Jan-Maat > Recent Status Updates

End of an eight page section with both parts of the same person discussing Proust - maybe his novel is more important to this one than Woof "Orlando" ? The desire here is not really to change but to return to what they once were in times past

I like the detail that Aline's favourite ice cream is a Dame Blanche; which is basically vanilla ice cream (and can you be more vanilla than having vanilla as yiur favourite flavour of ice cream), like her clothes earlier (biege, laura ashley) suggests being unobtrusive, avoiding attention.
Though in this case the double portion of chocolate sauce might indicate a slight wish for self indulgence

Orlanda and Aline meet each other / themselves

-et ma bouteille de whisky?
...
Orlanda regardait la mère de Lucien avec épovante et reconnaissait l'image qui avait poursuivi le malheureux dans ses rêves: le cheveu était gris, clairsemé jusqu'à la calvitie au sommet de la tête, elle avait le visage bouffi avec le nez mauve de l'alcoolisme...

Il est certain qu'Aline Berger ne se fait aucune idée de ce genre de vie, il y a dix générationsque sa famille a de l'argent. Marie-Jeanne parle un français grammaticalement incertain et n'a plus rien lu depepuis qu'elle a eu le bonheur de pouvoir quitter l'ecole, ce qui n'empêche pas l'ambition: elle veut être mariée, avoir des enfants, une maison et deux voitures.

...car la mère a si profondément inscrit ses convictions dans la fille qu'Aline leur obéit sans les connaître.

-sans doute, si la pièce est sale, c'est qu'il épargne sur les détergents!

A sign that taki g over someone else's body and life has it's own hazards

Braudel cites a 1940s book about Dante which argues that the legendary voyages of Saint Brenden are an Irish version of the voyages of sinbad the sailer.

I believe the manuscript history of St.Brenden stories predates the Sinbad tradition which complicates matters slightly...

The slow process of change and cultural adoption. Use of Arabic numerals forbidden in Florence-1299, likewise in Freiburg in 1520, used in Antwerp only from the end of the 16th century.

Spread of paper, Bagdad 794, 11th century Valencia and Greece, western europe from circa 1350

'Spanish' men's fashion that emerged 14th century stemmed from Siberia while the women's fashions from Cyprus came from Tang China

Braudel says that even now (ie 1960s) the lifestyle in Croatia, despite being mixed with many other influences, is like that in Italy, although of an Italy of long ago.

Here I would have liked some examples - which even the footnotes deny me.

Albert Durieux etait un homme subtil, il ne commit pas l'erreur de proposer le mariage a Aline. Il sentait fort bien vette zone de retrait ou il ne fallait pas tenter de penetrer et dont elle-meme, en verite, ne savait rien.

Coffee arrived in Constantinople around 1550, in venice about 1580, it only reach France and England in the 17th century (Marseille- 1646)

Bandits might be supportrd by the local nobility, in.some regions relations seem particularly close - catalonia, southern Italy and Sicily, the papal states.

The Ottoman Turks defeat the Mamluks by using artillery (the mamluks apparently thought it was a dishonourable weapon and so shunned it). Artillery was the basis Braudel notes for the success of France, Muscovy (against Kazan at least), and Spain against Granada.

le parfum délicat de la féminité bien tenue lui fut insupportable, c'était la prison où il avait été enfermé et dont il n'avait jamais imaginé s'évader,...je crois que les filles ne m'intéresseront pas, se dit-il. En somme, il semble que j'ai changé de sexe, mais pas de sexualité.

Aline - half of the main character - is reading "Darkover Landfall" by Marion Zimmer Bradley as a rest from reading "Orlando" by Virginia Woolf.
The MZB is an interesting choice, I wonder if Harpman knew when writing that MZB's daughter publicised that she had been sexually abused by her mother - in any case it supports the theme of the danger and risks involved in a project of absolute self liberation

Elle ressemble á sa mère, qui ressemblait à sa mère, ce sont des générations de femmes bien élevées...

Consciousness has been split:
- La vérité, je le sais, est qu'elle me détestait, je lui causais sans cesse des difficultés en désirant des choses qui la faisaient rougir...

They look at themselves:
-les bottes de cuir clair, la jupe de soie et la veste Laura Ashley forment un camaïeu de beige...

Jamais une femme n'a été homme, jamais un homme n'a été femme.

- this narrator seems to doubt the reliability of Ovid's Metamorphosis -beware!

At the end of the 14th century the Mediterranean belonged to the cities and the city states, larger states like the Byzantine empireand the kingdom of Aragón were the product of their large cities.
This situation changed completelyduring the 15th century

English Levant company between 1581 and 1592 was making profits of up to 300%; but in 1595 the company was operating 15 ships with a total crew of 790. Mainly sailing to Egypt, Cyprus, and the Aegean. Less often to Venice and Algiers.

Presumably mostly smaller vessels buying high value luxury goods - spices, carpets, silk

Importing grain from distant countries was a clear sign of overall prosperity, although it was catastrophic for the poor.

In Portugal grain was pushed out by vines and olive trees. Grain was increasingly imported from Flanders and the Baltic region - this trade was conducted by Bretons who sold the grain in Lisbon for gold.

Later the Bretons were also transporting grain to Galicia

There was bread for the poor and bread for the rich and only the latter was made from wheat.

Pepper. I woke up in the dark hours of last night thinking about this. On the XVIth century Portugal controlled the supply of pepper to Europe. In 1586 Phillip II signed a contract for a consortium to buy up that pepper for wholsale into European countries at a fixed rate. The consortium had 20 shares, 7 of which were held by the Fuggers - a German banking family

To pay for the war in Flanders, the king of Spain sent ships loaded with silver from Barcelona to Genoa. Sometimes, ships were lost at sea - but not so often as the insurance premium that the spanish were paying was 1.5%

The story goes that in Mali in 1450 salt was exchanged for its own weight in gold

At the same time as there was emigration from Spain chiefly to the Americas there was also imigration into Spain mostly from the Auvergne.

Sardinia and Corsica as semi-closed economic zones. Very little money in circulation in Corsica, therefore taxes could be paid in goods - grain, cgestnuts, silkworms, or oil. While a school teacher might be paid 40 liters of grain a year for their work.

Sardines in the text.

I tell you, if there is a fish in a book that I read, it will mostly be a sardine.