Each time I visit Paris, I am looking for the Paris that I fell in love with : the nineteenth century Paris of culture, literature, education, architecture, language, Impressionism, science, and Intellectuals. Is it possible to still find these treasures from the nineteenth century? Yes, it is, however, one must first know what to look for and where. Impressionist Art In 1990, I became interested in French history and culture and began to study the art of Impressionist painting by visiting museums and reading art history books and Impressionist biographies. The paintings of the Impressionists ..read more

As I translate and study French Literature, I am always looking for connections to my experiences in France, specifically Paris, and the great French writers and philosophers of  littérature from the 18th and 19th centuries such as Hugo, Balzac, Valery, Verne, and Voltaire. When I was living in Paris in the fall of 2012, I purchased Voltaire Lettres D’Alsace A Sa Nièce Madame Denis (1938), a compilation of 100 letters written by Voltaire to his niece Madame Denis while he lived in Strasbourg and Colmar around 1753. The connection? My family history dates to this time in Alsace, France and ..read more

Where to start? I’m currently reading André Gide’s Journals in which he reviews the books that he reads, on average, of one book a day! C’est possible? Peut-être, non ..read more

I recently revisited one of my favorite books in my Library: Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris by David Pinkney. It has been 10 years since I read this remarkable history of the Paris that I know and love which features large, elegant buildings with stone facades and wrought iron details, majestic parks and boulevards, corner cafés, cobbled stone streets…thank you to Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the principal Architect. This is the Paris that was the setting for the Novels of Balzac, Hugo, Baudelaire, Maupassant and documented by many of the Impressionists such as Monet, Manet, Renoir, and ..read more

Paul Valéry: The Mind in the Mirror by Dr. Elizabeth Sewell, Professor of Literature, Cambridge University, Vassar, and Notre Dame. For the past two years, I have been on a Paul Valéry quest and have posted 16 blogs just from his book of Poems, Alphabet [see post]. I first read Alphabet in August 2021, and was fascinated by this new idea (for me) of the birth of self and its world at dawn—the recreation of self each new morning. As there is no English translation, I set about translating each poem from French, chewing on these philosophical ideas in English, and synthesizing these new ideas in ..read more

This is the concluding post for Paul Valery’s Alphabet, Quelle to Zenith, the 16th to 24th hour of the day. I thought by this point, our Narrator would be wounding down his day, heading to bed, seven to eight hours sleep and all! Alas, only the last hour, “Z”, Zenith, contains the night sleep, and he is awake at dawn and ready for the next day. Je m’éveille et me lève et vais…. In our last poem, “P”, our lovers were staring intently into each other’s eyes, through budding tears. They had had a quarrel, followed by silence, and then reconciled in the garden where they were once again “masters o ..read more

On se tait. We are silent; One is silent; I am silent. The third person singular on in French represents I, me, you, we, one, they, he, she, or people. Just as in English, one must rely on the context. I love this pronoun. It is so easy to use when speaking French and requires the nasally, swallowed, back of your throat “ahn”. Valéry is using on in the 14th hour to represent all. On se tait, I am silent. When I first read Valéry’s “O” chapter almost a year ago, I took this heart and applied it to my life. When I am silent, then I am listening to others. When I am silent, I am reflecting, I am ..read more

In the chapters “M” from Paul Valéry’s Alphabet, we are now half-way through our day, the 12th hour. If my day began at 6am, it would be 6pm. I would be preparing my dinner, or “supper” as we say here in the U.S. Valéry includes three poems in the chapters for “M”. According to his PLANS in the appendix, the themes of “M” are a continuation of the themes in  “L”- Arbre. Amour. Mille fois, j’ai déjà ressenti l’Unique… A thousand times over, he still feels unique. Our narrator has a thirst for knowledge which brings a joy in feeling the coming of the next idea! I love this. This is how I fe ..read more

“L” La paresse agrandit les minuscules choses prochaines. 11th hour For those who are following this series of poems in Alphabet by the twentieth century French poet Paul Valéry, you are anticipating the next sequential letter of the alphabet “K” in this post. However, Valéry chose to omit two letters of the alphabet, K and W, when he wrote this book of poems which correspond to the 24 hours in a day. We are now in the 11th hour, “L”, in which “laziness enlarges the tiniest things”! In the previous hour “J”, the 10th hour, our narrator has just finished a wonderful déjeuner with good food and ..read more

Drowsiness. Heat. Midday Je m’interroge au mileu de ma fumée si j’irai tantôt vers la mer. 10th hour Midday. What to do with this beautiful, sunshiny, day? Will our narrator go towards the sea, or the mountains, or visit some friends? Paul Valéry, the author of Alphabet, was born in the small Mediterranean seaport of Sète, near Hérault, France. [see my featured photo from my trip to Carcassonne]. Imagine the possibilities of this day in southern France, on the Mediterranean… Je me peins le possible et j’efface. He paints the possible, and he erases it. He wants to be productive, be useful, as ..read more