She limps.
I have been making a concerted effort to finish off some of the books I was reading, before starting any new ones. It's working! I've finished four books in the last five days - pretty impressive, I think you'll agree. Even more so considering that one of them was Le Morte Darthur, which I have been reading on and off for about 18 months. Admittedly for me the interest was mainly linguistic - picking up such beautiful words as greking, or finding out what truncheon meant in those days - but the story is fun too, especially in the earlier books. I am now all buzzing with chivalry and full of wild Arthurian theories, but sadly I don't know anyone else who's read Malory so I can't really talk to anyone about it. Oh well, that's what the internet's for.
My next long-term reading project is Florio's 1603 translation of Montaigne's Essays. Montaigne was a brilliant thinker and Florio was a brilliant writer so you can't go wrong really. I do have - somewhere - Montaigne in the original Middle French, but I think it must be in one of the boxes under the stairs because when I went to check one of the quotes this morning I couldn't find it anywhere. Here is an example of random awesomeness, where he is building an argument that people's fear of death sometimes seems to be superseded by other concerns:
One who was led to the gallowes, desired it might not be thorow such a street, for feare a Merchant should set a Serjant on his backe, for an old debt. Another wished the hang-man not to touch his throat, lest hee should make him swowne with laughing, because he was so ticklish. [...] Everie man hath heard the tale of the Piccard, who being upon the ladder ready to be throwen downe, there was a wench presented unto him, with this offer (as in some cases our law doth sometimes tolerate) that if hee would marrie her, his life should be saved, who after he had a while beheld her, and perceiving that she halted, said hastily, Away, away, good hang-man, make an end of thy business, she limps.
Not much else to report. I caved and joined Twitter. Got a new pair of glasses. Bought an iPhone. Hannah made cakes, a lot. At work, I interviewed our global news director about two staff missing in Libya and asked him what kind of training journalists were given before they were sent on such missions, knowing full well I'd just been sent to Libya with no training at all. He dealt with the question fairly well on camera, but amazingly the very next day I was told by my boss that I'm being sent on a hazardous environments course with the French special forces in June. Awesome!
The weather in Paris is hot and gorgeous, everyone along Boulevard Montmartre is sitting out at pavement cafes drinking fizzy cocktails. On the way back from picking my new glasses up we stopped in at La Marquise and had a couple of coupes of champagne and watched the joggers and passers-by, whom I could now see in slightly higher definition than before. In honour of the season I translated a Nerval poem I like, so here's that.
Warm days already. Dust in flight.
The skies are all of blue, and light.
Long evenings. Walls by fire aroused-
And nothing green. A reddish glimmer
Hardly manages to shimmer
On the great trees’ darkened boughs.
Good weather bores me, dulls my brain,
Coming after days of rain
Which all at once should soon have brought to
Life the Spring in pink and green-
Like some young nymph, all fresh and clean,
Stepping, smiling, from the water.
Posted via LiveJournal app for iPad.