Showing posts with label Cagnes-sur-Mer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cagnes-sur-Mer. Show all posts

Thursday, October 01, 2020

In Memory of Happier Days


Watercolor of the kitchen garden behind our apartment in France

 First of all, I (Donis) want to say "Welcome, welcome, Douglas!"

Second,  I was going to write about writing today, but after watching last night's "debate", I am in a mood. We don't want to go into what kind of mood that is. I remember an incident from 1968, when I was a fiery young thing; my grandmother, who lived through 2 world wars, the 1918 epidemic, death, divorce, and the Great Depression, said to me, "I've seen some hard times in this country, but I've never seen anything like this." I wonder what she'd say now? I'm not a young thing any more. I've been through my own crap. This is not the atmosphere I wanted to spend my Golden Years in.

I find myself thinking about better times, when the United States was looked upon with admiration by many in the rest of the world. In July 1969, a girlfriend and I were in Italy when the first men landed on the moon. For the next few weeks, Italians and other random Europeans would stop us on the street as soon as they realized we were Americans and offer their congratulations.

On one trip to Yorkshire, my husband and were followed around by a bunch of kids who were fascinated to meet actual Americans.

A few years after the moon landing, my husband and I lived for a brief time in a beautiful little town in southern France called Cagnes-sur-Mer. Cagnes sits on the Mediterranean coast almost exactly between Nice and Cannes, and was at one time the home of Auguste Renoir. Which may tell you something about its portrait-worthiness.

We rented a little apartment on the second floor of a building about one block from the beach. I say “beach”, which technically I suppose it is, but do not envision sunny stretches of golden sand. The beach was made up of rocks. Perfectly polished round or ovoid black rocks just big enough to fit in the palm of your hand, smoothed by the sea and tide. Pretty in their own way, but after sitting on them for a while, one ended up with an interesting pocky pattern on one's behind. The beach also seemed to be clothing-optional, but that's another story.

We had no television in our little two room apartment - a living/sleeping area and a well-stocked kitchen. Very French. Don and I spent delightful days cooking, painting, and wandering. The little market down the street is the first place I ever saw Yoplait and Nutella. Don spoke fair French but at the time I did not. After a few weeks, though, I could get around fairly well, especially at the market where I could ask for une otre chau with the best of them.

Often we went down to the beach and watched people harvest mussels from the rocks while we read or drew. Some days we would walk up the long hill to the Haute de Cagnes, where a gold-colored 14th Century Grimaldi castle dominates the town. Once a week, we would hop on the train and make the 20 minute ride into Nice to spend the day. My husband is an art lover, with an art history degree and several years experience running an art library. So we saw every art show that came through, and there were plenty. I got quite an education in French art of all eras, but especially Post-Impressionism. The day in Nice always ended with a stroll down the Promenade des Anglaise and a visit to the English-American Library near the Anglican Church on the Rue de France, where we would check out as many books as we were allowed. I loved that library. We developed a relationship with the volunteer librarian, an Englishwoman whose name I unfortunately cannot remember. She told me that the library had been in business continuously since the 1820s, except for a few years during World War II, when the local Nazi commander ordered it closed since it was a meeting place for the resistance. In response, patrons began to spirit books out of the building, and after the war the library reopened with what they had saved. The librarian also told me that the official who had ordered the library closed made away with a boxcar-load of books for his own personal collection. They thought those books were lost forever until the rail car, books and all, was located on a siding outside of Lyon after the Germans left France.

Nostalgia may not be useful in correcting our current difficulties, but sometimes I find myself escaping back to happier times just to give myself a break!



Thursday, September 06, 2018

Mark Twain and Me



I (Donis) have been watching the PBS rerun of Ken Burns' documentary on the life of Samuel Clemens, the last episode of which ran last night. It is a most excellent documentary, I'm sure you agree, as are all of Burns' offerings. But this particular one speaks to me in a different way than the others. So let me tell you a story, Dear Reader.

Many long years ago, when the world was young and I was a slip of a girl, my husband and I lived for several months in a little apartment in a town called Cagnes-sur-Mer, which is located between Nice and Cannes on the French Riviera. Once a week, Don and I would hop on the local train and take the short, nine mile trip to Nice to visit the Anglo-American Library and check out a boatload of books.

The library collection at that time consisted mainly of English language and English translation classics, and it is there that I found and read so many old titles that are difficult or nearly impossible to find these days anywhere except in ancient dusty bookshops. For instance, I was able to read the entire eleven volume translation of the eleventh century Japanese novel The Tale of Gengi by Lady Murasaki, and was blown away by the fantastical world she portrayed. 

The library also owned the entire collection of Mark Twain's writings, and I read every one of them, in order, including the autobiography. Now, like all good little English majors, I had read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and analyzed the crap out of them. I was familiar with The Prince and the Pauper and A Yankee in King Arthur's Court, though whether I had read the books or seen the 1950s era movies I can't say. I can only remember that I thought that the Connecticut Yankee looked just like Bing Crosby.

But it was only when I read the entire body of work for my own pleasure rather than for academic analysis that I found myself falling in love. And I mean that. Especially after reading his late life works, I felt such a kinship with the man that I felt true grief that he was long dead and there was no possibility that I would ever get to meet him in the flesh.

It's cliche to say the man was a genius, but he had not only a beautiful facility with words, but he was so far ahead of his time in his thinking that it is startling. Some of the things he wrote about human rights would be controversial today–especially in this current political climate. So if you have not done so, do yourself a favor, Dear Reader, and read every Twain piece you can get your hands on. Whether he enlightens or offends, he'll rock your world.

Let me leave you with one of my very favorite pieces of writing and what Wright Morris called a 'triumph of the vernacular'.

This was authored by  Twain, not as any sort of literary enterprise, but as a letter of complaint to the Hartford Gas Company in about 1901.

Sirs,
Someday you will move me almost to the verge of irritation by your chuckle-headed Goddamned fashion of shutting your Goddamned gas off with giving any notice to your Goddamned parishioners.  Several time you have come within an ace of smothering half this household in their beds and blowing up the other half by this idiotic, not to say criminal, custom of yours.  And it has happened again today.  Haven't you a telephone?
Yrs
S.L. Clemens

I consider this a prime example of how a great writer composes with language like a great musician composes with music.