Category: Media

All manner of French media: books, film, plays, TV, radio, art, etc.

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L’Amante Anglaise de Marguerite Duras

Last month I read the play L’Amante anglaise, by Marguerite Duras, which is the second item in the reading list of Harvard’s 20th Century French Theater and Performance course. Duras, who is perhaps best known in America as the author of Hiroshima Mon Amour, which was adapted into a 1959 film. L’Amante anglaise delves into the psyches and motivations of an unremarkable fifty-year-old woman, Claire Lannes, who murdered her cousin (a deaf and mute resident of Claire’s household) for no apparent reason. She then dismembered the body and spent several nights dropping the parts from a bridge onto trains passing below. The police found the pieces and traced them back to the one point that the disparate train lines had in common, that one bridge. From there they located Claire without difficulty.

But it is with difficulty that the audience tries to make sense of Claire’s character and inner life. The play has two acts and three characters. In the opening act, Claire’s husband Pierre is interviewed by a nameless interrogator who advises Pierre that he is not under suspicion, is not obliged to answer questions, and is free to go. But the Interrogator is deeply interested in understanding Claire, the crime, and Pierre’s marriage. The entire act is one long dialogue between the Interrogator and Pierre. Act two is more of the same, except now the Interrogator is interviewing Claire, who has already been tried and convicted, who is awaiting sentence, and who still has some undivulged secrets (e.g. what did she do with the head of her victim, which was never recovered? Why did she murder her cousin?). The Interrogator becomes more of a character in his own right in the second act as his frustrations in the face of Claire’s airy lack of self-knowledge reveal oddities in the Interrogator’s personality.

The play is based on a real crime that took place in 1949 in France, a murder and disposal-by-train by Amélie Rabilioux. Duras found this event a rich source of inspiration, as she wrote a first play about it 1960 (Les Viaducs de la Seine-et-Oise), and then a novel L’Amante anglaise in 1967, and then a play version of the novel in 1968. The text I read was from a revised script of the play which became standard in 1976. The play is well known and often performed. France Culture produced and broadcast a full-length studio reading of L’Amante anglaise 1967. There is also a 2021 filmed reading of it that breaks up the scenes and interleaves Pierre’s interview with Claire’s interview.

As a writing exercise I prepared a 750 word commentary about the play and lightly revised it with my teacher. Here’s the final text, as well as things I learned in the process.

Depuis l’Antiquité les philosophes se demandent si les être humains ne sont que sang et chair, peau et os. Au XVIIe siècle on a introduit le nom matérialisme pour la position affirmative, tandis que dualisme décrit le contraire: nous avons quelque chose (une âme, peut-être) qui nous rend plus qu’un amas de particules chimiques et leurs réactions. Cet élément spirituel est le siège de la volonté, le conducteur qui dirige nos actions. Sinon, comment comprendre le comportement humain? Pourquoi a-t-on porté cette chemise, choisi ce métier, pris des vacances à la plage et pas dans les montagnes, dîné dans ce restaurant et pas dans le suivant ? C’est angoissant d’imaginer que la réponse de toutes ces questions soit «c’est le résultat des interactions déterminées parmi les molécules de nos cerveaux». Nous avons grand soif d’explications.

Dans sa pièce du théâtre L’Amante anglaise, Marguerite Duras nous invite à contempler les motivations de plusieurs personnages, et en même temps à considérer: Sommes-nous libres de choisir notre chemin? D’où vient la volonté ?

Malgré qu’elle ne soit pas présentée jusqu’au deuxième acte, Claire Lannes est le centre d’attention dès la première page. Pourquoi a-t-elle tué sa cousine? Pourquoi ne veut-elle pas dévoiler le lieu où elle a caché la tête? Pourquoi s’obstine-t-elle à dire qu’elle ne connaît pas elle-même les bonnes réponses? Pourquoi imagine-t-elle que la bonne question serait la clé pour débloquer un discours révélateur? Le public est guidé vers elle comme cible de l’enquête.

Bien sûr, il y a un deuxième personnage dont les motivations méritent investigation : Pierre Lannes, le mari de Claire. Il a accepté sans difficulté l’affirmation de sa femme que Marie-Thérèse Bousquet était partie pour quelques jours pour rendre visite à sa famille. Il avoue qu’il se doutait de la vérité de cette déclaration, mais il ne l’a pas relevé. Est-ce qu’il soupçonnait son crime horrible et a préféré différer le moment d’ affronter cette horreur? Plus profondément, pourquoi s’est-il marié avec Claire? Pourquoi est-il resté avec elle pendant une vingtaine d’années? Est-qu’il ment quand il répond à l’interrogateur qu’il n’aurais jamais poursuivi une histoire d’amour avec une servante, soit la cousine de sa femme soit n’importe qui. On imagine que mieux comprendre Pierre Lannes, c’est mieux comprendre Claire Lannes, et aussi inversement.

Ensuite on passe au troisième personnage, l’Interrogateur. Au début, il est  facile de le reléguer à l’arrière-plan. Il nous donne un croquis de l’histoire, il nous indique que Pierre n’est pas un suspect, et il agit comme interlocuteur (il serait saugrenu de monter un spectacle qui ne comprend que deux monologues étendus). Mais petit à petit, l’interrogateur gagne sa propre histoire, ou plutôt son propre mystère. Qui est-il? Il n’est ni magistrat ni juge ni psychologue. Est-il journaliste? Historien? Un parent caché de la victime? Pourquoi est-ce qu’il approfondit cette affaire sensationnelle? Est-il capable de freiner ses enquêtes, et sinon d’où vient son empressement  à les comprendre? Au cours de la pièce, il émerge comme un homme frustré, fouillant obsessivement pour trouver les explications qui lui échappent, comme elles nous échappent tous.

Enfin, tous les trois personnages, Pierre, Claire, et l’Interrogateur, suscitent en nous un désir fort de comprendre leurs motivations. Mais il y a un quatrième personnage, ou plutôt une personne, dont les motivations m’intéressent: c’est Marguerite Duras. La version du texte que j’ai lu correspond au mise en scène au Théâtre d’Orsay en 1976. Mais le spectacle original a été créé au Théâtre national populaire en 1968, tiré de son roman de 1967. En outre, elle a écrit et monté une autre pièce au même sujet, Les Viaducs de la Seine-et-Oise, sept ans plus tôt en 1960. Évidemment, ce meurtre commis par Amélie Rabilloux en décembre 1949 préoccupait Marguerite Duras pendant longtemps. Quel élément, quelle combinaison de gens et de circonstances de cette histoire l’envoûtait?

Je retourne finalement aux questions philosophiques. Si on souhaite jamais développer des théories ou des instruments pour comprendre les comportements complexes, subtiles, et entremêlés des gens dans la vie ordinaire, il faut d’abord que ces outils fonctionnent dans les situations les plus pures, simples et extraordinaires. Nous abordons les événements quotidiens en examinant les affaires hors du commun. Si Marguerite Duras retournait fréquemment à ce découpage en morceau d’un corps humain, c’est parce qu’elle veut disséquer notre nature humaine pour repérer où demeure la volonté.

Language aside, it’s not a great essay. It’s got two or three ideas in it, and I like the closing sentence, but the middle is far too rambling with endlessly posed but unanswered questions. Fortunately, I wrote it more as a vehicle for improving my French than to be a solid work of literary criticism. So let’s see what I gained on that front.

Things I Learned

My original draft had a number of boring errors in preposition choice, adjective agreement, or omission of reflexive pronoun. I continue to work on my automaticity in these areas and am getting better little by little. There were several more substantive corrections I learned:

  • Keeping a consistent register. This essay starts out in a high register, using highfalutin phrases to talk about philosophy and literary construction. That’s a valid stylistic choice, but only if it is maintained throughout. So my teacher identified several familiar expressions that broke this pattern and revised them into a more formal register.
    • «La volonté, ça vient d’où» became «D’où vient la volonté».
    • «un tas de» became «un amas de».
    • «Pourquoi elle ne veut pas» became «Pourquoi ne veut-elle pas».
    • «Bien sur qu’il y a» became «Bien sur, il y a».
    • «c’est facile de» became «il est facile de».
    • «machins» became «outils».
    • «bizarroïde» became «hors du commun».
  • Malgré que is the subject of a longstanding grammar controversy. There’s a lengthy entry about malgré que on CNRTL (see article II), which is considered an authoritative source by my French work colleagues. It begins : «Ac. 1835-1935, Littré et les grammairiens puristes n’acceptent malgré que que dans l’emploi II A, qui n’est pas un emploi conj. mais où malgré est un subst. compl. de j’en aie et que le pron. rel.…». Long story short, in oral language everybody uses «malgré que» = “despite the fact that” as they use «bien que» = “even though”. But the official grammar ruling is that in a formal register one must use only malgré + a noun, never malgré que + a clause. Bien que + a clause is still fine. However, this rule is far more honored in the breach than in the observance, even in soutenu register writing, and so we let it stand in my essay: Malgré qu’elle ne soit pas présentée. There is general consensus that if one uses this locution, the verb in the subsequent clause must be in the subjunctive mood.
  • Chimique is always an adjective, never a noun. There is no French noun corresponding to the English noun “chemical(s)”. The French speak of «produits chimiques», «particules chimiques», etc. The word is an adjective and must always modify some noun.
  • affronter, confronter. These two words both map to “confront” or “face” in English, but in French the correct choice depends on the nature of the thing being faced. If it’s a localized person, opponent, or obstacle and you wish to describe its position, you use confronter. If it’s a non-localized challenge, a danger, or a fear and someone is tackling or addressing it, you use affronter. The word confronter really has a face-to-face, head-on, physical arrangement aspect to it. In the essay above, a slight change to the sentence would highlight the ability of this distinction to resolve ambiguity: «Est-ce qu’il soupçonnait son crime horrible et a préféré différer le moment de l’affronter ?». Since the verb is «affronter» the elided pronoun l’ refers to the crime, and not to the criminal. If I meant the criminal I would need to write «le moment de le confronter», as you would look directly at the criminal while confronting them with an accusation.
  • un proposition has a meaning more specific than its English cognate “proposition”. The French «proposition» is a proposal, a demand, or an offer. In English, I use the word proposition also to mean a statement that can be true or false: “I was in Connecticut this weekend” or “The global climate is on track to rise by 2° by 2050.” Apparently this usage of «proposition» in French is restricted only to technical discussions of Boolean logic and not everyday statements. I replaced «proposition» in my original draft with «déclaration» when referring to a simple statement.
  • fouiller can mean “to dig through”, “to rummage”, or “to search” (it can also mean simply “to dig” in the ground). The direct object is the thing being searched: fouiller un tiroir, fouiller une valise. But if you want to name the target of the search, you can’t simply use pour and a noun: Je fouille l’armoire pour une chemise. You have to add a verb into the mix: Je fouille l’armoire pour trouver une chemise or Je fouille l’armoire pour repérer une chemise. The French sure do like their verbs…

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Learning Log, 2021 Week 38

I’m logging what I do each week to improve my French. Maybe it will motivate me to do more. No need to post the details here, but I’ll see if posting a skeleton log of my actions helps motivate me to keep it up. I’ll update this post over the week rather than make new articles each time.

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Learning Log, 2021 Week 37

I’m logging what I do each week to improve my French. Maybe it will motivate me to do more. No need to post the details here, but I’ll see if posting a skeleton log of my actions helps motivate me to keep it up. I’ll update this post over the week rather than make new articles each time.

  • J’ai fait…
    • GPdF Niveau perfectionnement
      • Chapitre 29: Pronom sujet neutre ou impersonnel
      • Chapitre 30: Le commentaire. L’identification et la description.
  • J’ai lu …
  • J’ai écrit …
  • J’ai regardé …
  • J’ai écouté à …
    • L’Invité de 8h20: Le Grand Entretien (FranceInter)
      • Frédéric Dabi : «Cette jeunesse prend conscience qu’elle est absolument à part»
      • Anne Hidalgo : «C’est bien qu’en démocratie chacun veuille jouer sa partition»
  • Cours particulier (x2)
    • Conversation
    • Rédaction du Homard et le Crabe.
    • Rédaction du Joséphine Baker entre au Panthéon.

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Les Bonnes de Jean Genet

Yesterday I finished reading Les Bonnes, the first play on the reading list for the 20th century French Theater and Performance course that I’m working through. I also watched a filmed version of the unusual 2011 production of Les Bonnes, directed by Jacques Vincey. The play was written in 1947 by Jean Genet and saw its first production that same year at Théâtre de l’Athénée, under the direction of Louis Jouvet. (I’ve encountered Jouvet’s name several times, more as an actor than as a director, though I gather he was quite renowned in both roles. Jouvet was famous enough that the theater has been renamed “Théâtre de l’Athénée Louis-Jouvet” and the plaza it faces renamed “Square de l’Opéra-Louis-Jouvet”). Les Bonnes is a warhorse in the repertoire of French theater. Wikipedia lists 10 notable productions since 1970, and my own web search revealed dozens of others at all levels of professional, amateur, and student theater. It has been translated into English as “The Maids”, which has been regularly performed since 1952. There are film adaptations of both the French and English versions, as well as many video recordings of live theater productions. The play is assigned reading au lycée for many French high school students. In short, a classic.

The play has three characters: Claire, Solange, and Madame. Claire and Solange are sisters, and work as maids for an haute bourgeoise woman known to us only as Madame. The place and time period are unspecified, but it’s French enough for there to be mansards, balls, operas, fancy dresses and furs; modern enough for there to be a telephone in the house; and ancient enough that there are no labor-saving electrical household appliances, leaving the onerous work to the maids. The two sisters hate their life as impoverished, dependent maids, hate Madame, and to some degree also hate each other and themselves. There’s a lot of hate to spread around. One gathers they have been in this situation for years and developed some deep-seated pathologies. Over the course of the play, we learn that Claire and Solange have managed to have Madame’s husband falsely imprisoned based on their own anonymous accusations. The maids are now conspiring to murder Madame herself. Although Jean Genet insists that his play was not inspired by it, there was a well publicized murder by two maids, the sisters Léa and Christine Papin, that transpired in western France in 1933.

The play is structured in three scenes, although no explicit boundaries are provided in the text. In the first scene, Claire and Solange are engaged in a role-playing game for their own benefit, with Solange pretending to be Madame and Claire pretending to be Solange. Claire dresses up in Madame’s clothing, puts on her makeup, and ironically adopts her airs and unconscious arrogance. Exactly why Solange pretends to be Claire rather than herself is never clear, although it contributes to the overall theme of confusing fantasy with reality. The two heap insults and derision on each other and play-act the strangulation of Madame, while also sporadically dropping out of the game to discuss what to portray next or to remark on their unrolling murder plot. A phone call interrupts them: it’s Monsieur, announcing that he’s just been released from prison and requesting that Madame meet him at a restaurant to celebrate. As the expected time of Madame’s return approaches, Claire and Solange end their game, hurriedly restore Madame’s things to their usual places, and otherwise hide traces of their mummery.

The second scene begins as Madame enters (after a failed attempt to visit her husband in prison), still unaware of Monsieur’s release. We now get to see the real interactions between Madame and the maids, which is not far off from the play-acting of scene one although the maids must be more circumspect and subservient in expressing their opprobrium for Madame. Claire prepares poisoned tea, but the two sisters are unsuccessful in maneuvering Madame to drink it. Madame notices many of the things that are awry in her bedroom after the play-acting and starts to suspect that her maids may be misbehaving, possibly even to the point of listening at doors and rifling through sensitive papers. Worried that Madame will realize they must be the source of the anonymous accusations about Monsieur, the sisters distract her with news of Monsieur’s release and the phone message requesting a rendez-vous. Madame is overjoyed and rushes off to meet him, despite the maids’ attempts to delay her long enough to drink the tea.

In the third scene Claire and Solange rip into each other, venomously trading blame for who botched the assassination and who left suspicion-raising evidence of their role-playing. Solange urges them to flee the house, but Claire despondently points out they are trapped by their poverty. The sisters fall back into their fantasy games, but this time with a harder edge. Solange performs a more realistic strangling of Claire-as-Madame, though it is still a mock killing. Solange then bitterly denounces Madame for couching her condescension in terms of kindness and generosity. She apostrophizes at length that she will no longer tolerate going through life bent over, but will stand up straight from now on. Claire resuscitates from her faux-death and insists that they enact the poison drinking scene that failed materialize. Solange is resistant, but finally agrees to serve Claire/Madame the poisoned tea. Claire knowingly drinks the poison and actually dies as Solange imagines herself in handcuffs and the play ends.

I understood most of this material in my first reading of the text, but was confused at a couple of levels. First, it was very unclear from the text which words are intended to be spoken “in real life” from one character to another, which are spoken “in the game”, and which are spoken as an aside to the theatrical audience. Often a single speaker turn contains two or three of these, with no stage directions indicating which words belong in which frame. Some critics assert this is a deliberate editing choice intended to give to a reader the same ambiguity between fantasy and reality that a spectator would have watching the show, and that the characters have in their fictional lives. Second, there are definitely sexual undercurrents in many of the interactions between Claire and Solange, but my French is not strong enough to know where the subtext is glaringly obvious, where the meaning is more implicit, and where I invented hidden meaning when none exists. So, my next stop was to watch a performance of the play.

Kitchen gloves are all he’s wearing …

The performance listed in the course materials is a professionally filmed recording of a 2011 production directed by Jacques Vincey. I watched it (text in hand) and got a very different sense of the play than I had by simply reading it. The print edition I have begins with a five page note from the author: Comment jouer «Les Bonnes» (“How to perform The Maids”). It declares that the atmosphere should be furtive and that the maids should be proper, yet still sexual, but not overtly erotic. The author also acknowledges that the dialogue may not be a realistic representation of how maids talk when they aren’t observed, but asserts that when he goes to the theater he wants to see himself on stage, stripped of conventions and niceties, naked. Director Jacques Vincey decided to start his 2011 production with an abridged version of this note recited by a completely naked man who does not otherwise figure in the rest of the show (though I believe he participates later as clothed stage hand). This introductory scene is presumably why the video merits a YouTube warning “This video contains content that may be offensive to some viewers. Are you sure you want to proceed?”, which also prevents it from being embedded on this page. You’ll have to click the link if you want to see stage directions recited nude.

The Jacques Vincey production is highly stylized with stark sets, dark lighting, minimal costuming, and eerie music. Almost all props are absent, replaced by pantomime. Many lines are spoken slowly with an emotionless, dispassionate affect, while others are delivered in a stentorian shout. I don’t know enough to be confident that labeling this production “avant garde” is formally accurate, but that description will give a non-professional the right impression. I came away from watching it with the thought “Ah, I see, that’s what this play is. An abstract psycho-drama infused with social commentary, class politics, and post-war despair. Got it.”

Only it turns out, this description is heavily influenced by the directorial choices of the production. I was fortunate enough to wonder if this is how it’s always played and looked for other recording of other productions. I found dozens of them on the web, both complete shows and excerpts. They illustrate a wide range of stylistic interpretations of the text, among which Jacques Vincey’s is an outlier. There are productions with more traditional, fully realized sets, props, and costumes. There are productions with less overtly deranged portrayals of Claire and Solange. There are productions where the maids are younger or prettier, ones where Madame is more natural or more horrible, ones that emphasize or ignore the sexual tension in Claire and Solange’s play-acting. There are productions set in prison. By far the oddest one I found was a production by Centaur Theater where the actors are on horses most of the time.

Centaur Theater presents «Les Bonnes»
Must watch: equestrian acting at its finest

All in all Les Bonnes (and Jacques Vincey’s production) was an unusual and satisfying first dish in the nine course meal that I’ve ordered for myself. And I’ve been reminded that not only must one not judge a book by its cover, but one must also not judge a classic play by just one of its productions.

Next week: L’Amante anglaise, by Marguerite Duras.

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Harvard Course: French Theater and Performance

Last month somebody introduced me to the existence of a course at Harvard University on French Theater and Performance. The one-line description of the class is “In this course, we will trace the history of French theater from the early twentieth-century to the present: its major trends, figures, and forms as well as its intellectual, historical, and political contexts.” I live just a few miles from the university, so briefly flirted with the idea of arranging to audit the class this semester (lectures in French!). But after a few minutes, I settled on a more modest undertaking: read all nine plays on the reading list. I might have to go more slowly than the one play per week pace that the course follows, but I figure it will be a good way to get a sampling from the past 120 years of French theater.

Here’s the reading list for the course:

  1. Jean Genet Les Bonnes, Gallimard Folio
  2. Marguerite Duras, L’Amante anglaise, Gallimard Folio
  3. Albert Camus, Les Justes, Gallimard Folio Plus Classiques 
  4. Samuel Beckett, Fin de partie, Editions de Minuit
  5. Bernard-Marie Koltès, Combat de nègre et de chiens, Editions de Minuit
  6. Nathalie Sarraute, Le silence, Gallimard Folio
  7. Jean-Luc Lagarce, Juste la fin du monde, Solitaires intempestifs
  8. Marie NDiaye, Papa doit manger, Editions de Minuit
  9. Wajdi Mouawad, Tous des oiseaux, Actes Sud Papier

The books were all available via the Harvard Coop bookstore. They very nicely put them all in a list so I could fill my cart with just a few clicks. A week later, I had a nice stack of reading for the Fall.

Perhaps if I get wrapped up in this I’ll contact the professor, Matthew Rodriguez, and ask if I can sit in on just one or two lectures to get the feel of it. In the meantime, Allons-y!

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Learning Log, 2021 Week 36

I’m logging what I do each week to improve my French. Maybe it will motivate me to do more. No need to post the details here, but I’ll see if posting a skeleton log of my actions helps motivate me to keep it up. I’ll update this post over the week rather than make new articles each time.

  • J’ai fait…
    • GPdF Chapitre 4: Les Temps de l’indicatif.
      • Les Passés
        • Mettez les verbes au passé composé, puis imaginez une suite à cette histoire.
    • GPdF Chapitre 5: Le Subjonctif
      • Emplois du subjonctif.
        • Répondez en utilisant le subjonctif selon le modèle.
  • J’ai lu …
    • La Nuit des temps, de René Barjavel, pp 238 – 410.
  • J’ai écrit …
  • J’ai écouté à …
  • Cours particulier (x2)
    • Tout, toute, tous, toutes.
    • Conversation.

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Songs for Grammar: Embrasse-les tous

Césaire de Heisterbach

I’ve often heard the advice that it’s a mistake to learn vocabulary words in isolation, either as memorized english translations of French word or as memorized French synonyms of a French word. Better, says the recommendation, to remember a sentence that uses the target word so that you learn it in context. I’ve found this advice hard to implement, as I have difficulty remembering whole sentences, especially for the full range of words I’m trying to learn.

But this technique may be more viable for grammar rules. This morning I was doing an exercice on the words tout, toute, tous, and toutes. One of the examples shown was an excerpt from Césaire de Heisterbach, who chronicled the siege of Béziers (between Narbonne and Montpellier) in 1209. It contains this well known (if often re-attributed) passage:

«Comment distinguer les hérétiques des catholique», se demandait-on lors de la prise de la ville de Béziers où vivaient de nombreux cathares, en 1209.

«Tuez-les tous, Dieu reconnaîtra les siens», répondit Arnaud Amaury, légat du pape Innocent III.»

“How shall we distinguish the heathens from the catholics?”, they wondered upon capturing the city of Beziers which, in 1209, still housed many Cathars.

“Kill them all, God will know his own,” replied Arnaud Amaury, the representative of Pope Innocent III.

Ah yes, a classic in the annals of tactics. Bloodshed aside, the point of this passage was illustrate that the word tous, when used as a pronoun meaning “everyone, all of them”, comes after an imperative verb, and also after any direct object there may be. Thus «Tuez-les tous» and not «Tous les tuez», «Tuez-tous-les», etc. Moreover, because «tous» is a pronoun here you pronounce the final “s” rather than leaving it silent as you would in «Tous les deux» or «tous les gens» where it is an adjective. That makes this Béziers passage less than ideal as a canonical example. Even if I overcame my qualms about memorizing a passage about killing heathens, there’s no hint to help me remember to pronounce that final “s”.

Fortunately for me, there preamble to the exercise gives a second example that is right up my alley: a Georges Brassens song excerpt!

De Pierre à Paul en passant par Félicien
Embrasse-les tous, Embrasse-les tous
Dieu reconnaîtra le sien
Passe-les tous par tes armes
Passe-les tous par tes charmes
Jusqu’à ce que l’un deux les bras en croix
Tourne de l’oeil dans tes bras

From Peter to Paul, by way of Félicien
Kiss them all, kiss them all
God will know his own
Dazzle them all with your wiles
Favor them all with your smiles
Til one of them faints in your arms
Swept of his feet by your charms

I love the reference that Brassens makes in this song, and I am thankful to the authors of this grammar text for drawing my attention to it. I vaguely knew the “Kill them all and let god sort it out” line, but didn’t know the particular french structure of it, nor did I think of it when I first herd the Brassens song. I thought he was just doing his usual anarchy-and-free-love thing. But it’s a great bit of literary jiu-jitsu to add in his anti-clericalism and turn the Church-inspired slaughter into an endorsement of promiscuity. That said, if you look past the sentimental and nostalgic music, there’s still a bit of misogyny to these American-in-2020 ears

Anyway, from a pedagogical view point I like this example is a better fit for me. It has the advantage that it is a song with music, which makes it easier for me to remember, and also that I can listen to the recording of Brassens singing it and pronouncing the final “s”.

It so happens that I know another Brassens song, even more ribald, which shows the contrasting pronunciation of «tous» when used as an adjective «Tous les gars».

Quand Margot dégrafait son corsage
Pour donner la gougoutte à son chat
Tous les gars, tous les gars du village
Étaient là, lalala la la la
Étaient là, lalala la la la

When Margot would unclip her blouse
To let her cat nurse from her breasts
All the men, all the men of the village
Would come hooting and howling
Lalala la la la!

If you listen to the whole song, Margot is presented as a simple (but wise?) shepherdess, innocently thinking that the men are there to see a cute kitty-cat that she had adopted when its mother was lost. The men are happy to let her think whatever she like so long as they get their daily peep show. The women of the village are none too happy about it, though, and end up organizing themselves and beating the cat to death. Margot is distraught by this turn of events, takes herself a husband, and from then only shows her charms to him only. Echos of Il était une bergère if you think about it (translation).

And just in case you thought it was only men who sang ribald Brassens songs, here’s a recording of Patachou singing the same song. Recall that Patachou (née Henriette Ragon) is the cabaret nightclub singer who discovered Brassens in 1952, first singing his songs on stage and later getting him up on stage to perform them himself. According to her account, she convinced him to sing because some of his songs were told in the first person by an obviously male character, and presenting audiences with a woman singing them was too much of a stretch.

Finally, I can’t resist including this all-instrumental version of Brave Margot, posted just a few months ago by a classical guitarist

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Touchez pas à la charentaise!

Les charentaises are a particular style of slippers made in La Charente, a department of France some 80 miles north east of Bordeaux. I’ve driven past it, but never gone there. These slippers have been made in La Charente for over 350 years, first by hand and then by machine. They were originally intended for military and rural life, as a comfortable indoor shoe that you could keep on all day long while you donned and doffed your outdoor boots or wooden shoes. A number of charentaises-making factories opened there in the first years of the 20th century, and they started aggressively exporting the slippers globally in the 1950s. At its peak in the 1970s, this French industry was exporting over a million pairs of slippers each year. Together with a beret and a baguette, a pair of charentaises became part of the French caricature.

The global center of shoe manufacturing today is in Asia, as China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia account for 75% of all output. While French production of slippers fell precipitously in the past 50 years, it’s having something of a resurgence, both in La Charente and in Brittany. The French government has been pursuing a “Made in France” industrial initiative for the past few years, and generally has a soft spot for saving culturally iconic production. My French teacher assigned me to watch a documentary about the re-opening of one of the original charentaise factories and write a response about the importance (or not) of preserving industries like this.

Here’s my rather rambling response, after applying corrections suggested by my teacher N.M. In other posts I include both my original draft and the final draft after editing in order to display my errors. But as this post is long enough already, I’m posting only the final draft.

Version rédigé avec N.M.

C’est quoi la forme de la vie? La pomme est ronde, un cristal de sel est cubique, la coquille d’un escargot est spirale. Quelle est la morphologie de la vie? Dans son livre La Maison de joie: Une histoire de la vie et de la mort, l’historienne Jill Lepore constate que de l’Antiquité à la Lumière les peuples de l’Ouest ont imaginé que la vie est comme un cercle. On est né, on reçoit la sagesse et les traditions du passé, on habite dans la maison de son père, on laboure les champs de son grand-père, et on mange les recettes de ses arrières grand-mères. Au cours des années, on grandit, on a des enfants, et on leur apprend à faire comme leurs parents. Finalement on vieillit, on sourit aux petits-enfants, on leur enseigne les comptines patrimoniales, et on meurt conforté par le fait que le cercle recommence.

Pourtant depuis la Lumière, cette notion d’une vie cyclique a été remplacée par la vie linéaire. On utilise la raison pour améliorer les techniques. On progresse. On grimpe vers le sommet, on se hisse à l’échelle. L’arrivée de l’industrialisation et des idées de Darwin au XIXe siècle a accéléré cette réorientation de la conception de la vie. On doit construire, accumuler, foncer plus loin ou plus vite. Regardez les milliardaires de nos jours, messieurs Bezos et Branson, qui se hâtent de se lancer dans l’espace. Ruons-nous vers l’avenir!

Mais faites attention! Parce qu’on ne peut pas être au four et au moulin. En se dépêchant sur la longueur du chemin de progrès, il faut qu’on lâche maintes coutumes du passé. On ne peut pas dire «Rien à jeter» en surchargeant les malles de notre culture actuelle. Nos boulevards sont ou pour les chevaux, ou pour les automobiles, mais pas les deux. Un stationnement au centre ville est ou une écurie ou un parking. Et un travailleur doit choisir un métier, soit fermier, soit ouvrier, soit enseignant, soit avocat. Quel choix fera-t-il?

D’où venons-nous ? Que sommes-nous ? Où allons-nous ?

Ça me rappelle des questions du peintre Paul Gauguin, dont une œuvre est sous-titrée «D’où venons-nous ? Que sommes-nous ? Où allons-nous ?». Parce que la question de «que garder, de quoi se débarrasser» est à son cœur une question d’identité. Pour les circulaires, répondre à ces trois questions est facile. Nous venons d’un chemin déjà arpenté par nos parents; nous sommes des gens qui entournent cette orbite familiale sans aucun souci; nous repasserons les mêmes chemins à nos tours. Mais chez les linéaires, chez les dévots du progrès, les questions d’identité sont plus difficiles. Il faut changer pour s’améliorer, et un changement de mode de vie exige un changement d’identité. Choisir d’abandonner nos pratiques habituelles, de bouleverser nos affaires, c’est choisir de nous laisser mourir un peu pour permettre de faire naître le prochain «nous». Sommes-nous prêts à mourir?

Enfin, au bout de cette route sinueuse, j’arrive au sujet des charentaises. Cette pantoufle particulière est née il y a trois cent cinquante ans. En 1907, Théophile Rondinaud (parmi les autres) à lancé une usine à Rivière en Charente. Dès les années 1950, son fils James Rondinaud exportait ce produit dans le monde entier. Pendant les années 1970, l’usine Rondinaud employait 1300 travailleurs. La Charente était renommée pour ces jolies pantoufles douces. Mais cinquante ans plus tard, c’est la faillite. Les fabricants asiatiques ont surpassé ceux de la Charente, les chiffres d’affaires ont chuté. Même avec une consolidation de quatre fabricants sous le nom «la Manufacture Charentaise» (LMC), et avec la protection inédite du titre d’Indication géographique «charentaise de Charente-Périgord», cette société a dû mettre la clé sous la porte en 2019.

Est-ce qu’il faut être en deuil pour cette industrie française? Il y a deux ans qu’Emmanuel Macron a annoncé son initiative de relocaliser certaines chaînes de valeur pour les produits critiques. La crise sanitaire du Covid-19 a démontré la sagesse de fabriquer les molécules pharmaceutiques intra-pays. Une usine pour faire les semi-conducteurs en France c’est stratégique pour ne pas être dépendant de la Chine pour nos ordinateurs et nos portables incontournables. Mais les pantoufles? Forcément un manque imprévu de chausseurs duveteux ne serait pas une crise nationale. Les orteils patriotiques de la France survivraient.

Ici ce n’est pas une question de nécessité mais d’identité. Si un membre de la famille Rondinaud, comme l’arrière petit-fils Olivier Rondinaud, veut continuer l’entreprise, qu’il y aille. Mais si la rentabilité est insuffisante, on doit poser la question: d’où viendra la subvention? À mon avis, ceux qui s’identifient aux charentaises doivent subventionner eux-mêmes leur fabrication en France. Si c’est Olivier Rondinaud seul, je souhaite qu’il ait une grande fortune personnelle. Si ce sont les travailleurs de l’usine, peut-être qu’ils voudront travailler à des salaires réduits. Enfin, si les habitants du département ou du pays s’identifient profondément avec les charentaises, une subvention nationale serait dans ce cas-là la plus correcte. Pas de problème pour moi.

Mais il se trouvera, peut-être, que les consommateurs de la France préfèrent acheter les pantoufles bon marché, que les contribuables préfèrent renouveler les autoroutes, et que Mais peut-être qu’il se trouve que les consommateurs français préfèreraient acheter des pantoufles bon marché, que les contribuables préféreraient renouveler les autoroutes, et que les électeurs préféreraient revaloriser les salaires des soignants. Évidemment, il y a des limites budgétaires. Donc, qui sont les Français? Un peuple qui donne priorité à ses pieds? Ou un peuple en marche vers l’avenir sur des chemins modernes, avec des soignants correctement payés, mais avec les pieds à la chinoise?

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Learning Log, 2021 Week 35

I’m logging what I do each week to improve my French. Maybe it will motivate me to do more. No need to post the details here, but I’ll see if posting a skeleton log of my actions helps motivate me to keep it up. I’ll update this post over the week rather than make new articles each time.

  • GPdF Chapitre 3: Les Négations
    • La Place de la négation
      • Dites dans les exemples suivant si «ne» est explétif ou s’il est négatif.
      • Créez des interdictions d’après les contextes proposés.
  • GPdF Chapitre 4: Les Temps de l’indicatif.
    • Le Présent
      • Utilisez le présent à la place des passés quand c’est possible pour donner à ce texte un caractère plus vivant.
    • Les Passés
      • Mettez les verbes entre parenthèses à l’imparfait.
  • GPdF Chapitre 5: Le Subjonctif
    • Formation et caractéristiques
    • Utilisez le subjonctif comme dans le modèle.
    • Complétez avec le subjonctif.
  • J’ai regardé …
    • Dix pour cent
      • Juliette (s2 e6) with French audio only.
  • J’ai lu …
    • La Nuit des temps, de René Barjavel, pp 62 – 237
  • J’ai écrit …
  • J’ai écouté …
    • L’Univers . Cours « tout public » Aurélien Barrau.
    • L’Invité de 8h20: Le Grand Entretien (FranceInter)
      • Pierre Rosanvallon : “Il y a un désir d’égalité, que chacun soit reconnu dans sa singularité”
      • Atiq Rahimi, écrivain et réalisateur, et Jean-Pierre Filiu, historien. Afghanistan : “Maintenant les islamistes, les djihadistes partout dans le monde, se disent que c’est possible”
      • “10 à 11% des enseignants pas vaccinés” affirme le ministre Jean-Michel Blanquer
      • Gérard Larcher, président du Sénat, sénateur LR des Yvelines, est l’invité du Grand entretien de France Inter.
      • Bruno Le Maire : “le pass sanitaire n’a ralenti ni la consommation, ni la croissance”
    • Le 7/9 par Nicolas Demorand , Léa Salamé (FranceInter)
      • Sept 1 émission, 70 minutes.
  • Cours particulier

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Learning Log, 2021 Week 34

I’m going to try doing some simple French exercises daily as a supplement to consuming organic language (reading books and articles, listening to podcasts, watching videos). Exercises were a big part of how I learned French in high school, but I haven’t done much with them in the past 10 years. Maybe the habit of a little each day will be helpful.

I randomly picked a source of exercises from my shelf: Grammaire progressive du français (niveau avancé). Long ago I had written in the answers to the first few exercises, so I’m starting with Chapitre 2: L’Adjectif. No need to post the details here, but I’ll see if posting a skeleton log of my actions helps motivate me to keep it up. I’ll update this post over the week rather than make new articles each time.