Louis-Ferdinand Céline, "Céline" tout court, for the French, keeps on creating turmoil. Fifty years after his death, French authorities denied him any official remembrance… A pathetic and a… logical decision! Céline's antisemitism is pointed. Hard to deny: three pamphlets, extremely violent, published between 1938 and 1941, unfortunately "best sellers" during the nazi occupation of France (1940-1945), are considered as mere "calls for murder"… ("incitation au meurtre", en français).
For ever banned
French Jews were already segregated and seriously threatened at the time. Consequently, Shoah struck them at full by summer 1942. It's of course easy to look at Céline as one of those pro-nazi writers (alike Robert Brasillach and Pierre Drieu la Rochelle). Unlike Brasillach and Drieu, Céline didn't get too close from the German leaders and saved his own life by fleeing to Danemark till 1951, the year of the "Great Amnesty" in France. Nevertheless, I would have been forgiving him… Because Céline is such a genius and because he's "abnormal", kind of "mentally sick", in a way. In front of fair judges, Céline would have been freed of all charges. I guess… So self-destructive as he was, he must have realized that those three thin books ("L'Ecole des Cadavres", "Bagatelle pour un Massacre", "Les Beaux Draps", by the way…) would definitely ban him from all "national recognition" for ever. He was right.
Forgettable pamphlets
Because Céline doesn't need any "pumpous circumstances" from "official France". We, his faithful readers, can celebrate him, in our own way! Without any help! No, thank you! Jean-Paul Sartre refused the 1964 Nobel Price and Julien Gracq denied the 1951 Prix Goncourt, too… Because, for them only the reader counts. Only the reader… And let's forget the "official guys": most of the time they don't even know what they are "acting" about (it's start to show!). Let's just read Céline, quietly, in our own sweet way (as Miles would play…). Let's have our personnal display of pictures coming from his books: we don't need any movie! Let's read "Voyage", "Mort à Crédit", "D'un Château l'Autre", "Rigodon", "Nord", Féérie pour une autre fois" (alias "Normance"), "Guignol's band"… and let's forget those three "pamphlets": in fact they are not worth reading!!!
Jean-Pierre FRIGO
vendredi 2 septembre 2011
samedi 13 août 2011
Recommencements
Déjà un an de Café Voltaire. Là, maintenant, le temps pour écrire revient petit à petit. DUNQUE… ça devrait "re-pulser" dans le bon sens. Intention de partager des trucs originaux et intéressants que je trouve. Pourtant il va falloir continuer en anglais pour toutes sortes de raisons. A bientôt, donc! (sur nos lignes, nos antennes et dans nos colonnes…) Jean-Pierre FRIGO
dimanche 24 octobre 2010
Musics again and again…
Paul Verlaine used to say: "De la musique avant toute chose…"
Somebody else said: "After the end of the world there will always be MUSIC left…"
Duke Ellington: "There is only two kinds of musci: the good one and the bad one."
Breathing musics…
- >More important than words or melody is the sound and the tempo… which produce impacts on us, unconsciously I guess… Take Erik SATIE or Thelonious MONK there is so much in their music of the "art of silence", a way to breathe INSIDE the music.
Miles DAVIS has got the idea too (may be from Thelonious…?). Let's take a ballad like "Drag dog" (on the "My Prince will come" album (1961)): the way Miles plays the first part is typical of "breathing music". Same thing for "In a silent way" (1968)…
- Listening to Erik Satie's "Vexations" - a cyclical phrase repeated 840 times - brings back the same impression of "breathing": it looks extreme or unlistenable but when played it is not: the piece puts the listener in a kind of transe where one composes is ownd music by "playing" and "adjusting"different parts together, not as expected from the beginning. Satie meant it that way, probably… In brief: looks boring, on paper, but when listened carefully, one of the most exciting music on Earth. John Cage got into it too… but I never listened to his own version.
- Back to Monk: his solo works - and compositions >> Monk is a prolific composer! - show evidences how he is dealing with space and silent intervals… Worth listening are "Ruby my dear", "Crepuscule with Nellie" (Nellie was Monk's wife) plus the dramatic pauses on "Coming on the Hudson"… Anywayn, nothing is more dramatic than the Monk'silence(s) on the famous 1954 sessions with Miles: "Bag's groove".
Somebody else said: "After the end of the world there will always be MUSIC left…"
Duke Ellington: "There is only two kinds of musci: the good one and the bad one."
Breathing musics…
- >More important than words or melody is the sound and the tempo… which produce impacts on us, unconsciously I guess… Take Erik SATIE or Thelonious MONK there is so much in their music of the "art of silence", a way to breathe INSIDE the music.
Miles DAVIS has got the idea too (may be from Thelonious…?). Let's take a ballad like "Drag dog" (on the "My Prince will come" album (1961)): the way Miles plays the first part is typical of "breathing music". Same thing for "In a silent way" (1968)…
- Listening to Erik Satie's "Vexations" - a cyclical phrase repeated 840 times - brings back the same impression of "breathing": it looks extreme or unlistenable but when played it is not: the piece puts the listener in a kind of transe where one composes is ownd music by "playing" and "adjusting"different parts together, not as expected from the beginning. Satie meant it that way, probably… In brief: looks boring, on paper, but when listened carefully, one of the most exciting music on Earth. John Cage got into it too… but I never listened to his own version.
- Back to Monk: his solo works - and compositions >> Monk is a prolific composer! - show evidences how he is dealing with space and silent intervals… Worth listening are "Ruby my dear", "Crepuscule with Nellie" (Nellie was Monk's wife) plus the dramatic pauses on "Coming on the Hudson"… Anywayn, nothing is more dramatic than the Monk'silence(s) on the famous 1954 sessions with Miles: "Bag's groove".
dimanche 17 octobre 2010
LANDSCAPES
Hi again,
Tomorrow was…… 5 days later.
Feeling commited to landscapes. Geographical landscapes can fit into our own mental landscapes, collapse with them or just get passed by. But it does matter for me. One of my favourites landscapes is seen from the coupole of the Panthéon in Paris. Possibility to turn 360° around and around and get the city of Paris under a different angle every time. Kind of original landscape compaired to those from Notre-Dame or the Eiffel Tower, or even the Arch of Triumph. The worst landscape I know is also from Paris, when one stares at the terr……rrrible Montparnasse Tower: crappy building. What a shame!
Back to "normal landscapes", out of "cityscapes" I will recall:
- A narrow and windy road in Burgundy, alongside "l'Armançon", a river, between Montbard and Tonnerre. Early morning, sunrays between the two lines of trees, one for each bank of the water. I was a kid in our family car. A view and an atmosphere which sends me to a rêverie…
- Those sequences of islands and lakes by road 62, from Mikkeli to Puumala, but especially after Puumala… At twilights in summertime: gives me the feel I've been here before, few thousand years ago. One of my favourite Finnish landscapes with Koli, and in and around Jyväskylä… Reposaari too… for another reason: land swallowed into the sea.
- Incredible hiking track East of Meyrueis in the French Cévennes. The path to Cabrillac. Valleys on both sides.
- River Thames in Henley: such a green haze, greens melting in the meadows, around the willows, linked by the same colours displayed by the Thames…
- Dawn in Montsegur Castle, seen from the high walls. 4 am in July, looking North: a magic embrace over those lowerlands and plains of Midi. Thinking - never forgetting - of the people who resisted there in 1243-1244. Flash back of imagination.
- Arrival to the Atlantic Ocean in La Joselière, Vendée. In 1962, when we were 11 and 9 with my brother Daniel. Hearts pounding while the car was driving up the coastline just before the wide seascape "exploding" in total view. Our extatic faces hit by blows of light, chilly wind and the thickest air.
- Those heights overlooking Monthermé in the French Ardennes. A place called "Les Hauts Buttés" I used to link to Julien Gracq's book, "Un balcon en forêt'. Back to the primitive forest and to beautiful loneliness among my tree friends. From there, worth to walk East, across the woods, towards the Belgian border. Something to experiment for a European soul!
- "My" straight roads in the far outskirts of Paris, South and South-East of the French capital, across the Brie and Eastern Beauce. Roads bordered with poplars, open fields everywhere, roads like veins, soil like skin.
- Wineyards in Elsass, at the hills overlooking Andlau, a village South of Barr. Geometrical designs below the woods, round and circular village underneath its wineyards. Close to paradise… When mankind seems perfectly in tune with nature.
Soon, musics, only musics… Next week but not tomorrow. No.
JPF
Tomorrow was…… 5 days later.
Feeling commited to landscapes. Geographical landscapes can fit into our own mental landscapes, collapse with them or just get passed by. But it does matter for me. One of my favourites landscapes is seen from the coupole of the Panthéon in Paris. Possibility to turn 360° around and around and get the city of Paris under a different angle every time. Kind of original landscape compaired to those from Notre-Dame or the Eiffel Tower, or even the Arch of Triumph. The worst landscape I know is also from Paris, when one stares at the terr……rrrible Montparnasse Tower: crappy building. What a shame!
Back to "normal landscapes", out of "cityscapes" I will recall:
- A narrow and windy road in Burgundy, alongside "l'Armançon", a river, between Montbard and Tonnerre. Early morning, sunrays between the two lines of trees, one for each bank of the water. I was a kid in our family car. A view and an atmosphere which sends me to a rêverie…
- Those sequences of islands and lakes by road 62, from Mikkeli to Puumala, but especially after Puumala… At twilights in summertime: gives me the feel I've been here before, few thousand years ago. One of my favourite Finnish landscapes with Koli, and in and around Jyväskylä… Reposaari too… for another reason: land swallowed into the sea.
- Incredible hiking track East of Meyrueis in the French Cévennes. The path to Cabrillac. Valleys on both sides.
- River Thames in Henley: such a green haze, greens melting in the meadows, around the willows, linked by the same colours displayed by the Thames…
- Dawn in Montsegur Castle, seen from the high walls. 4 am in July, looking North: a magic embrace over those lowerlands and plains of Midi. Thinking - never forgetting - of the people who resisted there in 1243-1244. Flash back of imagination.
- Arrival to the Atlantic Ocean in La Joselière, Vendée. In 1962, when we were 11 and 9 with my brother Daniel. Hearts pounding while the car was driving up the coastline just before the wide seascape "exploding" in total view. Our extatic faces hit by blows of light, chilly wind and the thickest air.
- Those heights overlooking Monthermé in the French Ardennes. A place called "Les Hauts Buttés" I used to link to Julien Gracq's book, "Un balcon en forêt'. Back to the primitive forest and to beautiful loneliness among my tree friends. From there, worth to walk East, across the woods, towards the Belgian border. Something to experiment for a European soul!
- "My" straight roads in the far outskirts of Paris, South and South-East of the French capital, across the Brie and Eastern Beauce. Roads bordered with poplars, open fields everywhere, roads like veins, soil like skin.
- Wineyards in Elsass, at the hills overlooking Andlau, a village South of Barr. Geometrical designs below the woods, round and circular village underneath its wineyards. Close to paradise… When mankind seems perfectly in tune with nature.
Soon, musics, only musics… Next week but not tomorrow. No.
JPF
mardi 12 octobre 2010
Choices
Hi,
My name is Jean-Pierre FRIGO, the owner of "Café Voltaire" in Turku.
I would just like to write about people, books, musics and films I remember today as "key-stuff":
People:
- Miles Davis, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Malle, Pierre Bourdieu, Simone de Beauvoir, Emmanuel Todd, Julia Kristeva, Sofi Oksanen, Mika Waltari, Patrick Modiano, Françoise Sagan, Machiavel, my grand-mother (!), Gunther Walraff (examplary!), Alain Tanner, Claude Goretta, Vassily Grossman, Heinrich Böll… and Voltaire!!! (more coming… but that's all for today…)
Books:
- "D'un Château l'autre" (LF Céline), "A la Recherche du temps perdu" (M Proust), "Puhdistus" (S Oksanen), "Yksityismiehen juna" (M Waltari), "L'élégance du Hérisson" (Muriel Barbery), "Portrait de groupe avec dame" (H Böll), "Le Mur" (JP Sartre), "Les Belles Images" (S d Beauvoir), "Jours tranquilles à Clichy" (H Miller)……… "Je me souviens" (G Perec)……………
Musics:
- "Backseat Betty" (Miles Davis), "Freight Train" (John Coltrane), "Body and Soul" (C Hawkins), "To Erlinda" (Michel Petrucciani), "Don't explain" (H Merryl), "Misty" (par DD Bridwater / "Live in Paris"), "Swift shifting" (C Baker), "Yellow tango" (Dick Twardzik), "Dat Dere" (Eldar), "Ghosty Heads" (R Lee Jones), "Gnosiennes" (E Satie), "Triple concerto" (Beethoven), "Ebony concerto" (Stravinsky)…
Films:
- "La Salamandre" (A Tanner), "Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie" (L Bunuel), "Le Fantôme de la Liberté" (L Bunuel), "Little Big Man (A Penn), "Amarcord" (Fellini), "Festen" (T Vinterberg), "Bird" (C Eastwood), "L'invitation" (C Goretta), "Kauas pilvet karkkaavat" (A Kaurismäki), "Arvotommat" (M Kaurismäki), "My dinner with André" (L Malle), "Deep End" (Skolimowski), "A bout de souffle" (JP Godard), etc………
What else? More to come (!) tomorrow………
JPF
My name is Jean-Pierre FRIGO, the owner of "Café Voltaire" in Turku.
I would just like to write about people, books, musics and films I remember today as "key-stuff":
People:
- Miles Davis, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Malle, Pierre Bourdieu, Simone de Beauvoir, Emmanuel Todd, Julia Kristeva, Sofi Oksanen, Mika Waltari, Patrick Modiano, Françoise Sagan, Machiavel, my grand-mother (!), Gunther Walraff (examplary!), Alain Tanner, Claude Goretta, Vassily Grossman, Heinrich Böll… and Voltaire!!! (more coming… but that's all for today…)
Books:
- "D'un Château l'autre" (LF Céline), "A la Recherche du temps perdu" (M Proust), "Puhdistus" (S Oksanen), "Yksityismiehen juna" (M Waltari), "L'élégance du Hérisson" (Muriel Barbery), "Portrait de groupe avec dame" (H Böll), "Le Mur" (JP Sartre), "Les Belles Images" (S d Beauvoir), "Jours tranquilles à Clichy" (H Miller)……… "Je me souviens" (G Perec)……………
Musics:
- "Backseat Betty" (Miles Davis), "Freight Train" (John Coltrane), "Body and Soul" (C Hawkins), "To Erlinda" (Michel Petrucciani), "Don't explain" (H Merryl), "Misty" (par DD Bridwater / "Live in Paris"), "Swift shifting" (C Baker), "Yellow tango" (Dick Twardzik), "Dat Dere" (Eldar), "Ghosty Heads" (R Lee Jones), "Gnosiennes" (E Satie), "Triple concerto" (Beethoven), "Ebony concerto" (Stravinsky)…
Films:
- "La Salamandre" (A Tanner), "Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie" (L Bunuel), "Le Fantôme de la Liberté" (L Bunuel), "Little Big Man (A Penn), "Amarcord" (Fellini), "Festen" (T Vinterberg), "Bird" (C Eastwood), "L'invitation" (C Goretta), "Kauas pilvet karkkaavat" (A Kaurismäki), "Arvotommat" (M Kaurismäki), "My dinner with André" (L Malle), "Deep End" (Skolimowski), "A bout de souffle" (JP Godard), etc………
What else? More to come (!) tomorrow………
JPF
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