Le Grand Amour de Marie-Antoinette Lettres Secrets de la Reine et du Comte de Fersen by Evelyn Lever

 I have, since little, been fascinated by Marie-Antoinette. Queen of France; if Marie-Therese, her mother was considered a remarkable and great stateswoman, Marie-Antoinette has always been classified as a frivolous person, a person who lived mainly in a dreaming, beautiful world  disconnected by the reality of his people.

She married at just 14 years Louis XVI a boy not incredibly beauty or attracting, unfortunately pretty shy; someone she didn't like. 

Time ago watching in an italian cultural program dedicated at Marie-Antoinette by Alberto Angela, Ulisse, I understood that there was evidence of a strong correspondence between her and Axel Von Fersen, the biggest love of her existence. Not only: that they are working for deciphering some letters. 

When I discovered that Editions Tallandier published a book only dedicated to the topic I tried to ask for a book review copy and grazie, grazie, grazie, they sent me that!

Le Grand Amour

de Marie-Antoinette Lettres Secrets de la Reine et du Comte de Fersen by Evelyne Lever is a wonderful discovery. The first Eleven Chapters treats the existence of Marie-Antoinette, and her love-affair with Fersen, the final part is dedicated to the letters exchanged by the lovers in particular during the years 1791-1792.

Symbol and one of the most iconic characters of a disappeared world, profoundly hated by its citizenship, Marie-Antoinette  accumulated, when she died also the phantomes and secrets of the old regime, "thrown away" by the arrival of the Republic. The myth of a queen absolutely insensible at the requests of the third state, meant for the republicans the justification for having killed her. 

In that existence, lived as we said before in extreme luxury and in a continuous fairy-tale is innested the story with a Swedish man who would have made the difference in the existence of Marie Antoinette: Axel Von Fersen.

It's only at the end of the XIX century that there is the possibility of seeing the first correspondence of Marie-Antoinette thanks also to mister de Klinckowström, a relative of von Fersen; he published some of  the correspondence of his ancestor Axel von Fersen with Marie-Antoinette, in particular the one from 1791-1792.

A lot of French people immediately were more than interested to see the rest of letters, if a real correspondence between the two existed, but the man, exasperated, and feeling a lot of pressure, told that he had burned all the rest.

In 1982 the descendants of mr de Klinckowström revailed that the letters existed; they were not burned and they have been bought by the Archives nationales de France. The author confesses that she has been one of the first of seeing them in person.

Considering the crypticity that some letters contains in 2014 three institutes started to collaborate together: les Archives nationales, la Fondation des sciences du Patrimoine and the Centre de recherche sur la conservation.

Let's try to reconstruct some bit this love and existence of this unlucky lady. 

First of all Marie-Antoinette.

Marie-Therese, the mother of Marie-Antoinette represented in Austria the christian morality and she has been a strong and beloved statist. 

Little Antonia, Marie-Antoinette later, was a gracious and little baby when born. She had miriads of other siblings. An anedoct: one day Mozart, performed for the royal family and the little Marie-Antoinette promised him of marrying him.

When the hypothesis that Antonia could become queen of France always more realistic the first worry of Marie-Therese was the lack of culture of her daughter. It was a marriage created, this one, for establighing a good relationship between the two countries; sure worries were a lot; Marie would have abandoned forever her country, language, people, at a little age, just 14 years. Was it indispensible? Marie-Antoinette once in France and married with Louis XVI has always lived with an internal torment that wouldn't never ceased.

The frank, honest and sunny character of Marie-Antoinette conquered immediately Louis XV, the father of the Dolphin.

Louis XVI appeared like a shy person although with a solid education; he talked english fluenty, he knew some words of italian, he had studied history, french literature, but the couple started to develop at long a problem: they could not consum the wedding.

Marie-Antoinette didn't love her husband but proved for him a profound friendship and respect. It was impossible in the past an union of love, in particular between princes and princesses. Theese marriages were created for cementing alliances, trying to avoid wars and  also for keeping the various countries more strong.

On 26 april 1774 Louis XV fell sick. It's smallpox. It is a straining moment this one for the french monarchy. Everyone guessed that the king wouldn't have passed this moment. Isolated in other branches of the castle of Versailles for avoid smallpox when the king died, they said: « Mon Dieu protégez-nous, nous sommes trop jeunes pour régner ! » "God, protect us, we are too young for this role."

Louis XVI is still too shy, and Marie-Antoinette lives inebriated of freedom!

Louis XVI is too weak for asking to his wife to be more moderated; after all he is happy of making her happy realizing every desire; parties and whatever she would have wanted.

Le Petit Trianon, donated by the king to his wife becomes her personal kingdom.

Marie-Antoinette doesn't develop any kind of political ambition, she wants just to be loved, admired by everyone. The most conservative ones starts to criticizing Marie-Antoinette and her behavior.

Of course the life-style started by Marie-Antoinette means also spending a lot of public money, and France when Louis XVI become king lives in great sufferance; common people are starved. Marie-Antoinette becomes the lady more well-dressed of the entire France; she wants to be a desiderable woman.

Unfortunately Marie-Antoinette because, after all, pure as said once the brothers Goncourt, and ingenuous, will fall in the trap of some manipulative people like De Benseval and later madame De Polignac. Polignac will manipulate poor Marie-Antoinette in many different ways. 

Marie-Therese, the mother of Marie-Antoinette is always more worried. What she hears are news of a queen all taken by beautiful dresses, dances, false ladies close to her just for opportunity, an existence, that one spent by Marie-Antoinette avoided by her severe mother. 

She wrote to her daughter in a worried letter: 

"We are in this world for making some good to the other ones. Your mark is one of the most essentials. We are not people that must live for themselves, or just for entertaining ourselves, but for the acquisition of Heaven, where everythings tends, and that it is not gratis: it must be earned."

Marie Antoinette couldn't think for once at the pleasures of Heaven, just at the most material ones.

Polignac becomes for Marie-Antoinette her biggest confident, and it was pretty dangerous to her. She opened to the friend and lady of company her thoughts, her hopes, she talked of her problems with the king not understanding that the other one had other purposes. 

In the while Joseph one of his siblings affords to Paris for meeting again his sister and the french royal family. He finds a beautiful environment and Marie-Antoinette is visibly happy to see again someone of her old family. Joseph will also investigate the problem of Louis XVI and later Marie-Antoinette will communicate to the mother that the wedding was consummed and in 1778 they waited  their first baby.

Fersen arrived in the existence of Marie Antoinette on January 30 1774. Oh, Axel Von Fersen was bewitched by Marie Antoinette. He returned to Sweden for four years never forgetting her and always asking to himself  if Maria-Antoinette remembered him.

In august 25th that Marie-Antoinette re-meet again the stunningly beautiful Axel Von Fersen.

She remembered him! She had previously met him 4 years before! What a joy! to see him again!

Marie-Antoinette's first baby was a daughter called Marie-Therese and life soon returned to the normality. 

A normality, this time, involving Fersen as well. 

The queen is fatally attracted by him but the man is scared of a potential relationship and what it would mean to him if discovered.

Marie-Antoinette talks of this problem with Polignac the most intriguing lady existing in the world. Very soon everyone knew that Marie-Antoinette was in love for Fersen. In the while Fersen leaves for join the American expedition and war. 

The book illustrates very well also the policy of that decades, the european equilibrisms, the USA but  also the family Fersen, his studies, his trips, his girlfriends.

When they are not together and Fersen somewhere else, he will write letters addressed at a certain Josephine...

Of course everyone knew the affaire between Marie-Antoinette and Axel von Fersen. The second child a son, born on 1785, maybe was the son of Fersen, people whispered insistently.

Was this one the son of Fersen? Marie-Antoinette betrayed the King and the monarchy? It's not impossible to exclude this option.

What did Fersen write to the Queen? The most diversified topics, from foreign policy to light subects, declaring his immense love for her.

At the same time Marie-Antoinette's reputation is completely ruined by the so-called scandal of the collier; the queen didn't know anything of this story, but it was organized pretty well. The cardinal of Rohan didn't know what he was doing, when "bought" this jewel for Marie-Antoinette as if the transition needed also the role of an important and eminent man of the church. Marie-Antoinette was scandalized. De La Motte was an ambitous girl in grade of cheating at several levels the poor cardinal. 

During this storm, at some point, the King discovers the love letters of Marie-Antoinette and Von Fersen, but he loves her and he can't help himself.

The two lovers starts to be more prudents with their correspondence.

We are close to the end. The convocation of the États généraux means the end of the monarchy and the beginning of the Revolution.

When the Revolution starts, the royal family is confined at Le Tuleries. Under many ways Fersen has written the destiny of the royal family, asking them to try to escape from there; the royal family will be later captured at Varennes.

Marie-Antoinette in 1792 in his letters to Fersen " Adieu, le plus aimé des hommes. Calmezvous si vous pouvez, ménagezvous pour moi. Je ne pourrai plus

vous écrire, mais rien dans le monde ne peut m’empêcher de vous adorer." She speaks at Fersen as the most loved man, but also of the danger of keeping alive this correspondence; she adds that she wouldn't want to write him anymore but no one in the world can prevent me from adoring you."

Marie Antoinette speaks like a lover, not like a close friend.

Few days after the death of Marie-Antoinette Fersen writes in his journal: « Ce jour était un jour mémorable et terrible pour moi, c’est celui où j’ai perdu la personne qui m’aimait le

plus au monde et qui m’aimait véritablement. Je pleurerai sa perte toute ma vie et je sens que tout mon sentiment pour El. ne peut me faire oublier tout ce que j’ai perdu. »

Fersen is desperate. Marie Antoinette was the only person who had loved him the most and  realistically. Fersen feels that he has lost everything and understands that "All my feelings for her can't let me forget what I have lost forever."

The rest of his existence, with some sporadic female companionships never definitives, was spent by the aristocrat remembering her only love. 

Fersen died atrociously in his country, in 1810.

Beautiful book, this love-story remains one of the saddest ones presenting us by History, but it is put in a human perspectives; after all Marie-Antoinette wasn't in love with her husband. She hadn't choosen of marrying him; maybe she didn't want to be a queen although I guess she loved her priviledged role and the endless possibilities of having fun in many different ways; with Fersen she found a bit of happiness. 

Hoghly recommended.

I thank so much Editions Tallandier for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Quando C'erano i Comunisti I Cento Anni del PCI tra Cronaca e Storia con una trestimonianza di Umberto Terracini by Mario Pendinelli and Marcello Sorgi

Quando C'erano i Comunisti

I Cento Anni del PCI tra Cronaca e Storia con una testimonianza di Umberto Terracini by Mario Pendinelli and Marcello Sorgi is the most engaging book that you can find around about the Communist Party.

Lights, shadows, the Italian Communist Party has been maybe the most powerful one of all the rest of european communists parties receiving a lot of money from Moscow.

It is not just a reconstruction of the movement, and then the party, but the story of its main protagonists, starting with Antonio Nino Gramsci and his family; his friendship with Palmiro Toglietti.

Togliatti and Gramsci were closed friends, inseparables; they knew each other when at the university and they loved to stay always together. Years pretty dark the ones of the first portion of 1900s. The First World War, the Spanish Flu that killed 100 million of people in the entire world, one day in 1911 the big thief at the Louvre of Paris: someone stole the Monna Lisa by Leonardo. Who was the responsible? 

Impossible to think but investigations at first were conducted in the direction of Guillame Apollinaire seen close to the Gioconda days before and Pablo Picasso. 

Years later, someone called Perrugia was trying to sell the Monna Lisa.

In this tumultous contest, Gramsci and Togliatti start to elaborate their theories.

Close to them the arrival of Angelo Tasca one of the protagonists of the events of 1921. 

But we are now in 1915 when Italy enters in war; socialists remain neutrals, Mussolini apart.

Salandra was the president of the council and he was pretty criticized by Giolitti because Salandra thought that what would have followed would have been a little and quick war, while the proportion of what became is known to everyone. "He lives in luxurious estates while poor devils are at war" commented, bitterly, Giolitti. 

Toglietti that years become volunteer while Gramsci dedicated its time at the journalistic activity although a magazine didn't pay him; L'Avanti paid but not too much for a living so Antonio was constricted at giving private lessons for a living.

In an article called La Città Futura Gramsci critices the populist rethoric.

In 1917 in Russia there is the revolution; the tzar has been killed with all his family and a new order, mostly created with wagons of blood has been created.

Gramsci has a new girlfriend, although when he will afford to Moscow, he will marry a girl of the city having a baby with her.

Pia said, once Gramsci was dead, that he was in grade to communicaty the most brutal facts with great sweetness.

FIAT was the most importat factory in Italy and as remarked Gobetti, Fiat for Italy means the entrance in the future thanks to its modernity.

Born in 1899 thanks to the visionariety of a group of aristocrats and rich bourgeois, will mean for the communist party the liberation of people from the feudal system of peasantry, trying to give them more emancipation and freedom.

These workers had to have a different dignity, much more high, elevated; workers that meant a new order. 

In the while what the first world war brought, once finished, was the dissolution of the big empires, more hate between countries, confused ideas at the Conference of Peace, in Paris.

Food, energy, transporation were the main voices that should have been taken in consideration by our country but that were not when our delegation was in Paris. 

There wasn't a clear idea of the country and where the country thanks to this war and the pandemic flu wanted to go. 600.000 dead, 500.000 mutilated the numbers of our "victory". 

Lenin is following with great interest the italian situation and its industrialization, thinking in 1920 that  is arrived the moment for a sort of revolution in our country as well.

Reed, a reporter of the Metropolitan Magazine New York, writes that this one is a little man, not incredibly beauty; he is also pretty sly and with a good intellectual audacity.

Mussolini becomes the editor of L' Avanti but he will leave the socialist party founding a new newsmagazine called "Il Popolo d'Italia" and starting the fascist movement.

On january 21, 1921 a branch of socialists decides to create the italian communist party, with a scission althouth at first at the elections the experience is a real failure.

Fascim starts to become a reality always more eradicated in the territory.

When Gramsci will afford again to Russia, Lenin has had a stroke. It is close to him the moment of giving the power at someone else: Stalin.

Lenin didn't like Stalin at all. He was defined by Lenin as a capricious, rude and unloyal person.

Stalin suffered of smallpox when little and so his skin had still the visible and horrible signs of the devastation of that infective illness.

Then he also suffered of an illness that caused a permament damage at the articulations of one of his the arms: and his parents were not of great example.

These two totalitarian regimes created in the XX cwentury, the communism and the fascism were much more than a simple assolutism. 

Why? Because they were like long shadows in grade of capturing the attention of people under all aspects. George Mosse wrote: "It's the public life pervading private life; it's the public, prevailing on the private..." 

All the people against these ideologies must be killed. 

In this sense, please read The Eight Life for Brilka, because it will give you the sense of what it meant to live in Tblisi Georgia, during that years. Again a long saga that will explain you why these ideologies were so disgusting; they were in grade of killing the souls of people.

Stalin was crazy; of a lucid craziness. People were scared of him. 

Stalin was horrible and killed million of people because activist politicians, because against the regime, because, simply, he thought that that people had to die because enemies.

Sure, he thought that "dictatorial methods brought a lot of profits for people."

But...Stalin has been a degeneration, or Lenin had started the process that would have brought at all this sufferance? 

With Lenin the country became a communism dictatorship (with masses of peasants demonstrating because they didn't want to lose their lands and their houses.)

These years as also remarked with strength Solzenicyn there is fear. The country leaves in fear from decades, and people are scared. A little gesture can cost the existence or freedom, wrote the beloved writer that experienced gulag and every sorta of sufferance.

The communist Party born in Russia on dec 30 1922 will end its experience dec 26th 1991 creating a subordination of many countries and people also pretty diversified. It was a great empire. During the second world war, the russian empire, one of the winners of the second world war conflict will impose in the countries close to it, its model.

It was a great joy the departure of Stalin on march 5 1953 although, apparently 80 million of people were mourning and in an ingenuous country where just less people knew the truth L'Unità wrote that Stalin was "the man who had fought for the progress and liberation of the humanity."

Three years later, tired of covering the massacres organized by Stalin, the new leader Chruscev, said without too many other words and compliments that Stalin had committed horrible crimes. 

It will be during the years of Chrusev that Solzenicyn will publish his first books. The statesman reported a man, Stalin who didn't hesistate at killing who had also a little different idea from him. 

He suffered of several disturbs of personality, thinking that everyone was a traitor. 

Who didn't want to obey was sent in a gulag dying for the sufferances experienced. 

These secrets informations will be soon releaed in the New York Times and people will be shocked by what they read. During these years Russia launches the Sputnik beginning a long competition with the USA for the discovery of space. 

John Kenneth Gallbraith from Harvard noticed also that the end of the private property had caused another big problem: people didn't cultivate anymore grain as they did before, and  cows of peasants were not kept well and milk not much.

There was also a big discussion, let's use that expression, between, Kennedy and the same Chruscev (with which Kennedy had establised a special phone line for speaking with him) that brought high tension; Cuba the reason of the problem; anyway problems were sorted out successfully well.

Chruscev loses the power thanks to a golpe, although apparently for a story of old age; the new leader becomes  Breznev, ukrainian.

With him, Russia will know a long period of stagnation; Breznev  petrified his world.

Togliatti became the leader of the italian communist party in the while. It's the time of the Resistance and Togliatti, returned from Russia, searches all the anti-fascists, monarchs included. Togliatti will be one of the most influential founders of the Italian Republic, and the communist party will become the leader of the Resistance born in Sept 8 1943.

While partisans fought for the freedom of the country, Vassalli found an incredible system for setting free at Regina Coeli Sandro Pertini and Saragat that were waiting to be killed.

Although Palmiro Togliatti was married, he fell in love with Nilde Iotti, her lover and companion per decades. Nilde didn't have children because she could not marry Togliatti. In Italy divorce was not yet a law, but she admitted in an interview released at Oriana Fallaci that after all what it is important is to be parents and she was a good parent for Marisa.

They also lived in a hidden place per years, very cold in the winter, and absolutely devastatingly warm in the Rome's summers. 

At the end Togliatti lost the patience: he wanted to go to live in a different place and with more dignity. 

The political party lived the love with Iotti with severity, judging not too positively their leader; a leader seen like a god, before the meeting with Iotti.

Nilde Iotti will demonstrate to everyone, in particular after the departure of Palmiro Togliatti, that was a strong lady, and a great dirigent of the communist party. At long she has been the President of the Chamber of Deputy from 1979 to 1992.

Renato Guttuso, sicilian and great painter has been a  beloved esponent of the italian communist party. Partisan, he will become a senator in the legislation 1976-1979. When Togliatti died, Renato Guttuso, after a period of silence will impress in the canvas all his sentiments.

Not just politicians in that painting: there is Luchino Visconti, close to Salvatore Quasimodo, Elio Vittorini like also Giangiacomo Feltrinelli disappeared in a tragic terrorist attack.

This painting, Il Funerale di Togliatti will be shown in many italian places, before to find its place at Bologna, the city Guttuso wanted, because the heart of the italian communism. 

In the while in the party there is ferment. What kind of new political party for this society, very different from the one seen by Gramsci? The economy is going on very well, maybe it's better, the idea of some esponents, of building a new party with the socialists; a riformist one. Other ones think that a refoundation of the left is indispensible.

Longo, at that time leader of the PCI will want as vice-secretary Enrico Berlinguer.

Born in Sardinia, and precisely at Sassari, in jail  for armed insurrection and much more, his father will sort out the problem.

The father will speak with Togliatti, because his son doesn't want to go to Rome and Togliatti will help him. Enrico will start to work to Rome in the juvenile section of the party.

Enrico was a closed boy, someone who didn't like to let show to others his feelings, but one day some friends of him tell that they organized a dinner where he was with them, and was happy, and cheerful as all the rest of them. She knows a girl Letizia Laurenti, and he falls in love. He will marry her and they will have four children: Bianca, Laura, Maria Stella and Marco.

Berlinguer is different from  Gramsci and Togliatti. His world is not the world of the founders of the communist party. He hasn't never known Lenin, Stalin. He is much much more free than his predecessors were. 

Plus, of course he didn't suffer what his predecessors suffered. Yes, he went to jail for a bit, but his father, an influential man, helped him without hesitations.

Berlinguer has been the communist leader more loved by italians.

Berlinguer when secretary would have wanted to create an historic compromise with the Democrazia Cristiana. The person with which he was more in contact with was Aldo Moro, someone opened and interested at walking close to Berlinguer and the ideas he wanted to share with him.

Divorce becomes law but the history of this special moment is influenced by the destiny of Aldo Moro. Once kidnapped, and later killed by the Brigate Rosse this era will be forever gone and the confrontation between these two parties ended.

Berlinguer, close to the experiment with Aldo Moro, thinks also that the legacy of Russia is too heavy; maybe it's better to search for another ideal of socialism. 

During a meeting in Russia, Breznev will try to let understand to the various foreign leaders that they can't do what they want.

Berlinguer doesn't have the same opinion of Breznev and he doesn't want to listen the words of the russian leader. 

It's a speech absolutely revolutionary and judged with ice by the russian establishment; the day after the piece ends in the New York Times, remarking the independent line of Italy.

In an interview with Giampaolo Pansa, Berlinguer remarked the independence that he wanted to create looking at western countries and NATO more than at Moscow.

As said before the Brigate Rosse were a degeneration of the communist party and for this reason Berlinguer will fight them with strength.

They are complicated years with Berlinguer under many ways "lost" because Aldo Moro is dead; a precious person was not anymore close to him.

Berlinguer died abruptly; he became sick during a speech because of a stroke, remaining the most beloved secretary of the italian communist party.

Alessandro Natta was the successor of Berlinguer, he had ideas filo-russian; Achille Occhetto would have later ended the experience of the communist party, creating scissions with the more nostalgic branch of followers; years later the party abandoned also Botteghe Oscure, their headquarter.

A book  informative, beautiful: the perfect reading for everyone curious to discover much more our past history.

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Donna Brigantia e altre Storie by Rocco Familiari

 If you love short stories of peculiar places Donna

Brigantia e altre Storie by Rocco Familiari is your book! A book that you must read!

These stories are set in a little town located in Calabria and they report, tell, the characteristics and adventures of the most "importants" for diversified reasons, citizens. 

One of the peculiarities of these people? Nicknames, so that people could recognize immediately the other one; nicknames born because of some particular treats of their characters, but also because of physical aspects, characteristics sometimes funny, like the man with a good, mmm, let's put the things in this terms, package, or Cicciobello, a neckless man with the passion for pronstitutes. There is Donna Brigantia, a lady who made several children with her husband, because bastards not admitted, but that if she found a man attractive, they had a restaurant, she didn't hesitate. There is, always in Donna Brigantia the idea of the possession of the land and the fear of killing someone because they didn't respect the order given of going away. There is Tirebouchon, latin-lover, dead paradoxically while he was opening a bottle of champagne. This book tell stories of people in the immediate post second world war and offers a variety of characters that will enchant you. You can read the book following the sequentiality of the stories, or jumping here and there going at the discovery of new adventures, nicknames and colored characters!

Highly recommended

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Midcentury Suspension Literature and Feeling in the Wake of World War II by Claire Seiler

 Midcentury Suspension

Literature and Feeling in the Wake of World War II by Claire Seiler is an interesting book published by Columbia University Press about the meaning of the midcentury in the USA and how writers mainly lived it. 

The first fifty years of the XX century hasn't been simple at all: Two World Wars, a pandemic flu, the Spanish one, between the First and Second World War, Holocaust. Yes, a particular tribulated world, that  first 50 years  of the century. 

What to wait next? That was the main problem and obsessions, analyzed by politicians like Churchill in meetings organized for speaking of this thematic, for making a point of the first fifty years, trying to see...the next future.

In general universities tried to give an answer like journalists, writers. Yes because that years were made by sensations, mainly. 

Appeared more than clear that the rights of black people would have been taken in great consideration, but it was also a time of suspension this one, because everyone had big fear of nuclear weapons and of the following uncertainty left behind by the war. Everyone would have wanted to re-start without pressures but no one knew what the second part, the second 50 years of that century would have meant to them.

Suspension, waiting, but also the certainty that this second part could be plenty of surprises, and not just negative ones. McKenzie wrote: "I feel in the 1950 as if I were on the edge of my seat, standing on tiptoe, peering around the corner." Williams synthetized his feelings writing about an "Immediate World."

Suspension: this word suggests several meanings or better, interpretations: "A freezing or delay of action or progress, a deferral of decisions, or a temporary revocation of a normal state of affairs." The XX century can be defined as the Modernist Century.

Suspension can be very well seen in two beloved masterpieces written by Elizabeth Bowen and Samuel Beckett. The first book is The Heat of the Day and the second Waiting for Godot, where in both cases there is suspension not maybe of the time but of a lack of action of the various protagonists. 

In Godot the protagonists continues to wait for the arrival of Godot. they continue to wait without trying to search for some other "escapism" regarding the entire situation, but living with ironically passivity the existence. Written after the last world war, sure it was a work influenced by what happened in the middle, and we can traces lines indicating it. Estragon at a certain point will say: "...Yes i now I remember, yesterday evening we spent blathering about nothing in particular. That's been going on now for half a century."

The book by Bowen had a long gestation and was re-written after the war, set anyway in the middle of the second world war; there is historical, rethorical suspension. The story, the one of Stella Rodney; she accompanies her lover on a trip to his suburban family home.

Once arrived she perceives the inadequacy of class and nationality. 

The protagonists live suspended because of the war. A senseless war, presenting to all of them the fixity of the moment, but at the same time, the perception that time  goes by. The "sense of the now" become one of the most crucial and important theme of the book.

Frank O'Hara was a poet who had written "Memorial Day 1950." Frank studied at Harvard and completed his studies at 24 years. 

In this first poem, sometimes not too taken too much in consideration there is a paternal elegy because of the damages caused by the oldest generations to the newest ones. 

Not only: this poem symbolizes what it meant to be a poet who distrusts the world built after the war.

In " A Byzantine Place: 50 Places and aNoh Play" and later in Try! Try!  several kind of meditations. In the second play the return home of a soldier, John from the war, for then discovering, it was a classic, his wife in the arms of someone else, seeing in funny terms after all. 

The stress left behind by war couldn't be avoided and if under many ways writers didn't write after all massively about Spanish flu, differently has been with for a war who marked not just a century but also the conception of level of horror that the humanity can reach for destroying the world with nuclear bombs or annientating the existences of million of people. 

Beautiful, erudite book!

Highly recommended!

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Only a Lodger... And Hardly That by Vesna Main

 Only a Lodger...

And Hardly That by Vesna Main published by Seagull Press is an evocative, beautiful book on the existence and how hard or sunny, or funny or simply wonderfully complicated, can be.

There are four stories and a poetic excursion.

I read this book in a few hours and absorbing it, is like a long digestion because of the thematic treated, the characters introduced to us, readers; it is an hypnotic book that you'll love a lot and that, first of all, will let you think; at the end you will want to hugh the protagonists of all these tales, because of their lack of fortunes, because of their misadventures, because of the confusion created by third people to them so that the existence was altered forever, creating maybe creative people; minds born because of an internal intense sufferance. You will also imagine these people in your existence and how they could have made the difference; revolutionaries, fearless characters, people of culture. 

In the first tale, the longest one of the book, the protagonist is She; her mother was the center of the existence of this not yet four years old kid, when the story starts; a mother who loved to change the clothes of She three times per day; they hadn't to be necessarely dirty; a mother, this one, who loved to punish psychologically and physically her baby if she lacked; if She didn't remember a piece of poem, something crucial but important for her mother; a mother who, coldly, has never demostrated her any kind of love, just severity; a babysitter pretty sweet disappeared abruptly and She, didn't never understand the reason but she missed her tremendously; this toddler at six years went to a local school, not properly the one expected by her mother; there were children much different, and more than once they were unpleasants.

Love, love, love. She would have always wanted to be loved, but she could not to be loved, because, she didn't know how to love or better, what it meant the word love. 

Once at the university when she understood that a very good student didn't pass an exam, she asked to a common friend if the husband of that girl had left her: her friend started to laugh asking her if for case she was joking because for sure they were not together because of university and the failure of an exam wouldn't never been so remarkably important in the couple. 

She didn't understand, because in her case, love meant to do all her best at school: so a bad vote would have meant to be less loved by her parents and in particular, by her mother.

Growing she dreamt of going somewhere else, for re-start everything; she developed, maybe because of her mother's character, so hard, controvertial, the idea of cultivating some girlfriends like lovers. These women laughed at her, and she couldn't never establish a good relationship; two big love, two men will mark the existence of tribulated She. The decision to become a writer, because she needed to tale, to report. For sufferance, because it was a catartic way for making some peace with her past. Memories, tales of a remote past, and the present, with her memory fading away. It is one of the best short tales I have ever read. Intense, felt, written with heart, profoundity, analyzing, going deep, and putting in that words a sincerity and passion.

In another tale the character of Pavel Horvat. Pavel was a man of culture, someone intensely curios and a man who culturally bettered his existence for all his life. 

He was a great teachers, admired by everyone but he didn't find interests for women. People started to think that maybe was homosexual. Simply, he had a family, abandoned that one and now he was fine in the solitude of the four walls of his house.

He was a man starved of learning. He thought that the existence was too short for spending it in a too silly way, so he read a lot, learnt many languages, spent time in many countries, was enchanted by the italian language, was suprised and addicted by every word in the world, meaning, smell, because Pavel thought that words smelled as well; he was in love with every language he learnt. Every year was a different discovery and vacations the best time of the year for learning more.

In the while Pavel every Christmas for thirty years sent anonymously at four people of his family four packages plenty of books, anonymously; do you know the secret of Pulcinella? Everyone knew who the sender was: his relatives knew that was Pavel/Viktor who sent these pacakges, but they didn't tell a lot about it if not to be absolutely grateful for the thought. Why Pavel did it? Absolutely, at first, for culturally enriching his dear ones. Why did he choose certain books? Maybe Pavel wanted to "drive" the readings of his relatives. 

Yes, maybe there was the idea of "driving" the reading existence of their beloved ones, making them curious. One of them is sure of it; that packages had meant the discovery of great novels, a passion never abandoned anymore.

Great Pavel! Great idea!

The Fourth Character is the story of four photographs of beloved relatives of the author, analyzed with great disgressions; she starts with grand-father Francis and her; Francis in the pic was in his 60s just retired from a big newspaper and book publishing. 

Francis more than anyone else instilled in the existence of her niece the love for knowledge and reading; better, she says that "It was with my grandfather Francis, and not with my parents, who were far too busy making a living, and far too cynical to think of changing the world, that I learnt to appreciate the life of the mind."

Then the author analyzes the facial expression of her grand-father. He doesn't appear happy to be there, he doesn't smile. Realistically just some time before that that picture was taken, people were not comfy with pictures. 

When pictures were born taking a picture, a memory, was a long process: people wore their most elegant clothes, it was necessary to go to the studio of the photographer. 

In these first pictures, admits the author, taking pictures started to become more normal but at the same time perfection resulted distant because photographs not taken by a real photographer.

In the second picture the comparison of the group of people with the painting by Manet La Musique aux Tuileries. 

What did that picture of a group of people taken after a lunch mean to the author? A great sadness because most of the people she knew very well passed away and just maybe two toddlers, now in their late 80's, or early 90's.

The painting of Le Tuileries, where there are unknown people, results immortal to her because she didn't know them; their existences is perpetuated and fixated on the painting; sure, in the pic where there were her relatives, she understands all the mortality of the existence.

There is also the analysis of this group of people: all from the same social class, people derived from the working class but that hoped to reach best results during the life.

In the third picture the happy birthday, her grand-father Francis at that time just 40 years had developed big problems with alcohol. She married a woman she loved but the parents of her were skeptical because they "read" in him a revolutionary spirit: Francis was in love for socialism.

His wife didn't want to notice the problem of her husband and continued with her own existence.

In the last picture we will be introduced at the extramarital relationship Francis developed with the time. More: during the last world war, he joined the anti-fascists group. He was put in jail and tortured. 

Now, that her grand-parents are disappeared, the author imagines what it is still remained in her soul of them; then, flashes of a remote past, voices whispering in her ears, she remembers...Her grand-father Francis reading some of the Faust of Goethe, Crime and Punishment, Overcoat, by Gogol. A picture can become a story, and objects are remarking not just the time passed by but also memories of our story.

The fourth story the one of a man, pretty wealthy in his forties, unmarried but with the idea of settling down. Maria the daughter of a man he knows very well become the center of his attention. He will try with all himself: he will invite the family of the girl at dinners, in his house in the countryside, he will speak with the father of the girl, he will cultivate under many ways the friendship with the girl. Nothing: after three years, one day he will discover that the girl married another man. As his mother would have said..."Ottel... was not to meant to be."

The Acrobat is a section dedicated to a poem and telling the story of a girl, Maria in love with a flying circus performer.

This book is a gem, trust me. You'll love it and you'll treasure forever.

I thank Seagull Press for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Le Second Métier de l'écrivain by Colette

 Le Second Métier de l'écrivain by Colette

published by L'Editions de L'Herne focus the attention in a new phaenomenon appeared in France as also in other parts of the world with the advent of the XX century: publicity and ads.

Most societies, brands, for selling more, for let know their products at a largest population, established contacts with reporters, journalists, writers, asking to them of writing good reviews. The idea: reaching as many people as possible. 

It was a paid job, le second métier de l'ècrivan, voilà! and of course Colette, one of the most known and beloved french writers who wrote mainly for female magazines was involved in this fertil and productive activity pretty intensely.

She wrote with passion: she didn't just wanted to "sell" the products, but she wanted to leave a piece of herself for her readers, sharing memories, sensorialities, experiences, creating in these pieces, wonderful and felt expressions of pure adoration for the product she was writing of.

Colette created also a brand with her same name founded on 1932 and the author cured all the aspects of the publicity. 

Many perfumes have been reviewed by Colette, like Parfum d'Orsay, Lanvin, Raucour and more. Colette explained the magic of the perfume in the various part of the bodies and how the nostrils can be invaded by wonderful and absolutely stunning fragrances for building memories, and unique moments in the existence of people.

Everything changes says in a piece, the one of d'Orsay, Colette, including Parfums. Colette confesses she used the same parfum for more than 40 years. What was exactly a perfume for Colette? "Les plus indispensable del superflus". Why this? Because a perfume starts a pure physical poetry. Perfumes are a noble caprice, a voluptous touch, they add romantic notes to our daily existences.

Speaking about fashion these ones some of her words regarding Hermes. Hermes was in grade to read the Parisienne lady, disconnecting her from her fragilities althought there is a peculiar strenght in grade of donating to them a lot of grace.

Hermés means patience, Hermés means perfection and Colette asks to women of imitating the same philosophy of the exclusive branch maturing its same patience. Brands are also viewed by Colette with human, inspiring  characteristics.

For the Grand Maison de Blanc Colette starts describing a morning with all its sweetnesses: bread, honey, milk but also the vapour of boiling chocolate: early morning, for all the creatives, for all that people looking at the new and still uncertain day with expectations and dreams; but also her women, her elegant readers 42 kilos, a hat, asks Colette don't suffer of indigestion while they are reading? What a wonderful elegant table the one Colette imagines for a sophisticated, elegant evening where every detail are perfects. Writing about La Galerie Lafayette. Colette notices a diversified exposition where women resuscitated one of the most characteristic silhuettes like high breasts, long legs, a body freedom also expression of the fruits of love; women with the desire of    following their destiny.

Colette presents often the idea of a lady in love not just with elegance but also with the pleasures of the existence, like also some good glasses of wine, some warm beverages enriched with cinnamon. 

Colette was also the testimonial of Lucky Strikes! a brand of cigarettes!

Beautiful and inspiring book!

I thank L'Editions de l'Herne for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori