A Pátria em Perigo, de Jules & Edmond de Goncourt. Tradução e notas

Tradução do texto teatral A Pátria em Perigo, de Jules & Edmond de Goncourt.

Madame Desoye, “First Woman Importer” of Japanese Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris

The shop run by Madame Desoye at 220, rue de Rivoli in Paris is legendary in Japonisme studies thanks to the writings of Edmond de Goncourt and Philippe Burty, yet the identity of the woman hidden behind this married name, like the extent of her participation in Japoniste activities, has long remained a mystery. The present article draws upon new archival research to provide information about the life of Louise Mélina Desoye, née Chopin (1836-1909) and her important contributions to the first wave of French Japonisme.

La Vanité à l’usage des demoiselles : savoir-vivre et savoir-mourir dans le roman d’éducation pour filles dans le Second Empire

Les années 1850 voient s’installer le Second Empire après un demi-siècle houleux où s’illustre la vanité du pouvoir temporel. Toutes deux légitimistes, Sophie Rostoptchine, comtesse de Ségur, et Victorine Monniot, ont laissé une empreinte profonde dans l’éducation des jeunes filles du Second Empire. Leur enseignement, fondé sur une interprétation concrète du catéchisme catholique, illustre les principes chrétiens de renonciation aux biens matériels enseignés par le memento mori tout en se faisant l’écho des angoisses de l’époque. L’article se propose d’étudier la présence de la vanité comme outil pédagogique dans Le Journal de Marguerite (1858) et le cycle de Sophie (1858-1859) et de mettre au jour les liens entre ces romans édifiants et les hantises exprimées par Baudelaire ou Edmond de Goncourt.

“The Most Passionate of All”

Known primarily as a jeweler in the vanguard of Art nouveau and an important collector of the Impressionists, Henri Vever (1854-1942), as his private diaries make clear, was also a foremost connoisseur of Japanese art in fin-de-siècle France, “the most passionate of all,” to Edmond de Goncourt. Well-connected to networks of dealers, museum officials, publications, and sites of sociability such as the dîners japonais, Vever figures among the most prominent members of a second wave of Parisian enthusiasts of Japanese art, active from approximately 1880 to 1900. Under the tutelage of the Japanese art dealers Hayashi Tadamasa and Siegfried Bing and the fine art printer Charles Gillot, Vever constituted a renowned collection of not only Japanese prints but also other art objects previously disregarded by collectors. Vever’s multiple and intersecting identities as luxury craft producer, leading member of professional associations, art historian and critic, collector, and Republican mayor placed him at the forefront of efforts to legitimate the collection and appreciation of Japanese art in France. His diaries also underscore the connections between the worlds of Japanese and Impressionist art collectors, and between proponents of japonisme and Art nouveau. Further, they highlight the importance of the 1900 Paris Exposition universelle as a triumphant moment for japonisme in France, just as they signal the shift on the part of some japonisants, at the same time, from Japanese art towards the decorative arts of the Islamic world.

In the Land of Pain

<p>(<em>Authors' Note</em>: Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) was a nineteenth century French novelist. A contemporary of Gustave Flaubert, Edmond de Goncourt and Emile Zola, among others, he achieved much fame and renown in his life time. He contracted syphilis sometimes in his twenties. In the last ten years of his life, he suffered from the effects of neurosyphilis. “In the Land of Pain” is a personal account of his struggle with the illness which eventually took his life).</p><p>     In the early nineteenth century, the tertiary form of syphilis began to be recognized. After lurking in the victim’s blood for several years, syphilis attacked the central nervous system. The resulting condition, called neurosyphilis, was invariably fatal. It usually manifested in two major forms: Locomotor ataxia (also called tabesdorsalis) or general paresis (also called general paresis of the insane).</p>