Word: gallicisms
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France is the Sick Woman of Europe. Diagnoses of her ailments are plentiful, with blame falling on practically anything, including the parliamentary system, the Gallic spirit, absinthe, existentialism, contraceptives, conservatism, radicalism, modern art, the unreasonable insistence on reason, the undigested principles of the French Revolution. Brilliant Satirist Jean Dutourd (A Dog's Head, The Best Butter) will have little to do with any of these explanations. He refuses to see history in terms of abstract ideas, cycles or forces. He sees it in terms of men-weak or strong, good or bad. wise or stupid, to be judged...
...character with the sort of inane intensity a small boy devotes to a wart. Items: French Suspiciousness, British Weather. The Cult of the Liver among Middle-Aged Frenchmen, The Function of the Horse in Anglo-Saxon Courtship Patterns. There is a marvelous visual essay on the ricochet principle in Gallic traffic, and the now-familiar comic scene in which a British mother gives her daughter some moral aspirin on her wedding night: "I know, my dear, it's disgusting. But . . . just close your eyes and think of England...
...girls are a study of Gallic contrasts. Mick Micheyl is sunny; Juliette Greco is subterranean. In her simple sheath or plain skirt and white broadcloth shirtwaist, Mick affects the saucy style of a French street urchin-the impertinent type Parisians call un titi. Juliette, in her clinging, floor-length black, displays the kind of world-weariness that once moved Jean Cocteau to speak of "the 'ruinous jewel of her heart." Both Mick and Juliette, intense admirers insist, do not merely sing-they have something...
...poems in four different languages, all in different ways evoking the New World. Italy's Dino Campana sees classical images that compare the noble Indian savage to Venus, Federico Garcia Lorca's Brooklyn Bridge Nocturne throbs with Spanish symbolism, while France's Jules Laforgue dreams in Gallic-materialist specifics ("Des venaisons, et du whisky. . . et la loi de Lynch") and Walt Whitman shambles forth in his pagan-hobo way, singing The Song of the Open Road. Trying to follow each poet's vision, the music seemed to have little vision...
...nostalgic, there is Gustave Charpentier's Louise (Epic, 3 LPs), infrequently heard in the U.S. It is a sentimental apotheosis of the Gallic spirit, dating from a turn-of-the-century Paris that had never heard of existentialism. The work is not only good opera but good soap opera, telling the torturous romance of a working girl and her artist lover. The scene is the same turbulent Paris where Bohème's Rodolfo and Mimi loved, but while Puccini's Bohemians are really passionate Italians, Charpentier's characters are really Parisians-frothy, but a little...