Word: richelieu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...election to the august French Academy, established 325 years ago by Cardinal Richelieu to safeguard the purity of the French language, was Novelist Paul (Ouvert la Nuit) Morand. At 70 he was suitably ancient, with his Scott Fitzgeraldish novels of the '20s had more claim to literary distinction than many of the "immortals" already in the academy. But he had also been Pétain's envoy, first to Rumania, then to Switzerland...
Similarly, three hundred years ago, Richelieu had warned his King that only a monarchical strait-jacket could keep together a fickle and undisciplined nation. In de Gaulle's constitution, the President of the Republic, elected by a College of about 75,000 citizens (including Parliament and delegates of France's territorial subdivisions), will ensure "the regular operation of France's institutions" and guarantee "the continuity of the State...
...including such masterpieces as Veronese's Marriage at Cana, largest canvas (22 ft. by 32 ft.) in the Louvre, and Mantegna's great Crucifixion. Added to the warehouses of art confiscated during the French Revolution (including Michelangelo's marble Slaves, found in the Due de Richelieu's town house), the foreign conquests made Napoleon's Louvre the central museum for all Europe, and, incidentally, sparked a museum movement...
...history, Voltaire by championing Newton in France, Emilie by helping to open the border to the philosophy of Germany's Leibnitz. Voltaire was high-strung, always ailing, always in hot water with the authorities; Emilie was "strong as an ox" and influential at court: the powerful Due de Richelieu had been her lover. She and Voltaire wrote to each other nearly every day, even when they were in the same house, and though Emilie took other lovers-strong passions, she said, were good for her health-Voltaire was the fixed sun of her life...
...theater was revivified when the Big Four of the Paris theater (Louis Jouvet, Charles Dullin, Georges Pitoeff, Gaston Baty) swept into the House of Molière and swept out the mustiness and pedantry that had infected it. Today it consists of two theaters, the Salle Richelieu on the Right Bank, where classical plays are given, and the Salle Luxembourg on the Left Bank, where contemporary plays are given. It has a staff of more than 400 actors and technicians, and its repertoire is so immense that it could give a completely different program every day for five years...