BONNE FÊTE NATIONALE!

Happy Bastille Day to all who love that other country that has meant so much in my life, la belle France.  

Last night I was thinking about just what it was about its literature that impressed me so much as a schoolgirl and then as a young woman, and I remembered that, coming from a generation that did not study Classics, I learnt about the Greek myths from Corneille and Racine.  I learnt the exuberant cadence of the French language from Molière and about how it can sound as sad as a violin from Verlaine.  My feminist consciousness was activated, of course, by de Beauvoir but above all, in studying 20th century French literature, I came across, for the first time, books that offered no answers but which asked the questions I had begun to ask myself. For that awakening, ma chère France, I shall always be grateful - "je t'ai gardée dans mon coeur"..

Juliette Gréco - Douce France