great operas definitely ended? No expressions anymore in literature, music and why not the later film of the inner feelings of the individual, what moves her/him/one?
Perhaps the musical based mostly on a novel of a wellknown author? And a show using all facets of art? Instead of the libretto of the operas?

And perhaps this "concert" of "Les Misérables" more close to the old "opera" concept?




Kind regards from Paul.

Dear all,
Perhaps literature can also be exported to other cultural fields.
The barrier between literature and music can also be transfigured by high-quality literary song lyrics when it comes to transmitting emotions comparable to those of a poem.



I don't dream anymore, I don't smoke anymore
I don't even have a story anymore.
I'm dirty without you, I'm ugly without you
Like an orphan in a dormitory

I don't want to live my life anymore
My life ends when you leave
I have no life and even my bed
Converts into a station platform
When you leave

I am ill
Completely sick
Like when my mother used to go out at night
And that she left me alone with
My despair

I am ill
Perfectly ill
You never know when you'll arrive
You go you never know where
And it's been almost two years
That you don't care

Like a rock, like a sin
I'm hanging on to you.
I'm tired, I'm exhausted.
To pretend to be happy when they are there

I drink every night and all the whiskies
For me have the same taste
And all the boats carry your flag
I don't know where else to go
You are everywhere

I am ill
Completely sick
I shed my blood in your body
And I'm like a dead bird
When you sleep

I am ill
Perfectly ill
You deprived me of all my songs
You emptied me of all my words
Yet I had talent
Before your skin

This love kills me if it continues
I'll die alone with myself
Near my radio like a stupid kid
Listening to my own voice singing

I am ill
Completely sick
Like when my mother used to go out at night
And that she left me alone with
My despair

I am ill
That's right... I'm sick.
You deprived me of all my songs
You emptied me of all my words
And my heart is completely sick.
Surrounded by barricades
Do you hear... I'm sick.

Songwriters: DONNA-SERGE LAMMA / S. PAPPA

Kind regards,
Abelard

LIR, I feel exactly the same about Joseph Conrad - for some reason at university I studied most of his books, and remember them with great distaste. Mind you, I generally don't like what I think of as masculine adventure stories and one-focus novels, so I hated The Old Man and the Sea too. 

Re French, I read some novels in French at university (most students read them in English, but I didn't) -  the one I remember most was Camus' L'Etranger. Our lecturer stressed very much the opening line so I still remember it: "Aujourd'hui, Maman a morte. Ou peut-etre hier, je ne saie quoi." May have spelt some of that wrongly; it's been a long time since I used any French beyond the odd word. "Voila" is the main French word used in NZ, I think. 

But L'Etranger does have a theme of existentialism and its main character seems a bit lost - the Outsider of the title. 
We did study some Rimbaud but I have forgotten every bit of it, even impressions.

Dear Abelard,

thanks for the song and indeed as the lady says: "I don't believe that a language will limit an emotion". Each language has in my opinion the same set of instruments to express feelings, impressions. Each language can explain in my opinion the most abstract thinking. We discussed it already on the language board, the only difficulty, and that happens in each language is the fact that one, especially about abstract words, as to define for everyone speaking that language, what the concept of a specific word is. We had here for instance a long discussion and Caro and LiR will recall it, about the concept of the word "empathy" or was it "compassion"

As to the song and its deeper feelings, for some reason, work?, occupation?, character? from the Fifties till now I remained qua music and songs in the "J'attendrai" stage ...
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/jattendrai-i-will-wait.html



Kind regards from Paul.

Sparked by what Abelard said about the connection between literature and music:
"Perhaps literature can also be exported to other cultural fields.
The barrier between literature and music can also be transfigured by high-quality literary song lyrics when it comes to transmitting emotions comparable to those of a poem."
And he is right in my humble opinion. But I think he only mentioned one element: the high-quality lyrics of the song and again in my humble opinion, you need three of them, the afore mentioned high-quality lyrics, a high-quality singer (a great tenor for instance?) and high-quality music (a great performer for instance?). This combination of the three makes the greatest impression on the target public?

There is perhaps even a more direct link between poetry and music? The symphonic poem? No text anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Saint-Sa%C3%ABns
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_macabre_(Saint-Sa%C3%ABns)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Cazalis


Kind regards from Paul.

And another from a poem of Goethe on music by a French performer and combined with visual interpretation in the American film of 1940 Fantasia (with the Mickey Mouse actor).
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Zauberlehrling
https://www.poemofquotes.com/johannwolfganggoethe/the-sorcerers-apprentice.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorcerer%27s_Apprentice_(Dukas)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dukas


Abelard, I mentioned it already on other fora as to a Frenchman, who, as a youngster had to move with his parents in a hurry from Cairo in 1956 and one of the main problems was to get their beloved piano in France without damage in the middle of life threatening danger. The human nature can be odd. But he knew a lot about music and the English language...but the Frenchman said no connection to my question...
In my opinion and somewhere I found a site about Italian words more ending on a vowel that other languages and so this language more adapted to musical songs? As in my opinion the Russian or other Slavic languages too...? Perhaps dialects too, because they connect words with vowels to pronounce them easier? I will seek if I mentioned this question not on the language forum here too...
Perhaps MM and GG (Green George alisa Gil) about whom I have a high opinion concerning music...

Kind regards from Paul.

Thinking about what Caro has said above, I also studied "L'Etranger" and also "La Peste" by Camus.  They aren't "for pleasure" reads but worth dipping into if one feels like a thoughtful read. (Hope that makes sense - maybe not the most elegant English but I'm very tired at present).

Paul mentioned "Colomba" (and did he also mention "Carmen") by Prosper Merimee.  Here is a clip from "Carmen" with Latvian opera singer Elina Garanca (hope I'm spelled that correctly) singing  the title role.

@Caro wrote:Re French, I read some novels in French at university (most students read them in English, but I didn't) -  the one I remember most was Camus' L'Etranger. Our lecturer stressed very much the opening line so I still remember it: "Aujourd'hui, Maman a morte. Ou peut-etre hier, je ne saie quoi." May have spelt some of that wrongly; it's been a long time since I used any French beyond the odd word. "Voila" is the main French word used in NZ, I think. 


Caro,

again the most feared "no post specified"...message lost...I start again...

Caro,

Camus and especially philosophers are not so much my kettle of fish...excuses Temperance and nordmann...but when I read in the wiki: philosophy of absurditism...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus

No, I could better follow and understand Malraux that I mentioned up thread...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Malraux


A kind of an Hemingway fighting in the Spanish Civil War and together with him betrayed by the Stalin Communists.
Will try tomorrow to give more reasoning to my reply.

Kind regards from Paul.

Lady, crossed posts...

And you know I am in love with opera. Coincidentally yesterday I diverged as usual to opera and yes to Carmen with this (and of course by the algorythmes on my name to a lot of other beloved operas:



Kind regards from Paul.

I personally have little experience of much French literature, but as you know Paul, my partner was a French-speaking Belgian, although educated at secondary level at a predominantly Flemish school. I'm guessing Racine and Molière were on the school syllabus for French Literature ... and that may well be why he always said he hated them! But that is a little surprising because at school he was very keen on amateur dramatics. I still have quite a few of his French language books including some plays, such as 'Knock' by Jules Romains, 'Huis Clos' by Sartre, 'Caligula' and 'Le Malentendu' both by Camus, and 'La Reine morte' by Henry de Montherlant.

I've actually read 'Knock', 'Huis Clos' and 'Le Malentendu', partly because they are entertaining and not too long, but also because being plays, they are mostly dialogue and so good for improving my spoken French. (On a rather lower level the 'Petit Nicholas' series of children's books by René Goscinny - the creator of the Astérix books - are also good for learning French as again they are mostly simple dialogue as used in everyday situations, but made comic because they a told through the viewpont of a young boy ... but I don't think one can really call them 'literature'). Another one of his books which I read some years ago to improve my French is Alphose Daudet's classic 'Lettres de mon moulin' ... (being Provençal - or at least familiar with Provence - I'm sure Abelard will approve of that choice!). I've never read Camus' 'L'Étranger', which I know is a book frequently recommended for those learning French. However having just found it in the box with all the other French books, I think I ought to give it a go, again not just to better my French but also to further my cultural understanding too: there are many exiled French-Algerians, the so-called Pied Noirs, living around here. I also keep meaning to tackle Maurice Druon's acclaimed historical series of books, 'Les Rois maudits', having been captivated by the French TV adaption of them which aired as a miniseries on British TV in the mid 1970s (the TF2 remake in 2005, starring Philippe Torreton and Jeanne Moreau, wasn't anywhere as good, imo).

I keep losing my posts - must be hitting the wrong key.  I read M. Druon's "Rois Maudits" many years ago and liked them (except the seventh volume which was written a long time after the other six and I've never got around to reading it).  I can't remember all the French books I've read either in French or in translation over the years.  I recall that Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris" had a lot less happy ending than the film with Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara.  I appreciated some of Emile Zola's Rougon-Macquart novels though they aren't particularly happy stories.  Honore de Balzac wrote some good novels also but again they could be depressing.  I don't want to give the impression I read a vast amount of French literature - I could read a French book (not necessarily a 'classic' book and then maybe not read another one for months).  I've read a little Baudelaire, Claudel and Verlaine in my time and Andre Gide's novella 'La Porte Etroite' and 'En Attendant Godot' by Beckett in French [that was at the Birkbeck course which I never finished because my Mum became sick].  If I think of any other books I've tackled I'll report back another time.

I don't know how reliable Wikipedia is these days but when I looked up Bizet yesterday (because I had listened to some music from "Carmen") it (Wikipedia) said that Bizet died without knowing that "Carmen" was to become a resounding success.

I shouldn't leave out Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" and I've read at least one short story by Proust - I remember when I was about 18 somebody was shocked because the (nun) headmistress at my convent school had suggested reading "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" - she didn't think that a nun should have suggested that a teenaged girl read anything by Proust because Proust was gay.  I think the nun was thinking that Proust had a good style of writing in French and it might help my French style improve.  I never did get round to reading that series of books ALRDTP but I doubt that Proust would have written fulsomely about being gay at the time when he was writing.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I don't know how reliable Wikipedia is these days but when I looked up Bizet yesterday (because I had listened to some music from "Carmen") it (Wikipedia) said that Bizet died without knowing that "Carmen" was to become a resounding success.

I think the initial trouble with Bizet's Carmen was that, despite the brilliant music, it broke many of the operatic conventions of the time and so shocked its conservative Parisian audience. The heroine is a wanton seductress, there's a lot of raw emotion - jealousy, unrequited love, sexual manipulation, and self-hatred - plus there's not only a murder but a suicide as well, and both depicted on stage. The opera's premiere got disappointing reviews and during the initial run in the summer of 1875 it was often performed to a half-empty house. Then on 3 June, the day after the opera's 33rd performance, Bizet died suddenly at the age of just 36. That night's performance was cancelled, although the tragic circumstances did bring about a temporary increase in public interest during the short period before the season ended later that summer. There was a brief, largely unsuccessful, second run from November until February 1876, but after that Carmen was not performed in Paris again until 1883. 

However shortly before his death Bizet had signed a contract for a production of Carmen by the Vienna Court Opera. For this production Bizet's friend, Ernest Guiraud, slightly modified some of the dialogue and incorporated some of the music from Bizet's L'Arlésienne suite. This version opened in Vienna in October 1875 and despite some critical reservations was a roaring success with the Viennese public.

Lady and Meles meles,

I envy you both as you seem to have read more French literature than I, although I learned that much French to speak and to read after my 18...perhaps I am a bit of a culture barbarian...
MM, thanks for your explanation of "Carmen" that I never heard about and I will come back on your Belgian partner, but still preparing for a reply to Caro about Camus and Malraux (and yes I read the very Catholic Paul Claudel). And about "existentialism" I have still a vague memory that they continuously are asking themselves why they "by God" are living and if they have a role in the existence of "things"...I will try to correct my view if they explain it otherwise on "wiki" and the more "in depth uni studies"
I have to say that I up to now have never heard about "absurditism"....

Kind regards to Caro and to both of you from Paul.

Well Paul, I have read Camus' play 'Le Malentendu' (The Misunderstanding) which is apparently a classic example of his concept of 'absurdism', but I too had never heard the term before now. However I know Camus wrote the play in Nazi-occupied France when he was separated from his wife (who had remained in Algeria), was ill and depressed, and as a well-known writer was presumably under constant suspicion by the authorities ... and I can certainly see how it is a comment on the absurd nature of people's lives at that time; trapped in a bleak, desperate, unhappy and confused existence full of uncertainty, fear, secrets and things 'best unsaid'.

But I hasten to add that I do not run my B&B/chambres d'hotes business like the mother and daughter in 'Le Malentendu'. They - SPOILER ALERT - make their living by renting rooms, then killing and robbing their clients, including their own son/brother, who, when he returns after several years away, they fail to recognise when he rents a room. His, fatal, mistake was failing to be completely open and honest with them, as he wanted to see how they were managing without him before he chose to reveal who he really was. Having just disposed of his body the mother and daughter find his dropped passport and so finally realise who he really was. And then his wife turns up looking for her husband ...  Suffice to say it doesn't have a happy ending. 

It's drama with a strange,slightly absurd and darkly comic premise, but 'Fawlty Towers' it ain't.

MM and Caro,

MM thank you for your explanation about Camus' play "le Malentendu". And of course "absurdism", (I made a new word in English from the French "absurdité").
And thanks also for mentioning the circumstances, which Camus "found himself in?"  (dans lesquelles il se trouvait) ("was in?"), and so one can perhaps better understand the absurdity of it all.
"However I know Camus wrote the play in Nazi-occupied France when he was separated from his wife (who had remained in Algeria), was ill and depressed, and as a well-known writer was under constant suspicion by the authorities ... and I can certainly see how it is a comment on the absurd nature of people's lives at that time; trapped in a bleak, desperate, unhappy and confused existence full of uncertainty, fear, secrets and things 'best unsaid'."

Caro, checked the first line research the wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stranger_(Camus_novel)

Caro, as I see it now, it is a book that when checking it in the library in a quick diagonal reading, I would immediately put again in the shelf. A book that I never would read even if obliged. It is not the first time that I not finished a novel, because, yes, it was an, in a sense, glorification of absurdity or reality with no sense (nonsense)


I started with the quick approach wiki about absurdism and existentialism and quickly abandonned it because of all the difficult definitions that were in my reading a bit vague
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism


My take on it, but I digress, as this subject is more for the philosophy forum, I will put it there. Perhaps we can nordmann, Tim and Temperance lurk into it...

Kind regards from Paul.

If Paul Claudel was a Catholic poet, Francois Mauriac was a Catholic prose writer I've read.  "Therese Desqueroux" is the book of his I remember - and I hadn't realised there had been a film starring Audrey Tautou in the title role in 2012.  "Aucassin et Nicolette" (medieval French conte-fable) has been discussed on this website before.  I won't say anything which might "spoil" these works for anyone who doesn't know them.  A lady in the French conversation group I belong to has sometimes brought extracts from "Les Petits Enfants du Siecle" which I have loathed, but she's a lovely lady so I keep my hatred of the work to myself.

I wonder what French people think of works like "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens (English) or "The Scarlet Pimpernel" by Baroness Orczy (Hungarian born but settled in England) - novels about their history (in this case both about the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution).  I liked "A Tale of Two Cities" though thinking as an adult the premise of an Englishman laying down his life for his (French aristocrat) friend in revolutionary Paris seems far-fetched.  How realistic "The Scarlet Pimpernel" was I can't hazard a guess but I quite liked the 1999 TV series though I didn't see all the episodes (having Martin Shaw as Chauvelin may have had something to do with the fact I quite liked it).

I saw this on TV (in England) a few years ago - a film (set in the Reign of Terror) "L'Anglaise et le Duc" with Lucy Russell playing "L'Anglaise".  I think this was a "based on a true story" type of film. Lucy Russell may not be a household name but she seems to have https://youtu.be/BbhDN_hiQ00enjoyed an eclectic career.

I can't find a suitable clip from either the Beaumarchais play of "Le Berbier de Seville" or the opera which took its inspiration from the work but I remember some friends a bit older than me (who were studying the Beaumarchais play for A level French) being annoyed that in a performance of the work in English Cherubin (Cherubino in the opera) was played by a girl.  I heard a talk (I can't remember by whom it was given) where it was stated that Beaumarchais should be played by a female* - though I haven't been able to verify that; Google has not come to my aid.

*I'd better not tell the conspiracy theorists! (Don't ask Abelard, you're better off not knowing).

LadyinRetirement wrote:

...
*I'd better not tell the conspiracy theorists! (Don't ask Abelard, you're better off not knowing).

Dear LadyinRetirement,
Do not underestimate Abelard and his pronounced taste for the "conspiracy theories" of women's tricks........

In the "Mariage de Figaro", Beaumarchais uses a comic effect by having a woman play the male character of  Cherubin because he considers that only women have enough subtlety to play this sensitive and cunning young man.
He uses the trick of the woman to put his seductive male play-role in different funny  situations full of understatements.
This wink at the struggle of the sexes surprises the audience and makes them laugh, because it's funny to see how women cheat easily on men in this play.
It should not be forgotten that at the time, men liked to imagine themselves superior to women and this new vision of the "beautiful sex", well known in real life but often hidden in plays in which they often had a secondary role, probably surprised the male audience and made the female smile.

So hilarious and relevant related with the omnipresent gender relations in this play.
Unfortunately, the English machine translation is of poor quality even if it helps a little bit


Of course, nowadays, everything has changed. Men no longer like to think they're superior and... hum, uh, , err...
cough, cough, cough!

Kind regards,
Abelard,
cough, cough!

Abelard, this is my third attempt at trying to post a response.  I was trying to say that in British pantomime (which is of course far less sophisticated than anything by Beaumarchais or Mozart), an older male actor sometimes plays characters such as "Mother Goose" or Cinderella's mother although they are female characters and the "principal boy" (juvenile male lead) is often played by a young woman.  Not all pantomimes are based on stories by Perrault though of the ones that are, I doubt he would recognise much of them in the pantomimes except in the main plot points.

Lady,

yes François Mauriac and Thérèse Desqueyroux
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se_Desqueyroux_(novel)

When sixteen and as said in the Catholic college, we were among others pushed to read French Catholic novels. I had a second hand bookshop in Ostend, who sold each paperback (in Dutch translation) for  a quarter of a nowadys Euro (some fifth of a Pound?) and among them that work of Mauriac. Have to say I started in it and put it aside after a while. I have to say that I in that period was nearly addicted to reading novels, nearly a three a week, translations of all kind of languages, from the said bookshop, from the local library and from two series, each month a book, where my parents were subscribed to. It abruptly ended when 18, higher studies and in between work and that "after" work has never stopped anymore, even when fully employed in a factory...

That said I much more appreciated that other "Catholic" writer Graham Greene, from whom I was delighted by his novel: "The heart of the matter"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heart_of_the_Matter

There I was really captivated by the main personage, really in my opinion a real person of flesh and blood, who one recognize as a person with a consciousness from all times, thorn apart by what life prepares for him. Really the best novel I have ever read. And welll written too.
I think I have also read the Power and the Glory.
I read once a book about a priest, who had to do the research for a "canonization?", "beatification?" and the guiding of his Catholic superior in that process. I thought it was also from Graham Greene, but don't find it back anywhere. If one of our literary members can help me with that?

And now about Camus again. I think I was too harsh to Caro, condemning the book that she mentioned, as not worth to read for me. It is my personal appreciation and I have no right to condemn  it in a general sense. As each work adds to the further knowledge of the human thinking and as such has its value in the panoply of human tendences. And as she said, if I recall it well, the beauty of the language in which it is written is also a factor of appreciation.

Kind regards from Paul.

There is certainly something with the board. While I dozens of times correct my message and tap each time on preview, when at the end I correct an emptienth time after my "kind regards", the message is suddenly sent without tapping on "send" and as now I avoided a double by for insurance  copying my message, but I didn't need to, while the message was already there...

The gentleman who leads/co-ordinates the French conversation group I attend through the U3A brought some A4 copies of a few pages from Flaubert's Trois Contes - the one of the three tales that the extract was taken from was Un Coeur Simple.  In the episode we studied yesterday a lady who has been unlucky in love and taken under the wing of a family rescues the mother and the two children from a bull.  The leader said (correctly) that the story itself not too difficult but there is some interesting vocabulary, there were certainly some words previously unknown to me.  Of course it's from the horse-and-cart days so some of the words will have fallen out of everyday use.  I know of Madame Bovary of course which I may have mentioned earlier in this thread but it's my first time having experience of a short story by Flaubert.

A playwright I've studied (that I don't think I mentioned previously) was Jean Anouilh.  Not that I've read/seen all his plays.  [Andromaque error cough cough] Antigone was about a fairly complex heroine I thought.  I could to some extent understand her motivation but I didn't warm to her as a character.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

A playwright I've studied (that I don't think I mentioned previously) was Jean Anouilh.  Not that I've read/seen all his plays.  Andromaque was about a fairly complex heroine I thought.  I could to some extent understand her motivation but I didn't warm to her as a character.

 
Lady,

wasn't it Antigone from Jean Anouilh? If it was that, it was one of the two that I studied most (the Antigone even at school), as also the Becket from him. I commented them already a few times overhere, as the Antigone from him quite different from the Sophocles one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becket

Andromaque from Racine?

Kind regards from Paul.

As Paul rightly noted Jean Anhouilh wrote about Antigone.  I did study a play where Andromaque featured though she wasn't an eponymous heroine.  That was Jean Giraudoux's La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas Lieu.  In that play Andromaque was a contented wife and pregnant - I don't know if she would prove popular in the modern world where it is popular to have female characters be "bad ass".  Does La Guerre de Troie......get produced in theatres much anymore at least in the UK?  I know (well Wikipedia knew) that it was translated into English by Christopher Fry as Tiger at the Gates in the 1950s.

Dear all,
The Little Prince of Antoine de Saint Exupery is considered to be one of  the most important, creative and famous French book of the 20th century.
Translated into 361 languages and published over 150 million copies, it goes well beyond a children's tale, and is the most widely translated book in the world after the Bible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Prince
With multiple allegories it explores the souls of men and their place in the world through an inner initiatory journey.
The man facing himself.


Into the soul of the man


Kind regards,
Abelard

Abelard,

I hope that you in the future will still want to speak with me...or with nordmann...

I already commented it overhere together with "Vol de Nuit"
https://reshistorica.forumotion.com/t1105-antoine-de-saint-d-exupery?highlight=antoine+de+saint+d+exuperi
Paul wrote on 17 april 2017:
"Further about "Le Petit Prince", Priscilla.
As I said:
"read "Le Petit Prince" I think at the age of sixteen too, as "Vol de Nuit". As I found "Vol de Nuit" a real interesting story and brought in splendid French I couldn't appreciate "The little Prince" not that much. I even skimmed trough it as I didn't understand where Saint d'Exupéry was up to. I understood it as moralizing but didn't see on the first sight what he wanted to prove..."
But the day before yesterday listened to my link that I provided in my former message. And for the first time in my life heard the whole version of "Le Petit Prince".
Hesitating I am still not convinced about what Saint d[size=14]'Exupéry wanted to learn to us. In my humble opinion I see a man wrestling with himself to seek for something worthwhile to live for...? a fear to participate in real life of the community of humans with all their flaws and oddities and to be a worthful access for some of them...? It is difficult to explain what I feel about the book....it is as if he explains how worthless it all is to try to do the right things in the environment of the grown up people...to contribute to society for the better of that society...and instead remain an harmless innocent child that stick to a self obliged duty..Or have I misunderstood it all, Nordmann...
Kind regards to both of you, Paul."
nordmann wrote:
Haven't a clue, Paul. Never liked the story much or saw what all the fuss was about. All very French - overly complicated, pseudo-intellectual and gloomy, I always reckoned.

Despite my eulogy to nordmann, in the time, perhaps he is a bit over reacting about "the French", meaning "all" French, of course there are I suppose some French, who are overly complicated, pseudo-intellectual and gloomy, but I think you have it everywhere...I recognize even some characteristics for me...
It is only nordmann, who can bring enlightenement...NORDMANN where are you?

But Abelard I wouldn't be honest with myself, if I am not sticking to what I wrote about Antoine d'Exupéry and his Petit Prince until someone can come with arguments to change my vision and as you see it will certainly not be nordmann...
Perhaps Priscilla? PRISCILLA where are you?

Kind regards Abelard from Paul and I hope, sans rancune

PaulRyckier wrote:

Abelard,

I hope that you in the future will still want to speak with me...or with nordmann...
....
nordmann wrote:
Haven't a clue, Paul. Never liked the story much or saw what all the fuss was about. All very French - overly complicated, pseudo-intellectual and gloomy, I always reckoned.
....
But Abelard I wouldn't be honest with myself, if I am not sticking to what I wrote about Antoine d'Exupéry and his Petit Prince until someone can come with arguments to change my vision and as you see it will certainly not be nordmann...
Kind regards Abelard from Paul and I hope, sans rancune

Dear Paul,
You're putting me in a difficult position.
You know, the famous cliché of the unbearable, pretentious, arrogant and futile Frenchman!
I would not want to give this image of myself in this forum, especially since I am not a literature teacher and I could, however, answer your question in a few clear and precise sentences quickly before going to work.
I am divided between the desire to share a love of universal culture and the risk of appearing as a pedantic who lectures other users.

The best thing, I think, is to leave intact the mystery and the charm of what this philosophical tale brilliantly teaches us about one of the major questions that man has been asking himself since the dawn of time:
The meaning of life!
Let us simply mention it, as a work considered pseudo intellectual and gloomy  by some and a treasure of the universal literature by others.

As a hint, I am just writing to you that these two contradictory points of view fit perfectly into the framework of what the book teaches us about man's place in the world.
Nordmann might be rather the character of the "geographer" , you could be rather a "lamp post worker" now retired, and I think I am rather the "fox" .
But "chut" as would say the French author, let's let poetry and magic of universe intact and do not damage it with intellectualism or religion.
Let's be a humble child or, if you prefer, a "Little Prince" passing on his small planet before he returns to the stars after giving his own meaning to his own life according to his actions and interactions with the other "planets" and their "little princes" or "roses" among others factors ......

A real tale for children!

Little Prince wrote:

"Please, draw me a sheep!"

Kind regards,
Abelard

I should hop in here in my own defence - before we start a Hiberno-Gallic Cultural War (or at least start one for the wrong reasons) - that, when it comes to character motivation, cognitive sequencing and general over-elaboration of intellectualised egoistic expression, I have always had a problem with French literature (and French philosophy for that matter, for precisely the same reasons). However I also have to admit that such a redundant style (in my view) represents a form of literature that has always been traditionally popular in French society too, which indicates that the average French reader does not see these things as impediments to enjoyment at all. In their view it is quite acceptable to bury a simplistic moral examination of existentialism deep within a convoluted short story. For them indeed - based on the many gushing praises for The Little Prince I have read from those for whom the story was originally written - it is to de Saint Exupery's credit that he constructed such a tedious context and style in which he then buried his point. For me however (and I must admit I do recall enjoying, as an adolescent, such explorations of other people's deliberate puzzles) I now find such invitations to delve into consciously constructed over-complex fabrications in order to glean little, or even nothing, a complete waste of whatever little time I have left as a functioning brain.

This is not necessarily an anti-French rant, I hasten to add. I am also anti-American in this regard too, or at least that dwindling aspect of American culture which was once called its "literature". I also regard all TV and radio soap operas, YouTube "vlogs", Jacques Derrida, political ideology, all religions, and indeed anyone else who considers hermeneutics as a challenge to be defeated rather than as a tool of understanding, in exactly the same light. Alas, The Little Prince in my mind is, and has been for many years now, to be found at the bottom of one of those mental black sacks into which all the above have also been consigned and are currently awaiting collection by the nearest Sanit(ar)y Department (in the wheelie-bin marked "unsuitable for recycling").

Dear Nobiles Barbariæ,

Nordmann wrote:

Existentialism....character motivation, cognitive sequencing and general overelaboration of intellectualized selfish expression.....
and to all those who consider hermeneutics as a challenge to be overcome rather than a tool for understanding,.....

? ? ????? wow!
The Little Prince treats knowledge through sensitivity rather than through understanding or reasoning or "technics".
This is what gives it its exceptional character for those who appreciate it all over the world.
This book may be as clear as a landscape before our eyes if we take the effort to look.

There are so many severe "doctrinal technicians" and "great specialists" in literature that no one remembers.
One wonders why.

On the other hand, genius writers are rarer and we remember them.




Kind regards,
Abelard

I've lost three posts so I'll try again tomorrow.  I was going to reference "Les Silences du Colonel Bramble" and "Jacqou le Croquant" among other things but after losing posts I'm out of patience for tonight.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I've lost three posts so I'll try again tomorrow.  I was going to reference "Les Silences du Colonel Bramble" and "Jacqou le Croquant" among other things but after losing posts I'm out of patience for tonight.

Lady,

it happened to me too overhere. There is something with the site I think, but now with Google Chrome, the daughter of the neighbour learned me how to stay, as now in the "tab window?" of Res Historica and open  new windows in which I do research and then copy and past it if necessary to the window of "post in". So I can never lose my "message"...for the youngsters among us...but of the oldies as I am...perhaps you can do the same in explorer and firefox...?

And then these doubles...you have it too, you said, but then used immediately the "edit" button, but when I receive as now there is a new message during you "edited"? "composed"? your message I copy my message and when there is no other message but mine, I have ntohing to do, but nowthere was yours and so I had to past my copy...

Kind regards from an "empathizing" Paul.

PS: also with your trouble of the last days. If I have time tonight I will post my "troubles" with the city council and the Flemisch regional burocracy...a bundle of five inches thick...

I think my problems may have been with my other laptop, Paul.  I have one that I bought (not too expensive and not too many whistles and bells on it) to use to work out my tax return in January when I was waiting for a new electric lead for this one (the one I do my work typing on).  My later attempts at commenting were on the other computer and sometimes it seems to develop a mind of its own.

Anyway, one of the other members of the French conversation group I go to weekly sometimes brings in extracts from Andre Maurois' "Les Silences du Colonel Bramble" - which is mocking of the English officer class but not in a nasty way (I think M. Maurois worked with some British officers during the First World War).  A children's book which I have heard of (I was in France a short while in autumn 1969 and an adaptation was being shown on French TV so it was talked about at that time) was "Jacquou le Croquet".  From what I understand it's subject matter is the trope of the orphaned boy getting revenge on the evil nobleman who brought about the death/downfall of his parents but by depriving the evil person of his wealth rather than by killing him.  Apparently the writer, Eugene Le Roy, was left by his parents with another person because they could not take him with them when they had to go away to find work.  Abandoned children feature quite significantly it seems in M. Le Roy's works and if he was left alone as a young child himself one can understand why.  (I looked up information about him on Wikipedia).  M. Le Roy had taken inspiration from some peasant revolt type uprisings that took place in south-western France in the 19th century.  I didn't know about them.

Lady and Abelard, excuses...just came in...will be for tomorrow...

Kind regards to both from Paul.

Dear Abelard,

further on Le Petit Prince and my personal vision on that book...
As said in my message: We had to read for school at 16: "Vol de Nuit" and "Le Petit Prince". And as I was still learning French at school and not in the practice as later during factory time, I read it intensily, while many words I didn't understand. Thursday and Friday I had to eat at noon, while my parents were busy, at the house of a friend of my father. And it was always the lady, who was there alone. she had learned French when staying in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and even she, a common woman, had difficulties with some words that I didn't understand. So while reading intensily, I appreciated much that novel both for its language and its style...
But when I started with the Petit Prince (it was an "illustrated" one), I saw it more as the "Tintin" strips from Georges Remy or the Bible and New Testament strips all from the same press group Casterman from Tournai...and I appreciated much more the Tintin and religious strips than the Prince, which was for the uncomplicated youngster too difficult for me to seek more than a child story in it...and by the way I had to translate it all to understand...so I skimmed through it...

But now, on the occasion of my thread about d'Exupéry, I read it for the first time in my life 60 years later in full, with a good grasp of the French language and with the experience of 7 years exchanges about religious and philosophical matters with Temperance, Tim of Aclea and nordmann. And now intensily and word for word and in the light from what I learned about d'Exupéry before and now recently for this thread.

You said:
The best thing, I think, is to leave intact the mystery and the charm of what this philosophical tale brilliantly teaches us about one of the major questions that man has been asking himself since the dawn of time:
The meaning of life!

And yes, you are right about "from the dawn of manhood and the meaning of life"...
And that too we discussed here many times as I said once: it is not an easy position for an atheist to see only his bit of his life in the many present and from the past on this earth and probably the infinitisemal numbers of "beings" in the universe. And if I recall it well, Tim appreciated that wording...

Abelard, I think that the search for the "meaning of life" is very individual and perhaps it is that what grown ups seek perhaps in that short novel? Hence its second position after the Bible?
But now, from my individual point of view, and I neaver read the Bible either in my life (in the Catholic schools it was more the "Chatechismus" that we had to follow), I had also during life a questioning about the meaning of life and for me it was during that "small bit of life" to be there for others and perhaps later to be remembered by my inner circle and if I come to fame  by the outer circle as a good guy...
If Tim of Aclea still "do" the sermons, he can perhaps find the same in the Bible and put it in a sermon? But I don't ask for followers...hesitating about the emoticon...

Abelard, and perhaps it is a great book and many find it a masterwork, in my opinion ti is certainly a great poetic approach, but when I read it (but who am I?) I find the seeking of the meaning of life rather "flou" (wazig) (hazy?), I rather see the struggle of d'Exupéry with his own existence...or see I there too much in it? If I have time I will reread my own thread and again the whole "Petit Prince" to find out where I started to have that opinion...or is that not the purpose of the making of that small novel? And only with the goal to just read it as it "is"?

Kind regards from Paul.

I sometimes forget that the book on which The Bridge on the River Kwai film was based was written by a French author* Le Pont de la Riviere Kwai (having problems with the accent grave today - when I try to pop it on the first 'e' in 'Riviere' it replaces the e instead of sitting above it).  I've seen the film (back in the 1960s we had it as the end of term film once at school) and I have read the book but I can't remember how faithful the adaptation was now.

With regard to "Le Petit Prince", I don't know that work and I would hate for Abelard to think we are being dismissive of a story he likes.  Some people are amazed that I am not really fond of the works of Joseph Conrad (yes, I know he was Polish not French) - but I don't care how profound Heart of Darkness is and I was unable to finish Tolkien's (he's not French either) Lord of the Rings though I did listen to some of the 1980s radio adaptation and I saw the cartoon version in the late 1970s/early 1980s but that was only about half the story (ended somewhere around Boromir's funeral I think).  But one of the good features about Res Hist is that members often have differing opinions about matters but discuss them in a (mostly!!!!) courteous way.

* Seeing the posts below I'm embarrassed that I missed Pierre Boulle's name when I originally made this comment.

An excellent book, LiR, and much better than the film in my view. What a lot of people fail to realise is that he also wrote Planet Of The Apes, though in that case the Hollywood version with Charlton Heston came out on top (less existentialism and bad psychology).

Lady,

as I see now from search as the name is not mentioned overhere and I guess nordmann knew it all off the top of his head...
Pierre Boulle
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pierre-Boulle
And now I understand why nordmann said:
"he also wrote Planet Of The Apes, though in that case the Hollywood version with Charlton Heston came out on top (less existentialism and bad psychology)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_over_the_River_Kwai


Kind regards from Paul.

In the Zoom U3A French Conversation meeting I attend on Tuesdays, today one member of the group had shared the beginning of Le Petit Prince which Abelard mentioned a couple of years ago.  It seems to be a very sweet story though as I say we (the French coversation group) have only just started it. At that very early stage of the story (illustrated) it showed how children can take information imparted to them very literally.  When I was very small and my Dad who came from the outskirts of Liverpool mentioned "the Orange men" I thought they were a group of men (and I guess by default women) with orange skin.

You mean they aren't citrusens of that particular shade? Zut alors!

Oh, GG, you are a caution!  The point in question in Le Petit Prince was that the teller of the tale (which is a first person narration) was explaining that the narrator was looking back at his childhood.  He had been told that pythons swallowed prey larger than themselves and the child had drawn a picture of an elephant inside a python. Obviously, a python wouldn't swallow an elephant in real life.  Maybe I should have given context in my earlier post.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Obviously, a python wouldn't swallow an elephant in real life. 

Oh I don't know, about 40 million years ago in Africa there was a particularly large and heavy prehistoric snake, Gigantophis garstini which grew to about 7 metres long and is thought to have preyed on small primitive proboscideans (elephant ancestors) such as moeritherium.



In Chinese mythology Bashe or Bāshé, 巴蛇 was a giant python that ate elephants, and there is a Chinese proverb that says, "a man's greed is like a snake that tries to swallow an elephant", that is, never sated until it eventually destroys the devourer. Desmond Tutu (I think) once said that "there is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time" but snakes, having no hands, have trouble manipulating knives and forks and so generally have to eschew (as they also cannot chew) this sensible gastronomic advice.

But enough of such serpentine wanderings away from the OP. Perhaps we should move on from drawing pythons and elephants to drawing sheep:

Well I never.  As ever, you are a mine of information, MM.  When I was around top of primary school age, I went through a phase of being "mad on" prehistoric animals especially dinosaurs and my parents bought me a nice book, Prehistoric Animals by Joseph Maria for Christmas.  I wondered for a moment if the picture of the moeritherium (should it be moeritheria if there are a couple of them?) was from that book.  Clearly not because P.... A..... was illustrated by Z Burian rather than Heinrich Harder.