The Wichita Bureau learned a new word today--dépigeonnage, which you can probably figure out for yourself but if you are stumped, don't count on Google Translate: they say the English for dépigeonnage is dépigeonnage. Really never thought of our feathered friends as being high on the list of French nuisances but evidently somebody does--here's a French "environmental" (sic?) website with news on " La Lutte Contre les Pigeons." Here's another site, this one cautioning that "Les pigeons causent des nuisances directement sur la santé," and warning that "Le dépigeonnage nécessite l’expertise d’un professional." Or, as Wichita suggests, does it have something to do with St. Francis and feeding (or not feeding) the birds? It does, I admit, remind me of one of my favorite Biblical chestnuts--workable in any language but somehow more convincing in French. It's the one where Mary explains the baby to the elderly Joseph: c'est le pigeon, Joseph.
Mrs. Buce pronounces herself only mildly amused by the pigeon concept, but would consider démoleage or désquirrelage, if either is on offer.
Here's the authoritative American approach to the topic. Not sure how well it would translate:
Je congnois bien par ouyr dire, plusieurs especes de voluptez prudentes, fortes et glorieuses : mais l’opinion ne peut pas assez sur moy pour m’en mettre en appetit. Je ne les veux pas tant magnanimes, magnifiques et fastueuses, comme je les veux doucereuses, faciles et prestes. A natura discedimus : populo nos damus, nullius rei bono auctori.
Ma philosophie est en action, en usage naturel et present : peu en fantasie. Prinssé-je plaisir à jouer aux noisettes et à la toupie !
That is:
I know from hearsay that there are several species of pleasure which are wise, strong and laudable; but rumour has not enough power over me to arouse an appetite for them in me. I do not so much want noble, magnificent and proud pleasures as sweetish ones, easy and ready to hand. We are departing from wht is natural, surrendering ourselves to the plebs who aare never a good guide in anything.
My philosophy lies in action, in natural and present practice, and but little in ratiocination. Would that I could enjoy tossing hazelnuts and whipping tops!
So Montaigne, On Some Lines of Virgil, Book III, Essay 5. The italicized quotation is from Seneca, Epist. mora.,CXIX, 17. The translation is from M. A. Screech, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne at 950 1991).
I've remarked before on how relatively easy-going the French seem to have become about acts of wanton savagery committed against their language by foreigners (that would be me, your honor). Here's one who hasn't given up the old ways: Marc Fumaroli, identified here on the book jacket as "a scholar of French classical rhetoric and art." The book is entitled --well now, just what is it entitled The English-language edition is entitled When the World Spoke French
, but the French original was (if you can believe it) more modest: simply Quand l'Europe Parlait Francais--that is "Europe," not "the World." Oddly, neither is quite accurate: "the World" is a bit of a stretch for a book that says nothing about Hong Kong or Antarctica. But "Europe" ignores two of the finest and funniest bits--anecdotes about Benjamin Franklin and Gouvernor Morris, who n bore the burden of Paris duty in the cause of their nascent American republic.
"Anecdotes" is the operative word here: in sum, 26 more or less free-standing vignettes about people who were, or wanted to be, or should have been, fixtures on the Parisian during "the Enlightenment"--defined by Fumaroli as the 100/101 years between the treaties that ended the War of Spanish Succession (1713-14) and the first fall of Napoleon (1814). They're a varied lot, both in subject and quality. Perhaps the best is the author's account of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield, he who offered such pithy advice to his son. Fumaroli presents the noble Lord in what will be, I suspect, for most readers an entirely new light--and if he has to stretch to make a Paris connection, why that is perhaps only to be expected. His piece on Frederic II, by contrast, seems almost perfunctory in the sense that he probably felt he had to include something about Voltaire's royal pal, even though he doesn't have a lot new to say (I admit I did not know, however, that Frederic's father "spat in the dinner plates of his children before they were served."
There is one structural oddity about the book that the producers of the English-language edition did not figure out how to resolve. That is: each vignette ends with a selection of "original source material"--a letter or some such, somehow related to the subject in question. Fine, but why, exactly? I suspect the giveaway is in the lede: Fumaroli is a scholar of rhetoric and he meant to show just how supple and powerful was his beloved language. The trouble is that this will only work if the selections are in French:--but this is a translation, and so they are in English. As such they don't prove much of anything and are pretty much of a big yawn (I admit I am half tempted to order up the French original to see if I can get any sense of his original point). I suspect on the whole they might have saved a few trees without loss to human understanding if the translator had simply left them out. But it's a minor flaw. Meanwhile, if you want a sense of French culture from a man who obviously hasn't had a happy day since they chopped the head off Marie Antoinettei Fumaroli is your man.
[Wait a minute, Fumaroli? A student of French rhetoric? What kinda name is Fumaroli, anyway?]
