dhampyresa

One of the books I'm reading right now is Anne Crignon's Une belle grève de femmes: Les Penn Sardin, Douarnenez 1924 (A women's strike: The Penn sardin [1], Douarnenez, 1924). I'm two-thirds of the way through and it has been really good book so far.

[1] "Penn sardin" is Breton for "sardine head"; it's the name of the headdress for women of Douarnenez and, by extension those same women.

There is one thing, though. Because of the time/place the book is set in (Brittany, 1920s) the book occasionally uses Breton -- the dominant language in that era/area -- to transcribe the exact words of slogans, songs, announcements, etc. Now. I speak a little Breton. A very little Breton, but enough to know that "Pemp real a vo" did not translate directly to "twenty-five sous per hour" -- "pemp" means five, not twenty-five. It bugged me enough that I eventually went and got my Breton-French dictionnary: a "real" is worth five sous. A literal translation would be "Five five-sous we'll get" (the "per hour" is implied).

There was another moment where I also had to fetch the dictionnary because I got tripped up by sentence structure in the Breton vs the French translation. So I would appreciate literal translations as well as accurate ones -- though possibly this is mostly because or where my language skills are: were I better or worse, I'm not sure I would have cared or noticed.

What is your preference for in-text translations? Literal, accurate, both? A secret other option?

I'm working on writing up my best books of 2024 entry but I got carried away talking about Bleu: histoire d'une couleur (Blue: history of a colour) by Michel Pastoureau, so I'm moving it to its own entry.

Pastoureau is a historian focusing on symbolism so this was super fascinating! It uses the colour blue specifically to examine the social/cultural place of colours throughout history in Europe, mostly France, but there is at least one transatlantic trip to talk about blue jeans.

Blue is picked because it's a relatively "new" colour as a standalone rather than a type of black, green or purple. Many languages don't have a blue/green distinction, for example -- I wrote about how this shows up in Brezhoneg/Breton here. The comments have discussion about other languages.

The history of colours is particularly hard to study, because textiles decay, dyes and paints change colours over time and languages evolve both through time and place. All this without mentioning that the quality and colour of the light itself affects how a colour appears: the same object might look very different under candle light and sunlight.

The main take away of the book is we live in a society that colours are not physical phenomenon, but social ones. Yes, there is the physical reality of what one person's eyes perceive, but how they interpret and communicate that reality is completely context dependant.

I will now proceed to list a bunch of facts I learned reading this book:

- In the Middle Ages, there was a debate on the metaphysical nature of colour: is it a property of the object itself and thus matter and thus sinful or is it a property of light and thus divine? The Catholic church went with "divine", in the end. Interestingly, centuries later, the Reformation went with "sinful" -- though I don't know that the earlier debate was explicitly referenced rather than a wholesale rejection of Catholicism's whole deal.

- The liturgical colours of the Catholic do not include blue. I was shocked to read this because I had never thought of it and the colour blue is so strongly tied to Mary, but it is true. The reason blue is tied to Mary is that it was extremely expensive and God's mom deserves the best.

- Goethe should turn on his location. I just want to talk. (He disapproves of blue walls. I have a blue wall in my bedroom.)

- The word "indigo" comes from the fact bricks of dried extract from the indigo plant were used in Europe as dyes -- and thought to be rocks from India.

- In the Middle Ages, pale blue was closer to pink than dark blue. Colours were grouped by saturation, not hue.

- In the Renaissance, blue was a warm colour. (The book has dates throughout, as much as possible. I'm not very good at remembering them.)

- Red dyers and blue dyers were different jobs and never shall the twain meet. There was a practical consideration for this: one needs hot water to work, the other cold. There was also a cultural aspect to this division as northern France focused on red dyes and southern on blue.

- Which lead to a trend in the late 13th century in northern France churches where the devil was depicted in blue, such as this stained glass window:

Fucking hell we did it WE DID IT WE DID IT

The Nouveau Front Populaire (alliance of leftist and green parties) came in first! The far-right is third. THIRD. Thank you, votes barrage, thank you.

I am also delighted to hear that Brittany did not elect anyone from the RN and that an independantist was elected in New Caledonia | Kanaky.

Times sure are interesting.

It's been raining memes in all my group chats these past days. Who needs House of the Dragon when you have the French political scene and Ciotti pulling a Saruman locking himself in his tower after allying with evil and being betrayed.

"Le ridicule ne tue pas" / "Ridicule doesn't kill" but lol. Lmao, even.

Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant (distributed in English as "Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person" or "Humanist Vampire Too Sensitive to Kill") is about a teenaged vampire who refuses to kill humans whose family cuts her off. Fortunately she runs into a suicidal teenager. They go on a roadtrip to get him revenge before sunrise.

It nails teenage awkwardness and is also quite funny and moving, as well as cathartic in parts. The Québécois accents add a certain je ne sais quoi (and the French [1] subtitles were a nice addition, even if they cut out the (occasional) swearing).

[1] Think of Québecois and France French as two different but mostly intelligible languages.

The chances of anyone else having had the following specific experience are pretty much nil: When I read Tracy Deonn's Legendborn, I got tripped up by a false friend between Breton and Welsh.

Legendborn is a YA fantasy book in which a Black sixteen year old girl ends up involved in a secret society of descendants of the Arthurian knights who fight demons. They call the demons by Welsh names, so when "isel" and "uchel" had been explained already and "goruchel" was brought up I kinda skipped over the explanation going "it's uchel + gor as in korrigan with a mutation, cool, got it, moving on" and it... Was not that. So it was a bit of a record scratch when the goruchel's actuality showed up. NOT THAT THE AUTHOR COULD HAVE BEEN EXPECTED TO THINK THIS WOULD HAPPEN


More widely applicable review:

I enjoyed it. I like Bree and Sel a lot, both separately and together. Alice is MVP. LOVED the healer guy. I'll read the sequel.

I did think the pacing at the start was a bit slow and at the end a bit too fast -- expect for when Bree gets into a mental conversation with a ghost for however long it is and I was like "is time standing still for everyone else or are they having deadly swordfights while she's just chilling?"

There were too many characters. When one of them was revealed as a traitor, my only thought was "who the fuck is this?!"

I am not a fan of love triangles, but this one was ok because (a) it's Arthuriana, I was braced for it and (b) it's an actual triangle, ie one of the two dudes have an important relationship/care about each other.

I cannot speak about how the themes of Black (generational) trauma were handled, but the author is a US Black woman. Saw reviews saying it was welldone.

I liked how the grief was handled.

I did like

bit of Merlin lore

that it used the "son of a demon" Merlin origin story

.

One thing that really REALLY bugged me though was the complete and utter lack of any reference to any of the female characters in Arthuriana. This is especially egregious when you consider that the titular descendants of the Knights of the Round Table include descendants of ARTHUR AND LANCELOT. #JusticeForGuinevere2023

Overall: Enjoyed it. Cover is gorgeous. Curious about where it's going, will read the sequel.

I had plans for doing things in January, but then fuckery happened and I don't want to talk about it.

On the plus side I got to meet Joann Sfar at Angoulême this year :D I've been a fan of Le Chat du Rabbin for forever and it was really nice to tell him so.

Via minoanmiss

Watch on YouTube

Untold in English, maybe.

I wonder if any of his friendships with Olympe de Gouges (feminist and slavery abolition activist), Chevalier d'Éon (spy trans woman) and Thomas Alexandre Dumas (Black freed slave, future Napoléon general and father of the Dumas of Musketeers fame) will be included.

Wonder how they're going to deal with the complicated history of slavery abolition in France. Briefly: in 1315 an edict made it so any slave that set foot on continental France was instantly freed; this edict was abolishing serf servitude and was not applied to any colonies once those were conquered (hence Toussaint l'Ouverture forex); in an II 1794 slavery was abolished in all France, including the colonies; 1802 Napoléon re-establishes slavery (big YIKES) and finally in 1848, France definitely abolishes slavery in all its territories. Yay. Took us long enough.

Another élection ?! But we just had one! (And round two of this one is next week.)

Another week of feeling like my brain has been replaced by snot? But i just had one :(

I've been somewhat anxious (...understatement) about the election and sometime around Thursday I've started being unable to think past Sunday or think much at all. But now I feel like I can finally breathe again.