Seven Ages of Paris

An interesting take on French culture:

“One of the most remarkable features in all the history of France is the way in which, following two crushing nineteenth-century military disasters—Waterloo in 1815 and the capitulation to Prussia and the Commune of 1871—each time there was an extraordinary blossoming in the gentler and more enduring works of humanity. . . .

Sophronisba It was almost as if they came in direct response to catastrophe on the military plane. Following 1871, it would be the burst of liberating colour and joy that was Impressionism; in 1815, it was the unique flowering of the great French novel, from Balzac and Hugo to Gautier, Flaubert and Daudet, from Dumas père and fils to Zola, Maupassant and Anatole France.“ 2y

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Sophronisba

Seven Ages of Paris | Alistair Horne

Stendhal on Paris: “This capital of the greatest empire of modern times is used up for me, I have become blasé with regard to its pleasures … Obviously I haven‘t the light, frivolous character necessary for enjoying Paris to the full.” He had by now come to look on the Parisians as “a surly, fretful, envious people, in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction … Even the pretty girls wore five or six wrinkles across their foreheads, etched in by envy.”

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Sophronisba

Seven Ages of Paris | Alistair Horne

TIL that France's Louis XI was such a miser that he married his young daughter off to a slightly-built man “because it seems to me that the children they might have would not cost much to feed.”

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