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Kinderscènes
On ne saurait trouver de livre peuplé d'un si grand nombre d'adorables petites filles déjà presque écloses : Rose et Röschen, Julia la malicieuse et Justine la victime, Dolly Jackson qui se meurt dans sa douzième année, Francine la sournoise, Solange, la fille de la dame "pas comme il faut" de La Bourboule, et Éliane, la Languedocienne de quatorze ans, aux beaux yeux cernés...
240 pages, Paperback
First published October 4, 1977
2 people are currently reading
156 people want to read
About the author
Valery Larbaud
148 books21 followersHe was born in Vichy, Allier, the only child of a pharmacist. His father died when he was 8, and he was brought up by his mother and aunt. His father had been owner of the Vichy Saint-Yorre mineral water springs, and the family fortune assured him an easy life. He travelled Europe in style. On luxury liners and the Orient Express he carried off the dandy role, with spa visits to nurse fragile health.
Poèmes par un riche amateur, published in 1908, received Octave Mirbeau's vote for Prix Goncourt. Three years later, his novel Fermina Márquez, inspired by his days as a boarder at Sainte-Barbe-des-Champs at Fontenay-aux-Roses, had some Prix Goncourt votes in 1911.
He spoke six languages including English, Italian and Spanish. In France he helped translate and popularise Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walt Whitman, Samuel Butler, and James Joyce, whose Ulysses was translated by Auguste Morel (1924-1929) under Larbaud's supervision.
At home in Vichy, he saw as friends Charles-Louis Philippe, André Gide, Léon-Paul Fargue and Jean Aubry, his future biographer. An attack of hemiplegia and aphasia in 1935 left him paralysed. Having spent his fortune, he had to sell his property and 15,000 book library. Despite his illness, he continued to receive many honorary titles, and in 1952 he was awarded the Prix National des Lettres.
The Prix Littéraire Valery Larbaud was created in 1957 by L'Association Internationale des Amis de Valery Larbaud, a group created to promote the author's work. Past winners of this yearly award include J.M.G. Le Clézio, Jacques Réda, Emmanuel Carrère, and Jean Rolin.
Georges Perec's character Bartlebooth is a cross between Melville's Bartleby and Larbaud's Barnabooth.
Poèmes par un riche amateur, published in 1908, received Octave Mirbeau's vote for Prix Goncourt. Three years later, his novel Fermina Márquez, inspired by his days as a boarder at Sainte-Barbe-des-Champs at Fontenay-aux-Roses, had some Prix Goncourt votes in 1911.
He spoke six languages including English, Italian and Spanish. In France he helped translate and popularise Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walt Whitman, Samuel Butler, and James Joyce, whose Ulysses was translated by Auguste Morel (1924-1929) under Larbaud's supervision.
At home in Vichy, he saw as friends Charles-Louis Philippe, André Gide, Léon-Paul Fargue and Jean Aubry, his future biographer. An attack of hemiplegia and aphasia in 1935 left him paralysed. Having spent his fortune, he had to sell his property and 15,000 book library. Despite his illness, he continued to receive many honorary titles, and in 1952 he was awarded the Prix National des Lettres.
The Prix Littéraire Valery Larbaud was created in 1957 by L'Association Internationale des Amis de Valery Larbaud, a group created to promote the author's work. Past winners of this yearly award include J.M.G. Le Clézio, Jacques Réda, Emmanuel Carrère, and Jean Rolin.
Georges Perec's character Bartlebooth is a cross between Melville's Bartleby and Larbaud's Barnabooth.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 14, 2015
A (literally) wonderful collection of eight delicate stories exploring the inner worlds of children, originally published in France in 1918. All the children featured are rather privileged, smart, and cultured, but still the perceptions and thoughts and actions and interactions are so carefully and accurately evoked that they become universal.
The children in the stories are all adolescents (12 – 15 yrs old) and so are experiencing some particularly difficult transitions – from becoming conscious of class differences to awakening sexual desires to changing perceptions of time (or more accurately entering adult time from the relative timelessness of childhood). Most of the stories involve the interplay of friends, and there’s hardly anything I like more than the evocation of shared worlds between children; there’s real magic in these that is rarely if ever re-experienced in later life. The whole collection has a fairy tale atmosphere, and as in fairy tales there are shadows and dangers and injuries, but also a sense that everything will turn out fine.
One of my favorites was the shortest, The Hour With the Face, at only 5 pages long. It involved nothing more than a boy waiting for his music teacher for an hour, hoping he never arrives. He spends this hour in silent conversation with a face he sees in the veins of a marble mantelpiece, a face that no adult has ever noticed.
I know very little about Valery Larbaud, but I do know that he was also a poet and that a collection of his poems has just been translated for the first time into English, this task done by Ron Padgett and Bill Zavatsky, both of whom have put out excellent poetry translations from the French.
The children in the stories are all adolescents (12 – 15 yrs old) and so are experiencing some particularly difficult transitions – from becoming conscious of class differences to awakening sexual desires to changing perceptions of time (or more accurately entering adult time from the relative timelessness of childhood). Most of the stories involve the interplay of friends, and there’s hardly anything I like more than the evocation of shared worlds between children; there’s real magic in these that is rarely if ever re-experienced in later life. The whole collection has a fairy tale atmosphere, and as in fairy tales there are shadows and dangers and injuries, but also a sense that everything will turn out fine.
One of my favorites was the shortest, The Hour With the Face, at only 5 pages long. It involved nothing more than a boy waiting for his music teacher for an hour, hoping he never arrives. He spends this hour in silent conversation with a face he sees in the veins of a marble mantelpiece, a face that no adult has ever noticed.
I know very little about Valery Larbaud, but I do know that he was also a poet and that a collection of his poems has just been translated for the first time into English, this task done by Ron Padgett and Bill Zavatsky, both of whom have put out excellent poetry translations from the French.
June 8, 2021
Mijn bespreking staat op m'n blog: https://thedreamlifeofbalsosnell.org/... en op Mappalibri: http://mappalibri.be/?navigatieid=61&...
July 9, 2014
This book had its moments their were areas I really enjoyed some that I felt I had no clue what was going on and then just odd areas.
September 6, 2021
Bejubeld in de pers, maar viel mij wat tege,.
September 26, 2008
My friend Cathy Wald translated this book, which is said to be Marcel Proust's favorite. It captures the feeling and time of childhood like no other book I've read. Enjoy this gem!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews