“Why, at least, was not her husband one of those silently determined men who work at their books all night, and at last, when at sixty rheumatism was upon them, wear a string of medals on their ill-fitting black coat? She would have wished this name of Bovary, which was hers, to be illustrious. ToContinue reading “RKS Literature: “Madame Bovary”: Her Useless Husband Charles (Gustave Flaubert)”
Tag Archives: French literature
RKS Literature: Snubbed by the Parisian Aristocracy (Balzac)
“It was one thing to be despised by the country families of Angoulême, quite another by the aristocracy of Paris; by going out of their way on insult Lucien, the booby-squires had admitted his importance and treated him as a man: but for Mme d’Espard he simply did not exist. This was not a sentence,Continue reading “RKS Literature: Snubbed by the Parisian Aristocracy (Balzac)”
RKS Literature: Poets and the Mocking Laughter of Hell (Balzac)
“If poetry is to be spoken aloud in such a way as to be understood, absolute concentration is necessary. There must be complete sympathy between the reader and the audience, in the absence of which no electrical communication of emotion can take place. If this sympathetic atmosphere is lacking, the poet finds himself in theContinue reading “RKS Literature: Poets and the Mocking Laughter of Hell (Balzac)”
RKS Literature: Infatuation: Balzac’s “Lost Illusions”
“He did not notice her faded cheeks, or the brick red blotches on her cheek-bones, the result of boredom and a certain amount of ill-health. His imagination seized, first of all, on those ardent eyes, those elegant curls that caught the candlelight, that dazzling whiteness – so many points of light that drew him likeContinue reading “RKS Literature: Infatuation: Balzac’s “Lost Illusions””
Passage of the Day :Marguerite de Navarre: “The Heptameron”: Love
“I’ll do just as you ask, because the story I have in mind is about a woman who was wanton and a woman who was wise. You may please yourselves which example you follow. You will see that love makes bad people do bad things, and virtuous people do things we should respect. For inContinue reading “Passage of the Day :Marguerite de Navarre: “The Heptameron”: Love”
Passage of the Day: Marguerite de Navarre “The Heptameron”: Love
“Those of you how quickly the fire of love spreads when it starts to smoulder in the heart and in the imagination will understand that once Love enters two such perfect subjects, he never stops until he has rendered them obedient to his commands, until indeed he has filled them so full of his clearContinue reading “Passage of the Day: Marguerite de Navarre “The Heptameron”: Love”
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