Kaiser behind the haystack

Alfred Ludwig Heinrich Karl Graf von Waldersee, a German soldier who rose to become (briefly) Chief of the Imperial German General Staff, was born 190 years ago today. He left behind plenty of written material, including diaries, much of which was published in a three-volume biographical life. In one diary entry (see below), Waldersee recalls the Kaiser (Wilhelm I) confessing to him that he’d eaten some chocolate ‘in secret behind the haystack’.

Waldersee was born on 8 April 1832 in Potsdam into a military and aristocratic family, his father being a cavalry general. He graduated from artillery and engineering school at the age of 20, and joined the Prussian General Staff as an adjutant during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. He later served in Paris as military attaché and spy, and was selected in 1869 as Aide-de-Camp to Kaiser Wilhelm I. He acted as chief of staff to the military governor of Paris in 1871, and in 1873 he became the commanding general of X. Army Corps in Hannover. The following year, he married Mary Esther Lee, daughter of wealthy New York City merchant David Lee and widow of Prince Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein.

In 1882, Waldersee was chosen by Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder as his principal assistant on the General Staff at Berlin with the rank of Generalquartiermeister, a position that gave him military and political influence. Developing strategies for a preventative war against Russia and France brought Waldersee into confrontation with the Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, but also paved the way to a friendship with Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, the future Kaiser Wilhelm II who ascended the throne in June 1888. In August, Waldersee was appointed to succeed Moltke as Chief of General Staff. Rather quickly, however, the new young sovereign lost confidence in a scheming Waldersee and demoted him to command IX Army Corps at Hamburg-Altona.

In 1900, Waldersee was promoted field marshal and given command of an international expeditionary force sent to China aimed at quelling the Boxer Rebellion. Back in Germany in 1901 he was named an honorary citizen of Hamburg, one of many honours he received during his lifetime.  He died in 1904. See Wikipedia or the Prussian Machine for more information.

A ‘life-and-letters’ biography of Waldersee was first published in German in three volumes in 1922-1923. The entire work was edited by Heinrich Otto Meisner, with the approval and assistance of the Waldersee’s  nephew, Lieut.-General George Count von Waldersee. A single-volume English translation by Frederic Whyte appeared in 1924 as A Field Marshal’s Memoirs From the Diary, Correspondence and Reminiscences of Alfred, Count Von Waldersee (Hutchinson). Modern reproductions of the original can be previewed at Googlebooks and Amazon. Here are few extracts from Waldersee’s diaries as found in the translated work.

4 August 1870, Commercy
‘Bismarck, who had a suite of his own, has three four-horsed carriages. He himself travels in a heavy conveyance with four horses which cannot keep up with the King’s stallions. For this reason - so it is said - there is intriguing in progress on his part against long marches. He maintains, moreover, that the King ought not to travel through the land alone in this way, but should keep with the army on the march. I don’t think that is necessary, though some more thought might perhaps be given to his safety.’

16 September 1870, Meaux
‘Yesterday evening Councillor of Embassy von Kendell came to me on behalf of Bismarck and asked me whether I would be Prefect of Paris, supposing we got in. The question came to me rather as a surprise. I said that there were two Prefects there, a so-called Prefect of the Seine and a Prefect of Police - which did he mean? He said that no notice was being taken of this, that I could amalgamate both offices, and that I should be pleasing the Chancellor very much if I decided to do so. No other suitable person was available. I had the great advantage of knowing the conditions of Paris. The President of Police in Berlin, Von Wurmb, would, indeed, be the right man for the post, but the Chancellor regarded him as too untrustworthy. After thinking it over for a while, I said yes, but raised the question whether the King would like one of his aides-de-camp to have a police post. Kendell said we should soon find out that and thanked me for my readiness to accept.’

20 September 1870, Ferrières
‘Yesterday I saw Paris stretched out before my eyes, exactly two months after I left it. The King rode through Aulnay up to the height of Le Blanc Mesnil. From this point a good view of Paris was to be had, so we came to a halt. The King showed how pleased he was to have got so far, and could not tear himself away from the place. He lingered for a good two hours. Once he went behind a haystack for a few minutes. Today he said to me: “Didn’t you give me some bits of chocolate at Rezonville?” I said yes, and he went on: “I had one piece left, and yesterday I ate it in secret behind the haystack!” ’

28 December 1870, Versailles
‘An excellent measure has been taken in hand during these last two days. The management of the attack on Paris, which is now to be undertaken in real earnest, has been entrusted to Lieut.-General von Kameke in his capacity as an Engineer, and to Major-General Kraft zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen as an Artillerist. Now at last some life will be introduced into things. . .’

Negotiations can now begin

‘Ambassador Tim Barrow, Permanent Representative of the UK to the European Union, hand-delivers the long-awaited letter to Donald Tusk. Nine months after the referendum, Theresa May has today given notice of her country’s wish to leave the European Union, triggering the two-year period under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union during which we must find an agreement for the UK’s orderly withdrawal and set out the framework for our future relationship. Negotiations can now begin.’ This is Michel Barnier, the European Commission’s Head of Task Force for Relations with the United Kingdom, writing in his diary exactly five years ago today. Once the negotiations were completed, Barnier published what he called My Secret Brexit Diary - A Glorious Illusion.

Barnier was born at La Tronche in the French Alps in 1951. Wikipedia notes that he was a scout and choirboy. He graduated from the ESCP business school in Paris in 1972. The following year he became a regional councillor for Savoie in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, also in the Alps. He served on the staff of various Gaullist ministers in the 1970s, before being elected in 1978, aged 27, to the French National Assembly as deputy for the Department of Savoie representing the neo-Gaullists, serving until 1993. In 1982, he had married Isabelle Altmayer ​and they had three children. He co-organised the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville.

Under Prime Minister Édouard Balladur, Barnier was first appointed to cabinet, as minister of the environment in 1993; and, in 1995, Jacques Chirac appointed him secretary of state for European affairs. Barnier then served as a European Commissioner for Regional Policy in the European Commission from 1999 until 2004. Back in national politics, he was made foreign minister in Jean-Pierre Raffarin’s government until  June 2005. Under Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency, he re-joined the cabinet as minister of agriculture. Briefly (2009-2010), he was a Member of the European Parliament and President of the French delegation of the EPP.

But, in 2010, Barnier was back in Brussels as European Commissioner in charge of Internal Market and Services, a position he held until 2014. From 2015, he acted as a special adviser on European defence policy to the European Commission’s President, Jean-Claude Juncker. Then, in July 2016, Juncker made him the Commission’s chief negotiator with the UK over its arrangements for leaving the European Union, under Article 50, and over the EU-UK’s future trade deal - a couple of jobs which kept him busy until the end of 2020! Most recently, he made a failed bid to become the Republican’s candidate for the 2022 French presidential elections.

Barnier kept a detailed diary throughout the Brexit negations. This was published in French by Gallimard as La grande illusion: Journal secret du Brexit (2016-2020). The text was translated into English by Robin Mackay and published in the UK by Polity as My Secret Brexit Diary - A Glorious Illusion. Polity says: ‘From Brussels to London, from Dublin to Nicosia, Michel Barnier’s secret diary lifts the lid on what really happened behind the scenes of one of the most high-stakes negotiations in modern history. The result is a unique testimony from the ultimate insider on the hidden world of Brexit and those who made it happen.’ A preview is freely available at Googlebooks.

Reviewing it for the The Guardian, Jonathan Powell said: ‘Michel Barnier's new book helps explain why Britain ended up being comprehensively out-negotiated over Brexit and saddled with a flawed withdrawal agreement and a deeply disadvantageous future relationship, both of which will cause us major problems for decades to come. This is therefore an important account.’ And Adam Fleming of the BBC said: ‘If the treaties are the legal texts of the Brexit talks then this is the human version, revealing a Michel Barnier who is much warmer and far less diplomatic than his public persona. It’s a masterclass in how the EU operates, and a rare glimpse into the tensions on their side.’

Here are several extracts from the published diary.

‘Wednesday, 29 March 2017: Notification
Ambassador Tim Barrow, Permanent Representative of the UK to the European Union, hand-delivers the long-awaited letter to Donald Tusk. Nine months after the referendum, Theresa May has today given notice of her country’s wish to leave the European Union, triggering the two-year period under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union during which we must find an agreement for the UK’s orderly withdrawal and set out the framework for our future relationship. Negotiations can now begin.’

‘Friday, 31 March 2017: Sadness and regret
As I do every week, I go over the weekly report sent to me by the Directorate-General for Communication, which surveys the reaction to Brexit among the twenty-seven member states.

Unsurprisingly, today they arc all focused on Mrs May’s letter of formal notice. Most heads of state or government have issued official responses. Their statements and communiqués are full of sadness and regret, as exemplified by those of the French, Belgian and Polish governments, which, while respecting the choice made by the British people, express their deep regret at the decision.

In parallel, there is an increasing number of calls for unity among the twenty-seven, whether from Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar or Mariano Rajoy in Spain. Other governments, such as Denmark and the Netherlands, explicitly refer to the defence of their national interests.

In general, I am struck by a convergence of the prevailing tone. From Finland to Portugal, the priorities arc the same. Everywhere there is talk of securing the rights of EU citizens living in the UK and of maintaining good relations with the UK in the future.

Behind the remarks of the various parties, I detect echoes of the discussions we have had thus far in each capital. The insistence of all upon the need to do things in the right order - ensuring an orderly withdrawal before discussing the future relationship - is symptomatic in this respect.’

‘Sunday, 11 June 2017: A wager lost...
Theresa May’s strategy has backfired. She called a general election to strengthen her majority and her position in the Brexit negotiations. What happened was the exact opposite. Instead of gaining fifty or even a hundred more seats as it had hoped, the Conservative Party lost thirteen. The Labour Party gained thirty, achieving its best result since 2001. The Liberal Democrats also made gains, UKIP was eliminated, and there is no longer a clear majority in the House of Commons. This is a real political shock for London. Some commentators, including the Financial Times, explain it partly as ‘the revenge of the young and Remainers’.

Forty-eight hours later, Theresa May announced a deal with a dozen MPs from the Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) that will enable her to achieve an absolute majority in the House. The DUP, founded in 1971, was headed for nearly forty years by Ian Paisley, a well-known Unionist leader. Arlene Foster, who was briefly First Minister of Northern Ireland, is now at the helm. The Unionist position is clear to all: they oppose anything that would remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom. What price will Theresa May have to pay for this alliance? And what are the consequences for negotiations on the sensitive issue of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland?

On Twitter, I read that in Brussels there is rejoicing at Theresa May’s defeat, that I’m about to take a four-week holiday, and that I’m handing out champagne to my team. Frankly, I think I’ll keep the champagne on ice for now. In order to lead these negotiations and make them successful, we need a stable partner who knows what they want.’

So I held my tongue

‘For my part, I should have liked to put a word in now and again, but as soon as it was on the tip of my tongue, I said to myself: “There’s nothing very extraordinary about that. That’s not going to interest them.” So I held my tongue. And they must have thought: “That poor Léautaud isn’t often very bright,” or even: “That poor Léautaud! Is he half-witted?” ’ This is from the diary of the (apparently insecure) French drama critic Paul Léautaud, born 150 years ago today. Though virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, he only achieved celebrity status in France late in life thanks to a series of radio interviews.

Léautaud was born in Paris on 18 January 1872, but was abandoned soon after by his opera singer mother. He was brought up by this father, also working in the theatre, who married again and had another son. After studying at the Courbevoie municipal school, he spent several years doing odd jobs in the city. In 1894, though, he became a legal clerk, and from around this time be began to submit poetry to the Mercure de France. From 1902 to 1907, he worked with a judicial administrator on the liquidation of estates, and from 1908 he joined the staff of Mercure nominally as a secretary. However, he was given freedom to write as he wished, submitting mostly drama reviews under the pseudonym Maurice Boissard

From 1912 onwards, Léautaud lived in the suburb of Fontenay-aux-Roses. Although he never married, he had many affairs. But, it seems, his first love was animals. Through his life, he owned hundreds of pets, with sometimes more than 50 in the house. It is said that he even went so far as to sell his correspondence with Paul Valéry, a portrait by Matisse and signed first editions of famous authors for money to feed his animals. In the first half of the 1950s, when already nearly 80, he found a modicum of fame thanks to a series of radio interviews with Robert Mallet. He died in 1956. Further information is available online at Wikipedia (the French page is substantially more informative than the English), in a New York Times profile, or in James Harding’s biography, Lost Illusions: Paul Léautaud and His World (can be previewed at Googlebooks).

Léautaud kept diaries for over 50 years. They have been published in French in many volumes (around 20). Mavis Gallant, writing in The New York Times in 1973, said of them: ‘They are the faithful notes of a misogynist who could not do without women; of a bachelor who trusted only the dependent love of animals; of a drama critic who thought that seeing a play and then describing it was all nonsense; of an instinctive writer who lacked imagination (he could not write about anything except his father, his mother and himself); of a pitiless observer who craved “nothing but tenderness” in return for sarcasm; of a narrow Parisian who never traveled and still knew that “one’s country is one's language,” and that “the only country that matters is life itself.” They are also an account of theatrical and literary Paris between 1893 and 1956, wide in scope and full of sharp, biased detail.’

As far as I can tell only one volume and one edition of Léautaud’s diaries exist in English: Journal of a Man of Letters 1898-1907, as translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury (Chatto & Windus, 1960). According to Sainsbury his translation is also an abridgement; it covers most of the first volume of the French edition and about a quarter of the second. The book also includes a preface by Alan Pryce-Jones. This starts as follows: ‘There are few odder figures in literature than Paul Léautaud. He could have existed nowhere but in Paris, unless possibly in the London of Richard Savage. He wrote very little beyond literary journalism and the diary which comprises this book. He was not particularly easy or agreeable. And until advanced old age he had a reputation for no more than eccentricity. At seventy-eight, a series of broadcast conversations with Robert Mallet turned him into a national celebrity overnight [. . .] and for the last five years of his life Léautaud, with a mixture of reluctance and delight, tasted the fruits of an ever increasing fame.’ Here are several extracts from Sainsbury’s translation of the diaries.

10 September 1898
‘This morning’s papers report Mallarmé’s death yesterday in his little house at Valvins. A master - to me, at any rate. When I came to know his poetry it was a revelation, prodigious, dazzling, a penetrating beam of beauty. But while it showed me verse at its greatest power and perfection, it discouraged me from attempting it, for I understood that no poetry could match his and that to follow along the same road (i.e. to imitate) would be neither dignified nor meritorious.

I think it was really due to Mallarmé that I got to know Valéry. I had seen Valéry often enough at the Mercure’s “Tuesdays”, but I had hardly spoken to him. One Tuesday, when I was on my way to the Mercure, I went into the tobacconist’s in the Rue de Seine, between the Rue Saint-Sulpice and the Rue Lobineau. Valéry was just coming out. He waited for me, and we walked together. I don’t know how he got on to Baudelaire, but I answered that there was a poet I put much higher - Mallarmé. Since then we seem to have been bound by a sort of sympathy, and we have had many talks together. This very winter he was going to take me to the Rue de Rome, but I shan’t have that pleasure now. I had been thinking of writing a Hommage au Poète with Mallarmé as the subject. The work’s still to be done.’

2 December 1902
‘I have been thinking again of my shyness and self-consciousness, of the clumsiness it produces on me, and the way it belittles me in the eyes of others. Passing the Mercure, I went in. It was Tuesday, and several people were there. I stood near the mantelpiece. Coming in, I had shaken hands with Régnier, to whom I had written a few days before to thank him for his book La Cité des Eaux. Presently he got up and came over to the mantelpiece. I was at once uneasy at the thought that he was going to talk to me and I should have to answer. Fargue joined us. We spoke of what a book ought to be when it’s rounded off, finished, and published, if one’s not going to be tempted to correct it afterwards or even to rewrite it. I say: we spoke, but I mean they did. For my part, I should have liked to put a word in now and again, but as soon as it was on the tip of my tongue, I said to myself: “There’s nothing very extraordinary about that. That’s not going to interest them.” So I held my tongue. And they must have thought: “That poor Léautaud isn’t often very bright,” or even: “That poor Léautaud! Is he half-witted?” ’

22 July 1906
‘Dinner with Mme Dehaynin and her daughter. We laughed a lot over the excellent meal which, in the last resort, was to cost so little! What an adventuress! She told me she prided herself on being able to spend a couple of months at the best seaside resort without paying a franc and then get away scot free, so clever was she at twisting people round her little finger. “When I’ve worn this place out,” she said, “I’d like to go to the Ritz.” After dinner we sat in the drawing-room. We were alone, and Mme Dehaynin went to the piano and sang us La Femme à Papa, La Mascotte, Madame Angot - a whole epoch of pleasures and follies, providing a few good minutes for me.’

28 November 1906
‘Spent the day copying out some Stendhal letters for the Pages Choisies. Comforting hours. In that respect I haven’t changed. What tone, what style, what spontaneity in those letters, what wit, what finesse! My ideas, my mental vivaciousness, are awakened, my inner self thaws, comes to life.

Went to the Mercure. Talked to Jean de Gourmont about his literary column in which he hands out bouquets so freely. It’s hopeless. On all sides indifference and laziness. It’s astonishing the fear people have nowadays of speaking their minds. Newspapers and reviews, even the most daring, are as mild as the academicians. Some are prompted by self-interest, some by fear, some by friendship. Everyone is drenched in mutual eulogies, and the lowest of the low are hailed as geniuses. Great mediocrity, great poverty of spirit, great stupidity at the bottom of it all.

I have always loved, I only love, those who go too far, the wild men, the souls that have escaped the rut. A Byron, a Stendhal, a Chateaubriand, a Poe, a Baudelaire. Those âmes en marge, with which my own feels so closely bound, help me to rise above the miserable life of every day, the miserable days so like their predecessors, to rise above them, transcend them, forget them.’

22 November 1907
‘Went this morning to fetch the proofs of my chronique dramatique . . . When I got them I told Morisse I was going to surprise every passage which might lead anyone to think I was tinted with antisemitism. He protested. But Dumur was there, and he sided with me, saying it was quite unlike me to say anything antisemitic.

But at five, when I took the corrected proofs back, Morisse reproached me almost bitterly for my cowardice in suppressing the passages in question, saying he would never have expected it of me, etc. It took me a long time to convince him there was no question of cowardice, and that in any case there was in me something that went beyond all questions of cowardice or courage and that was the pleasure I derived from saying what I had it in my heart to say to all and sundry, whether it be for or against. In this particular case I didn’t want people to think I thought what I didn’t think, and that was all, except that I wasn’t very sure of my facts and didn’t relish having passed remarks on a subjet I was not sufficiently well-informed about.’

That’s all I am to him

‘Any mistake I make, I’m out and he starts again. Really, I thought love was forever and that I, Jane, was more important as a person with all my faults than anyone else in the world, but I’m not. At least that illusion is gone. “Do you love me?” He says, “Of course, otherwise I would have chucked you out.” After six years and all we’ve been through, that’s all I am to him.’ This is from the youthful diaries, recently published, of the singer and actress Jane Birkin. At this point - about half way through her decade-long relationship with the French actor and musician Serge Gainsbourg - Birkin had two daughters, a three year old with Gainsbourg, and a seven year old with her ex-husband. Birkin is 75 years old today.

Birkin was born on 14 December 1946 in London to an actress and a spy, and raised in Chelsea. She was educated at Upper Chine School, Isle of Wight. She married the composer John Barry in 1965. The couple had a daughter, Kate, born two years later, but divorced soon after. In the late Sixties, she won acting roles in films with erotic content, such as Blowup and La Piscine, and then in the French film Slogan, alongside Gainsbourg, with whom she started an affair (despite him being nearly 20 years her senior). In 1969, the two of them released the single Je t’aime... moi non plus (originally written for Gainsbourg’s love at the time, Brigitte Bardot). The song became infamous for its sexual content and was banned by radio stations in several European countries.

After the birth of a second daughter (with Gainsbourg) Birkin took a break from acting in 1971-1972, but returned as Bardot’s lover in Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman, and then appeared in Gainsbourg’s first film, Je t’aime moi non plus, which was banned in the UK (but earned her a Best Actress César Award). She separated from Gainsbourg in 1980 but by then she was much in demand as an actress. In 1985, she co-starred with John Gielgud in Leave All Fair; and in 1991 she appeared in in Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse earning her another Cesar award. By this time she was also regularly recording albums. In 1982, she had given birth to her third daughter from her relationship with director Jacques Doillon, though they too were to separate, in the 1990s. She also was to have a relationship with the French writer Olivier Rolin.

Birkin continued film acting and singing into the 2000s though at a lesser pace; and she announced in 2017 that she had no plans to return to acting. Her oldest daughter, Kate, who had suffered from drug addictions over many years, tragically died in 2013. In 2021, her second daughter released a film about her own relationship with her mother, which premiered at Cannes: Jane by Charlotte. For more biographical information see Wikipedia, Interview Magazine, The Washington Post, and several media articles about recovering from a recent stroke (The Guardian and the BBC).

Birkin began keep a diary from the age of 11 and continued sporadically throughout her life - until Kate’s death. In 2018, Fayard published extracts from them in France; and in 2020 Weidenfeld & Nicolson brought out an English edition entitled The Munkey Diaries 1957-1982. Although the French and other editions have been published in two volumes, the second volume covering the years 1982-2013 has not yet appeared in English. According to the publisher: ‘Munkey Diaries re-creates the flamboyant era of Swinging London and Saint-Germain-des-Pres in the 1970s, and lets us into the everyday life of an exceptional woman. There are intimate revelations about Jane’s tumultuous life with her first husband, the composer John Barry, and her romantic and professional collaboration with Gainsbourg, as well as keen insights into a working life as an actor, singer and songwriter.’

In her preface, Birkin explains the term ‘Munkey’. 

‘I wrote my diary from the age of eleven, addressed to Munkey, my confidant, a soft toy monkey dressed as a jockey that my uncle had won in a tombola and given to me. He slept by my side, sharing the sadness of boarding school, hospital beds and my life with John, Serge and Jacques. He witnessed all the joys and all the unhappiness. He had a magic power; we took no planes, stayed in no hospitals without him being by our side.

Father said, “Maybe when we get to heaven it’ll be your monkey that welcomes us with open arms!”

Kate, Charlotte and Lou had his sacred clothes, without which travel was unthinkable. Serge kept Munkey’s jeans in his attaché case until the day he died. Faced with my children’s grief, I put Munkey beside Serge in his coffin, where he lay like a pharaoh. My monkey was there to protect him in the afterlife.

On reading my diaries it seems to me that one doesn’t change. What I was at twelve, I am still today. The lack of confidence, the jealousy, wanting to please . . . I understand better why my loves couldn’t last. The reader will be surprised, as I was, to see how little I talk about my professional life. I hardly mention the films, the plays - not even the songs. When people die, I talk about it months later - the happy times I was too busy living.’

A review of the book in the Evening Standard notes that the ‘relentless introspection comes at the expense of a more detailed survey of Birkin’s early career’; and The Guardian says ‘reading these diaries is like being trapped at a particularly demented piece of performance art, where the actors are clearly having much more fun than the audience.’ The Spectator says the ‘book is lachrymose to the point of sogginess’; but the Daily Mail calls it ‘enchanting’. Some pages can be read online at Amazon or Googlebooks. Many of the published extracts are identified only by the year they were written and a day of the week, but some are fully dated, such as this one.

13 November 1974
‘Dear Munkey,

The silence is so awful I have to write to someone. If I had done something, at least I would have a thing to be ashamed of, but I have nothing because I love someone; I love Serge more than any living thing, I would not lose him or his love for me for anything but sometimes I feel that he could write me off as a ‘bad lot’ and think no more of me. I don’t think he cares about me, except that I am his, but if I was even TEMPTED to be all that is bad, he would never have to think of me again and he would lie to the next girl. He would say, “La petite Birkin is my fabrication; I can make any number of them and better and younger but they’re nothing without me.”

He said last night that I drank only because he let me drink, that I lived only because he let me live. I’m his “poupée” (“doll”) with my “qualités’ as a poupée but completely re-makable with better material than me. All this is maybe just self-protective for my feelings, but I’m sure if I put one foot astray, he would be incapable of taking me back for me. I would have made my “erreur” and that would be an end to it.

My erreur tonight was being one hour late for dinner because I was honest and told him I was having a drink with C and we’d join him at the restaurant. It was 8 o’clock and I turned up at 9.30. He said he would be there at 9, so I was chronometrically half an hour or so late.

The reason was C. I wanted to talk to him. I’m twenty-seven, nearly twenty-eight. I’m afraid I have put him in a mess in spite of myself. I don’t know what he expects of me. I told him I love Serge, that no one can take away that love, it’s important. I care tor C, I like him, I wanted him to be my friend. It’s unimportant except I have a right to have a friend. He’s never tried to make love to me. He’s interested in me as a person. Why I do certain things, why I am embarrassed about certain things, what makes me not a cardboard poster, because that’s what most people associate me with. I wanted Serge to like him, I wanted him to like Serge the way I do - I’ve gone on and on about him. If only I’d kept my big mouth shut. Its almost like Bobby telling cousin Freda about his love life and expecting her to say “Poor Bobby”. I know that. I can’t say that he’s like a girlfriend. But people are doing far worse things, sneaking and not getting caught. Everyone has been unfaithful but I haven’t. So why should I suffer for what I haven’t done? I don’t want to have a sneaky “amant” (“lover”) like the bourgeois people do. I didn’t knock it off with Trintignant. Why? Serge. I didn’t want to spoil my thing with Serge.

Serge is sleeping peacefully and maybe he’s had affairs but is far too clever to tell me about then. And the strange thing is that I now know I wouldn’t mind as much as I thought. I would still love him, maybe hurt, certainly furious, but not to breaking-up point. I love him too much for that. I can’t imagine having a holiday, having a memory, having my life end with anyone but Sergio. So what does the rest matter? I wouldn’t like to look like a fool over the other girl, but if she was a pute or a thing of the moment, would I really die? I don’t think so. I feel happy. I love Serge, I’ve come into my own, I’m standing on my own feet. I had a drink; maybe I wanted a drink. I wanted to talk; I talked. In ten years I’m finished, no one will love me any more, I’ll be old and “moche” (“ugly”). My problems won’t interest anyone, I will no longer be à la mode. I won’t be twenty-seven, I will be thirty-seven and it’s over. I don’t want to get old. I won’t get old. Well, Serge will be looking at girls of seventeen and if I get jealous he will go “Allez-y ma vieille” (“Go ahead, old girl”) and it will be too late, even to have a drink, even to have a friend, and I will realise that life has gone and I’d be bitter of all the things I could’ve done if only I’d known.

But Serge has been twenty-seven, he’s had fun with what he wanted, with who he wanted, in Paris. I’m not asking that, a weekend to screw all Paris. I don’t like screwing. I just want to be wanted and not feel ashamed and old and responsible. And if after six years being with someone you turn up late - and each to his own, and considering everything I have done - and with a child in tow . . . well, I thought Serge loved me more than that, but sometimes he makes me think because of what he says or doesn’t say that six years is nothing, I’m only an episode in his numerous adventures. He’s allowed to be proud of it, to shout about it, and I’m nothing more than Dalida, or Gréco, or Bardot and I’m certainly much less than his precious wife, because he married her.

Any mistake I make, I’m out and he starts again. Really, I thought love was forever and that I, Jane, was more important as a person with all my faults than anyone else in the world, but I’m not. At least that illusion is gone. “Do you love me?” He says, “Of course, otherwise I would have chucked you out.” After six years and all we’ve been through, that’s all I am to him.’

A day of adventure

‘A day of adventure – At 10 we set forth in the best auto the city could muster to go to the King’s summer palace 75 miles away in the mountains – The auto was minus most of its innards. It hadnt had a spring in the last 10 years & carried no spare tire – the driver saying that if it was Gods will we would make the journey without needing one.’ This is from the unpublished travel diaries of the famous American journalist Dorothy Dix, born 160 years ago today. Dix’s columns of advice for women were syndicated widely across the US and the world, and, by the 1940s, she was considered to have been the most highly paid and most widely read of female journalists.

Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer was born on a large plantation straddling the Kentucky/Tennessee border on 18 November 1861. She received little formal education, and aged 17 married her stepmother’s brother George Gilmer. However, he soon fell victim to mental illness and was incapacitated - a situation that lasted the rest of his life. Elizabeth suffered a nervous collapse, but during her convalescence began writing stories and sketches of Tennessee life. She moved to Louisiana where she found work on the New Orleans newspaper Daily Picayune, writing obituaries, recipes and theatre reviews. As was customary for female journalists, she took on a pseudonym, Dorothy Dix. She was given a column - Sunday Salad - in which she started offering advice for women. This was renamed Dorothy Dix Talks, and would go on to become, Wikipedia reports, the world’s longest-running newspaper feature.

Dix was appointed editor of the women’s section and assistant to the editor of the Picayune, but in 1901 she accepted a lucrative offer from William Randolph Hearst to continue the column, thrice a week, at the New York Journal. She was also known for her sensational coverage of murder cases. She was an active campaigner for women’s suffrage, penning essays and pamphlets, and editing a suffrage periodical. In 1923, she signed with the Philadelphia-based Public Ledger Syndicate, and at its peak her columns were published in nearly 300 newspapers. Dix was receiving, from within the US and across the world, 100,000 letters a year. In addition to her newspaper work, she also authored books such as How to Win and Hold a Husband and Every-Day Help for Every-Day People. She died in 1951, at which time she was credited with being the highest paid and most widely read female journalist. Further information is available online at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and Austin Peay State University.

Between 1917 and 1933, Dix travelled widely in different parts of the world, often keeping a diary. These travel journals are held in the Felix G. Woodward Library of Austin Peay State University which claims it has ‘the most comprehensive collection available on Dorothy Dix and her writings’. Dix used the diaries for her book, My Joy-Ride Round the World (Mills & Boon, 1922) but otherwise they have never been published in print. However, the eight travel journals have been transcribed - by Elinor Howell Thurman - and are freely available online at the Austin Peay State University website. Here are some extracts.

Travel Journal - Europe, 1922
30 June 1922
‘Left Paris for battlefields, going out by the gate by which the French troops (35000 in number) were rushed to the front when the Germans got within 13 miles of the city. They went in taxicabs 3 abreast - The first place we stopped was Senlis, a quaint little town with narrow streets & creamy white old stone houses. It was an unarmed town & no resistance was made yet nevertheless the Germans blew up almost half of the houses, with dynamite & took the Mayor & 21 of the most prominent citizens & lined them up against a wall & shot them. It happened that the Mayors father was mayor of Senlis during the German occupancy of the town in the Franco Prussian wall [sic: war] & he also was shot in the same way[.] So one woman had the tragic fate of having both husband & son murdered by the Germans. We then went on to Soissons where some of the fiercest fighting of the whole war took place. It changed hands three times. Its beautiful cathedral & public buildings are ruins, & more than half its houses heaps of stones.

All afternoon we drove thro’ the devasted [sic] region that stretches from Soissons to Rheims, stopping at Chemin des Dames where from the rise of a little hill we could see the whole battle field, & at Berry-au-Bac on the Aisne canal where 500 Scotch troops who were standing with fixed bayonets waiting the order to charge were blown up by a mine the Germans had laid. It was 8 miles away & the explosion left a crater 400 feet across – We were on the scene of the greatest struggle in history[,] for here for 4 years the war swayed back & forth – every inch of ground was fought over a hundred times, every clod was dyed in blood. The terrain is still filled with shell holes & trenches until it looks like a rabbit warren. You can not walk across it for the barbed wire. We picked up hands full of shells & cartridge belts, so rotten they fell apart in your hands at a touch. Miss R. to the horror of the guide came calmly marching in with an unexploded hand grenade. There is no sign of the life that once went on here in times of peace for every village every human habitation was swept away by the bloody tide that rolled over it, yet it is not as desolate as you may suppose for over it all is the rank luxurious growth you see in cemeteries, & the whole plain was a mass of bloom – red of poppies, blue of wild larkspur, white of daisies as if nature spread the tricolor of France over her sons who were sleeping beneath the sod they gave their lives to save.

We staid the night at Rheims & saw the sunset gild the ruins of the splendid cathedral that it took the genius & piety of two centuries to create & that devils destroyed in two minutes. You grow impotent with rage when you behold the infamy that swept away from the world a thing of beauty that can never be replaced. Half of the houses in Rheims were destroyed, & in the whole city only 200 buildings escaped some injury. As we walked slowly back to the hotel we passed what had once been a fashionable restaurant but is now a crumbling heap of stones. In the court there was the gleam of [word crossed out: what] a broken & ruined marble fountain, & back of it fluttered a few rags of family wash belonging to some people who had taken refuge in the empty wine cellar, & were making their poor home there.’

Travel Journal - Eastern Europe, 1926
7 August 1926
‘Left in the morning via the Orient Express – which is an express only three times a week, and ambled along so leisurely it took us from Sat morning at 8.30 until [words crossed out: Tuesday Monday] Sunday at 3 to get to Sophia – We passed thro’ the loveliest, fat farming country, and saw many of the country women wearing their quaint native costume[.] But the trip was very tiresome & made the more disagreeable to me from having partaken not wisely but too well of half ripe melons. On the way up we were awakened in the middle of the night by 3 Bulgarian officials who suddenly flashed their lights in our faces – 4 dishevelled women more or less in the costume of Sept Morn blinked back[.] They jabbered – we shrugged our shoulders & said we didn’t comprehend – more jabber – more shrug – then one man threw up his hands & cried out in despair “These Americans! These Americans! These Americans!” & slammed the door – Afterwards we found out our passports werent vised [sic] right & that it was only as a great courtesy extended to our nation that we werent sent back to Constantinople.

We are staying at a very delightful hotel with heavenly cooking right opposite the palace – a big handsome yellow brick mansion set in fine grounds with the loveliest acacia trees, now in full bloom – Sofia is at the foot of the mountains & I never smelt anything so cool & bracing as the air. –’

9 August 1926
‘A day of adventure – At 10 we set forth in the best auto the city could muster to go to the King’s summer palace 75 miles away in the mountains – The auto was minus most of its innards. It hadnt had a spring in the last 10 years & carried no spare tire – the driver saying that if it was Gods will we would make the journey without needing one – No Turkish or Bulgarian cars carry extras on the the [sic] same principle. The roads are the worst in the world but our optimistic driver started out a clip that would have won a race on a fast track – Rocks, ruts, stones meant nothing in his young life & we went lickety split over them, while every bone in our bodies were [sic] jarred from our sockets & we held on to our false teeth with a death grip[.]

Apparently our chauffers [sic] confidence in Providence was misplaced for soon there was the sharp report of a blow out. Fortunately it occurred by a wayside inn – a regular peasant place – by a babbling brook & we descended and had coffee while he patched the ragged old tire – Again we hit the trail & went skedaddle around hair pin turns & again was [the] ominous sound of a blow out – There was nothing to do but walk back to the road house some 5 miles – Mr Gestat said it was 8 – which we did. But we were partially repaid for the days disaster by the delicious lunch of native foods they served us - A mutton stew made with tomatoes, beans, egg plant, peppers & potatoes, & red with paprika, & [word crossed out: a] sweet peppers stuffed with rice, chopped meat etc & cooked in a cream sauce.

In this region at a place called Kazanlik the finest attar of roses is made[.] They have 80000 acres under cultivation in roses. We intended going there – it is 300 kilometers – but after our experience with the demon chauffer[sic] we decided not to risk it.’

Travel Journal - South America, 1933
29 July 1933
‘At 9.30 Mr Noa – the boy friend provided by the American Express arrived with a fine open car with the top down, and we drove along the series of beautiful bays, seven in number that make the water front of Rio. Nothing could be lovelier than the blue bay dotted with little islands, with always the frowning heigths [sic] of Corcovado looking down upon them – We went thro miles of quaint streets with houses whose architecture took on every fantastic shape that it is possible to give bricks & mortor [sic] – Moorish looking houses with tile borders – houses that were job lots of towers & cupolas, houses with all sorts of statues on the roof – Evidently the Brazilian taste is very ornate for every public building is lavishly & sy[m]bolically adorned – But they are grand for all that –

We went out to see the old palace of Dom Pedro, now a museum[.] It is a big brownish yellow structure in the midst of a lovely park. In it is a small aquarium with a curious cannibal fish that eats people. It is a small blue fish with a snub nose, & a dumb face, but let any flesh appear near it, & millions of it fall upon its victim & devour it in a few minutes. They say a man attacked by it will bleed to death before he can reach the bank, even if it is only 10 ft away – It is a fresh water fish & abounds in rivers, & stockmen test every stream before trying to ford it with animals[.] The guide said that not long ago a murderer who was being hunted down tried to escape by jumping into a river, but he was attacked before any one could reach him by these fish & literally devoured alive & his screams of agony were frightful[.]

In the afternoon went with the B’s to the top of Sugar Loaf Mt, which is accomplished by means of an ascent to a low lying hill, then being shunted in a cage – like the cash in a department store – to the top of Sugar Loaf – across a valley a mile wide & goodness knows how high – We staid up on the mountain – or rather the second one – and had dinner on a terrace[,] a most scrumptious meal with a view that has no equal scarcely in the world – the whole city spread out like a scintilating [sic] jewel on the breast of nature, the water front outlined by strings of electric lights, and the wide expanses of blue water growing bluer and bluer as night fell until all was black except where the moon lay a silver band across it – no words can describe the beauty of Rio because it is the favorite child of nature, which has covered up all its man made defects with bougainvillea. No other city has such monstrosities in the way of architecture yet even these become quaint & interesting in their exotic setting, so that you dont wonder that the new rich taste of a generation ago ran to cupolas & towers & statuary[.]

The street scenes are very interesting[.] I am particularly intrigued by the fruit & vegetable vendors who carry hughe [sic] flat baskets on their heads & on their arms a little folding stand – like [word crossed out: the] suit case racks – which they set up & on which they deposit their wares when making a sale. Quaint too are the men who carry their poultry slung in hampers on either side of a mangy pony.

It seems that when the street car system was inaugurated here that the money was obtained by the sale of bonds. The Brazilians had no knowledge of what either a street car or a bond was so they got their terms mixed & called the cars bonds, which nomenclature goes to this day. They say “take the bondie to so- & so” –’

31 August 1933
‘Went by train to Valpariso [Valparaiso,] sea port of Santiago – City built into the side of the mountain, & streets so steep it makes you dizzy as you skid down them in a car – Drove down to Vina del Mar, one of the handsomest sea side places I ever saw - Gorgeous home[s] & a grand casino – Many of the wealthy Santiagans have their summer homes here –’

The Pepys of Paris?

‘The diaries of Pierre de l’Estoile ‘do for the Paris of Henry IV what Pepys does for the London of Charles II, and a great deal more . . .’ This is the opinion of Nancy Lyman Roelker, an American history professor who first translated into English and edited l’Estoile’s diaries. L’Estoile - who died 410 years ago today - was a royal secretary and very well placed to observe the religions and political shenanigans of the age. Most recently, his diaries have been used extensively by Durham University’s Tom Hamilton for a first biography of the man in English.

Pierre de l’Estoile was born in Paris in 1546 into a middle class family. His father and grandfather had both held prestigious positions in the royal bureaucracy. His father, though, died when Pierre was only twelve, and he was placed under the care of Mathieu Béroalde, a Hebraic scholar with Protestant inclinations. In l’Estoile’s earliest foray into writing, a miscellany on the early Wars of Religion, he adopted a neutral tone, presenting the attitudes and opinions of both Catholics and Protestants, while supporting the Crown’s efforts at mediation.

L’Estoile studied law at Bourges, trained as a notary, and like his forefathers became a royal secretary, though not achieving particularly high office. He married Anne de Baillon, but she died in 1580, shortly after the birth of a daughter. Two years later he married the 18 year-old daughter of Colombe de Marteau. During the latter years of his life, he maintained a close interest in religious and papal controversies, all the while amassing a huge library. He died on 8 October 1611. There are only very sketchy biographical details available online, at Wikipedia.

L’Estoile’s main claim to historical fame stems from the diaries he left behind - these are also the main source of information about his life. A century or so after his death, one of his descendants, the abbot of  Abbey of Saint-Acheul, deposited the diaries in the abbey’s library, and when the abbey was dissolved they passed through the hands of a bookseller before being acquired by the Royal Library. Although the diaries were not intended for publication they have been used as a prime first hand source for histories of the reigns of Henry III and IV of France. 

Extracts from the diaries were first published in English by Harvard University Press in 1958 in The Paris of Henry of Navarre as seen by Pierre de l’Estoile - Selections from his Mémoires-Journaux, as translated and edited by Nancy Lyman Roelker. Here’s a paragraph from the introduction in which the editor likens l’Estoile to Samuel Pepys.

‘The Mémoires-Journaux of Pierre de l’Estoile do for the Paris of Henry IV what Pepys does for the London of Charles II, and a great deal more, because l’Estoile was a serious student of politics and morals, and combined his acute observation with keen judgment of men and events. In his diary, which covers thirty-seven years, 1574-1611, the reader finds an eyewitness account of the wars of religion, the court of the Valois, and a full account of the reign of Henry IV, complete with an enormous cast of characters who take part in these events, their idosyncrasies, their clothes, their food, their jokes, diseases, and love affairs - so that the reader knows many of them more intimately than the family across the street. In effect, that family has ceased to be across the street, for the reader is living in the quarter of St. André-des-Arts on the left bank of the Seine opposite the Palais de Justice, and the Palais, seat of the Parlement de Paris, the highest court in France, has become the hub of the universe, as it was to the diarist, who earned his living as audiencier, or lerk-in-chief of the Parliament. Seated with Pierre de l’Estoile in his cabinet the reader has a window on Paris; he sees too the events of the great world as they are seen at the Palais, where men are hotly disputing the merits of Mary Stuart’s execution, or laughing at the sign which been informally posted, “Lost! The Great Invincible Naval Army . . . [Armada] if anyone can give news of it . . . let him come to St Peter’s Palace where the Holy Father will give him wine.” ’

More recently, the diaries have been used extensively for a biographical work by Tom Hamilton (Oxford University Press, 2017): Pierre de L’Estoile and his Word in the Wars of Religion. Some pages can be freely read at Googlebooks. Hamilton says the diaries ‘provides a fascinating portrait of his private life, his social world, his role as a collector of curiosities, and his own personal experiences of living through the era of the French religious wars.’ And there is an informative review available online at H-Net (Michigan State University Department of History).

Here are several extracts of the diaries from Roelker’s 1958 work. (However, it is worth bearing in mind that Hamilton argues, in his book, that the early diaries, at least, were composed after Henry III’s death, “relying on previous drafts that are now lost.” He bases this on an analysis of l’Estoile’s handwriting style, which is identical to the style of other writings that appear after 1589.)

30 May 1574
‘Sunday, May 30,1574, the day of Pentecost, at three o’clock in the afternoon, Charles IX, King of France, worn out by a long and violent illness and loss of blood, which had caused his death to be predicted for more than three months, died in the Château of Vincennes near Paris, at the age of twenty-three years, eleven months and four or five days, after reigning about thirteen and a half years full of continual war and strife. He left one daughter, about nineteen months old, named Isabella of France, by his wife Madame Isabella of Austria, and the kingdom of France troubled by civil wars (on the pretext of religion and the public welfare) in most of its provinces, especially Languedoc, Provence, Dauphiné, Poitou, Saintonge, Angoumois, and Normandy, where discontented Huguenots and the Catholics associated with them have seized various towns and strongholds which they hold with great force.’

31 May 1574
‘Monday, the last day of May, the Court of Parlement assembled in the morning, in spite of the holiday, and deputed certain presidents and conseillers to go to the Château of Vincennes to request Madame Catherine de Medici, mother of the late King, to accept the regency and undertake the government of the kingdom until the arrival of her son King Henry, who was in Poland. To this effect, the same afternoon . . . [she] willingly accepted the task, according to the intention of the late King, her son, who had decreed it a few hours before his death.

That same afternoon the body of the late King, who had lain in his bed . . . with his face uncovered for everyone to see . . . was opened and embalmed by the physicians and surgeons and placed in a metal casket.’

2 June 1574
‘Wednesday, 2nd, the Queen Regent had all the entrances to the Château of the Louvre locked, except the main gate . . . which had a large troop of archers stationed inside and one of Swiss outside. . . Rumor has it that she did this in fear of enterprises and secret conspiracies discovered at Easter, which had already resulted in the execution of Tourtet . . .  La Mole . . . and Coconas . . . in the Place de Grève in late April, and in the imprisonment of the Marshals Montmorency and Cossé.’

4 June 1574
‘Friday, June 4, three well-known gentlemen were sent by the Queen, in her own name and that of M. le Duc d’Alençon and the King of Navarre . . . to Poland to announce to the King the death of his late brother, congratulate him on his accession to the crown of France, and to urge him to hasten his return to his kingdom, to establish himself and to obviate the great evils and inconveniences which might be brought about by any further delay. . .’

1 July 1574
‘On Sunday,  the first day of July, in the great church Notre Dame in Paris, a solemn vow was taken taken in the name of the whole city, to Notre Dame de Lorette that if the city were delivered from the siege, they would present a silver lamp, and other ornaments. . . There was such a crowd at this occasion that a poor pregnant woman was suffocated in the mob, with her child.’ 

5 July 1574

‘Thursday, July 5, La Chapelle-Marteau, Prévost des Marchands, assembled the city [officials], read to them letters which the Duke of Mayenne had written to the Parisians, in which he exhorted them to hold fast and to cheer up, promising aid at the end of the month at the latest, and if he should fail, he gave them his wife and children to do with what they would. These beautiful words served the people for bread . . . although Boucher . . . and others have assured them of deliverance in two weeks, they were content to settle for a month, so anxious are they to gain that wonderful paradise which the preachers assure them will be gained by dying of hunger.’

8 July 1574
‘Thursday, July 8, the heart of the late King Charles was carried to the Célestins in Paris by M. le Duc, his brother, and there interred with all the solemnities and ceremonies usual in such cases.’

The most beautiful poem

‘The most beautiful poem there is, is life - life which discerns its own story in the making, in which inspiration and self-consciousness go together and help each other . . .’ This is the French moral philosopher Henri-Frédéric Amiel, born 200 years ago today, writing in his diary on his 31st birthday. Today, he is largely remembered thanks to this diary, which, in a way, he turned into a beautiful poem of his life.

Descended from a Huguenot family that had been driven to Switzerland, Amiel was born on 27 September 1821 in Geneva, but lost his parents at an early age. He travelled widely, and studied German philosophy in Berlin. In 1849, he was appointed professor of aesthetics at the academy of Geneva, and five years later became professor of moral philosophy. A few biographical details are available in English at Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica, but Jean-Marc Cottier runs an informative website in French.

Amiel is remembered today largely because of his diary first published in Geneva as Fragments d’un journal intime in 1882, and translated by Mrs Humphrey Ward into English as Amiel’s Journal: The Journal Intimé of Henri-Frédéric Amiel in 1884 (freely available at Internet Archive). The diary has been reprinted many times in English (currently lots of versions - see Amazon) and has been translated into many other languages.

According to Ward’s original introduction to the first English edition, Amiel’s literary heirs inherited thousands of sheets of his diary, covering a period of more than thirty years. She says Amiel recorded his various occupations, the incidents of each day, his psychological observations, and the impressions produced on him by books. But his journal was, ‘above all, the confidant of his most private and intimate thoughts; a means whereby the thinker became conscious of his own inner life; a safe shelter wherein his questionings of fate and the future, the voice of grief, of self-examination and confession, the soul’s cry for inward peace, might make themselves freely heard.’

Here are several extracts - on religion, nature, motherhood and self-analysis - which give a sense of Amiel’s daily cogitations.

27 September 1852
‘To-day I complete my thirty-first year. . .

The most beautiful poem there is, is life - life which discerns its own story in the making, in which inspiration and self-consciousness go together and help each other, life which knows itself to be the world in little, a repetition in miniature of the divine universal poem. Yes, be man; that is to say, be nature, be spirit, be the image of God, be what is greatest, most beautiful, most lofty in all the spheres of being, be infinite will and idea, a reproduction of the great whole. And be everything while being nothing, effacing thyself, letting God enter into thee as the air enters an empty space, reducing the ego to the mere vessel which contains the divine essence. Be humble, devout, silent, that so thou mayest hear within the depths of thyself the subtle and profound voice; be spiritual and pure, that so thou mayest have communion with the pure spirit. Withdraw thyself often into the sanctuary of thy inmost consciousness; become once more point and atom, that so thou mayest free thyself from space, time, matter, temptation, dispersion, that thou mayest escape thy very organs themselves and thine own life. That is to say, die often, and examine thyself in the presence of this death, as a preparation for the last death. He who can without shuddering confront blindness, deafness, paralysis, disease, betrayal, poverty; he who can without terror appear before the sovereign justice, he alone can call himself prepared for partial or total death. How far am I from anything of the sort, how far is my heart from any such stoicism! But at least we can try to detach ourselves from all that can be taken away from us, to accept everything as a loan and a gift, and to cling only to the imperishable - this at any rate we can attempt. To believe in a good and fatherly God, who educates us, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, who punishes only when he must, and takes away only with regret; this thought, or rather this conviction, gives courage and security. Oh, what need we have of love, of tenderness, of affection, of kindness, and how vulnerable we are, we the sons of God, we, immortal and sovereign beings! Strong as the universe or feeble as the worm, according as we represent God or only ourselves, as we lean upon infinite being, or as we stand alone.

The point of view of religion, of a religion at once active and moral, spiritual and profound, alone gives to life all the dignity and all the energy of which it is capable. Religion makes invulnerable and invincible. Earth can only be conquered in the name of heaven. All good things are given over and above to him who desires but righteousness. To be disinterested is to be strong, and the world is at the feet of him whom it cannot tempt. Why? Because spirit is lord of matter, and the world belongs to God. “Be of good cheer,” saith a heavenly voice, “I have overcome the world.”

Lord, lend thy strength to those who are weak in the flesh, but willing in the spirit!’

31 October 1852
‘Walked for half an hour in the garden. A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn. The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distant mountains, a melancholy nature. The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief. A brood of chattering birds were chasing each other through the shubberies. and playing games among the branches, like a knot of hiding schoolboys. The ground strewn with leaves, brown, yellow, and reddish; the trees half-stripped, some more, some less, and decked in ragged splendors of dark-red, scarlet, and yellow; the reddening shrubs and plantations; a few flowers still lingering behind, roses, nasturtiums, dahlias, shedding their petals round them; the bare fields, the thinned hedges; and the fir, the only green thing left, vigorous and stoical, like eternal youth braving decay; all these innumerable and marvelous symbols which forms colors, plants, and living beings, the earth and the sky, yield at all times to the eye which has learned to look for them, charmed and enthralled me. I wielded a poetic wand, and had but to touch a phenomenon to make it render up to me its moral significance. Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail. True poetry is truer than science, because it is synthetic, and seizes at once what the combination of all the sciences is able at most to attain as a final result. The soul of nature is divined by the poet; the man of science, only serves to accumulate materials for its demonstration.’

6 January 1853
‘Self-government with tenderness - here you have the condition of all authority over children. The child must discover in us no passion, no weakness of which he can make use; he must feel himself powerless to deceive or to trouble us; then he will recognize in us his natural superiors, and he will attach a special value to our kindness, because he will respect it. The child who can rouse in us anger, or impatience, or excitement, feels himself stronger than we, and a child only respects strength. The mother should consider herself as her child’s sun, a changeless and ever radiant world, whither the small restless creature, quick at tears and laughter, light, fickle, passionate, full of storms, may come for fresh stores of light, warmth, and electricity, of calm and of courage. The mother represents goodness, providence, law; that is to say, the divinity, under that form of it which is accessible to childhood. If she is herself passionate, she will inculcate on her child a capricious and despotic God, or even several discordant gods. The religion of a child depends on what its mother and its father are, and not on what they say. The inner and unconscious ideal which guides their life is precisely what touches the child; their words, their remonstrances, their punishments, their bursts of feeling even, are for him merely thunder and comedy; what they worship, this it is which his instinqt divines and reflects.

The child sees what we are, behind what we wish to be. Hence his reputation as a physiognomist. He extends his power as far as he can with each of us; he is the most subtle of diplomatists. Unconsciously he passes under the influence of each person about him, and reflects it while transforming it after his own nature. He is a magnifying mirror. This is why the first principle of education is: train yourself; and the first rule to follow if you wish to possess yourself of a child’s will is: master your own.’

28 April 1871
‘For a psychologist it is extremely interesting to be readily and directly conscious of the complications of one’s own organism and the play of its several parts. It seems to me that the sutures of my being are becoming just loose enough to allow me at once a clear perception of myself as a whole and a distinct sense of my own brittleness. A feeling like this makes personal existence a perpetual astonishment and curiosity. Instead of only seeing the world which surrounds me, I analyze myself. Instead of being single, all of apiece, I become legion, multitude, a whirlwind - a very cosmos. Instead of living on the surface, I take possession of my inmost self , I apprehend myself, if not in my cells and atoms, at least so far as my groups of organs, almost my tissues, are concerned. In other words, the central monad isolates itself from all the subordinate monads, that it may consider them, and finds its harmony again in itself.

Health is the perfect balance between our organism, with all its component parts, and the outer world; it serves us especially for acquiring a knowledge of that world. Organic disturbance obliges us to set up a fresh and more spiritual equilibrium, to withdraw within the soul. Thereupon our bodily constitution itself becomes the object of thought. It is no longer we, although it may belong to us; it is nothing more than the vessel in which we make the passage of life, a vessel of which we study the weak points and the structure without identifying it with our own individuality.

Where is the ultimate residence of the self? In thought, or rather in consciousness. But below consciousness there is its germ, the punctum saliens of spontaneity; for consciousness is not primitive, it becomes. The question is, can the thinking monad return into its envelope, that is to say, into pure spontaneity, or even into the dark abyss of virtuality? I hope not. The kingdom passes; the king remains; or rather is it the royalty alone which subsists - that is to say, the idea - the personality begin in its turn merely the passing vesture of the permanent idea? Is Leibnitz or Hegel right? Is the individual immortal under the form of the spiritual body? Is he eternal under the form of the individual idea? Who saw most clearly, St Paul or Plato? The theory of Leibnitz attracts me most because it opens to us an infinite of duration, of multitude, and evolution. For a monad, which is the virtual universe, a whole infinite of time is not too much to develop the infinite within it. Only one must admit exterior actions and influences which affect the evolution of the monad. Its independence must be a mobile and increasing quantity between zero and the infinite, without ever reaching either completeness or nullity, for the monad can be neither absolutely passive nor entirely free.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 27 September 2011.

Showered with flowers

‘In the evening to the first performance of Le Prophète. The public called me out after acts 2, 3, 4, and 5, twice in fact after act 4. At the end I was showered with flowers and garlands. The king summoned me to his box after act 4 to express his satisfaction.’ This is from the diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer, a German composer born 230 years ago today. He became hugely popular in the mid-19th century for his spectacular romantic operas, but his reputation took a downturn after his death partly thanks to Richard Wagner. Meyerbeer kept daily diaries for much of his life, and although the originals have been lost, a transcription survives, and this was translated into English and published for the first time some 20 years ago.

Jacob Liebmann Beer was born on 5 September 1791 in Tasdorf (now part of Rüdersdorf), near Berlin, then the capital of Prussia, to wealthy well-connected Jewish parents. (He adopted the surname Meyerbeer on the death of his grandfather in 1811, and he Italianized his first name to Giacomo while studying in Italy around 1817.) He was educated by tutors at home, and his first keyboard instructor was Franz Lauska, a favoured teacher at the Berlin court. He made his concert debut at the age of 11. He studied composition in Berlin and completed his first work for the stage in 1810, the ballet Der Fischer und das Milchmädchen. Shortly after, he went to Darmstadt to study with Abbé Vogler, whose students then included Carl Maria von Weber. After nearly two years of instruction, during which he wrote two operas and numerous other works, Meyerbeer left for Munich, ready to test his skills as a composer and performer. It was there that his second opera (but first surviving), Jephtas Gelübde, was unsuccessfully premiered in December 1812. 

After a journey to Paris and London, he settled in Italy, where he produced five operas in the style of Rossini. In 1825, he moved to Paris. The following year, after the death of his father, he married his cousin, Minna Mosson. They had five children, of whom the three youngest (all daughters) survived to adulthood. Meyerbeer first French opera, written in association with Eugène Scribe, was Robert le Diable produced in 1831 on an extremely lavish scale. Its success was immediate, and became a model for French grand opera, being performed throughout Europe. Five years later he scored another triumph with his opera Les Huguenots. In 1842, he temporarily returned to Berlin, where he became music director to the King of Prussia and where he aided production of Richard Wagner’s first opera Rienzi. During this time, he wrote a German opera, Ein Feldlager in Schlesien. His third romantic opera on a libretto of Scribe, Le Prophète, was given in Paris in 1849. He then turned to a lighter style and produced two works in the tradition of the opéra comique. His last opera, L’Africaine, was in rehearsal at the time of his death in 1864.

Encyclopaedia Britannica has this assessment: ‘Meyerbeer enjoyed an enormous vogue in his day, but his reputation, based on his four Paris operas, did not survive long. Yet he exercised a considerable influence on the development of opera by his conception of big character scenes, his dramatic style of vocal writing, and his original sense of orchestration - particularly his novel use of the bass clarinet, the saxophone, and the bassoon.’ However, following his death his work was subject to sustained assault by Wagner and his supporters and this contributed to a decline in his popularity; his operas were suppressed by the Nazi regime in Germany, and were neglected by opera houses through most of the twentieth century. Further information is also available at Wikipedia and the Jewish Encyclopedia. 

Meyerbeer kept diaries for much of his life, and though the original manuscripts are missing, a transcription made by Wilhelm Altmann is held by the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Between 1999 and 2004, these diaries were published in English in four volumes by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press - The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer - as translated, edited and annotated by Ignatius Letellier. In his preface, Letellier states these volumes provide the ‘first full text of Meyerbeer’s diaries in any language’. He adds: ‘I hope that it can play some part in helping to rediscover the life and work of a great composer, indeed a luminary of the operatic firmament, who for too long has been misunderstood and unjustly overlooked.’ All four books can be previewed at Googlebooks, and volume two can be digitally borrowed through Internet Archive. The following extracts are taken from volume 3 (subtitled The Years of Celebrity).

30 January 1850
‘In the evening to the first performance of Le Prophète. The public called me out after acts 2, 3, 4, and 5, twice in fact after act 4. At the end I was showered with flowers and garlands. The king summoned me to his box after act 4 to express his satisfaction. After the performance a deputation from the orchestra brought me a laurel wreath. The singers were also repeatedly called out. I nevertheless felt that the public’s reception of the individual musical pieces was lukewarm, and this could not have been otherwise: the singers and the chorus were, on the one hand, exhausted, because yesterday, and the day before yesterday, there had been two dress rehearsals with the performance today following immediately - without even a day of rest. Then, on the other hand, out of the desire to do everything correctly, they were unduly anxious and self-conscious, and all of them, with the exception of Michalesi, sang untidily. This was particularly true of Tichatschek in the role of the Prophet. Michalesi, on the other hand, was marvelous and carried all the rest.’

31 March 1850
‘The funeral of my beloved brother, which was marked by a great manifestation of sympathy for the deceased: representatives of the arts, science, the civil authorities, and the magistracy, as well as the ministers Brandenburg, Rabe, and Ladenberg, all were present. Over one hundred carriages followed the procession. The king sent his personal equipage as escort; he had already, the evening before, written my mother a letter of condolence in his own hand. The preacher Auerbach read the oration over the coffin before it was carried out of the death-chamber. The funeral indicated just how much the deceased, in spite of so much hostility, had been esteemed and honored by his fellow citizens. Stayed with Mother all day.’

31 May 1851
‘Tremendous celebration for the unveiling of Rauch’s monument of Frederick the Great. I watched the event from a window of the Academy, even though the king had ordered that Cornelius and I should be part of the academic deputation. In the evening, by royal command, a gala performance of my opera, Ein Feldlager in Schlesien, with admission by royal invitation only. After act 2, the king summoned Rauch and me to his box and expressed his satisfaction in the friendliest, kindliest manner. The performance itself passed by coldly and without interest.’

26 June 1754
‘Sorrowful, inauspicious day. At noon my beloved mother’s fearful, mortal agonies began and ended only two hours after midnight. What a terrible fourteen hours! What a mother I have lost!’

28 June 1856
‘The proposal by Herr von Korff for the hand of my daughter, and the manner in which Blanca responded to this news, preoccupied me to such an extent that I was incapable of any musical work.’

Day of disasters

‘Sunny, spring-like day. Day of disasters. This morning I read the fax that Gemini Films sent me, in which they communicate me the changes of the script, script that had already been accepted and paid in part and with its production running. The changes asked and done already by Rushdie are purely and simply the totality of the film. His attitude can be summed up in the next proposition: remove me from the project. None of my ideas of misé-en-scene is considered acceptable.’ This is from the diaries of the celebrated Chilean filmmaker, Raoul Ruiz, who died a decade ago today. Ruiz’s diaries were published posthumously, in 2017, and since then a Chilean film writer - Jaime Grijalba - has been translating entries from the diaries into English and making them freely available online.

Ruiz was born in 1941, the son of a ship’s captain and a schoolteacher in Puerto Montt, Chile, though his family soon moved to Santiago. Already as a teenager, he was involved with the theatre. At university he began law and theology studies, but abandoned them in favour of working in television, at first directing sports programmes. In 1964, he took a film course in Argentina, thereafter making several political films. He is said to have written 100 plays for the avant grade theatre in his 20s. His feature film, Three Sad Tigers, won him (and one other) the Golden Leopard at the 1969 Locarno Film Festival. In 1973, shortly after the military coup led by Augusto Pinochet, Ruiz and his wife (Valeria Sarmiento, also a film director) fled Chile and settled in Paris.

There followed a productive period for Ruiz with what IMDB calls ‘surrealistic masterpieces’ - Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983), City of Pirates (1983) and Manuel on the Island of Wonders (1984) ‘perversely yet charmingly addressing the recurring Ruizian themes of childhood, exile, and maritime and rural folklore’. In the 1990s, the IMDB profile continues, ‘Ruiz embarked on larger projects with prominent actors such as John Hurt, Marcello Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert and John Malkovich, alternating this sporadic mainstream art-house endeavour with his usual low-budget experimental productions and the teaching of his Poetics of Cinema (two volumes of which he published in 1995 and 2007)’.

In the last years of his life, Ruiz wrote and directed several low-budget productions in his native Chile, but his final international success was the Franco-Portuguese epic Mysteries of Lisbon (2010). He died on 19 August 2011. IMDB concludes; ‘He is little-known in his native Chile, however, despite having made the widely seen Little White Dove (1973), receiving several major arts prizes and having a National Day of Mourning dedicated to him on the day of his burial there. In the English-speaking world, only a handful of [his] films have been distributed and it is on these few films that his reputation there is built.’ Further information is also available at Wikipedia.

Some of Ruiz’s diary entries were published in 2017 (in Spanish) by Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales as Diario. Notas, recuerdos y secuencias de cosas vistas (in Spanish) with selection, editing and prologue by Bruno Cuneo.

Thanks to Jaime Grijalba - a Chilean who says of himself ‘I try to direct films, but in the meantime I just write about them - a wealth of Ruiz’s diary entries have been translated into English and made freely available online at The Ruiz Diaries.  Here is Grijalba’s introductory note: Hey! Welcome! I’ll be translating the Raúl Ruizdiaries for as long as the copyright people will get to me and sue my ass. In the meantime, enjoy, and if you think that I’m doing a good work with these translations, give up a tip at My Kofi it really helps a lot!’ He posted the first entry from Ruiz’s diary (21 November 1993) in February 2018 and is currently (i.e. in August 2021) posting entries from March 2001. 

Here are several of Grijalba’s translated entries from Ruiz’s diary.

22 November 1993
‘In flight to Lisbon. We ended yesterday’s night watching videos of Portuguese melodramas: Fado, with Amalia Rodrigues, and a cop flick by Ladislao Vadja (Marcelino pan y vino). Later I dined with the poet neighbor Waldo Rojas and Ely [Godoy-Rojas]. They come from a vernissage of Latin American artists. Euphoria and coldness. One hour before, brief meeting with Jean Diard to prepare an agitation plan. It’s about putting in contact, through his Confluences cultural center, various filmmakers from the neighborhood. There’s more every day. I’ve crossed paths with Chantal Akerman, with Alain Fleischer and lots of actors. With Jean Lefaux we’re putting together a triennial to organize a Film Without Qualities Festival and a Workshop (one month per year).

Valeria prepares a roast beef accompanied with a méli-mélo de champignons [-], the whole thing united with truffle oil. Irregular wine, but coherent. Then we screened half hour of The Secret Journey, that I finished mixing four days ago. Watchable. I think it’s tighter, more asciutto, than in the first watch. The neighbors don’t stop making commentaries, as if they were watching a vacation film. It’s true that what I’ve been doing lately, in the way that it maintains itself in secret, has lost all prestige, tends to be a home movie. But it’s watchable anyway.

Even later extremely boring nightmares and towards six in the morning it’s the time to calendar. I watch the entirety the scene in the cabaret in which Ninon, according to the script, dances a torrid dance. In fact it’s not such a bad idea to make her enter covered in a tulle and make her spin like a dervish, getting naked, but spinning and covering herself again when she’s about to get naked. Meanwhile, the audience at the cabaret watches distracted, without stopping their conversations. The kids drink soup and our protagonists don’t stop disputing with each other. It seems more a South American than a Portuguese bar, but, anyway! Portugal has always been for me a bridge and a substitute. The European body of the kingdom of Chile. At liftoff, the plane left the track, but managed to brake. Excellent pretext to drink a whisky.

Reading or re-reading The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by J. Hogg. It should be the film that I’ll make next year around this time. Three days ago we worked with Jérôme Prieur, who wrote the prologue of the Marabout edition. I don’t know what to think. From Ian Christie to Françoise Dumas, more than twenty friends try to convince me that I adapt this Neo Gothic novel that I like and gives me ideas for other films, but I’m not sure that the novel itself lends itself for a filmed recreation. There are true moments of madness and I feel images coming of hilarious cruelty, but, like The Man Who Was Thursday by Chesterton, I feel that these novels work more as fans than as vacuum cleaners. They scatter and impregnate, but in themselves they aren’t idea magnets. But I could be wrong. In any case we’ve convened to place it in 1830’s France and end it towards the end of the XIX century with the discovery of the justified sinner, suspended, frozen in a glacier.

This sudden association with E. A. Poe has me in a good mood. It’s strange the way in which fictions associate to generate filmable images: La chouette aveugle by Hedayat didn’t summon (although it did discover) imagery, but the contact with El condenado por desconfiado by Tirso de Molina was enough for it to secrete audiovisual figures of enormous potency. In 40 minutes we shall land. Enough time for a cognac and to take a nap.

Later. In the neighborhood of Graça, waiting for André Gomes, actor and plastic artist. The whole afternoon studying the work plan, which is quite tight. Some streets are missing. The rest is all chosen already. I think it’s the first time that a production is this advanced. Yes, I think it’s the first time. I still feel that I’m not prepared the same. What’s missing above all is a coherent way to organize the shots. I’m trying to follow species of the spiral kind from right to left or alternating details and wide shots. Something to hold onto. And, of course, I keep avoiding eroticism. And I wrote the script (like the one for Three Crowns of the Sailor) coming out of the hospital and a urgent desire to fuck, doubled this time by the generous effect of a treatment with vitamin E.

From the window of the hotel (the same room I had while prepping Three Crowns of the Sailor) you can see the Castle and the river. Intriguing twilight. It stopped raining. Lots of transparency. But I want fog. But I want to work with a lot of diffusers. Women’s stockings, 30’s silk breeches (today’s don’t filter the same, the supplementary nylon or the treatment of the silk gives it a stupid multicolored and sweetened effect). Anyway. The eroticism reemerges where one least expects it.’

26 July 2000
‘Yesterday I worked two hours in the morning shooting objects, specially chairs: wood with wood: the chair on the wooden floor next to a piece of firewood and a match that burns and putters out. Then I went to have lunch with Luis Villamán. It was my birthday and his was on Monday, so we celebrated it as single men. Then I went back home, took a nap and I was reading until 5 pm, in which I started to work with Andrés. We examined some exercises and then we talked about theory and we started to shoot. He’s quick and had a couple of interesting ideas. At 7 pm the Rojas’, Jorge and Catherine came and we went to celebrate my birthday at a Chinese restaurant (Pacifique). I went to bed at 1 am. At 8 am I got up and I spent the entire morning editing Déclaration d’intention. At 12.30 hrs. I went to have lunch with the girl they’re proposing me as coach for Laetitia. Then I went to buy some books.’

11 March 2001
‘Cloudy and rainy. Yesterday I had lunch with Collin and we worked the whole afternoon (until 16.30 hrs.) with Stéphane. We finished the analytical read. The first, because many will come. Then a nap and reading of Schehadé. I read the second act and immediately some pages of Hebdromadaires by Prévert, a series of ramblings on this world and the other. Generous and stimulating. I dined with Gilbert and Leonardo, who mechanically insists in making me work on Dorian Gray and is still deaf to my explanations, which are simple. I’m under contract (“word contract”, the worst of all) with Paulo. I returned at 12. I saw a bit of television, a local soccer match. Soccer is still the only interesting thing among the live TV shows. I’ll spend the morning reading and taking notes and hearing (more than listening) music by Berg and Max Reger: from melancholy, melancholy and a half. I’ll have lunch with the Rojas’ couple and Andrés. Then I hope to work some, unless the heaviness leads me to lay down on bed.’

13 March 2001
‘Cloudy and fatal. Yesterday I started a new experience: a parallel carnet. As if someone said, a light way of leading a double life. And who says double says triple: I bought a third carnet (made of leather, in homage to [-]).

Last night I woke up at 2 am and I started to read the Hebdromadaire, the conversations with Prévert: “ ‘Are the sages of interest to you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because I’m ignorant.’ ‘What it’s for you to be ignorant?’ ‘I ignore it.’ “. And adds: “Maybe the ignorant ignores what he knows and the sage knows what it is that he ignores”. Last night the semi-insomnia was provoked by the fear of filling the sound bar too much, to charge of commentaries without knowing much le comment dire.

During the mixing Sergio Castilla called from Chile, pleading me to not use for my film the Delora nº 3 by Leng (or that I use it but that I stop using it). I don’t know how he got the number of the mixing room.

Second day of mixing. It rains. I’ll go at noon to give a look (again) to the old book shops. I keep searching for Le chant de l’equipage by Mac Orlan. I started to leaf through Claude Farrère. Hesitating if entering or not in the meanders of Thomas de Quincey: “The bad fortune wheel”. It only takes three lines to bring up the despair and the desire to die. I can’t manage to concentrate on the Chilean film, which is approaching me quickly and menacingly. I have to pay the phone.

Curious to write on top of the wrinkles of the paper (which seems to turn eloquent to us as it fills with signs, as it a second writing would fight to emerge and impose itself).

11.10 hrs. Some images for Cofralandes: series of interiors that culminate via approaching into detail shots (an object), that takes us to another interior, until that from detail to detail we find ourselves in a garbage dump (or in a store) in which all the objects seen in the other interiors can be seen. Each object tells its story. Stories of a salt shaker: salt flats, salaries, rites of the salt. Ashtray: same.

19.30 hrs. Back to the mixing. We’re in the third reel. I had lunch with Lucho Villamán, who’s preparing for his trip to Chile. I waver between preparing something to eat or go to a restaurant. But without means to talk it’s almost preferred to stay at home. To read and write.

Each day I give a step more towards my novels. I decided to finish Jamaica Inn, but I’ll need another title and I can’t find it.

Finally it’s nice to write on this paper. Permanent sensation of writing a palimpsest (is it written like that?).

I bought Positif. Articles on the documentary. I guess they’ll say something that isn’t the usual common ground. Picabia: “L’art est le culte de l’erreur”. And Gauguin: “Quand l’Ètat s’en mêle, il finit bien les choses”.

How to make a film that isn’t poetic art.

I started the reading of The Prince of Fools by Gérard de Nerval. The only that I don’t manage to do is go to the cinema. I don’t have a way to complaint that people don’t go to see my films. In fact, I don’t complain. Tomorrow I’ll do an effort and I’ll go see Traffic, to see Benicio del Toro act, to whom Paulo proposed the main role in The Ground Beneath Her Feet.

I saw on TV, in Actors Studio, an interview with Stanley Donen. Always surprising the simplicity and brutality of the American formulas. The ideal of our time: formulas so simple that they turn mysterious. “Encore une fois: le prince des sots”. May it be.

21.15 hrs. What is a novel? What is a film? What is art? To ask Serge Daney what is at this point. It isn’t, but what is a not Daney? A common French? The French mediocrity. No, nothing. Good, we’ll see. All that is see is not novel. What is novelated is what it’s told as revealed. On the account of what? Say it, Vaché.

At this point I’m little by little recovering the library of Paul de René that was burnt by the Nazis and a from which a few copies are left. All with the same kind of filling.

It seems that Pinochet will be judged for concealment. “Concealment”, the word that perfectly fits Chile. Country of concealment. Lost between absolutes and tales (see Lulio).

I have to do something with my books that isn’t burning them... Or sell them and win money, which would be worse. But so much ungrateful complaining.

The next week I travel to Chile (I said Chile: I travel to Cuba, where Valeria is, which, in this world, is my wife). Well. Tonight readings and leisure. Some red wine and [-] unreasonable.’

17 March 2001
‘Sunny, spring-like day. Day of disasters. This morning I read the fax that Gemini Films sent me, in which they communicate me the changes of the script, script that had already been accepted and paid in part and with its production running. The changes asked and done already by Rushdie are purely and simply the totality of the film. His attitude can be summed up in the next proposition: remove me from the project. None of my ideas of misé-en-scene is considered acceptable. I’m almost sure that they’ve given the script to read to what they call a “doctor”, a specialist in dramatic construction. This for the project is the flatness, we’re at the starting point.

I tried to expel the disaster dedicating myself to make the tax declaration and it’s a horror what I’ve earned and spent, essentially inviting friends to eat. I foresee a less friendly and very lonely future. More meals at home. Patience. Then an urgent fax from Hong Kong came asking me for the list of subtitles of Three Crowns of the Sailor, which I made nineteen years ago. Everywhere asking me for this and that, colloquia and nonsense. On the other hand, Comedy of Innocence is what they call a serious failure (90-something thousand tickets: honorable, but small).

Well, yesterday we were feasting in a restaurant the almost end of the mixing (reel 6, only one left). Yesterday the meeting of the Circle was a serious failure because Gérard was missing, who was in a police station, where his son had been jailed, who was protesting for the rights of the African immigrants. We did anyway a  schedule for the magazine. Some good ideas.

The day of all catastrophes. Salman Rushdie communicates through his agent that he wants to change all the scenes of the script to transform it into “the great popular success that we all want” (we all want?) Then, the always ingrate task of declaring taxes. I’m at the Flore waiting, hopeless, for Paulo, from whom I got a somewhat confusing message saying that he’ll be at the Flore between 12.00 and 13.00 hrs.’