travel books: students of Rouen by the faculty at Caen, the ancient capital of Normandy, whose massive and beautiful churches are constructed like the tragedies of Corneille. The subject for the French composition was a sentence from Renan: `To have had common glories in the past, to possess a common will in the present, to have achieved great things together, to be determined upon further achievement, these are the essential conditions for being a people'; it pleased me so much that I forgot where I was and why I was writing in the delight of composition. The oral examination seemed easy. I was questioned about Descartes and his influence on literature; about Livy (and I had just read Taine's book) and about a book of Homer which I knew by heart. Everything went smoothly except geography. An illtempered old man asked me the depth of the Rhone at Pont-Saint-Esprit. I never knew any figures, and this one least of all. But despite this culpable ignorance I passed. For several years I had spent my vacations in Paris with my mother's family, and there I found an atmosphere that was not very different from that of the Lycee. My four aunts loved the theatre and poetry. Every Thursday one of them would take me to the classical matinee of the Comedic Francaise. Before long I was commenting like a connoisseur upon the Mascarille of Georges Beer, the Pourceaugnac of Coquelin the younger or the Berenice of Julia Bartet. To see Mounet-Sully in CEdipus Rex, Coquelin in Cyrano, and later Sarah Bernhardt in L'Aiglon was for me a solemn, almost sacred, pleasure. When the exposition of 1900 opened, the Comedie Fran~aise organized a series of afternoon poetry readings at the Trocadero and my favourite actors and actresses took part, uncostumed, in reciting the poems of Chenier, La Fontaine, Hugo, Baudelaire, Verlaine. I could imagine in advance the intonations and rejoice in the happy inspirations of the actors. I lived in a wholly unreal world of poetry and passion. These days in Paris intoxicated me all the more inasmuch as I was in love. I did not know with whom. I longed to die for a beautiful and unhappy mistress. I loved to read in Sophocles or Euripides the story of Perseus rescuing Andromeda. I repeated with delight the beautiful sonnet of Ronsard: `Il ne faut s'etonner,' disaient ces bons vieillards, Dessus le mur troyen voyant passer Helene, books

Books > Old Books > Call No Man Happy (1943)

Page 036

PARADISE LOST

students of Rouen by the faculty at Caen, the ancient capital of Normandy, whose massive and beautiful churches are constructed like the tragedies of Corneille. The subject for the French composition was a sentence from Renan: `To have had common glories in the past, to possess a common will in the present, to have achieved great things together, to be determined upon further achievement, these are the essential conditions for being a people'; it pleased me so much that I forgot where I was and why I was writing in the delight of composition. The oral examination seemed easy. I was questioned about Descartes and his influence on literature; about Livy (and I had just read Taine's book) and about a book of Homer which I knew by heart. Everything went smoothly except geography. An illtempered old man asked me the depth of the Rhone at Pont-Saint-Esprit. I never knew any figures, and this one least of all. But despite this culpable ignorance I passed.
For several years I had spent my vacations in Paris with my mother's family, and there I found an atmosphere that was not very different from that of the Lycee. My four aunts loved the theatre and poetry. Every Thursday one of them would take me to the classical matinee of the Comedic Francaise. Before long I was commenting like a connoisseur upon the Mascarille of Georges Beer, the Pourceaugnac of Coquelin the younger or the Berenice of Julia Bartet. To see Mounet-Sully in CEdipus Rex, Coquelin in Cyrano, and later Sarah Bernhardt in L'Aiglon was for me a solemn, almost sacred, pleasure. When the exposition of 1900 opened, the Comedie Fran~aise organized a series of afternoon poetry readings at the Trocadero and my favourite actors and actresses took part, uncostumed, in reciting the poems of Chenier, La Fontaine, Hugo, Baudelaire, Verlaine. I could imagine in advance the intonations and rejoice in the happy inspirations of the actors. I lived in a wholly unreal world of poetry and passion.
These days in Paris intoxicated me all the more inasmuch as I was in love. I did not know with whom. I longed to die for a beautiful and unhappy mistress. I loved to read in Sophocles or Euripides the story of Perseus rescuing Andromeda. I repeated with delight the beautiful sonnet of Ronsard:
`Il ne faut s'etonner,' disaient ces bons vieillards,
Dessus le mur troyen voyant passer Helene,