How American lesbians perverted hitherto honest and decent French women

As seen from America, France and specifically Paris have long been considered a cauldron of vice, lust, lewdness, debauchery and perversion.

Wasn't! This is an urban legend. French women in particular (who were shy and innocent persons) have a dreadful reputation in the eyes of America whereas it's an American woman who was at the root of all evil.

Have you ever heard of Nathalie Clifford Barney who may well be considered the serial killer of sapphism? Among her many friends were Renée Vivien, Liane de Pougy, Romaine Brooks, Elisabeth de Grammond, Dolly Wilde (the niece of Oscar), Emma Calvé, Colette, Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Djuna Barnes and on and on and on...

Although the most prominent of them all, Nathalie Clifford Barney wasn't the only American lesbian  in Paris since you could also mention Janet Flanner, Margareth Anderson who had a liaison with Georgette Leblanc, Solita Solano...

Actually, Nathalie Clifford Barney may be viewed as the harbinger of what was to become the trademark of Paris as the place of devilish sexual depravity in the eyes of Americans back home. And yet, Clifford Barney's souvenir has been shadowed by another American lesbian who arrived in Paris ten years later.

An educated and talented woman, Gertrude Stein already possessed all the prerequisites that would allow her to be introduced among the intellectual Parisian elite of arts and literature. Her relationship with Alice B. Toklas lasted until Stein died in 1947. Theirs was the most famous lesbian couple of that time and as everyone knows they were at the center of the American artistic community in Paris from the 20s to 1940.

Now the point of the post of course in not to make a comprehensive list of all these women but rather to underline how important they were at that time for the artistic world in Paris and how their lives definitively identified the presence of America in France during the first half of the XXth century.

To my knowledge, these Americans were much more influential than French lesbians may have been during all these years and also, it looks like these women seduced many more French women than the other way round.

As written at the beginning of the post, hitherto French women were innocent lambs.  But again, what do I know?

Who the real musicians are

This video of Oscar Peterson playing Yesterday of Paul MacCartney is an example among dozens of other titles by the Beatles covered by the greatest names of the American jazz scene.

I remember Ella Fitzgerald singing Can't buy me love which has a powerful swing in it. Count Basie also played one title of the Fab Four (although I can't remember which it was), not to forget Ray Charles (Yesterday and Eleanor Rigby) and Franck Sinatra as well, singing Something by George Harrison.

Also we have Joan Baez singing Eleanor Rigby and Aretha Franklin doing the same here.

There are certainly many, many other American artists (Elvis, but he may have been a good performer and singer, he's not particularly remembered as a musician)  who covered many titles written by Paul and John, simply no name comes to mind at the moment.

This long list in order to make a comparison with the Rolling Stones (yeah, I'm not dealing with metaphysics here) who may be great performers but, IMHO, are poor musicians when it comes to composing.

Apart Ruby Tuesday, Lady Jane and Sitting on a fence which all have tremendous melodic lines, most of the songs by the Stones are shallow musicalywise.

Don't get me wrong here: Honky Tonk Woman, Sympathy for the devil, Jumping Jack Flash, Gimme me shelter and many others are really exciting tunes to listen to but where's the melody?

That may be the reason why the Beatles' songs were so many times covered by American musicians since, for what I know, Americans are impressively good at writing beautiful melodies. Listen to this for example...

Think of Bing Crosby, Irving Berlin, Nat King Cole and so many others.

So sorry but when it comes to compose beautiful melodies (notwithstanding the harmonies and variety of instruments) the Beatles beat the Stones hands down!

A lost cause from the beginning

There was Another article some times ago in the NYT about the Afghan war.

The readers' comments are worth reading as usual. Although I haven't read all of them, an overwhelming majority calls for America to withdraw out of that absurd, insane, neo-colonial  military entanglement with no chance to achieve anything whatsoever but final disaster.

I have written several posts about this in the past such as here, here here and here again. 

Save for a tiny minority of Europeans and Americans diehard warmongers or those gullible enough to believe in the politicians' outright lies, a vast majority of the American as well as European people demand and end to this sheer madness.

To no avail of course since people have no say in any matter in our so-called democratic countries...

The Germans, the French can't stand that their countries are involved in that far away land which has no connection to them. But the media, particularly in France, have decided not to play any role in  conveying the French people opposition, as these media have long renounced to play their part as fourth power.  

And after all, only 50 French soldiers have been killed over there, which is insignificant after 8 years on the ground.

Since the economic crisis is striking everywhere next to everybody, the war by far is not a major concern for Europeans and yet, how much do the costs of this war weigh on our economies?

E la nave va...Gods of all civilisations are speechless in front of human stupidity! Only when they'll decide to put an end to the lunacies of their creatures will wars no longer happen on earth.

Except that there are no gods!

Laozi and the witch

I don't know much about American history but it seems immigrants arrived in this country with no expectation at all about the help the American State could provide for them. As a matter of fact, the very concept of "State" seems to be somehow eerie to most Americans who refer to the Government where Europeans -and the rest of the world for that matter- would refer to their respective State.

As we all know, the global historical mistrust of any too big political entity in America is reflected in the philosophical opposition between statism and minarchism. That fundamental dividing line between these two approaches of how a country should be run was most famously exemplified by R. Reagan's slogan:

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem

As written above, I don't know much about American history and politics but eventually I've come to the understanding that Republicans are more favorable to minarchism than their Democrat opponents.

There's now been some 2 years or so that a recent political trend in the US has emerged which seems to be even more demanding than the Rep re the need for less State (aka Marxism) and more "let the people free to live their lives without Government entanglement".

Whether they know it or not, these people in fact are giving a second life to a very old and basic concept of Chinese Taoism which is known as Wu wei. The core meaning of this concept is rather complex and hard to precisely define (we're talking about China here) but yet can be summed up as a means to restrain the prince from abuse of power, enjoining him to 'do' as little as possible.

For what I understand of the Tea Party movt, isn't it exactly what they expect from the people in Washington: Stop meddling in our private lives and get your dirty hands off our country!

I missed much of the story but I kinda understand that a certain Christine O'Donnell, more or less a prominent figure of the Tea Party, admitted she practised witchcraft as a teenager. Although her positions on sexuality aren't exactly sync with taoist sexual practices, she nonetheless actively and forcefully promotes a Chinese political theory in the United States of America.

After I've so often read so many Americans complaining that their country has been outsourcing most of the industrial jobs to China, the question arises now: Isn't Christine O'Donnell a leading member of the Chinese fifth column in the US whose ultimate goal is to bring America down to her knees?

Who would have thought that 2.500 years after he died Laozi's philosophy would be propagated on the other side of the earth by an American witch?

He's a she

 

After years of soul searching I now know (until my neurons evaporate) that the United States is a singular subject which must then be conjugated accordingly.

This leads us to a typically light topic: What is the gender of the 50 American States in French or other European languages?

A quick look at Wiki and we come back with the following result: 8 of the 50 American states are considered feminine in gender (in French) regarding their names and the way they must be conjugated.

California,

Carolina (North and South)

Florida,

Georgia, 

Louisiana,

Pennsylvania

Virginia,

Suffice to look at the last letter of each one and you can't be mistaken that the a ending is indicative of a Latin root. Which doesn't explain much since 12 other States also end with an a.

Alabama,

Alaska,

Arizona,

Dakota (north and south)

Iowa,

Indiana,

Minnesota,

Montana,

Nebraska,

Nevada,

Utah.

Hmmmm… looks like I need a linguist's expertise here since many names have their roots in the native's own names for their territories. Maybe did the colonists adapt the original Indian names to a more European educated-sounding tune. 

Another wild guess: Save for Pennsylvania, all these names are girl first names in French (Virginie, Caroline, Louis/Louise) or Spanish.

My attention was called upon this rather unimportant matter a dozen years ago about California since that was, at the time, the only State that came to my mind as being feminine in French. The answer I got then was referring to a Spanish novel and I left it to it.

But here you'll find a much comprehensive article regarding the origin of the name California.

I suppose you'll find similar articles on Wiki a propos all American States whether they bear a "feminine" name or not.

I haven't furthered the research in German, Polish or Italian but hey, if you feel like...

Rip Van Winkle

It's been such a long time that I've heard about this short story by W. Irving that I had to read it. Mission accomplished and I can't say that was the literary experience of my life. A nice bucolic little story it may be but that can have some importance for American readers only methinks.

It's all about the symbol of the birth of America or rather, the transition from a British colony to an independent state which led to the unaltered identity of the American citizens per se.

I gather it must be some mandatory reading in American schools (or is it?) and the only reason why a foreigner would read this piece is because he's/she's interested in American culture, history and literature which is my case then.

I didn't do any serious research but I believe the action is supposed to have taken place between, say, 1766 and 1786.

There's something which didn't fail to arise my curiosity and it's the name of the main character. He's a descendant of the Dutch settlers and in his name I can read blink, wink, and wrinkle. Come to think of it, all these words are Time-related whether be it about its brevity or, on the contrary, its length which is the condition for wrinkles to appear.

Did Washington Irving choose this name on purpose or did the inner dynamic of language do the trick for him? True to say, there are so many possibilities with the English language that it seems any word-clustery is likely.

And also, did the author chose the first name of his caracter, Rip, at random or is it legitimate to read Rest In Peace, you former subject of his majesty king George the third?

Well, at least I know who Rip van Winkle was and why he's so often referred to in the US. Even Thoreau in his Civil Desobedience  (1849) mentions him 30 years after the story of Rip van Winkle was published.

(On a side note it's worth noticing that the Wiki articles about Rip and Thoreau are both classified as quality articles respectively in German and French but not in English)