Roi d'Étre et de Néant

I've found recently that I really badly need to practice speaking French. My French conversation class is fine, but I need to speak it more frequently than twice a week--I need it everyday!

I think I'm just missing hearing everyone around me(except for the people who came with me) speaking French. It was great...I know I could have spoke more but I was extremely timid until Thursday and the "incident," which showed me that I can speak pretty well. I just wish there was a way to practice speaking here! I need to grab a classmate and make it mandatory that we speak to each other only in French...I need to find someone who's not timid though...hmmm.


I'm really excited about the scholarship ceremony next week. I have no idea what scholarship I got and the mystery is killing me! Hahah. I'm also excited because soon this semester will be over and each day I'm closer and closer to the summer and maybe even going back to France if my friend's offer still stands and I can get my finances in order. Let us cross our fingers. :)

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Recently in survey II we've been discussing orientalism and "otherness" in the sense of the depiction of non-european women in modern art(think Picasso and Matisse) and, equally, the depiction and treatment of women in art in general. The latter doesn't intrigue me as much as the former, mainly because the concept of "otherness" is a bit more of a daunting issue for me than femininity. Moreover, while pondering why Picasso and many of his contemporaries chose to pursue l'art negré or orientalism in their art, it made me think of why France enamores me so and why other things, more domestic things, do not.

I guess the intrigue comes also from the idea hinted on by L.Ferdinand Céline in "Voyage au bout de la Nuit," the idea of getting as far away from where one is in hopes of reaching some form of happiness, while at the same time having the--although pessimistic--realistic acknowledgement that wherever one goes, the "night" is inescapable(although, admittedly, that's not what I'm talking about, but how can one reference Nietzchan philosophy without mentioning Voyage?). It's that hopefulness and interest in what it is like to be something other than what one is and, I guess, trying to figure it out. I've always, albeit unconsciously, thought of my home, Houston, Texas, and, increasingly, the United States as a sort of void or blackhole which I can either escape or plummet into, either willingly or not. I believe this to be a leifmotiv between me and my siblings(or at least the two older ones), ongoing fear of the "void." Although we've never talked about it, I think it's the rapport we have between one another which binds us.

What does this have to do with "otherness? and France? Well, the "other" is that escape for me. The idea of seperation from what is normalcy here and, therefore, becoming the "other" but at the same time having the power to choose. By and by, in France I have that power. I'm different because I am American, and different in the U.S. because I am not like all Americans nor am I French or want to be--what I am is an individual who, perhaps imaginatively and marginally, has cultivated her own little space of existence. Unlike Picasso's Demoiselles or Matisse's falsified L'asie , I would have the power to choose my distinctiveness, more so than I've had that here--no one would be able to cover me with fake meaing, no one important, anyway. Freedom from the void. Yves Klein was trying to find it and I'm trying to get away from it, but of course in this context it has two meanings. Miraculously this ties back to Céline in the sense that one could say my "night" is the void and like Bardamu(the main character in the novel) I'm trying my hardest to find a way out. Let us hope that our results aren't connected also.

I'm sitting here staring at my computer who is staring at me while I read about other people's lives. I'm so envious. I just finished French Lessons by Alice Kaplan -a book that made me wish I had gone to Duke University and had the vague chance of being one of her students- and I am floored as to how interesting her life is/was. A few tragic moments here and there, but really, how interesting! How excitingly different!

The story begins to hold interest when the reader begins to follow a 15 year old girl who gets sent off to boarding school in Switzerland and from then on has a love affair with the French language and culture. She continues on to receive her PhD from Yale and studied under Paul De Man during this time, who was considered a literary genius for his work with deconstructionism, but after his death discovered to have written for a collaborative newspaper during WWII. Later she interviews one of the biggest facist(and well, only one still living) of French History, Maurice Bardèche, brother in law of the convicted and executed collaborator Robert Brasillach. I mean really, even though he was a devastating man, a negationist, an anti-Semitic, and ruthless, how amazing it is to have been the first to interview him and reveal him to the world? Not only that, but to be Jewish, fluent in French, educated--a complete contradiction to the inferiority of Jews that Nazi Germany collaborators and negationist proclaimed to be true. That's amazing, in my opinion. It's permenately etching oneself into the history books, permenately making oneself an authority on French fascism.

So, back to the slow life. Yes, I remember. I wake up, go to work, do school work, read, paint, study french. Although, at least I can catch up on some good reading time, here's what I've got lined up: Death on the Installment Plan by Celine, Voyage au bout de la nuit by Celine, Zazie dans le Metro by Raymond Queneau.

I think I'll start a short story, just for kicks. I'll make it something of an assignment and base it off of historical facts--perhaps I'll dabble in fascism, nihilism, existenialism and WWI/II war crimes. That way, I'll have to do a lot of research and learn a great deal while I write. Oh, I'm excited now! I guess it's nice having so much free time.