I just finished reading Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette. Of course, we all know what happened to her at the end. According to Fraser, she never said, "let them eat cake" and was an amiable enough woman, not endowed with a great deal of intelligence or drive, really an ordinary woman -- who wanted to be a good mother, who tried to be a good wife, who liked pretty things and the theatre and music. Her husband, King Louis XVI, was a bit of a buffoon -- not an evil man or a megalomaniac or a womanizer, like his predecessors. But they are the ones who paid for the excesses of the monarchy. At the end of the book, Fraser says that Marie Antoinette was a scapegoat -- she was a foreign princess (from Austria) and was hated by the populace and one of the revolutionaries said they had to have her head. Yes, I guess so, but if she was a scapegoat, she was not alone.
When you see Versailles, you see the unbelievable indulgence of people who feel they have a divine right to money and power and beauty. (One of you, you know who you are, pointed out that Versailles explains the French revolution.) As a Anglophile friend of mine said, it puts Buckingham Palace to shame. You can understand the rage of people who don't have bread and see other people who seem to have more than everything. That's why it's dangerous to have these societies where there is such a discrepancy between the very rich and the very poor. (And of course, it's wrong, in my opinion, for some people to have gold thread and pearls on their dresses when little kids are dying of hunger and drinking dirty water.) Having read a bit about the French revolution, I see that the revolutionaries had many of the same goals as the Communists in Russia and they did articulate them quite clearly, too. (I had always pictured them as rabid nuts before.) But like so many of these violent upheavals, the revolutionaries lost control of their movement and then it started to feed on itself. Robespierre, Danton, Saint-Just, Philippe Egalitie, all died at the guillotine during the Terror. Anthony pointed out that once you remove the normal checks and balances and legal and political control from society, you're facing the possibility that anything can happen and anarchy can well prevail. I guess it's fortunate that human nature appears to prefer some sort of order because it rears its head pretty quickly after a conflagration like the French Revolution. In the case of France, six years after the Reign of Terror, Napoleon was in charge.
Well, in a week we will all be back in our own orderly lives, with almost no "unstructured" time. I love unstructured time (although, human that I am, I attempt to structure it with lists!) -- long, lazy days walking Daisy or going to Aquafit classes, or having an impromptu meal in a nice restaurant, or sitting and reading a biography of Marie Antoinette all day, if that's what I like. (That sort of describes my day yesterday.)
I'm going to try to make a French meal tomorrow for a couple of friends. Here is my menu:
Entree (in France, that's the appetizer) -- lobster bisque
Plat Principal (the main course) -- sole meuniere, with roast potatoes and haricots verts
Fromage (cheese course) -- baked camembert
Dessert -- Clafoutis (which is like a cake with cherries, or in this case, blueberries, in it) and ice cream (French vanilla, of course)
I'm going to try to pair a different wine with each course. If it doesn't turn out, we'll just bulk up on cheese and bread! That's as French as anything.
Tuesday 30 August 2016
Friday 26 August 2016
Retour de la ville de lumiere
Back from the city of light.
Please, if you have the chance to visit Paris any time in your life, go there. It is a wonderful, life-changing place and has something for everyone, no matter what you like to do. I heard that Parisians were very snooty and cold, but that was not our experience. I will say, they were very efficient, but even in their efficiency, they were pleasant and friendly and helpful and almost everyone was able to speak fantastic English (much to our shame and chagrin, because we did try to speak French, and they were quite encouraging about it, but many of them would say they spoke a "little" English and then go on to speak it extremely well. We improved over the time we were there though and were able to order in French and ask for directions in the Metro and even have small conversations about the weather and where we came from and things like that by the end of our holiday.)
Paris is an astonishingly beautiful city -- our little hotel window had a killer view of old St. Eustache and the Bourse du Commerce and many little French apartment windows with red flowers in the boxes and Juliet balconies and French doors behind (and also the very ugly Forum des Halles, which is a modern mall sort of thing in this old neighbourhood which was the scene of the assassination of Henri IV). We saw many sights -- all except the Musee d'Orsay from my list of to-do's -- poor William had a migraine on the morning we had set aside for the Impressionists. We ate lovely food --- cheese and bread and pastry and chocolate (except for Anthony who can't eat chocolate) -- and drank lots of coffee and wine (me) and walked great distances (many Parisian woman wear very elegant shoes and of course, they generally look a lot more "put together" than someone like me, even on their worst days, but I thank goodness for sensible shoes). We idylled away hot summer afternoons reading in different picturesque parks (while William caught European Pokemon, much to the envy of his fellow Pokemon hunters back here in Canada) and ate at sidewalk cafes and listened to music and hung out at the Paris Plage (the city brings in tons of lovely rose coloured sand and beach chairs and beach umbrellas and they have activities for children and dancing and ice cream on the banks of the Seine). We shopped along the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue St. Honore and in the Marais (mostly window-shopped because, as you know, I am not a shopper) and we had a bit of a book-buying frenzy at Shakespeare and Company (and felt like Hemingway or Scott Fitzgerald, sitting on an old couch on the second floor reading Proust's letters {that would be me}). We saw some political demonstrations (right outside our hotel, to Anthony's extreme pleasure, the Communist Party of France held a meeting -- one of the pamphleteers tried to engage me in conversation, but my French was not up to the task) and rode the metro (which is efficient and well-organized and safe) all over the far flung reaches of the city. I got to make a pilgrimage to Oscar Wilde's grave and that of Moliere (at Pere Lachaise Cemetery -- where there are lots of amazing people buried -- but my map was not easy to read and so I didn't get to see Sarah Bernhardt's grave and several others that I really wanted to see -- but it was wonderful to see Oscar Wilde (there were flowers there for him) and Moliere). We went to an organ concert at St. Eustache, which is where Moliere was baptized and where Liszt conducted (and one of the pieces was a very dramatic composition by Liszt himself). I can't describe how moved I was to stand in front of Botticelli's Three Graces at the Louvre or to visit Napoleon's tomb (where this inscription stands over the entrance to his very impressive coffin -- "I desire that my ashes repose on the shore of the Seine in the midst of the French people whom I have loved so much"). It really is impossible to list all the amazing things we got the chance to do and how happy we were to be able to be there and have these experiences.
I would go back in a heartbeat. There is the Musee d'Orsay to see and we didn't take the train to Chartres because once we were there, I realized that there were so many things we wanted to do right in Paris that it would push us over the top to try to go to Chartres as well. We didn't spend any time in Montmartre and I would like to go to the Cluny Museum and the Atelier Brancusi and the Centre Pompidou (which was close to our hotel, and visible from our window) and the Picasso museum and a gazillion other things.
Here I will end with a bit of Baudelaire -- not the sickly stuff from "Fleurs du Mal" but something more "upbeat"!
Treasure galore - ornate,
Time glossed -- would decorate
Our chamber, where the rarest blooms
Would blend their lavish scent
Heady and opulent
With wisps of amber-like perfumes;
Where all the Orient's
Splendid, rich ornaments
Deep mirrors, ceilings fine -- would each,
In confidential tone
Speak to the soul alone
In its own and secret speech.
Please, if you have the chance to visit Paris any time in your life, go there. It is a wonderful, life-changing place and has something for everyone, no matter what you like to do. I heard that Parisians were very snooty and cold, but that was not our experience. I will say, they were very efficient, but even in their efficiency, they were pleasant and friendly and helpful and almost everyone was able to speak fantastic English (much to our shame and chagrin, because we did try to speak French, and they were quite encouraging about it, but many of them would say they spoke a "little" English and then go on to speak it extremely well. We improved over the time we were there though and were able to order in French and ask for directions in the Metro and even have small conversations about the weather and where we came from and things like that by the end of our holiday.)
Paris is an astonishingly beautiful city -- our little hotel window had a killer view of old St. Eustache and the Bourse du Commerce and many little French apartment windows with red flowers in the boxes and Juliet balconies and French doors behind (and also the very ugly Forum des Halles, which is a modern mall sort of thing in this old neighbourhood which was the scene of the assassination of Henri IV). We saw many sights -- all except the Musee d'Orsay from my list of to-do's -- poor William had a migraine on the morning we had set aside for the Impressionists. We ate lovely food --- cheese and bread and pastry and chocolate (except for Anthony who can't eat chocolate) -- and drank lots of coffee and wine (me) and walked great distances (many Parisian woman wear very elegant shoes and of course, they generally look a lot more "put together" than someone like me, even on their worst days, but I thank goodness for sensible shoes). We idylled away hot summer afternoons reading in different picturesque parks (while William caught European Pokemon, much to the envy of his fellow Pokemon hunters back here in Canada) and ate at sidewalk cafes and listened to music and hung out at the Paris Plage (the city brings in tons of lovely rose coloured sand and beach chairs and beach umbrellas and they have activities for children and dancing and ice cream on the banks of the Seine). We shopped along the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue St. Honore and in the Marais (mostly window-shopped because, as you know, I am not a shopper) and we had a bit of a book-buying frenzy at Shakespeare and Company (and felt like Hemingway or Scott Fitzgerald, sitting on an old couch on the second floor reading Proust's letters {that would be me}). We saw some political demonstrations (right outside our hotel, to Anthony's extreme pleasure, the Communist Party of France held a meeting -- one of the pamphleteers tried to engage me in conversation, but my French was not up to the task) and rode the metro (which is efficient and well-organized and safe) all over the far flung reaches of the city. I got to make a pilgrimage to Oscar Wilde's grave and that of Moliere (at Pere Lachaise Cemetery -- where there are lots of amazing people buried -- but my map was not easy to read and so I didn't get to see Sarah Bernhardt's grave and several others that I really wanted to see -- but it was wonderful to see Oscar Wilde (there were flowers there for him) and Moliere). We went to an organ concert at St. Eustache, which is where Moliere was baptized and where Liszt conducted (and one of the pieces was a very dramatic composition by Liszt himself). I can't describe how moved I was to stand in front of Botticelli's Three Graces at the Louvre or to visit Napoleon's tomb (where this inscription stands over the entrance to his very impressive coffin -- "I desire that my ashes repose on the shore of the Seine in the midst of the French people whom I have loved so much"). It really is impossible to list all the amazing things we got the chance to do and how happy we were to be able to be there and have these experiences.
I would go back in a heartbeat. There is the Musee d'Orsay to see and we didn't take the train to Chartres because once we were there, I realized that there were so many things we wanted to do right in Paris that it would push us over the top to try to go to Chartres as well. We didn't spend any time in Montmartre and I would like to go to the Cluny Museum and the Atelier Brancusi and the Centre Pompidou (which was close to our hotel, and visible from our window) and the Picasso museum and a gazillion other things.
Here I will end with a bit of Baudelaire -- not the sickly stuff from "Fleurs du Mal" but something more "upbeat"!
Treasure galore - ornate,
Time glossed -- would decorate
Our chamber, where the rarest blooms
Would blend their lavish scent
Heady and opulent
With wisps of amber-like perfumes;
Where all the Orient's
Splendid, rich ornaments
Deep mirrors, ceilings fine -- would each,
In confidential tone
Speak to the soul alone
In its own and secret speech.
Sunday 14 August 2016
A bientôt!
On Tuesday, we're off to Gay Paree for ten days! I know it is not a long time, but I also know we will have a terrific time and lots of adventures and make memories for the rest of our lives. It can be stressful to enter the Unknown (my youngest son is not happy to leave his comfort zone) but you aren't safe anywhere -- you can fall in the bathtub or down your own stairs or be killed in your car on the way to work, and you have to grab the opportunity to enjoy all the wonderful things that the world has to offer. I have been reading a lot about Paris and there are so many things to see and do that ten days is only scratching the surface. We will eat, drink and make merry and see the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay and Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter and the Luxembourg Gardens and la Place de la Concorde and Napoleon's Tomb and Versailles and Chartres (quite a lot to manage, I'm afraid).
I've also been reading novels about Paris -- I have found a mystery writer called Cara Black who writes about a detective, Aimee Leduc, who lives and works in Paris. I must confess that mysteries are my guilty pleasures in the book world and although I don't think the writing in the series -- Murder in the . . . (and then she names a part of Paris, like Pigalle, or Montmartre) can compare to my favourites -- Dorothy L. Sayers or P.D. James -- they still give you a taste of Paris, I think. I will report back once I'm there and experiencing it for myself. It's very exciting.
Are you watching the Olympics? I actually thought I was off the Olympics for good this time. I saw all the news reports about the Olympic committee moving people out of their villages to build Olympic venues and parking lots and the desperate economic situation in Brazil contrasting with the enormous monetary outlay required to put on the games (that most people agree is never recouped by people after the games) and I really didn't want to watch, but something convinced me to watch one event (I'm not sure what it was, maybe women's soccer) and now I have been sucked right back into the personal stories of the athletes (who really can't be blamed for the excesses of the IOC or the bureaucratic interests that provide the disgusting aspect of the Olympics). My husband and I used to say that they should always have the summer Olympics in Athens and have permanent venues and athletes' quarters there and the countries who participate would pay to maintain the site (and the winter games could be in Lillehammer, because if you remember the games there, it was really a magical place and Norway is not some big world power and it is a stable place and a nice wintery scene, as long as climate change is contained to 2 degrees -- let's hope for that!)
Anyway, I have watched the races in the pool and been amazed by the great Michael Phelps (and touched by Canadian Penny Oleksiak's look of surprise when she is successful in her races) and, as I said, the women's soccer games (shocked by Hope Solo's remarks after the United States was defeated by Sweden) and the 10,000 metre race last night which, to me, really expresses the agony and ecstasy of athletic competition -- Mo Farah from Great Britain was the favourite, but he ran at the back for the beginning of the race and when he made his move, he fell and appeared to be trampled by the other runners, but he jumped back up and then, took the lead and he and his Kenyan competitor, Paul Tanui, pushed themselves beyond what any of us can imagine, running hard at the end of such a long race and Farah won the gold and Tanui the silver. I feel so badly for athletes like Ryan Cochrane, who give it their all and then are disappointed with their performance. He came sixth in his final race, a gruelling 1500 meters in the pool, and he was unhappy about it -- I understand that he wanted to do better, but really sixth in the world is an amazing achievement and I hope as time passes he can realize that he has done what none of the rest of us can ever imagine doing. He put himself out there, did his best, "left nothing behind" (I think athletes say that when they give it their all) and has achieved greatness. And all the people who have competed -- Anthony said he read that they should have an ordinary person running or swimming or jumping or whatever next to all the athletes so we could see how amazing they are and how great all their performances are. It is an extraordinary accomplishment to even go.
I've also been reading novels about Paris -- I have found a mystery writer called Cara Black who writes about a detective, Aimee Leduc, who lives and works in Paris. I must confess that mysteries are my guilty pleasures in the book world and although I don't think the writing in the series -- Murder in the . . . (and then she names a part of Paris, like Pigalle, or Montmartre) can compare to my favourites -- Dorothy L. Sayers or P.D. James -- they still give you a taste of Paris, I think. I will report back once I'm there and experiencing it for myself. It's very exciting.
Are you watching the Olympics? I actually thought I was off the Olympics for good this time. I saw all the news reports about the Olympic committee moving people out of their villages to build Olympic venues and parking lots and the desperate economic situation in Brazil contrasting with the enormous monetary outlay required to put on the games (that most people agree is never recouped by people after the games) and I really didn't want to watch, but something convinced me to watch one event (I'm not sure what it was, maybe women's soccer) and now I have been sucked right back into the personal stories of the athletes (who really can't be blamed for the excesses of the IOC or the bureaucratic interests that provide the disgusting aspect of the Olympics). My husband and I used to say that they should always have the summer Olympics in Athens and have permanent venues and athletes' quarters there and the countries who participate would pay to maintain the site (and the winter games could be in Lillehammer, because if you remember the games there, it was really a magical place and Norway is not some big world power and it is a stable place and a nice wintery scene, as long as climate change is contained to 2 degrees -- let's hope for that!)
Anyway, I have watched the races in the pool and been amazed by the great Michael Phelps (and touched by Canadian Penny Oleksiak's look of surprise when she is successful in her races) and, as I said, the women's soccer games (shocked by Hope Solo's remarks after the United States was defeated by Sweden) and the 10,000 metre race last night which, to me, really expresses the agony and ecstasy of athletic competition -- Mo Farah from Great Britain was the favourite, but he ran at the back for the beginning of the race and when he made his move, he fell and appeared to be trampled by the other runners, but he jumped back up and then, took the lead and he and his Kenyan competitor, Paul Tanui, pushed themselves beyond what any of us can imagine, running hard at the end of such a long race and Farah won the gold and Tanui the silver. I feel so badly for athletes like Ryan Cochrane, who give it their all and then are disappointed with their performance. He came sixth in his final race, a gruelling 1500 meters in the pool, and he was unhappy about it -- I understand that he wanted to do better, but really sixth in the world is an amazing achievement and I hope as time passes he can realize that he has done what none of the rest of us can ever imagine doing. He put himself out there, did his best, "left nothing behind" (I think athletes say that when they give it their all) and has achieved greatness. And all the people who have competed -- Anthony said he read that they should have an ordinary person running or swimming or jumping or whatever next to all the athletes so we could see how amazing they are and how great all their performances are. It is an extraordinary accomplishment to even go.
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