Posts from — November 2008

I didn’t know that they had “salvaged books from raids on aristocrats’ libraries during the French Revolution and hid resistance material during the Nazi occupation”. I’m talking about the Paris bouquinistes, at whose stalls I can never resist stopping to browse. When I worked at Université Paris VII (when it was in the old premises at Jussieu) for a semester last year, I had to walk past at least a kilometre of bouquinistes on my way to and from work, and the twenty minute walk became much longer. I acquired some wonderful treasures, though. In the photo, above,  I have just purchased one of the famous Tintin books (Vol 714 pour Sydney), which have a cult following among the French, or at least so it seemed among my fellow profs. You can read the rest of the article from which my opening quote was taken in my (Australian) hometown newspaper, The Age. Apparently the bouquinistes are under threat from “online dealers and a change in Parisians’ reading and shopping habits. Many now sell tourist trinkets to stay afloat, cramming their stalls with souvenirs”. Fortunately the municipal authorities are trying to do something about it.

(This picture of Martine Aubry is from Liberation)

We’ve been hearing the idiom ‘d’un cheveu’ in the French news lately, so I decided to translate Yvan Amar’s explanation of it from his Les Mots de la Semaine column on Radio France:

In France they’ve been voting to elect the head of the Socialist Party. Of course, not everyone has voted, only the members of the party. And Martine Aubry has come first by a whisker (in French the idiom is ‘d’un cheveu’: by one hair). This is one of those expressions we hear often, and Abdalla Hamlaoui asked us what it means, and especially how it can be explained.

Everyone understands its meaning: Martine Aubrey had more votes than Segolene Royal, but very few! The difference was minimal, miniscule. So, we know that a hair is very fine, and often we use this word to express something which is so small as to be almost nothing.

But there is another reason for using this word. We say sometimes that one competitor has won by a head. This means that they have won by very little. So, one hair is even less than one head, but we are still using the same type of image because the hair is on the head. We also say quite often a ‘short head’, if we want to add that it’s only a little difference, or we might even say a ‘very short head’. And sometimes we keep only the adjective, as in a ‘short victory’, or a ‘very short victory’.

The photo is from German newspaper Die Welt.

There’s so much going on in PARIS political circles, I don’t know where to begin.

I think I’ll leave Mesdames Royal and Aubry to sort out who’s boss of the Socialist Party this week before I write about them, leaving me to concentrate on Madame le Ministre Dati.

Rachida Dati is Sarkozy’s Justice Minister and the first Muslim woman to hold a high government post. Since coming to office, she has pushed through many of Sarkozy’s law and order reforms, and is now facing opposition from the magistrates’ union on a number of issues, including overcrowded prisons with high suicide rates.

Now, at 42, Dati is to give birth to her first child in January, but has so far refused to name the father, saying her personal life is ‘complicated’, a descriptor that seems to have been lifted straight from Facebook. Dati has for some time, however, been wearing a large, expensive looking ring, on the fourth finger of her left hand. Until last week, anyway, when the so-called sympathetic-to-Sarkozy newspaper Le Figaro published an interview with Dati about her plans to reform criminal law.

This topic has been overshadowed, though, by the interest in her ring, or rather the disappearance of it. The photograph accompanying the interview was one that had originally appeared in Le Figaro in June, at that time complete with the ring, but this time with the ring photoshopped out. The motivations for this piece of journalistic creativity remain obscure. Was it a desire to de-bling a member of Sarkozy’s government, to detract attention from the fourth finger of her left hand, or something else? Whatever it was, it had the opposite effect.

No doubt everyone will be watching to see just who visits her next January. Mind you, she says she’ll only be taking a week’s maternity leave.

(Readers of German can also read the article in Die Welt from which the photo was taken.)

My pianist son, as opposed to my cricketer son (that’s him in the red helmet), has requested for his Christmas present a ticket to see the wonderful pianist Maurizio POLLINI. Pollini is playing one gig only in Paris, on January 25 at the SALLE PLEYEL in the rue du faubourg Saint-Honoré in the eighth. Pollini is going to be playing Beethoven Sonatas Opus 31 no. 2 and Opus 57, and Deuxième Sonata by French conductor and composer Pierre BOULEZ.

Opus 31 no.2, also known as ‘THE TEMPEST’, is BEETHOVEN’S musical response to Shakespeare’s play, while Opus 57 also known as the ‘APPASSIONATA’ was considered by Beethoven to be his greatest piano sonata. I remember taking the kids to see ‘The Tempest’ performed by the Australian Bell Shakespeare Company in Melbourne many years ago, but will be re-reading it before January 25!

Pierre BOULEZ’S 2nd SONATA is often considered one of the greatest works of the 20th century. In common with other contemporary music, Boulez’s work has been championed by POLLINI throughout his career, as have the cornerstones of the piano repertoire, such as the Beethoven sonatas.

As a little foretaste, here is a 2004 clip of Maurizio Pollini and the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA playing an excerpt of the first movement of BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTO NO. 4, with conductor Claudio ABBADO.

As with most events these days, Pollini’s concert at the Salle Pleyel can be booked online. As I was doing so, I noticed there was an option for printing the tickets chez vous. So, voilà, now I have my tickets all printed and ready to go in two months time. For extra security I was able to save the tickets as a pdf file and send them to my son in England. I’ve found this printing-at-home option is available for many bookings now—not just for concerts and theatre, but also some train tickets. It sure beats queuing. Mind you, I’ve had some interesting conversations in Paris queues over the years, and considerably honed my French speaking skills at the same time. Maybe I’ll forego the printing chez vous option once in a while…

From Liberation:

Speeches, postcards, and an umbrella…

Three days of images from the heart of the Socialist Party…

And from Le Monde:

Direct from Reims: Royal slams the door, Hamon remains a candidate, Aubry and Delanoe keep quiet…

Three hours after the start of the meeting to decide which resolutions to adopt, Segolene Royal and her followers announced their departure. ‘The hand that we held out has not been grasped,’ said Royal. ‘We are taking action. I call on all the party members to choose next Thursday between a return to the methods of old, or a Socialist Party with alternative methods. The SP needs to change.’

I love YVAN AMAR of Radio France International’s ‘learn French’ section. He doesn’t know me, but I regard him as my personal French tutor. Each day he takes a word from the news bulletins (les mots de l’acualité), and discusses its meaning, origins and usage. This week we’ve had chouchou, obamania, coude à coude, and motion (the last two were explaining the very complicated voting for various motions that has been going on in the socialist party, about which I wrote earlier). The transcript for each program is also available. Thanks to the internet, I can listen to Radio France even when I’m back in Australia.

Then each week, Yvan also presents a longer program, called Danse des mots, in which he presents interviews and discussions with all manner of people on the subject of francophonie. Recent topics covered include ‘Indigenous French speakers’, ‘the birth of social and political French’, ‘Francophone forum in Quebec’ and ‘Stylistic figures used in contemporary French’.

I download all these, and also the twice daily downloadable news bulletins, put them all on my MP3 player, and listen to them while I am walking to work, or standing in queues, or travelling on the Metro. Voilà!