Paris is not that bad
So, a year ago everyone in Paris was really mean and everything was a big trial, but in the intervening year, all the Parisians have become much nicer, and the whole city has become easier to negotiate!
Oh I'm just kidding! It's me that's changed, silly! Also it is springtime, rather than oppressive winter, and I'm sleeping in a charming apartment in the 10th arrondissement, rather than in a vermin-infested flophouse in the filthy ghetto-suburbs. It's the little things that make the difference, really.
And the library work is going really well, too. The entrance interview which was such a trial last time, was a breeze. And my interviewer thought I was British, which I consider an odd sort of triumph. But the big news happened in the Manuscript Department.
Some of you may remember that I wanted to go through the massive collection of correspondence belonging to Félix-Hippolyte Larrey, since my beloved Garcia cites him as a friend in a letter. So I get the letters, and there's no index, or even a table of contents, just a big jumble of about 900 letters of different sizes and colors all bound together into this one big messy volume. To find any Garcia letters, I thought I would have to just trudge through the whole thing. So I start at the beginning, and just when I realize that the letters are in fact, roughly organized alphabetically by author, a name caught my eye: Bennati. For those of you who don't know, Bennati is this totally different doctor who I am very interested in for totally different reasons. The feeling was a lot like that one time Katie took me to a party with her friends in the Mission, and I ran into this girl I went to college with. I'm all like, "What are you doing here?!"
More than his mere presence in the collection, the letter was very, very intimate. Bennati was writing to Larrey while the latter was in Flanders with the Army perfecting his battlefield amputation skills. Bennati reports that he was visiting Larrey's mother often, that his sister was doing well, that when he visits they talk constantly about "notre excellent Hippolyte." He signs the letter "a thousand kisses, and then a thousand more from your good mother -Bennati." (Also, for my purposes, the fact the Bennati provides him with a fairly detailed sketch of the recent goings-on at the Théâtre-Italien is more than a little useful...)
Remember when I wrote in these pages about the seductiveness of manuscript sources? This was the same feeling, but ten times more powerful than the Minute Books I was working with then. I mean, it's like: the letter is dated 21 October, and he says that he thinks his chances in the Montyon competition are pretty good, but he hasn't heard yet. Well, I know, from the Académie des Sciences records, that his was going to win, and that the award would be announced just ten days later, on 2 November. I want to shout back at him—don't worry! Be patient! And of course I also want to shout back at him about his early death—he's dead less than two years after writing the letter. You might want to avoid the Boulevard de Gand, monsieur...
There were no Garcia letters at all. But frankly this might be more interesting.
Oh I'm just kidding! It's me that's changed, silly! Also it is springtime, rather than oppressive winter, and I'm sleeping in a charming apartment in the 10th arrondissement, rather than in a vermin-infested flophouse in the filthy ghetto-suburbs. It's the little things that make the difference, really.
And the library work is going really well, too. The entrance interview which was such a trial last time, was a breeze. And my interviewer thought I was British, which I consider an odd sort of triumph. But the big news happened in the Manuscript Department.
Some of you may remember that I wanted to go through the massive collection of correspondence belonging to Félix-Hippolyte Larrey, since my beloved Garcia cites him as a friend in a letter. So I get the letters, and there's no index, or even a table of contents, just a big jumble of about 900 letters of different sizes and colors all bound together into this one big messy volume. To find any Garcia letters, I thought I would have to just trudge through the whole thing. So I start at the beginning, and just when I realize that the letters are in fact, roughly organized alphabetically by author, a name caught my eye: Bennati. For those of you who don't know, Bennati is this totally different doctor who I am very interested in for totally different reasons. The feeling was a lot like that one time Katie took me to a party with her friends in the Mission, and I ran into this girl I went to college with. I'm all like, "What are you doing here?!"
More than his mere presence in the collection, the letter was very, very intimate. Bennati was writing to Larrey while the latter was in Flanders with the Army perfecting his battlefield amputation skills. Bennati reports that he was visiting Larrey's mother often, that his sister was doing well, that when he visits they talk constantly about "notre excellent Hippolyte." He signs the letter "a thousand kisses, and then a thousand more from your good mother -Bennati." (Also, for my purposes, the fact the Bennati provides him with a fairly detailed sketch of the recent goings-on at the Théâtre-Italien is more than a little useful...)
Remember when I wrote in these pages about the seductiveness of manuscript sources? This was the same feeling, but ten times more powerful than the Minute Books I was working with then. I mean, it's like: the letter is dated 21 October, and he says that he thinks his chances in the Montyon competition are pretty good, but he hasn't heard yet. Well, I know, from the Académie des Sciences records, that his was going to win, and that the award would be announced just ten days later, on 2 November. I want to shout back at him—don't worry! Be patient! And of course I also want to shout back at him about his early death—he's dead less than two years after writing the letter. You might want to avoid the Boulevard de Gand, monsieur...
There were no Garcia letters at all. But frankly this might be more interesting.
posted by Grrg at 8:46 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home