There are indications I will not live eternally, but I have an unfinished project: publishing a book on Molière.
This goal may be unrealistic. However, I will not be given another chance. It will be a short book and I may not have reviewed recent literature on the subject as thoroughly as I would like to. Yet, I wrote a PhD thesis on Molière, and a PhD thesis is a scholarly venture. Moreover, I was expected to “dust it off,” a thesis is a thesis, and publish it.
Dusting it off is what I plan to do. In other words, it will not sound too scholarly. I will quote fellow moliéristes, but will focus on my findings.
L’Avare (www.gettyimages.fr)
Problematic Plays
Tartuffe, 1664 – 1669
Dom Juan, 1665
Le Misanthrope, 1666
L’Avare, 1668
Were it not for the intervention of a second father, the young couples in L’Avare(The Miser), 1668, could not marry. They would be at the mercy of Harpagon’s greed.
Matters are worse in Tartuffe, 1664 -1669. Were it not for the intervention of the king, not only would the young lovers not marry, but Orgon’s family would be ruined. In The Misanthrope,1666, Alceste is his own worst enemy. In Dom Juan, 1665, Dom Juan is removed by a deus ex machinaand he has left Elvira, his wife.
Presentation
Chapters may resemble Molière’s “L’Avare:” Doublings, a post. This post is informative, but not too scholarly. It also illustrates my main finding. In Molière’s plays, the young lovers cannot marry without an intervention, or putting on a play (Le Bourgeois gentilhomme). In L’Avare, they are saved by a second father: doublings. Molière uses stage devices, such as a deus ex machina, to save the society of the play.
Therefore, if a blocking character is removed, he is apharmakos (a scapegoat).
L’Avare, 1668, (The Miser) is rooted in Roman playwright Plautus‘ Aulularia. Plautus died in 184 BCE. Molière’s miserly father is a Shylock(The Merchant of Venice, c. 1600, by Shakespeare). There are misers in the commedia dell’arte, and Molière knew the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte. Comedy has a tradition. Greek playwright Aristophanes is considered its father. Molière also wrote farces. These date back not only to medieval France, but to the Atellane farces, which featured stock characters, as does the commedia dell’arte.
Conclusion & remerciements
I feel very young, but time goes by so quickly. It would please me to tell more about Molière, but it has to be now. It’s my last chance and there you are, supporting me.
I wish to thank a very kind gentleman who sent me images of Colette‘s La Chatte by Raoul Dufy.
Pierre-Loïc,
Je vous remercie bien sincèrement d’avoir pensé à moi. Ces dessins de Dufy me font plaisir. Votre générosité m’a beaucoup touchée.
Colette a eu une « dernière chatte », et j’ai, pour ma part, une dernière occasion.
I have not been able to write due to various house chores. I haven’t quite finished settling down. In the past, I settled into a home in a matter of days. This time, I will have to hire professionals. How humbling!
You may remember that I lost my voice on 11 December. It has now returned, but it is different. X-rays revealed advanced emphysema. I could not believe my doctor. Two thirds of my lungs have turned into a dry sponge. I have never smoked.
I can breathe ‘normally,’ so no treatment is necessary.
However, I am losing my driver’s license: myalgic encephalomyelitis, not emphysema, although the two could be linked. I had a long career as a driver.
I bought an apartment located close to a little market. Just in case… The little market has everything I need. I have been told I qualified for a service dog, but Belaud said no.
—ooo—
My cat Belaud was delighted when I discovered a painting featuring a chartreux sitting on a lady’s lap: artistic roots. French poet Joachim du Bellay had a chartreux named Belaud. When his Belaud died, he wrote an extroardinary epitaph entitled Sur la mort de Belaud. As you know, I share my home and life with a cat named Belaud. Belaud is a pure-bred French chartreux. I named my chartreux after Joachim du Bellay‘s Belaud. Du Bellay’s Sur la mort de Belaud is a long poem I would not attempt to translate.
Belaud Portrayed & Elevated
literary roots
artistic roots
Belaud has literary roots, but the J. Paul Getty Museum has a painting featuring a dignified lady, nose up, holding her precious chartreux. Artist Jean-Baptiste Perronneau (French, 1715 – 1783) is not as prominent a figure as Joachim du Bellay, but we owe him the portrait of a chartreux, and images are immediate. Upon analysis, we may find that a picture is complex, but in the case of Perronneau’s portrait, we know we are seeing a lady, Magdaleine Pinceloup de la Grange, holding her beloved cat, a chartreux.
Because of this portrait, chartreux have acquired greater stature. A cat protrayed is a thousand cats. Moreover, Jean-Baptiste Perronneau depicted a chartreux sitting in the lap of the distinguished madame Pinceloup de la Grange. I told Belaud that a portrait of a chartreux had surfaced. “Well, mother,” said Belaud, “I knew. We cats research our ancestry.” Mme Pinceloup de la Grange’s chartreux could indeed be Belaud’s ancestor. However, my Belaud does not wear a collar because he is not a threat to birds. He would love to be hired to chase away various rats, “gros rats.” In fact, one gentleman offered him a lucrative contract: “toxicity” said the gentleman, “toxicity! It will be the Black Death all over again.” The gentleman died a few weeks later.
Given their profession, chasing rats, chartreux are large and very robust cats. Fearing the cold, they wear two coats of fur. I should also mention that they enjoy sitting with their legs extended forward and that they sometimes cross their legs, as though they were dogs, or human beings. They may be referred to as blue cats, but they are grey cats. The light, however, may make their fur appear blue and even mauve.
The chartreux and their British Blue relatives have a round face, large cheeks, a permanent smile and yellow to copper eyes. I should also tell you that Chartreux are very quiet. Legend has it that their silent owners, Carthusian monks, taught them silence. Belaud purrs, but he is otherwise absolutely silent. A long time ago, I read they were brought to France by crusaders. Were Carthusians crusaders?
Du Bellay’s epitaph on Belaud is very long, but very rich. Besides, Du Bellay is a better-known figure than monsieur Perronneau. He was a member of La Pléiade, a group of stellar poets who are the fountainhead of poetry in French. Poet Pierre de Ronsard (11 September 1524 – 27 December 1585) was a prince of poets, un prince des poètes, which is not insignificant, but he is famous for a carpe diem poem. In one of his Sonnets pour Hélène, he enjoins Hélène to love him dès aujourd’hui, as of today, life being so short. There was an Hélène whose gentleman friend had died in a war. She was not in the least interested in Ronsard, but Ronsard’s poem is unforgettable.
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain :
Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie.
Italy was the first refuge of Greek scholars. As for painters, Christians, they fled to Russia, carrying icons. Constantinople had been a Holy See for Eastern Christianity. We know about the Great East/West Schism, 1054. The Vatican is Western Christianity’s Holy See. The Eastern Church would have several Holy Sees, called Synods.
The arrival in Italy of Greek scholars may have led scholars to look to Antiquity and learn Greek. The Renaissance, however, saw the emergence of the vernacular, the mother tongue.
Du Bellay promoted the vernacular, French in his case. He was inspired by Italian author Sperone Speroni’s Dialogo delle lingue, 1542. Speroni was a friend and supporter of Venetian-language playwright Angelo Beolco (el Ruzante). However, the greater supporter of the vernacular was Pietro Bembo (20 May 1470 – either 11 January or 18 January). Bembo championed the use of Italian by poet Petrarch (20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374). Predecessors were Dante Alighieri (c. 1265 – 1321), the author of the Divine Comedy, written in the vernacular, and Giovanni Boccaccio (16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375), the author of the Decameron, written in the Florentine language.
Yvonne de Gaulle in a London kitchen (Getty Images)
Chartreux are often compared to British blue cats. There is a resemblance, but the two breeds differ. The snout of British Blues does not point forward as much as the snout of chartreux. Consequently, British Blues have rounder faces and larger jowls. Belaud’s face is round, but his jowls are not as prominent as the jowls of his British cousins.
I was able to gather precious information about Chartreux and British Blues. My very bilingual Scottish friend, Francis, was hired to go between English-speaking Winston Churchill and Charles De Gaulle, who spoke French, as D-Day was planned. How did Francis survive being a go-between to such men? De Gaulle would not always agree with Churchill and he communicated with the Free French Forces, Forces françaises libres which he led beginning on 28 June 1940. L’appel du 18 juin (1940), a radio broadcast, the BBC, gave hope to the French. France had defenders: the United States and the British Empire. Churchill was at times livid, said Francis, discreetly. We have learned since that De Gaulle told the Forces françaises libres that Paul Verlaine’s Chanson d’automne would be used in the planning of D-Day. Verlaine is un prince des poètes, but Chanson d’automne was a code.
Obviously, sharing the code was dangerous, but I wonder whether Francis had a role to play in the Querelle des Chartreux et des Bleus britanniques. He would not have told me. But truth me told, a querelle des chats took place in the thick of a devastating war. The British wanted to mix the Chartreux with the British Blue and De Gaulle would not allow the national cat of France simply to vanish. Later, Yvonne, De Gaulle’s wife, gave her husband a chartreux which le général called Gris [grey]-Gris. Gris-Gris probably had an aristocratic name, but le général called him Gris-Gris. Gris-Gris followed De Gaulle from room to room.
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
Charles Baudelaire by Étienne Carjat
Writers Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, and Charles Baudelaire also adopted a chartreux. Belaud’s mother was a Sidonie de… I cannot remember the rest of her name, but his father was Tennessee. The cat she called la dernière chatte (the last cat), was no doubt a chartreux.
This post is a shameful coq-à-l’âne (jumping from one subject to another). The coq-à-l’âne had a terrible reputation, but now that marginalia is all the rage, I’m saved. However, I will close proudly as Belaud is all over this post, un fil conducteur, a link, carrying weight.
I apologize for not posting for a long time. I was asked to prepare a “protection mandate” and a Will. I am told that it is ordinary business. However, if at all possible, I will take care of my cat until nature takes him away. He will be eleven in April. I will also take care of myself.
However, I’ve not been idle. I have been comparing the Western Church, Catholicism’s Virgin Mary in particular, and the Eastern Church’s Theotokos, the Birth-Giver of God.
This subject is a little more complicated than one would suspect. The two Churches are both united and different.
I will publish my post as soon as my cat lets me use the computer’s keyboard.
We associate artist Isaac Ilyich Levitan (30 August 1860 – 4 August 1900: aged 40) with mood or lyrical landscapes, but he also left lovely paintings featuring flowers.
I am very tired and must rest, but I am thinking of you.
Jean-Marc, the somewhat timid groom below, was Jean-Pierre’s best friend. He flew to Quebec for Jean-Pierre’s funeral.
Jean-Marc married my sister Thérèse. They had lovely girls: Danielle, Anne and Dominique. We lost Dominique, but Danielle and Anne are fine. As for Thérèse, she died of septic shock ten years ago. She and Jean-Marc lived in British Columbia.
Ten years later
Last summer, Jean-Marc remarried. His bride is the widow of a friend he lost to a plane crash. Jean-Marc also had a plane, but did not use it after his friend’s fatal crash. He therefore met his new bride when they were much younger. Destiny brought then together again. Her name is Marguerite.
Jean-Marc was an excellent husband to my sister and he will be an excellent husband to his second wife. He sold the house where he and Thérèse had lived and moved to his bride’s townhouse. It’s a brand new life.
—ooo—
I met Jean-Marc before Jean-Pierre brought him to our house. I went to a figure-skating show. Jean-Marc was the fellow who came from one end of the skating rink, gained speed, and jumped over several barrels, landing gently.
If my memory serves me well, barrels were added twice. He would therefore skate back to his starting position, entertaining the crowd, and jump over the barrels again, landing gently.
He and my sister were turtledoves and I think it’s happening again. Often, the second marriage is better than the first. Jean-Marc needed a companion. In my opinion, he’s found an angel.
Russian despots, Peter I the Great and Catherine II, the Great, enlarged Russia. Peter wanted access to various seas, the Baltic Sea, to begin with. He defeated the Swedish Empire shortly after Charles XII, a despot, was killed at the Siege of Fredriksten, in 1718. In 1703, Peter I the Great founded Saint Petersburg and, in 1721, Russia became an empire as Sweden entered its Age of Liberty.
Enlightened despotism is quite the topic. For instance, Russian despots, Peter I the Great and Empress Catherine II the Great westernized Russia, which is not insignificant. Catherine befriended Denis Diderot. When Diderot tried to provide his daughter with a dowry, his only recourse was the sale of his library, a considerable collection. Catherine bought it and made him custodian of his collection. He did not have to part with his books. He travelled to Russia and spent several months at Catherine’s court. When he was dying, she rented a comfortable room for him.
In 1745, Catherine married Russian Tsar Peter III, who was assassinated. Catherine gave serfs to her lovers and a castle to at least one of her favourites, Grigory Potemkin, whom she may have married, but the ‘affair’ was over in 1776. Although I am certain Voltaire did not approve of serfdom, he entertained a long friendship, letters mainly, with Empress Catherine II the Great.
Diderot did not enter a profession. He wanted to write. At one point, Madame Geoffrin, the famous salonnière, gave him furniture and a new dressing gown. He may have spent money. In Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre, Diderot writes that he should not have parted with his old dressing gown.
Mes amis, gardez vos vieux amis. Mes amis, craignez l’atteinte de la richesse. Que mon exemple vous instruise. La pauvreté a ses franchises ; l’opulence a sa gêne.
[My friends, keep your old friends. My friends, fear the infringement of riches. Let my example be a lesson to you. Poverty has its freedoms; opulence, its constraints.]
Diderot would gladly have discarded everything, so there would again be coherence and, therefore, beauty to his lodgings. But he would not let go of a painting by Claude-Joseph Vernet. Everything matched: a lovely ensemble.
Si vous voyiez le bel ensemble de ce morceau ; comme tout y est harmonieux ; comme les effets s’y enchaînent ; …
[If you saw…]
—ooo—
My little story is barely worth telling. I tried to make a doctor’s appointment for my friend who suffers from Ménière’s Disease. He’s nearly deaf. So, I wanted to talk to my doctor to see if he could help. My friend’s doctor is an intern and my doctor supervises interns. It’s the same office, but he can do things interns cannot do. This doctor always returns my calls, but this time, he didn’t. Last evening, I wrote to my friend to inform him that I doubted my doctor would phone. But, as I was about to press “send,” tears welled up in my eyes…
This morning, I turned to music, my refuge. I love this aria by Händel. The singer is Canada’s Karina Gauvin FR / Karina Gauvin EN.
Composite Elephant, 17th century, India (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY)
It’s a day at a time.
I have been working on Despotism. Peter I (the Great & 6 ft 8 [203 cm]) wanted access to seas. He defeated the Swedish Empire and founded the Russian Empire in 1721.
—ooo—
In August 2017, my brother Jean-Pierre, nephew François and his wife, Josée, helped me move from a large apartment to a smaller one. I had too many books. After transporting something to my locker, my brother said: “I won’t sleep for three nights.”
What had I heard? I told François that his father could not help me anymore. He needed to be treated.
In the meantime, my brother’s urine grew into a mixture of urine, blood and an unidentified white substance. He saw a doctor who prescribed antibiotics. Antibiotics! We are now in the spring of 2018 (not August 2017). My brother saw a second doctor who diagnosed cancer.
I pity men who are treated for a cancer of the bladder. Jean-Pierre’s urethra was so damaged that he nearly went into shock and died, when a tube was inserted through the urethra, to fill his bladder with a chemical and then remove the chemical. The pain was excruciating, and they said they could not give him an anaesthetic or freeze the affected area. I nearly jumped out of my skin. More of these treatments had been scheduled.
Between treatments, my brother was not prescribed a painkiller. I tried to help by offering a few tablets of codeine that had been prescribed for stubborn migraines several years ago. I doubted these tablets could still relieve pain. Besides, medication should be prescribed by one’s own doctor. My brother did not take the codeine.
A few years ago, Mr MacEachen invited me to share a lunch with him in Ottawa. We were joined by Pearl, Mr MacEachen’s finest secretary, and Craig, who helped Mr MacEachen. Allan J. asked me about medicine in Quebec. I told him that I had not been able to find a doctor, so a secretary at the Medical School had referred me to an intern and that I now had a good doctor. He worked in a public clinic supervising interns.
In other words, I told Mr MacEachen that, in Quebec, one could not find a doctor. He answered that the system would break down. He was right. Allan J. MacEachean built Canada’s first social programmes, under Lester B. Pearson, and had studied economics in an ivy league university.
I have since learned that those who despair seek the services of a private doctor, which is extremely expensive. These doctors have rich patients and treat celebrities.
Painting attributed to Bichitr (active ca. 1610–60)
The Syndicates
the priest-ridden province
the syndicate-ridden province
It appears that, in Quebec, doctors are protected by powerful syndicates. Before the Révolution tranquille, Quebec was considered a ‘priest-ridden’ province. Many priests had been sent to the Seminary in Quebec City because England did not know what to do with the French priests who had emigrated to Britain during the French Revolution. They then remembered that they had a French, and Catholic, colony. A second wave of priests and religious orders emigrated to Quebec in 1905, when the French passed the Law on the Separation of the Churches and the State: la loi du 9 décembre 1905.
Quebec may have been a priest-ridden province but it would appear it is now run by syndicates. (See Révolution tranquille, Wiki2.org.) A cousin of mine could not believe that my pension did not allow me to spend part of the winter, if not all, in Florida. “You didn’t have a very good syndicate,” she said. Truth be told, we did not have a syndicate.
An Emergency
I just read my email. A friend who lives close to Sherbrooke and suffers from Ménière’s disease (vertigo and deafness) wrote to say that he had been on a waiting-list to see his specialist for two years. He asked that his appointment be moved up but he was told to wait. My hearing is normal, so it’s easy for me to make phone calls. I called.
Conclusion
If a province chases away good taxpayers, a welfare state is a white elephant, particularly when doctors, university teachers, lawyers, and everyone else, are syndicated. I dare not say more.
We lowly creatures…
Love to everyone 💕
Camille Saint-Saëns “The Elephant” from the Carnival of Animals,
played by Zoltán Bíró
Budapest, 29 November 2008
Last night, the hospital provided little beds so his wife and my niece Marie-France could be with him.
I have now lost 16 siblings. Most died in infancy or early childhood of a congenital blood disease. Yet, we had a happy childhood. My mother was very proud of us. She entered Jean-Pierre in a contest. He won the most beautiful baby of the year award.
Our Belgian friend, Mariette Proumen, and my mother designed and sewed beautiful clothes for us. Mariette had been the wardrobe mistress of the Brussels Opera. Her husband, Henri Proumen, a jeweller, and my father invented a perpetual clock. They were as close as brothers. We learned Belgian French, but we were also students of madame Leclair, the best diction and drama teacher in the province of Quebec.
Life in the red-brick house was the best. We could see forever.
Raphael is the healer among Archangels. He rescued my brother whose death was truly merciful.
I thank all of you for being with me and with Jean-Pierre as he entered eternity.
Colour Sketch for the Decoration of the Chapel of the Bishop’s Palace, Sherbrooke: “The Annunciation,” Ozias Leduc, 1922. (Musée des beaux-arts du Canada/National Galery of Canada)
Yesterday, my nephew François took me to see my brother Jean-Pierre. He is hospitalized in the very large building I showed in an earlier post.
When we arrived, a priest was giving him the Last Rites. The priest invited all of us to kiss him and leave him a message. No one knows how long he will live, but he is in a room for the dying.
My brother is very weak. He can barely lift his head from the pillow and he cannot sit in bed without the help of three persons, one for each arm and a person who rearranges his pillow.
We stayed with him the entire afternoon and the little group returned to the hospital in the evening. I stayed home. I don’t want to know how much we paid in parking fees, but if members of his family did not help my brother, he would require the services of at least one professional twenty-four hours a day. A nurse came in to give him morphine and she obviously kept an eye on us, but he wasn’t alone.
Good News
I have good news. Quebec doctors were becoming an aristocracy:
However, here is what doctors themselves did in late February 2018.
We, Quebec doctors, are asking that the salary increases granted to physicians be cancelled and that the resources of the system be better distributed for the good of the healthcare workers and to provide health services worthy to the people of Quebec, the letter posted on 26 February states
Chasse aux canards par un matin brumeux(Hunting for Ducks on a Foggy Morning), Ozias Leduc (Galerie Michel Bigué)
I added a paragraph to my last post, after it was published. By and large, posts are not read twice. I am therefore publishing what you haven’t read.
One paragraph in Wiki2.org’s entry entitled Official Language Act (Quebec) seems reassuring. Quebec’s Language Laws, Bills 22 and 101, do not take rights away from English-speaking Canadians. Their children may attend an English-language school. But the children of immigrants, are required to attend a French-language school. All signs, such as traffic signs, must be predominantly, if not entirely, in French. I remember mentioning in a post that a Quebec café or restaurant owner was required to remove the letters WC from the door to a public toilet room. WC (water closet) may be used in France, but not in Quebec. Stop signs are called arrêts in Quebec. In short, Quebec insists on looking French. Traffic monitors and advertising displays are in French.
Section 1, which provides that French is ‘the official language of the province of Quebec,’ is misleading in that it suggests that English is not also an official language in Quebec, which it is by virtue of Section 133 of the BNA Act and the federal Official Languages Act. … No legislation in the National Assembly proclaiming French the sole official language in the province can affect these bilingual areas protected by the BNA Act.
Although this paragraph is reassuring, to my knowledge, when Premier Robert Bourassa said that the province of Quebec would be unilingual (French), he meant ‘officially’ unilingual. Given that Canada’s official languages are French and English, why would Premier Bourassa say that Quebec would, henceforth, be a unilingual province, i. e. ‘officially’?
In other words, the rights of English-speaking Canadians are respected under the Official Languages Act of 1969, as per the paragraph I quoted. One difficulty arises for French-speaking Quebecers. After the age of 11, children are unlikely to acquire native fluency in a second language, but there are exceptions. Some individuals speak eighteen languages by the age of 18. They may make mistakes and they may have an accent, but… However, a large number of French-speaking Quebecers find ways of teaching English to their children. English is a North-American reality.
I have two students who mastered French. My star student is Gillian Pink, from Antigonish. Gillian is working at Oxford University.
Candlelight Study, Ozias Leduc, 1893 (Google)
Language Bills, Referendums, and Sovereignty
Let us return to Bill 22 and Bill 101. I have noted that there was an exodus from Quebec when Bill 22 was passed. In my opinion, Bill 22 was seen as a step in the direction of sovereignty. So have Bill 101 and the two referendums (1980 and 1995).
Quebec’s new Premier, François Legault, has stated that there would not be another referendum, but he and members of Coalition avenir Quebec will be seeking greater autonomy for Quebec. What does he mean? Quebec Premier René Lévesque did not sign the Constitution Act of 1982, and none of his successors have done so. The fact remains that I’ve been in the midst of an identity crisis for sixteen years, or since I left Antigonish, Nova Scotia.
My Quebec Health Insurance Card does not cover the cost of appointments with a doctor in provinces other than Canada. Yet, I am a Canadian, but a French-speaking Canadian living in Québec, whose mother tongue is French, who loves French literature, but who speaks English fluently and feels Quebec is safer as a province of Canada, than a country.
However, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms requires all provinces to provide primary and secondary education to their official-language minorities at public expense.
Would that Quebecers had not elected a party advocating greater autonomy for Quebec. Quebecers have to protect their language, but greater autonomy for Quebec suggests distancing Quebec from other Canadian provinces.
May all Canadians live in peace and harmony. Culturally, I am French. But home is also Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where I owned a lovely blue house, across the street from the campus of St Francis Xavier University and St Ninian’s Cathedral.
Ozias Leduc
Ozias Leduc (8 October 1864 – 16 June 1955) is my featured artist. His subject matter is often religious. But his art is nevertheless diverse and still lifes seem a favourite subject. Well-known artist Paul-Émile Borduas was one of his students. I am embedding a video. It is a French-language video with a lyrical ambiance. A couple is getting on a raft that will take them to Ozias Leduc’s house. It may be the smaller house.
Ozias Leduc’s house (Google)
Ozias Leduc’s house (Google)
St Ninians’ Cathedral, Antigonish, Nova Scotia
Closer to me, is St Ninian’s Cathedral, in Antigonish. Paintings in our Cathedral were the work of Ozias Leduc. I was in Antigonish when they were restored.
Love to everyone 💕
St. Ninian’s Cathedral, Antigonish, Nova Scotia
Leduc’s Boy with Bread, 1892-99, National Gallery of Canada (Wiki2.org.)