tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post4717436760314354346..comments2024-03-27T16:48:21.039-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: Alphonse Daudet's Letters from My Windmill - I ought rather to be dispatching rose-coloured poems and basketfuls of love storiesAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-1385715644166229572014-03-17T13:07:24.055-05:002014-03-17T13:07:24.055-05:00I know. I had to double check - is this the same ...I know. I had to double check - is this the same guy who wrote that book about syphilis? It is.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-55179832479967528952014-03-17T11:59:05.949-05:002014-03-17T11:59:05.949-05:00I've read Daudet's In the Land of Pain whi...I've read Daudet's In the Land of Pain which is very good but certainly not charming. I should get myself a copy of Letters from My Windmill as it seems a perfect armchair travel sort of book.Stefaniehttp://somanybooksblog.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-48027654742613806932014-03-16T21:31:00.028-05:002014-03-16T21:31:00.028-05:00I wondered if I should omit linking to Colleen'...I wondered if I should omit linking to Colleen's post, since the comments have a little to much of me in them, but I could not ignore her enthusiasm. I hope she gets to more Daudet soon. Both of the books you mention sound enjoyable. I am also curious about <i>The Nabob</i>, although perhaps as much for its subject. The Tarascon book and <i>Le Petit Chose</i> sound more like pure fun, even with all of those hideous bugs.<br /><br />RT - Since translation, in <a href="http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.com/2010/05/an-entirely-separate-genre-independent.html" rel="nofollow">Donald Frame's words</a>, "is an art, though a very modest minor one," I give the translator very modest minor credit or blame.<br /><br />When I say "Daudet did this, Daudet did that," the label "Daudet" is really just a shorthand for the implied author created in collaboration by Daudet, his translator, and me. I am reading and evaluating the text in front of me, not the French seen through a haze.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-67865232755935362802014-03-16T20:08:29.728-05:002014-03-16T20:08:29.728-05:00I always wonder about such books . . . How much cr...I always wonder about such books . . . How much credit or blame goes to translator? . . . I usually like to compare translations . . . R.T.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13220814349193561823noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-24904808764040439212014-03-16T16:11:19.575-05:002014-03-16T16:11:19.575-05:00I know about Mistral but he's not as widely re...I know about Mistral but he's not as widely read as Pagnol and Giono. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-89073756459655494562014-03-16T15:09:01.577-05:002014-03-16T15:09:01.577-05:00AR(T), no disrespect meant. Sometimes I can be bad...AR(T), no disrespect meant. Sometimes I can be bad at reading (or conveying) tone on these interwebs. All I noticed on that comment thread was camaraderie and fellow readers exchanging their opinions about interesting literary matters. Moving on, other interesting Daudet works are his very funny novel Tartarin of Tarascon and his memoir, Little Good-For-Nothing or Little What's-His-Name (Petite chose), a little excerpt:<br />The child protagonist's rich industrialist father having gone bankrupt, his family has to move to a much poorer house in another town, Lyons to escape creditors. He loses his best friend and his parrot pet, and:<br /><br /> "Think of my despair: no more Friday? No more parrot! Robinson Crusoe was no longer possible. Moreover, what means was there, with the best will in the world, to devise a desert island, in a fourth story, in a damp and dirty house, in the Rue Lanterne?<br /><br /> Oh, that horrible house! I shall see it all my life: the staircase was sticky; the courtyard was like a well; the porter, a shoemaker, had his shop against the water pump. It was hideous.<br /><br /> The evening of our arrival, as old Annou was installing herself in the kitchen, she gave a cry of distress: 'Cockroaches! Cockroaches!' We hurried to her. What a sight! The kitchen was full of these disgusting bugs; they were on the dresser, along the walls, in the drawers, on the mantelpiece, on the sideboard, everywhere. We stepped on them even without meaning to do it. Faugh! Annou had already killed a great many; but the more she killed, the more they came. The crawled out of the sink-hole, we plugged the sink-hole, but the next evening they came back through some other place, we could not tell where.We were obliged to get a cat to expressly to kill them, and every evening there was a fearful slaughter in the kitchen."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-79857893479686739132014-03-16T12:58:00.308-05:002014-03-16T12:58:00.308-05:00Men, not boys, and everyone was reasonably nice, u...Men, not boys, and everyone was reasonably nice, unless "nice" means "no conflict of any sort." When I am that ignorant or sloppy in public, I beg you, tell me.<br /><br />The combatant with the wolf is actually a goat, but quite a lively, heroic goat. I will bet that what you imagined the book to be like is in there somewhere. The newspaper column format allows him to hop around, in subject and rhetorical mode. <br /><br />Pagnol, of course! For some reason Pagnol has never quite caught on as literature in the U.S. Film buffs are more likely to know him. The <i>Jean de Florette</i> and <i>Manon des sources</i> movies contributed to the American love of Provence, I think, even though the films make Provence look horrible.<br /><br />Come to think of it, Giono has never received his due in the U.S. either. I wonder about Frédéric Mistral, too, what role he (or his Nobel Prize) played. Daudet devotes one of his sketches to a celebration of Mistral.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-42127223559136266022014-03-16T12:15:59.063-05:002014-03-16T12:15:59.063-05:00A "mortal combat with a wolf'?" That...A "mortal combat with a wolf'?" That sounds so much better than <i>Sapho,</i> a novel I didn't think was particularly stimulating or memorable. I have to say, what I imagined <i>Letters from My Windmill</i> to be from its title, and what you describe here, are two completely different things!LMRhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08538873868140070018noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-38982867077335780582014-03-16T10:40:37.038-05:002014-03-16T10:40:37.038-05:00That Idle Jam treat was delicious, thank you. Reme...That Idle Jam treat was delicious, thank you. Remember boys, be nice… Plus, I got introduced to Orwell's Benefit of Clergy. And, related to the misogyny theme from that Idle comment thread, I find it interesting that the very first lines from the one volume English edition of the Collected Works of Alphonse Daudet are:<br /><br />"Women certainly are a horrid invention! How I wish that a Black Plague or a second Deluge would carry you all off! What an abode of peace, what an oasis this world would then be!" <br /><br />This chivalrous, amiable sentiment was being uttered by my cousin, a fine young man of twenty-five, about six-foot-two in height, and with an eyeglass always stuck in his eye, which seems to expand when he gives vent to ferocious invectives against my sex.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-83712084741445311532014-03-16T01:36:03.194-05:002014-03-16T01:36:03.194-05:00This is something I read in school when I was 13. ...This is something I read in school when I was 13. I wonder how I'd see it now.<br /><br />Foreigners romanticize Provence a lot and it exasperates me sometimes. Yes, it's sunny and beautiful but lots of other places are beautiful too, as you say yourself. <br /><br />For the French Daudet played a role in that romantic vision of Provence but Pagnol played an even bigger part in that. Pagnol's books about his childhood are really popular. <br />Giono is also well-known. I suppose impressionist painters and Van Gogh concur to the myth too. <br /><br />Btw, when you say in French «c'est l'Arlesienne» it means you're talking of something that will never happen or will never come. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com