RussellinVT’s Comments (group member since Apr 11, 2024)

RussellinVT’s comments from the Ersatz TLS group.

Good stuff, AB, very educative. Remarkable how religion drove people this way and that. Colbert was not wrong to regret the loss of Protestant energy and talent. I always understood in a general rather inchoate way that England was one of the major beneficiaries. If in due course I find useful info in the Stanwood book I'll pass it on here.

The Wild Geese surely figure in literature as well as historical narratives, but I'm struggling to remember where. Thackeray seems the obvious place to start looking.

AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "...You've got me dipping into them again..."

I fell on one passage from 1942 that might appeal to your interest in ethnology and population movement. He rec..."

Interesting, AB. The French-origin names in S Africa hadn't struck me before. There don't appear to be many books specifically on the Huguenots. A recent one called The Global Refuge, by Owen Stanwood, seems to be directed mainly at the diaspora and gets quite favorable reviews, so I might see if the library can get a copy for me to look at.

RussellinVT wrote: "...You've got me dipping into them again..."

I fell on one passage from 1942 that might appeal to your interest in ethnology and population movement. He records an observation in an issue of Foreign Affairs that a certain General Hoffmann was descended, through his mother, from the Du Buisson family, and that like him, and like the great Moltke, nearly all the great German army leaders of the past hundred years, with the exception of Ludendorff, have had some Huguenot ancestry. Has a list ever been drawn up, he wonders, of the exiled families, of the gifts that France made to foreign countries through the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes?

I was interested to see how through the war years, in addition to reading much German literature, in his uncertain German – Faust, Eckermann’s Conversations, Magic Mountain, Lotte in Weimar - he read great tranches of English literature, in English – Shakespeare, Webster, Johnson, Boswell, Smollett, Keats, Jane Austen.

In the drama of France's defeat he shows, in emphatic terms, that he was a Gaullist from the very first, appalled by Pétain’s submission to the Germans and applauding De Gaulle’s Declaration, and the English. "How can one fail to approve Churchill?"

AB76 wrote: "His mentioning of Gide makes me wish Gide's journals were translated and accessible in english.."

Actually, Penguin did put out a one-volume translation of his Journals 1889-1949 back in 1967, which I bought and read, all 700+ pages, and still have! You've got me dipping into them again. They're still around, but all the inexpensive copies seem to exist only in New Zealand.

Ernst Jünger – The early months of 1944. EJ records the bombings, the atrocities, his efforts to help his son imprisoned on a charge, and the preparations for the Invasion which by early May is expected daily. News that it has happened does not reach the German HQ in Paris until the evening. In other passages you would hardy know there is a war on, because his attention is elsewhere - the meaning of words, writing style, flowers, fishes, insects, the Bible (especially Paul’s Letters). He discusses epigrammatic remarks of La Rochefoucauld and Chateaubriand. He reads the memoirs of Saint-Simon, the diaries of Pepys, the letters and diaries of Byron, the journals of Gide. His own journal is not out of place in such company. Amazingly, in March 1944, he records a discussion with another officer of the necessity of removing Kniebolo, by blowing him up in his office.

Paris in Ruins turned out to be a very good read. Explicitly linking the early history of the Impressionists, principally Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot, to the terrible events of the siege and then the suppression of the Commune – Smee ably conveys the horror of it all - really does illuminate the scene in a novel way. As he says, it explains Manet’s abandonment of his Spanish motifs and more generally his turn away from irony to the sincerity of ordinary life, and Morisot’s new and steely determination to commit to her vocation and become a professional painter (in the face of her mother’s wish that she, thirty and still single, get serious and get married). It also underscores how risky it was to associate oneself with a group whose declared republicanism allowed it to be suggested that they were sympathetic to the Communards, at a time when vengeful royalists and conservatives now held power.

I’m now looking around for studies of Manet and Morisot each on their own, with their works in chronological order so that you can see the development. Books on the Impressionists as a group merge their works in the general flow.

Passy, where the Morisots had their family home, features prominently. Manet and Degas used to visit the family before the war. The house survived the shelling (windows shattered, contents tumbled, but not structurally damaged). Others close by were destroyed. When I was working in Paris 30+ years ago I had occasion to go there regularly, and I enjoyed its villagey atmosphere. If I ever returned, and if I could afford it, it’s where I would choose to live.

AB76 wrote: "... the Morisot focus is fascinating, though from their portraits, i think Smee overstates their beauty by a mile..."

I agree. It seems Berthe would agree too, given that her comment on The Balcony was: “I am strange rather than ugly.” (!)

Thanks for the Huysmans tip. I've only ever read Against Nature.

Paris in Ruins – Sebastian Smee. I’m enjoying it so far. It’s evident that there is going to be a long build-up to the events of 1870-71, though it’s none the worse for that. I particularly like the way he brings Berthe Morisot to the forefront, as she is so often a background figure. Like the author, one of the pictures by the group that was most striking for me as a mid-teenager was The Balcony by Manet, not for the wooden and rather ridiculous figure of the man in the back, or the blank female figure standing to the right, but the seated figure with the deep, deep black eyes, who turns out to be Morisot herself.

The writing is matter-of-fact and rather conversational, not quite as stylish as one would expect from an art critic, very like that of Ross King, from whose The Judgment of Paris he seems to have borrowed a fair bit on the workings of the Salon. There’s none of the elegant wit of Otto Friedrich or Rupert Christiansen writing on the same period. Even so it has a swing to it, once he gets into his stride.

I have learned quite a lot about the political views of the group who would become the Impressionists. I’m not sure any of them were as radical and activist as the older Courbet, but it seems that virtually everyone in the group, including those from families who were comfortably off, like Bazille, were strongly republican.

Footnote: It seems to be conventional to be dismissive of many of the established artists who worked in the classical tradition and whose polished works were routinely selected by the Salon jury – Meissonier, Bouguereau, Gérôme, etc. I have to say that quite a few of their pictures I rather like!

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "how did that post get into our forum?"

Search me. Maybe he sent it to every Goodreads page he could find."

In my capacity as moderator I have deleted that post, so it should not now appear on anyone's feed. I have the ability as moderator to block that user from this group and will do so if it happens again.

Paris in Ruins

AB76 wrote: "will be good to compare notes, if you are reading it now or later, bit like with Junger."

Yes indeed. I'm about fifty pages in and have a number of comments already but will save them till I've got a bit further.

I finished The Call of the Tribe by Mario Vargas Llosa, an account of his journey from the earnest Communism and Existentialism of his youth, studying from cover to cover each issue of Les Temps Modernes as it came out, to the democratic liberalism of his maturity through seven affectionate assessments of philosophers and writers who particularly influenced him, starting with Adam Smith and ending with Jean-François Revel. A good read, and informative without getting too deep into the weeds.

AB76 wrote: "how did that post get into our forum?"

Search me. Maybe he sent it to every Goodreads page he could find.

I finished Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson. There’s far more detail on the tactics of soccer than any non-specialist could absorb. But there were some good stories. For example, I enjoyed reading about César Luis Menotti, the coach of Barcelona, Atletico Madrid and Argentina in the 1970s and 80s, who is said to have been an ineffably romantic figure, the embodiment of Argentinian bohemianism, a left-wing intellectual, philosopher and artist. This is one of his quotes, a bit unusual for a manager:

“There is a right-wing football and a left-wing football…Right-wing football wants to suggest that life is a struggle. It demands sacrifices. We have to become of steel and win by any method…obey and function, that’s what those with power want from players. That’s how they create retards, useful idiots that go with the system.”

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "My grandparents had bookcases galore...So i'm delighted to have picked up by chance Paris in Ruins Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism by Sebastian Smee Paris in Ruins by Sebastian Smee..."

P.S. As an illustration of what I was saying about the difference between the two new bookstores, this book wasn't on the shelves at middle-of-the-road Parnassus, but it was right there at The Bookshop.

Tam wrote: "I have read a fair amount of SF in my life. This one attracted me as it was shortlisted for the international Booker prize, and just plain curiosity, and I have perhaps an odd impression of Japan...."

The International Booker - I should have twigged. Look forward to hearing what you think.

Those stories of Japanese friends are singular in one way, but in another perhaps representative of actual Japanese norms.

AB76 wrote: "My grandparents had bookcases galore...So i'm delighted to have picked up by chance Paris in Ruins Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism by Sebastian Smee Paris in Ruins by Sebastian Smee, a book about the commune, Paris and the impressionist movement...."

How funny - I just picked up exactly that book as well, in Nashville, with the same eager anticipation. In my case I didn't learn about the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune until I did A-Level History (and French - Daudet's Contes du Lundi was a set book), but those conflicts I found riveting then and ever since (Michael Howard, Emile Zola, etc.)

Tam wrote: "I have set off reading 'Under the Eye of Big Bird' which turns out to be a novel about the hazards of cloning, rather than surviving a dystopian future catastrophe...."

Out of curiosity, Tam, what was it that led you to this book? I didn't recollect you being interested in futuristic sci-fi. The idea of babies being brought up by AI mothers is alarming but no longer dismissable as fantasy. Indeed, it's rather far-sighted for a 2016 novel.

Justine – Lawrence Durrell. I finished my latest, always enjoyable, re-read, and will soon move on to Balthazar. As I remember, only there do things begin to fall into place. For the moment it is an impressionistic examination of movements of the heart, and of the melancholy that afflicts the leading characters, with the ancient city as a dreamscape background. The richness of the prose, culminating in the great set-piece of the Mareotis duck hunt, does at times feel overdone. If there were a law against sumptuary in the writing of novels, Durrell would be a repeat offender. But really it’s a very classy performance, with just as many moments that are not overdone, and are instead wonderful, for example: when Melissa tells Nessim in terms that Justine is no longer faithful to him, that phrase “stood quivering in his mind, like a thrown knife.”

AB76 wrote: "Iron Cross is a UK magazine that covers stories from the German military in WW1 and WW2...The latest find is the Siebel Ferry, a kind of floating landing craft cum anti aircraft battery originally created for Operation Sealion."

Also very interesting. That photo does make them look quite imposing. I'm not familiar with Iron Cross magazine, but found there is quite a long piece about Siebel ferries on wikipedia. This mentions that after a few prototypes they developed a model that could cope with the waves of a Force 6 gale. So if they could have built enough of them - and achieved air superiority - a cross-Channel invasion might in fact have been feasible.

AB76 wrote: "The Victorian Crisis of Faith is really making me think, this slim volume of lectures published by the Church of England publishing house, the SPCK, has been a great find...."

Interesting, AB. Years ago I tried reading Newman's Apologia but didn't get far either.