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editor
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 Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 11:23 am Post subject: |
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Cousin Bette
BBC Miniseries
Based on the novel by Honoré de Balzac
DVD
| Quote: | Hortense: You exaggerate. He's attracted by the Hulot name and influence, but he's not a fool. He'll assess my beauty very much upon the value of my dowry.
Adeline: ... dear ....
Hortense: Come, maman, it's natural enough. The man's ambitious. I don't mind if you and papa can arrange the match. I'll take the councillor quite willingly. After all, it's hardly likely that I shall ever find myself a handsome, young man with a title and a genius for sculpture.
Bette: Ah, now, that I must admit! Such a character is very rare indeed.
Hortense: If he exsts at all, in fact.
Adeline: Hortense!
Hortense: No, no, Bette has rallied me about the councillor. Now it's my turn. Let me put you to the test. Better still, I'll make a wager with you. Give me proof that your young man is what you say and you shall have this yellow shawl of mine. You know you've always liked it. It's your color. And the quality. Feel it!
Bette: You don't ask that I bring him here to visit? Only ...
Hortense: Only that you prove that there is a young Count (Wenceslas) Steinbock, that he is a sculptor and a protegee of yours.
Bette: Done! |
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 12:33 pm Post subject: |
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From Omens and Lucky Charms:
With the Skin
Poems of Aleksander Wat
Hardcover
Translated and edited by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
| Quote: | Paris Revisited
At every new return
my first day in this city -
like the first day of creation:
and I see, I see that it's good.
Here a thousand voices
sound reveille to life!
The memory of places sings,
a pathetic cantatrice -
and her voice is not getting old
and her echo never fades
refracted from venerable stones
in eternal repetition
ever the same, not the same,
live, never dying,
woven into a frivolous
tune in the street.
Here a thousand voices
sound reveille to life!
Call and forbid you to die!
Summon, restore to life!
A thousand lips entice you!
A thousand charms cast spells:
fulgurant reason
in eyes met by chance,
a smile that opens lips
like a flower after the night,
sweet tenderness of the air
in the avenue of trimmed chestnuts,
a call of a wandering tune
and the smell of earthly foods
and a rainbow on the pavement
of an old church across the square ...
And a young man's faded shadow
who - so long ago! - was discovering
this world for the first time.
Here a thousand voices
sound reveille to life!
Rise from the dead,
son of misfortune!
Bow humbly to this land,
kiss the calloused hand
of the old city of Paris.
(-- pgs. 40-41) |
Link to this entry
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Last edited by editor on Sun Sep 20, 2009 3:04 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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editor
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| Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2009 3:03 pm Post subject: |
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From Omens and Lucky Charms:
If It Die ...
Hardcover
By Andre Gide
Translated by Dorothy Bussy
| Quote: | Half-way down, I left the sunny side, thinking I would try the shady. I was feeling so joyful that I went along singing and skipping, my eyes turned up to Heaven. And then, all at once, I saw coming down to me, as though in answer to my happiness, a little, fluttering, golden thing, falling through the shade like a bit of sunshine. Nearer and nearer it came, hovered for a moment, and then settled on my cap, Holy Ghostwise. I put up my hand and a charming little canary-bird nestled into it; the little creature was palpitating like my own heart, which was as light in my bosom and as winged as any bird. Surely the excess of my joy had become visible, though perhaps not to the dull senses of man; surely, for eyes of any discernment, my whole being must be shining with the brightness of a decoy mirrored and it was my radiance that had drawn this creature down from Heaven.
I ran home in delight to my mother, carrying my canary with me; but what chiefly excited and uplifted me was the thrilling assurance that the bird had been sent by Heaven especially in order to mark me out. I was already more than inclined to think I had a vocation of a mystic nature; ... (-- p. 164) |
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editor
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| Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 2:09 pm Post subject: |
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With Fondest Regards
Hardcover
By Françoise Sagan
| Quote: | I first became acquainted with gambling one June 21st. Born on the first day of summer, I approached the gaming tables with firm resolve on the evening of my twenty-first birthday. I entered the Palm Beach in Cannes with a godfather on either side of me, both of whom were amused to witness my debut on the green baize. They did indeed witness the start of my career, but they were not there to see where it led, for by then I had escaped their surveillance and was racing from casino to casino without them.
(N.B. Contrary to what's been said about me, it's not true that I have lost any 'fortunes' on the green baize, never having had one - strangely enough - at my disposal. I have lost at the tables only what my way of life has left me to play with, a life not of luxury but of dreaming - a dream that meant I should have no material cares and that the only cause for worry and anguish in the faces of those around me should be the pain of love. The kind of protection with which I've always sought to safeguard my immediate present, heedless of days to come, has never left me the smallest fortune to squander in games of chance. And so I've had no difficulty in always playing beyond my means, which is the very essence of gambling. Moreover, I tend to win when I gamble, odd as it may seem, and the owners of the casinos where I've playedmust laugh bitterly whenever anyone refers to the millions that I'm supposed to have lost at their tables. I wanted to make this parenthetical aside in the event I should be suspected of masochism, and so that gambling not be seen as ome evil companion of mine. Just as my friends have been good friends to me, so too has chance been a good companion, changeable certainly, but both ways). (Opening paragraphs of Games of Chance, pgs. 17-19) |
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editor
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| Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 9:44 am Post subject: |
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Silken Eyes
By Francoise Sagan
Translated from the French by Joanna Kilmartin
| Quote: | In appearance, M. Ximenestre closely resembled a drawing by Chaval: corpulent, with an air of amiable bewilderment. But now that the month of December had begun, he wore ane xpression so woebegone as to make every passerby with any heart at all want to stop and ask him what the matter. The trouble lay in the approach of Christmas, which M. Ximenestre, good Christian though he was, was this year contemplating with dismay, not having a sou with which to pamper the gift-hungry Mme.Simenestre, his good=for-nothing son, Charles, and his daughter, Augusta, an excellent calypso dancer. Not a sou: that was the exact state of his affairs. And there was no question of advances or loans. Both had already been obtained, without the knowledge of Mme. Ximenestre and his children, in order to gratify the latest vice of this supposed breadwinner; in short, to gratify M. Ximenestre's fatal passion: gambling.
Not just the ordinary kind of gambling where the gold trickles over the green baize, nor yet the kind where horses strain to the last gasp over another sort of green baize, but a game, yet unknown in France, which had, alas, become the craze in a cafe in the XVIIe arondissement where M. Ximinestre was in the habit of taking a glass of vermouth every evening before going home: a game of darts, but played with a peashooter and ten-franc notes. All the regulars were mad about it, apart from one man, who had had to give it up owing to chronic shortage of breath. Imported by an Australian newly arrived in the district, this thrilling game had quickly become the object of an exclusive club, which met in the back room, where the proprietor, a fan himself, had sacrificed the billiard table. (From A Dog's Night, pgs. 121-122) |
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