In an effort to retain (and expand) my French abilities, I bought a number of random books in French from a used bookstore. One of them, a collection of letters written by the second wife of Louis XIV, might sound horribly dry, but is of particular interest to me, what with the French play I was in about how she came to be queen. The play was fantastic, if slightly stressful, and made history all the more fun to learn.
In reading the book, a number of things stand out. For one, people at that time used to write a lot more about their feelings, their thoughts, and their affections for each other. This is probably due to the tediousness of writing with quill and ink, and the fact that a letter took hours to write, and days or weeks to be delivered. If that was the only way to stay in touch with people, you would naturally want to give them insight to who you are and how you feel, rather than just facts and getting up-to-date on what's going on. While I see how it is probably not everyone's cup of tea, it is absolutely beautiful in French, and makes one feel calmer and more at peace in a world where beauty and joy are often overlooked.
One of the phrases she uses, in speaking of her solitude and loneliness in a cloister after the king's death, comes when she mentions that food is no longer of particular interest to her:
In reading the book, a number of things stand out. For one, people at that time used to write a lot more about their feelings, their thoughts, and their affections for each other. This is probably due to the tediousness of writing with quill and ink, and the fact that a letter took hours to write, and days or weeks to be delivered. If that was the only way to stay in touch with people, you would naturally want to give them insight to who you are and how you feel, rather than just facts and getting up-to-date on what's going on. While I see how it is probably not everyone's cup of tea, it is absolutely beautiful in French, and makes one feel calmer and more at peace in a world where beauty and joy are often overlooked.
One of the phrases she uses, in speaking of her solitude and loneliness in a cloister after the king's death, comes when she mentions that food is no longer of particular interest to her:
Il faut nourrir la machine quand c'est le coeur qui meurt de faim.
It is necessary to feed the body, while the soul dies of hunger.
Unfortunately, it loses something in translation; the word she uses for the body- a machine- implies the separation of the clinical physical needs of a being from the boundless passions of the heart and soul. When you consider that this is a woman who lived in Versailles at the height of French fashion and modernity, yet loved the king so much that she advised him against marrying her, for the sake of his political position, it speaks volumes about the importance she placed on physicality vs passion.
When people learn that I am a polyglot, one of the questions they inevitably ask is "which is your favorite language?" Without hesitation, I always firmly reply, "French." They frequently seem shocked that I don't even have to stop and think about it, but I have yet to meet anyone who speaks French and another language who didn't love it. Don't get me wrong, Arabic has a rich history, Russian is pretty (in it's own rough way), Gaelic is comforting, and sign language expressive, but French just has a passion for life that I haven't found anywhere else. Whether good or bad, full of suffering or elation, the French language just seems determined to grab life by the throat and wring every drop of passion out of it as possible.
Perhaps that's why we've stolen the phrase "joie de vivre" from them: because no one else is so full of life. Cheers!
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