France | ZETEO

Jackson Pollock, Blue Poles - Number 11, 1952 (National Gallery of Australia)

Valéry, Landscapes, the Whole Human

May 22, 2019 by William Eaton

Re-translation and notes regarding a chapter from Paul Valéry’s Degas Danse Dessin. Thus: reflections on landscape painting and many other things, including the idea that « L’homme complet se meurt. » The whole human being is dying. With images from Aelbert Cuyp, Claude le Lorrain, Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock, Jenny Holzer, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Mark Bradford, Judith Bernstein, the Cranachs, and William Eaton (the re-translator).

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: art, featured, France, Impressionism, landscape, literature, Marcel Duchamp, painting

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Existentialism / Biography / Being in the World

November 29, 2016 by Walter Cummins

By Walter Cummins Review of At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails by Sarah Bakewell (New York: Other Press, 2016) One reason Sarah Bakewell’s The Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails is such an engaging read was her decision to organize her examination of philosophy around the lives of the central thinkers, with tantalizing tidbits about their friendships and fallings out, their wives and lovers, their personal tensions over evolving and conflicting theories. But her approach […]

Categories: Review • Tags: Camus, Existentialism, France, Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre

Portrait of Marie-Olympe de Gouges, painted by Alexander Kucharsky (1741-1819), private collection

Woman, Wake Up! Know your Rights

November 21, 2016 by Emily Sosolik

The French Revolution, the Declaration, and Olympe de Gouges’s “Rights of Woman” By Emily Sosolik Homme, es-tu capable d’être juste ? C’est une femme qui t’en fait la question ; tu ne lui ôteras pas moins ce droit. Dis-moi ? Qui t’a donné le souverain empire d’opprimer mon sexe ? Ta force ? Tes talents ? (Man, are you capable of being just? It’s a woman who is asking this question; you will, at least, not take this right from her. […]

Categories: Article • Tags: feminism, feminists, France, French Revolution, human rights, women, women's rights, women's studies

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Monet’s and Loti’s Japanese Spaces

January 13, 2016 by William Eaton

Creating a Contemplation Space for Artistic Creation Pierre Loti’s Essays on Japanese Temple Art as a Key to Claude Monet’s Water Garden By Richard M. Berrong Though there is no evidence that Claude Monet and French novelist Pierre Loti ever met, these almost exact contemporaries developed similarly Impressionist styles.[1] They also, and probably not coincidentally, shared an interest in Japanese art, to the extent that they both incorporated it in significant ways into their homes. Loti’s two essays […]

Categories: Article • Tags: France, garden, Impressionism, Japan, Monet, nineteenth century, Pierre Loti

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Paris Terrorism Madrid Syria Despair

November 14, 2015 by William Eaton

All I can manage this morning is an expression of disgust and despair. Yesterday morning, half a day or so before news of Paris began to reverberate around the world, the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed piece by Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch. The piece was about the opening of multilateral talks on Syria, scheduled to begin in Vienna today. Roth’s article expressed concern that the negotiators will set aside the on-going catastrophe affecting Syria’s civilian […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: civil war, France, Madrid, Paris, Syria, terrorism

Paris, Our Ideals, Terrorism

November 14, 2015 by William Eaton

Paris: Nothing Like It, Nothing Better In recent days, I’ve spent time formatting a book titled Paris, Etc., edited by Jessie Vail Aufiery. Jessie lived in Paris for a number of years with her French husband and their twin daughters. My immersion in poems, stories, and essays steeped in Parisian details, venues, attitudes, and nuances gave me a personal grim irony when confronted by the carnage of November 13, 2015. I’m sure many others are experiencing their own shock […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: France, Paris, terrorism, Western civilization

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Cocteau, Americans, Dignity, Slinkys

August 6, 2015 by William Eaton

In 1949, the French writer, artist, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau wrote a few lines about French politics at that time, lines that might help Americans today view their own political battles with more optimism than usual. In my translation: I know well that in 1949 politics are a big deal and the clashes of different factions seem more important than lovers’ quarrels. But, just between us, don’t these political battles feature the same injustice and bad faith as lovers’ quarrels? […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: art, France, Hollywood, Jean Cocteau, Le Journal des Goncourt, Museum of Modern Art, Picasso, technology, toys, United States of America

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After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, business as usual?

January 9, 2015 by William Eaton

[print_link][email_link] With all France stunned and sickened by the assassinations at Charlie Hebdo magazine, the political establishment is scrambling to present the situation to its best advantage. A tweet from the French President at the Elysée Palace, reproduced in Vanity Fair, shows François Hollande on the phone. The subtitle says Obama expresses American solidarity. The article quotes President Obama: France is America’s oldest ally, and has stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States in the fight against terrorists […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: assassination, cartoons, France, Middle East, politics, terror

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On Savoring

December 1, 2014 by William Eaton

Some features of an ethics of tasting, good and bad By William Eaton [I]t is muttered that whenever any government wants to dupe the peasants, it promises the abolition of the wine tax, and as soon as it has duped the peasants, it retains or reintroduces the wine tax. In the wine tax the peasant tastes the bouquet of the government . . . [Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850] It tastes twice the price. — […]

Categories: Essay • Tags: Camus, food, France, Paris, restaurants