Contented Mortals and Carnac

For the "Lion and the Mouse" research I'm reading the first part of Hester Lynch Piozzi's Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey Through France, Italy, and Germany, published in 1789 and describing a journey that began in autumn 1784. That her sagacity (not to mention capacity for prediction) is at times at fault is evident in the following passage:

The French are really a contented race of mortals;—precluded almost from possibility of adventure, the low Parisian leads a gentle humble life, nor envies that greatness he never can obtain; but either wonders delightedly, or diverts himself philosophically with the sight of splendours which seldom fail to excite serious envy in an Englishman, and sometimes occasion even suicide, from disappointed hopes, which never could take root in the heart of these unaspiring people.

It's another lesson not to generalize about national character.

Another book which I am consulting (also at gutenberg.org) is Brittany & Its Byways by Fanny Bury Palliser, and that was published in 1869. It begins in Cherbourg, and for a while I wanted to skip ahead, but the book crossed the Couësnon and entered Brittany soon enough. I like the little anecdotes in it, even the horrifying one about the watchdogs who used to run the streets of Saint-Malo after 10 p.m. every night, until 1770 when they brutally killed a navy officer. I also like the insights into daily life, like how the washerwomen bleach linens in a barrel using ashes and boiling water. Every time an interesting village or castle or church is mentioned I look it up in a certain online encyclopaedia to read about it in depth from a different angle.


What I hadn't realized before was how much of Arthurian legend and Druidic culture was alive across the Channel, and how much Brittany teems with relicts of the Stone Age. (Astérix and Obélix should have informed me on that point long ago, but when I read comic books they tend to be Tintin or Lucky Luke.) Looking at photos of the Forest of Brocéliande, which was once haunted (according to legend) by Merlin and Morgan le Fay, and then of the vast field of worn and lichen-covered stones at Carnac, was very impressive. The photo above is from Carnac.

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As for the Day of Reunification, I stayed in the apartment all day and only ran across photos of the gigantic marionettes in my newspaper- and blog-browsing, and therefore have nothing intelligent to report on the matter. The election outcome was a pity (and pitifully stupid), but I don't feel as worried about solipsist decision-making, misguided and often decidedly outré ideologies, and gross incompetence as I would if a neoliberally-influenced conservative party in the North American pattern had won the election. Now the SPD has the time to rediscover an independent platform that is based not on taking the left-leaning side of every centrist position in the determination to at once thumb its nose at, and distinguish itself in the voters' eyes from, the CDU, but on (more) genuine ideological or pragmatic conviction. Perhaps, however, my diagnosis of the underlying problem is wrong. Either way, if the CDU-FDP coalition is too awful, there is still the slight possibility of a vote of no confidence.