Thursday, December 31, 2015

 

Jacques Coulardeau at Amazon (3)


TRIPPING ENDLESSLY
ALL ALONG THE DOWNFALL
Jacques COULARDEAU
Illustrations
Annunzio COULARDEAU

CONTENTS
Saint Austremonius   p. 5
Psychophagus   p. 7
Sun Sand and Strife   p. 9
Casus Belli at the Casa Dei   p. 11
Haunted   p. 30
Memory Blocks   p. 45
One Happy Morning   p. 56
Perth Wolfenstein   p. 67
Birds of a Feather   p. 100
Fearless John’s Prayer to the Black Virgin
Of La Chaise-Dieu Abbey church   p. 114

All these poems and stories are dedicated to Lucretia who helped crossing the long depression between the mountain of hostile war and the mountain of reconstruction.
Some people, some events played an enormous role in those years, The University of Perpignan in their Mende unit; the Festival of La Chaise-Dieu and sacred music, music, and music again; Michel Thénot of Central Parc with whom I visited dozens of Romanesque churches running after Black Virgins; in Sri Lanka Sujeewa and Sudarshani and the confrontation with elephants; and then Paris with several life-ghosts who made me recapture life: many were named Arthur but some stand out, Ivan, Paula and Animata. Special mention to Christian Gauchet, Ghalib Hakkak and Père Emmanuel Gobilliard.
They are too numerous to be named all. They are legions and that’s how we survive on this earth, satiated with love, friendship and mental and spiritual experience.


© Jacques COULARDEAU  & Annunzio COULARDEAU
KINDLE DIRECT PUBLISHING, September 26, 2012
Amazon.com/.co.uk/.fr/.de/.it/.es/ etc.
ASIN: B009GIANZE

$5.35 on Amazon.com  --  €4,12 on Amazon.fr

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

 

Jacques Coulardeau at Amazon (2)

 

Right at the Bottom of the Urn [Kindle Edition]

Jacques COULARDEAU , 
Annunzio COULARDEAU 

The score is full of notes, filled with notes, notes and bars that have no shape at first, except going up and down, at times clustered in bunches here and there. The composer looks at his score, perfectly and neatly printed in world-class toner on the paper. And he has the sudden envy – and he has that sudden envy every single time he comes to the end of a composition – to be able to take it and shake it and rearrange it all haphazardly, maybe one day even empty it into the kitchen drain or flush all those notes down the toilet in the bathroom. Good riddance.

To Ivan Eve,
at a time when the sky was all smiles

From his Lord Wotton
at a time when he fell for Dorian Gray
the toy of the Lord Shiva of all Perdition
preparing for the shiva’h of his youth
lost in the seven veils of his maturity


Product Details :
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Amazon Digital Services, Inc., September 12, 2012
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Tuesday, December 29, 2015

 

Jacques Coulardeau at Academia.edu (45)


TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED
https://www.academia.edu/19893585/TIMOTHY_OLYPHANT_JUSTIFED

Abstract:

The whole question I am concerned about is whether a TV series, any TV series can be analyzed only at the purely technical, filming, shooting and editing, level or if it can be dealt with as a work of fiction that has to be considered like any work of fiction, as seriously as we would consider Shakespeare or Walt Whitman.

I am not satisfied with all such technical approaches that only speak of ellipses and flash backs and flash forwards and the angle of the take or the camera, the zooming details and movements.

I am not satisfied with those who consider a TV series, since it has to be popular, as having to be banal, hollow, void, meaningless and not being able to be analyzed the way any other work of fiction would and should be analyzed.

I deeply agree with the practice of Great Britain where an actor can – and must or at least is recommended to – have a parallel career on the stage, for TV and for the cinema. I regret the USA do not have that practice. We know the result when we compare British series and American series.

What’s more I don’t see why so many directors – and critics – consider film directors cannot direct a TV series, and they generally concede Twin Peaks as being an exception of a rather marginal man in the world of television. That’s grotesque.

I watched all these seasons in one go, two episodes per night and I summarized some general ideas only at the end. It is thus a living experience of this series and I think that’s how TV has to be taken, as a living experience. It is not because Dexter was killed – was he really killed – in his TV series that the author Jeff Lindsay does not have the right to keep him alive and to go on with his adventures. And we had already been used with such discrepancies between the TV series and the novel series. 

Yet a series has a problem with its end. It has to come to an end in some kind of flourish, fireworks, fanfare, brilliant twist. Prison Breaks is one of the best as for that, and yet two years later they are speaking of bringing it back to the screen. How are they going to revive the main character? The actor is available but the character was buried.

Sir Conan Doyle has already done that with his Sherlock Holmes that he killed at least once and nearly killed several times to just bring him back to life to satisfy public demand. That was literature you are going to say, and then what! Maybe TV series are also fiction.



Let me tell you here that I find it funny when some pretend to deal with history in fictional series and to have a good historian as a guarantee that all they say in the series is pure history, like Un Village Français by Frédéric Krivine and the retired university professor Jean-Pierre Azéma who found a juicy supplement to his retirement instead of teaching a few years more (65 is the sacred age at which all researchers have to retire in France, even in medicine, so that some just move to the USA to go on with their scientific work). Sorry to deceive you Mr Krivine, either you are an author and you respect the rules of fiction, and you work for television and you respect the rules of TV series and that goes against anything having to do with historical truth, especially since there is no truth, there are only points of view and Jean-Pierre Azéma is just one point-of-viewer among many others; or you are a historian and then you should be teaching your point og view about history to some university students. We are not watching your series to have any historical truth, sorry point of view, hammered into our thick skulls.

Luckily, otherwise they would reinvent the Bible.

Research Interests:
Drugs And Addiction, Southern Studies (U.S. South), Drugs and drug culture, Cinema, Series TV, Kentucky History, Moonshine, Marihuana,Company Coal Towns in eastern Kentucky, Heroin, Alcohol Addiction, Whisky, The Deep South, History of Kentucky, Political Affiliation and Gangsterism, and Timothy Olyphant



Monday, December 28, 2015

 

A miracle of action and nostalgia in 18 DVDs

ELMORE LEONARD – TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED – 2010-2014
THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON – 2010

The first season of a series always gives the recipe and you have to taste it. If the recipe is good, you will like the sample you taste and you will get attached, addicted or just mesmerized and faithful. Otherwise you will have to drag your feet through all the seasons you bought on a special deal.

The character Deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens is the centerpiece of the series and he better be original and true to life. The actor is essential and he is good, even good looking. He is a cop who shoots always first but never before the other gets or tries to get his artillery out. It always ends badly, for the other of course. This starts with Raylan killing a Very Important Person from the drug business in Miami, Florida. We all know V,I and P are the first three letters of VIPer and that this snake is particularly poisonous, though less efficient than a rattlesnake. But that’s only the starting block of the series. Raylan is railroaded back to Kentucky where he was coming from, back to the very city where he grew up and the very city he had thought he had left forever, and ever, till his justified killing of a drug VIP brought him back.


Then the character and the series is a mixture of features that make it unique. First the accent is southern and it takes some time for those who are not used to it to either get it or go back to it if they have had some experience in that field. The second element is that he is a Clint Eastwood of the new age. He has a cell phone and he is clean and he wears a two or five gallon hat as a distinctive trait. Dirty Harry was slightly dirty at times. But as a high plains drifter he is quite trendy in this world of the Internet of Things.


Then Raylan has a personal dimension with a father, a stepmother though no mother, nor siblings. He has his high school girl friend he did not marry and the woman he married and then divorced, and her subsequent second husband. He has all his old friends with whom he did all kinds of antics, some definitely not entirely legal. His best friend, if he is a best, is one of the sons of the local drug king who is just out of prison. Raylan’s father was the agent of that chap during his barred vacation, but he did not do good. So he has problems. The high school girl friend and paramour married one of the sons of the local drug lord. She finally killed him in strange conditions. The drug lord wants to get rid of his other son who was sent to prison by Raylan but managed to get out rather fast because of various circumstances, but he comes out a Christian reborn in Jesus. Halleluiah!


Raylan’s whole problem is that he has to get rid of the drug circle and at the same time spare his “best” friend turned reborn Christian. The rest is detail and funny, well written and inventive.

This season ends up on a cliffhanger. They are all dead except Raylan, his “best” friend whose father was killed by the only survivor of the Miami drug club. The “best” friend, who is called Boyd actually, goes after the running girl and we understand Raylan goes after them. What happens next is for next season, precisely. There is no real deep thinking or philosophy in this series. It is more so far what I would call southern folklore and standard US Marshal cop-lore in the boonies.


I should have spoiled nothing because what I have said is the normal pattern that we know from the very start. The pleasure is in the detail, the small elements, people, epiphenomena, and that or those you will have to discover yourself in five hundred and fifty two minutes of running time and the thirteen episodes. Good luck.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU


ELMORE LEONARD – TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED – 2010-2014
THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON – 2010

This second season does not bring the big surprise we could have expected. The Bennett family who have been controlling Harlan County for two or three generations, this Bennett family being in the hands of the mother, with no father available, but with three sons the mother uses as her direct servants and hit men, let’s say slaves in crime because that is what it is, this family has to come to an end one day and generally it happens with a lot of pain and suffering.


Why does it have to come to an end?

Because the power of this family is based on crime: illegal cultivation of marihuana at a very high level, grand style and all, for tremendous amounts of money. Because the power of this family is reinforced by one son who is the local sheriff and has turned the local police force into a gang to enforce and reinforce the power of and the decisions of the mother. Because the other two sons are plain criminals and nothing else, killing for fun and torturing for kicks. Because some company from outside decides that the tremendous amount of coal that is hidden in these Kentucky mountains has to be taken out and the Bennett family is an obstacle to this industrial venture and has to be either bought, or even bribed, or eliminated. Since the sons are die-hard criminal minds there is no other way but to eliminate them, and get rid of the mother.

The agents of that cleansing mission will be the Deputy US Marshall Raylan Givens from the Givens family, a rival family to the Bennetts, and the Crowders, another rival family to the Bennetts. Raylan is the only one who is on the side of more or less legal means, the use of force if it is justified. The other members of these two families are on the side of justice for themselves, vengeance for their dead, revenge for their businesses and lives. So they want the Bennett empire to be split up into pieces and the viable pieces to be entrusted, or recuperated, by them. 


So the brothers have to go one after another. One is shot dead by a girl he tried to molest and whose father he had killed, the second ends up in prison, the third, the local sheriff, ends up badly too and the mother has her own fate on her own hands. The chief of a tribe, or a clan, of a gang deserves some modest reward in their ends, in this case her end, face to face with Raylan.

The details you’ll have to get from the 13 episodes, but we knew from the very beginning that this second season was the end of the monstrous criminal corrupt dictatorship or a dumb mother and her three slaves of sorts, and sons by name.


There are tricky moments to eliminate secondary corrupt dummies, and some sensitive moments about the girl whose father was assassinated by the Bennetts. There are also some surprising moments concerning the two female characters, Raylan’s ex-wife who became his new girl friend, and his high school lover of sorts who is connected to one of the last surviving Crowders. Not to speak of Raylan’s step mother he calls his aunt. A very strong woman but to be strong is nearly a disadvantage when confronted to unethical criminals.

But I am sure you will enjoy the suspense. At the end, which could have been the end of the series, Raylan has applied for some promotion out of Kentucky or the Marshall service, he has just learned some good news about his ex-wife and we do not know what will happen. That’s not a cliff hanger but that will be a new start next season.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU


ELMORE LEONARD – TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED – 2010-2014
THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON – 2011

This third season is crucial now the main gang has lost their head, their chief. The only actors are the black gang and Crowder’s gang that has recuperated Arlo Givens, Raylan’s father. The new element that is going to animate the whole season is the arrival of the son of a Detroit gangster, rejected by his own father and who is playing the carpetbagger of the 21st century in Kentucky. That means this season is going to be business as usual in an unusual circumstantial situation with the invasive action of an invader from the North who does not seem to know how things are going down South.


Locally we only have one element that has some deeper meaning: the sheriff of the main county of the action has to face re-election. Boyd Crowder and his gang decide to play their pack of cards to get their own man elected. The Detroit invader tries to pay the incumbent sheriff to keep him in office. In fact the election is very tricky and the result is astounding. We must always consider being a newcomer in an elective job is necessarily a handicap but American elections are full of surprises. Remember the 2000 presidential election “won” by decision of the Supreme Court who stopped the recounting of several millions of votes that were not exactly correct. No allusion of course to rigged elections of any sort that are not possible in the USA: that’s typical of third world countries or Asia or Europe, hence of everywhere except the USA.


The second question is the place of a black gang among several white gangs in the South. Segregation is still real and effective though now some members of the black gang are not that clean or faithful as for their own gang and they may give some information to the other side, turning a tricky situation into a very messy situation.

What’s left then if the social and cultural issues are rather light?

Some good intentions that are both illegal and ethical but they create more problems than the conflicts they may solve. The objective is not to shoot all gangsters down, but to put them in prison, at least for a while, and if they have to be shot, they must not be shot dead. That’s the real problem for Raylan Givens, but he seems to be becoming civilized.


The season then ends on a good fine rich situation since most gangsters are eliminated, except one, the black piggy bank is broken and the content is brought to light from the depth of the stomach of this piggy bank and Raylan visits his ex-wife who is presently pregnant with his own child to make sure she is OK at her sister’s where she found refuge from the saucy bullet-ridden situation at “home,” if a police corps is a home of any kind.

So we end without a cliff hanger really but with a nearly cleaned up plate. So how are they going to renew the situation to have new “adventures” in this southern jungle to put on the platter of next season?

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU


ELMORE LEONARD – TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED – 2010-2014
THE COMPLETE FOURTH SEASON – 2012

This Season is tricky since so many of the old traditional outlaws in Harlan County have already been dealt with, I mean flipped over like flip cards and ended up right on their heads, brains and skulls spilled over the sidewalk. We knew there was a connection with Detroit in the drug business or heroin distribution and that there were only two local actors left. But Detroit was furious because the network was being both strangled and drained. So they had to do something about it. First to obtain the merger of the two opposed actors and then to protect the network against Deputy US Marshall Raylan Givens who is definitely not a gift, a present, a blessed contribution to the wealth of business, meaning outlawed business of course.

The Detroit people tried to take over and they sent some cleaning teams but unluckily they failed. That’s when we start understanding the real stake and it is Drew, that dead heroin higher-up gangster or dealer who actually faked his death in Harlan County and disappeared leaving a body behind him and some unluckily identity that was taken care of by Arlo Givens. The two million dollars of heroin went into the local business, made the county rich and the very few people who knew who Drew was kept their mouths shut and just became well-off and even rich. But Arlo Givens cheated, of course and naturally, and he kept the bag and the Drew driver’s license ID hidden in a wall of his house. For some absurd reason a couple of young people were sent to recuperate the bag but it ended up in the hands of the US Marshalls. Too bad! Arlo was supposed to have burnt it. And his cheating will not benefit him in the ends since his end is going to be miserable and unhappy. That’s what happens when you play poker – so to say – with bad boys.


And that’s the story of the season.
1-       to find out who Drew is in the county, under which identity he is hiding;
2-       to get him in the hands of justice so that he could get a deal with the local public attorney or prosecutor in exchange of his telling who is who in the vast US network of heroin, or at least the branch growing out of Detroit;
3-       to save a poor young naïve but not innocent prostitute who was the witness of some crime by one of the surviving Crowders, and at the same time to bring her into safety in the hands of the US Marshalls so that she could bring the last Crowders down, or at least one of them, the others being either eliminated or under some suspended fateful ending:
4-       to protect Raylan’s ex-wife who is going to give birth to his child, knowing that in the hands of the Detroit criminals she is a very good hostage, hence very valuable and thus has a high level of added value;
5-       to enable the child to be born safe and secure;
6-       to get Raylan suspended for thirty days, a suspension for sure, but a golden suspension indeed that is in fact a forced vacation;
7-       finally to manage to get the bad guy from Detroit that menaced Raylan’s wife killed in a way or another, though not by Raylan and not with Raylan’s gun.


You can trust Raylan to be able to get everything through with the most numerous surprises possible. That leads us to an end without any real cliffhanger. A baby is going to be born during recess. The merger will be solved among the two gangsters. The poor Boyd Crowder will get some respite and maybe even a promotion and his future wife will be taken in custody. The Black gang, on the other side of the racial divide, will manage to get out sprinkle white though not clean. Drew will be in custody and the young naïve etc. prostitute will be safe since her ex-madam is in custody too. And Raylan is on vacation. Happy fishing and lucky idleness, Sir, Mister Master Sir, do not forget we are in the South!

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU


ELMORE LEONARD – TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED – 2010-2014
THE COMPLETE FIFTH SEASON – 2013

This fifth season is tricky since all the local Harlan County families are dying like hell, so some props have to be brought into the Kentucky landscape. The first one is a whole family from Florida, the Crows, like the birds that are both parasites and scavengers, and they take over the Crowders with all kinds of conflicts going along with this coup d’état if not putsch. The second one through the friends in Detroit comes from Mexico with heroin. And that is the heart of the season with Raylan Givens more and more sidetracked by his chief Art to the point of this chief making a mistake in procedure and getting severely wounded. The worst part of the situation is that a ten year old boy is mixed up in this Crow family, and like with birds crows do not like smaller birds like sparrows and robins. So the boy has a lot of problems with his mother, when she is revealed to be his mother, and with his uncles when they are revealed to be his uncles.

The violence in this season is extremely serious but always the mark of some kind of paranoid or hysterical or even psychotic derangement of the various criminals who are like a bunch of spiders locked up in a glass pot. They are ready to eat one another if they cannot get even with the cops and kill them before getting back to eating one another alive if possible. They try the latter but they are so corrugated that they cannot shoot a weapon straight.


This criminal milieu reveals that family links, in other words blood relations, are an absolute dictatorship, a bond that cannot be cut loose or untied, a connection that is more than a rope, a real cable, and not made of some vegetal fiber but made with stainless steel. Blood means slavery. And on the other side within this blood entourage the stronger individuals consider they have all rights to do what they want and to be followed, obeyed by all other members. It is very bad luck to be a child in such an environment because then you are a pack mule at best and a body shield at worst. You can imagine if being a boy is not easy in that criminal family, what it would be to be a girl.

There is there a real lesson about human society. The lower you go into crime and hooliganism, the more disorganized and disjointed human relations become, in fact there is nothing human left, just the animal instinct not to survive but to kill. These people are not even animals who kill to feed or to defend themselves, but beasts who kill for the pleasure of killing and who torture as long as possible before killing to inflict pain, suffering and humiliation. Strangely enough these men only consider a menace to their manhood as having the chance of getting some kind of influence on their behavior, otherwise dying for them is nothing at all, whereas losing their masculinity is unbearable. You should see them then crawling and begging. They have no decency, no honor, no dignity.


That’s the main dimension of this series: it does not use any subtle intrigue or plot on the criminal side. It is only sheer force and mere violence.

On the cop side you have the ruffians, like Raylan, who manipulates the criminals into killing one another, maiming each other, mutilating themselves even, let’s say by accident, but these cops are always getting what they want: the death and elimination of the criminals if possible without going to a court of justice and saving on judicial costs. The second type is those who try to proceed by the rules and by the book, Miranda and all. They know X or Y is going to commit a crime but there is no need for them to make it come faster and thus blocking them, nor to do anything else but wait for the crime to have been committed. The last type, generally the bosses, is so frigid in front of these criminals that they prefer not seeing the crime that is coming rather than sending cops who might be a little bit rough.


So we are justified in thinking that such police forces are in fact by far ineffective, impotent in front of real crime, and this frustration largely explains that then some may become criminal in their turn by taking some ethnic categories of people, young, male and colored, meaning black or very dark, as prime targets for their harassment that can lead to some innocent casualties among these populations. That consequence of bad police work in the USA is not really hinted at in this series, but we know better.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU


ELMORE LEONARD – TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED – 2010- 2014
THE COMPLETE SIXTH SEASON – 2014

The final season of a series like this one is very complicated. It has to take all, or at least the most dangerous criminals down, in prison, in the earth or whatever other way they can imagine. So you have to understand that there is no spoiling in telling you that all except two end up dead or in prison, only two actually in that last category. And two on the loose, on the run, vanished in thin air. No spoiling in telling you Raylen Givens ends up in Miami, Florida, as had been announced for a while. He is a good daddy to his daughter, a visiting or visited daddy more than a real in-house one. His ex wife and mother of his daughter is of course with a second  second-choice husband, nothing to brag about. Not handsome but probably not crooked either, and yet the muscle man type, rough on the outline and hairy all over, working class and physical. A real man in one word even if he won’t win any Mister Universe competition.


The only thing I will not tell you is about Raylan’s hat, his famous twenty-gallon Stetson hat. Apparently he has to bury it in the last episode or so. Bury it in some deeply spiritual way that sounded like some crucial scene in some A-cowboy-movie like Pale Rider or some other B-cowboy-movie with John Wayne like never mind the title they are all the same.

But it is time to summarize this series. As I said, and they managed to keep that steadily till the end, it was a cross between a Clint Eastwood series and a country-rockabilly musical without singers nor dancers. The charm was in the southern accent which was authentic for some actors and an approaching imitation for others, but believable enough, and beyond these criminals seen as individuals you could see crime as an organized society with its own hierarchy within every gang and a special very confrontational hierarchy among the gangs, knowing that the black gang is completely out though they are the last resort gang that provides the various white gangs with technical and emergency help when needed. They are hated but they are very good at what they are doing like fake IDs and passports, the security blanket of a hideout or some rescue money or even team when things are getting a little bit sour.


Then the hierarchy is very geographical. At the top are the local family gangs and each family fights against all the others and the originality of this series is that a very effective though slightly Dirty Harry in style US Marshall is brought into Kentucky to help the local US Marshalls dismantle the gang system and bring down the die-hard last-longest gang based on the Crowder family and a couple of allies who hate them but have to serve them. So the seasons went on and on bringing down one gang after the other.

The family structure of these gangs is normally centered on a man, but there was one exception, and that really was an exception, of one gang centered on a mother and her sons. It so happens that out of one of these gangs one son changed routes and went up the highway instead of down the low way. He became a US Marshall and he of course was the only one who could be of any help since he had been educated with them all and he knew all their little secrets and their weak points and it never was endurance. Patience was the main asset you had to have if you wanted to bring them down, these gangsters.


The final hierarchy was geographical again since it was the various routes followed by the substances they sold on the black market that had to come from outside. So they tried, and had to try, getting in touch with people from Detroit or people from Mexico and it turned fiery and bitter very fast because in Kentucky they hated the guts of these outsiders and these outsiders looked down upon these red necks. This is shown very well in the various seasons.

The final element that is of interest is the spectacle you get of all the various polices in a state like Kentucky: two federal agencies, FBI and US Marshalls, state troopers and state police, and then the police of every single county whose sheriffs are elected by the people in a brilliant atmosphere of thriving prosperous corruption. When you know that and the fact that the police of Harlan County cannot cross the boundary line of the county, you imagine the mess and ease with which one criminal can cross that line. One crossing point is a bridge with the line right in the middle which became the meeting point of all negotiations, all exchanges, all encounters between bands, gangs and various police teams. That means in the US police work is impossible, coordination is a dream and when it is tempted it turns into a nightmare, and the local cops are very simply trained to profile the appearance of a passer-by by his look, skin color, hat, way of walking and other attitudinal and behavioral elements and when a total stranger is profiled into one dangerous category at first sight using a weapon becomes not an option but a reflex. And the only information they can get is from snitches or confidential (criminal) informers.


That’s the problem with Raylan Givens. He had the bad habit of shooting faster than his shadow took to open one eye and he had to learn some restraint. But he managed and strangely enough he remained fair and faithful to the woman who was not really involved but entangled in the Crowder gang to the last moment and even when after all that noise, but well you will have to find that out by yourself. Somewhere deep under Raylan Givens was a sentimental baboon or maybe puppy. That’s the main interest in the man. He was able to feel some emotions, some passion even though he would never admit it because he is a man and in his gang and anti-gang training sessions a real man does not feel any passion, emotion or sentiment. The surprising element is that he survived but we knew that from the very start. Maybe they could have tried an ending à la Prison Break or Dexter. A little bit lackluster.


Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

 

The last one, the end, the closing season. Tears and cries all around.

ELMORE LEONARD – TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED – 2010- 2014

THE COMPLETE SIXTH SEASON – 2014

The final season of a series like this one is very complicated. It has to take all, or at least the most dangerous criminals down, in prison, in the earth or whatever other way they can imagine. So you have to understand that there is no spoiling in telling you that all except two end up dead or in prison, only two actually in that last category. And two on the loose, on the run, vanished in thin air. No spoiling in telling you Raylen Givens ends up in Miami, Florida, as had been announced for a while. He is a good daddy to his daughter, a visiting or visited daddy more than a real in-house one. His ex wife and mother of his daughter is of course with a second  second-choice husband, nothing to brag about. Not handsome but probably not crooked either, and yet the muscle man type, rough on the outline and hairy all over, working class and physical. A real man in one word even if he won’t win any Mister Universe competition.

The only thing I will not tell you is about Raylan’s hat, his famous twenty-gallon Stetson hat. Apparently he has to bury it in the last episode or so. Bury it in some deeply spiritual way that sounded like some crucial scene in some A-cowboy-movie like Pale Rider or some other B-cowboy-movie with John Wayne like never mind the title they are all the same.


But it is time to summarize this series. As I said, and they managed to keep that steadily till the end, it was a cross between a Clint Eastwood series and a country-rockabilly musical without singers nor dancers. The charm was in the southern accent which was authentic for some actors and an approaching imitation for others, but believable enough, and beyond these criminals seen as individuals you could see crime as an organized society with its own hierarchy within every gang and a special very confrontational hierarchy among the gangs, knowing that the black gang is completely out though they are the last resort gang that provides the various white gangs with technical and emergency help when needed. They are hated but they are very good at what they are doing like fake IDs and passports, the security blanket of a hideout or some rescue money or even team when things are getting a little bit sour.


Then the hierarchy is very geographical. At the top are the local family gangs and each family fights against all the others and the originality of this series is that a very effective though slightly Dirty Harry in style US Marshall is brought into Kentucky to help the local US Marshalls dismantle the gang system and bring down the die-hard last-longest gang based on the Crowder family and a couple of allies who hate them but have to serve them. So the seasons went on and on bringing down one gang after the other.


The family structure of these gangs is normally centered on a man, but there was one exception, and that really was an exception, of one gang centered on a mother and her sons. It so happens that out of one of these gangs one son changed routes and went up the highway instead of down the low way. He became a US Marshall and he of course was the only one who could be of any help since he had been educated with them all and he knew all their little secrets and their weak points and it never was endurance. Patience was the main asset you had to have if you wanted to bring them down, these gangsters.

The final hierarchy was geographical again since it was the various routes followed by the substances they sold on the black market that had to come from outside. So they tried, and had to try, getting in touch with people from Detroit or people from Mexico and it turned fiery and bitter very fast because in Kentucky they hated the guts of these outsiders and these outsiders looked down upon these red necks. This is shown very well in the various seasons.


The final element that is of interest is the spectacle you get of all the various polices in a state like Kentucky: two federal agencies, FBI and US Marshalls, state troopers and state police, and then the police of every single county whose sheriffs are elected by the people in a brilliant atmosphere of thriving prosperous corruption. When you know that and the fact that the police of Harlan County cannot cross the boundary line of the county, you imagine the mess and ease with which one criminal can cross that line. One crossing point is a bridge with the line right in the middle which became the meeting point of all negotiations, all exchanges, all encounters between bands, gangs and various police teams. That means in the US police work is impossible, coordination is a dream and when it is tempted it turns into a nightmare, and the local cops are very simply trained to profile the appearance of a passer-by by his look, skin color, hat, way of walking and other attitudinal and behavioral elements and when a total stranger is profiled into one dangerous category at first sight using a weapon becomes not an option but a reflex. And the only information they can get is from snitches or confidential (criminal) informers.


That’s the problem with Raylan Givens. He had the bad habit of shooting faster than his shadow took to open one eye and he had to learn some restraint. But he managed and strangely enough he remained fair and faithful to the woman who was not really involved but entangled in the Crowder gang to the last moment and even when after all that noise, but well you will have to find that out by yourself. Somewhere deep under Raylan Givens was a sentimental baboon or maybe puppy. That’s the main interest in the man. He was able to feel some emotions, some passion even though he would never admit it because he is a man and in his gang and anti-gang training sessions a real man does not feel any passion, emotion or sentiment. The surprising element is that he survived but we knew that from the very start. Maybe they could have tried an ending à la Prison Break or Dexter. A little bit lackluster.


Dr Jacques COULARDEAU



Sunday, December 27, 2015

 

Jacques Coulardeau at Amazon (1)


La Parole de Saint Chrosome [Explicit]
Jacques Coulardeau


SATAN I LOVE YOU
            Oh! Yes I do!

Yesterday I was alone
All alone in my loneliness
Yesterday I asked Satan
            Who are you?

I am your best friend
Bone skin and flesh at once
I am the light of your mind
Daylight moonlight and sunlight
I am the solace of your heart
Some day the solstice of it […]



Amazon.com / Amazon.fr
Product Details / Détails sur le produit
Total Length / Durée totale: 44:48
Genres: Miscellaneous / Divers
Format: Explicit Lyrics / paroles explicites
ASIN: B006DHBBWA / B006DDFRXI

$6.99 / €8,39

Saturday, December 26, 2015

 

Voltaire n'est pas ce que l'on dit. Voltaire is not that thrilling!

Jacques Coulardeau at Academia.edu (44)

Le comique de Voltaire est souvent mélodramatique et larmoyant
https://www.academia.edu/19832298/Comique_de_Voltaire_m%C3%A9lodramatique_et_larmoyant
THÉÂTRE COMPLET DE M. DE VOLTAIRE, CONFORME À LA DERNIÈRE ÉDITION, ROME SEPTIÈME – FACSIMILÉ PAR ULAN PRESS
Discussion
Une seule remarque formelle : il manque quatre pages (126-127 et 134-135) et une page et totalement illisible (350).
VOLTAIRE – L’INDISCRET – 1725 […]
VOLTAIRE – L’ENFANT PRODIGUE – 1736 […]
VOLTAIRE – LA PRUDE - 1747 […]
VOLTAIRE – LA FEMME QUI A RAISON – 1949 […]
VOLTAIRE – NANINE – 1749 […]
ISAAC NEWTON AND JUDAISM […]


Voltaire (1694-1778) me trotte, avec ou sans béquilles, dans la tête depuis très longtemps, depuis qu’en quatrième ou troisième nous nous passions dans le lycée municipal de Bordeaux, dit Collège Moderne, les passages expurgés de Candide fait prisonnier par des pirates qui fouillent de fond en comble le bateau et ses passagers et passagères. C’était peu de temps avant que l’on interdise « La Religieuse » (1966-67) de Jacques Calmette, ce film adapté de Denis Diderot.

Mais une citation de ce Voltaire grand amateur de citations s’impose aujourd’hui comme une vérité éternelle et pourtant tellement mise en doute.

« La philosophie, la seule philosophie, cette sœur de la religion, a désarmé des mains que la superstition avait si longtemps ensanglantées; et l’esprit humain, au réveil de son ivresse, s’est étonné des excès où l’avait emporté le fanatisme. » (Voltaire, Traité sur la tolérance, 1763, chapitre IV, «Si la tolérance est dangereuse, et chez quels peuples elle est permise»)

C’est en notre période cruelle beaucoup plus qu’une simple citation. Et c’est pour moi maintenant devenu un pèlerinage. Depuis plus de dix ans je remonte dans un sens et dans l’autre le Boulevard Voltaire de Paris de la Place de la Nation à la Place de la République de mon hôtel au Syndicat National des Auteurs et des Compositeurs, bien plus loi il est vrai, rue Taitbout que j’atteins tout le temps en passant devant la Synagogue de la rue de la Victoire, ses grilles municipales au garde-à-vous et son CRS dans sa guérite vitrée de garde 24 heures sur 24 et 7 jours sur 7. J’ai parcouru ainsi ce boulevard plusieurs centaines de fois et j’ai chaque fois regardé le Bataclan au point de ne même plus le voir.


Mais l’actualité m’a tout à coup rappelé à la réalité et m’a ré-ouvert les yeux de la mémoire et j’ai revu ce bâtiment que je ne remarquais plus depuis longtemps. Et ce Boulevard Voltaire m’est alors apparu comme l’axe suivi le soir du 13 Novembre 2015 par des commandos en formation de combat armé de bombes et de religion. Et je suis passé devant le Bataclan et traversé la Place de la République bien des fois depuis particulièrement dans les mois qui ont suivi quand de véritables parterres de cierges, bougies, fleurs, messages chantaient la tolérance et mon projet de traiter du théâtre de Voltaire et de la philosophie dans ce théâtre se trouva un peu cerné et recentré sur une pièce devenue au cours des siècles plutôt confidentielle, même si le metteur en scène et auteur José Valverde la connaît, car il faut bien le dire le théâtre de Voltaire était un théâtre d’agitprop philosophique en son temps, et parfois même un peu sentimentalement mélodramatique à la Greuze. Jean Jacques Rousseau n’était pas beaucoup mieux. On est chez ces auteurs bien loin de Pierre de Marivaux (1688-1763) ou de Pierre de Beaumarchais (1732-1799). Denis Diderot (1713-1784) est presque un prodige dans cet ensemble philosophique plus que dramaturgique.


Mais voilà ici le premier travail sur un certain nombre de comédies qui ne sont pas parmi l  smeilleures pièces de Voltaire et qui ne laisseront pas beaucoup de gens rêver car ces comédies sont larmoyantes et pathétiques pour ne pas dire mélodramatiques. Je réserve Mahomet et Les Guèbres pour Avignon.

Friday, December 25, 2015

 

Le comique de Voltaire est souvent mélodramatique et larmoyant

THÉÂTRE COMPLET DE M. DE VOLTAIRE, CONFORME À LA DERNIÈRE ÉDITION, ROME SEPTIÈME – FACSIMILÉ PAR ULAN PRESS

Une seule remarque formelle : il manque quatre pages (126-127 et 134-135) et une page et totalement illisible (350).

VOLTAIRE – L’INDISCRET – 1725

Petite pièce mignonette mais cruelle qui serait du boulevard grinçant aujourd’hui par les temps qui courent. Le portrait est à la hache dans un bois si tendre qu’il en tombe en miettes. Un pauvre jeune homme de bonne société, courtisan qui plus est ne sait que se vanter de ses petites amours auprès de ceux qu’il appelle ses amis, alors qu’il ne les connaît pas.


Bien sûr, se vantant de sa dernière amourette, qu’il dit être sérieuse, pour une veuve – bien dotée bien sûr – auprès de gens qu’il dit être des confidents alors qu’ils sont des concurrents, il se trouve gros jean comme devant, perdant par devant et par derrière, floué et même un peu plus, quasiment sentimentalement violé, par ces compétiteurs tricheurs mais qu’il a littéralement et abondamment arrosés de toutes les munitions dont ils avaient besoin pour le mettre à plat, le liquider, le mitrailler au point d’en faire de la charpie.

Il est peut-être indiscret, mais il est surtout bête à lier. Il ne sait pas choisir ses amis et il ne sait pas évaluer le niveau de confidence et de confiance qu’il peut investir dans des connaissances en définitive accidentelles, de complaisance et sans la moindre profondeur. Plus idiot que moi, tu meurs.

Et mourir il doit, seul, abandonné, vilipendé et simplement rejeté par la bonne société, qui de toute façon est la mauvaise puisque aristocratique et courtisane. Mais ne nous y trompons pas : ce n’est qu’une question de hiérarchie. Si vous êtes en haut tout au sommet vous pouvez révéler tout ce que vous voulez sur qui que ce soit, même bien sûr et surtout des calomnies fieffées. Si vous êtes ne serait-ce qu’un cran plus bas le sommet vous rejettera car vous devenez dangereux pour leur prestige en osant faire ce que eux seuls sont autorisés à faire et la masse soutiendra cette élite car la masse est par définition acquiesçante et elle trouve la mise à l’index, le pilori et l’exécution publique (la roue comme pour Jean Calas) des plus amusantes. On rit toujours des malheur des autres ne serait-ce que parce qu’ils sont un cran plus haut que vous. Cela comme flatte leur amour propre.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU


VOLTAIRE – L’ENFANT PRODIGUE – 1736

Voltaire est un obsédé de la Bible et de la religion chrétienne qu’il n’arrête pas de réécrire dans ce qu’il considère sa pureté car les hommes n’ont selon lui jamais fait qu’abuser de cette religion divine, la pervertir, la vilipender. Pour lui la religion chrétienne – mais surtout pas la juive et encore moins la musulmane – est la seule religion vraie avec le seul dieu unique vrai. Il se veut tolérant pour les autres à condition que les autres respectent la loi de l’État, de la majorité et les souverains qui règnent sur notre bien commun qu’est la patrie. Cependant le terme et le concept de citoyen sont totalement marginaux dans une vision politique qui fait que nous sommes les sujets de nos souverains et que nous n’avons aucun droit de rébellion, de soulèvement, de mouvement de masse. Seule la raison des philosophes peut éclairer ces souverains et permettre ainsi l’évolution de la société et des mœurs dans le bon sens qui est essentiellement vu comme un adoucissement.

Ce décor étant planté la réécriture de cette parabole biblique est des plus touchante.

Fini le travail et le labeur qui a permis l’accumulation de biens dans la famille, une seule famille. On a deux familles, toutes les deux richement dotées de biens, de terres ou simplement de liquidités. Quant à savoir l’activité qu’ils peuvent bien faire, nenni, pas chez Voltaire. Mais le fils prodigue qui revient ne sera pas reçu par le festin du cochon (pas cachère) ou du veau (bien cachère) que l’on tue, car dans cette maison il n’y a pas de cochon ni de veau (adieu veau, vache, cochon, couvée…) qu’on élève et qu’on engraisse. Alors il ne pourra être reçu que par la livraison d’un banquet par quelque traiteur de cour si possible venu de la grande ville en fiacre.


Deux familles, avec deux fils d’un côté et une fille de l’autre. Des deux fils l’aîné est le fils prodigue qui bien qu’amoureux de la voisine casse tout pour aller semer son ivraie dans des terres sauvages, pour aller s’enivrer d’alcools et d’amours tout aussi sauvages, toutes aussi sauvages. Les deux pères, notons qu’il n’y a pas de mères, syndrome courant chez Voltaire semble-t-il, comme celui d’un fils et d’une fille à marier à toutes les sauces même le smoins sacrées, decident de marier l’un son fils cadet doté d’un droit d’aînesse par défaut de l’aîné réel, et l’autre sa fille qui n’aime absolument pas ce fils cadet fait aîné, surtout qu’il est de noblesse de robe, il est président de je ne sais quelle cour de justice ou parlement à Angoulème ou quelque part dans cette région, entre Bordeaux et Cognac. Er en plus il est un fat jusques et y compris dans son nom qu’il porte fièrement puisque c’est Fierenfat.

Bien obligée d’obéir elle rate cependant le coche juste à temps, une heure avant les noces, parce que le vrai aîné débarque avec un confrère de misère ancien valet pour prendre du service chez l’un ou l’autre des deux pères. Reconnaissance, ébullience, effervescence, excitation et révolution. La fille retombe amoureuse du vrai aîné contrit et repenti. Le cadet repassé d’aîné à cadet en est tout confus et contusionné et tout finit pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes. Les deux pauvres hères qui arrivent errants dans cette ville de province avaient même envisagé de redevenir des paysans et de gagner leur pain à la sueur de leur front et à la force de leurs poignets en cultivant non pas leur jardin puisqu’ils n’avaient rien, mais les champs de quelque hobereau ou seigneur plus ou moins féodal. Candide toujours à fleur de peau.

« Vois-tu d’ici ces gens dont la fortune
Est dans leur bras ; qui, la bèche à la main,
Le dos courbé, retournent ce jardin ?
Enrôlons-nous parmi cette canaille ;
Viens avec eux, imite-les, travaille,
Gagne ta vie. » dit Jasmin, le valet abandonné.


Et Euphémon-fils, le cadet ruiné, amplifiera immédiatement la « canaille » en « ces vils humains, moins hommes qu’animaux ». Qui peut dans le domaine du mépris social dire plus ?

Mais ne croyez pas que tout cela est gratuit. La philosophie parfois perverse de Voltaire suinte entre certains vers qu’il dit de cinq pieds alors qu’ils sont de dix syllabes, comme par exemple :

« Oui je suis las de tourmenter ma vie,
De vivre errant et damné comme un juif ; » dit Jasmin, encore lui.

Et surtout sans majuscule sur Juif, et ça c’est Voltaire ou les imprimeurs de son temps.

Est-ce que cette réécriture mélodramatique à fin heureuse et donc dramati-certainement-pas-tragi-comique de la parabole biblique apporte quoi que ce soit ? J’en doute fort et ce ne serait même pas du bon boulevard même dans les théâtres de poche de Montparnasse et même en considérant la veuve éconduite qui court après le Président du parlement de Cognac. A quand la réécriture de la Nativité en comptant et décrivant les contractions de la pauvre Marie ? Surtout que dans ce domaine des mariages de convenances et de profits Molière a déjà donné et beaucoup mieux.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

VOLTAIRE – LA PRUDE - 1747

Malgré ses protestations en introduction que sa pièce n’est qu’une pâle traduction ou adaptation de la pièce « The Plain Dealer » de William Wyncherley – qu’il  écrit avec une faute d’orthographe ? qui se comprend d’ailleurs en ces temps-là où l’orthographe y compris des noms propres était aléatoire – sa pièce est de lui-même si elle est un plagiat et je serais fort d’accord qu’elle est un pâle plagiat.


Le titre réfère à la femme centrale de la fable qui se prétend une prude pour mieux couvrir ses malversations qui sous le couvert de pruderie joue de libertinage pour simplement exploiter avec celui avec qui elle a un contrat de mariage – cassable il est vrai mais qui ne le sera pas, cassé bien sûr – les hommes imbéciles qui tombent dans ses rets. Ils y perdent du temps, de l’honneur et tous les biens qu’ils peuvent confier à cette prude perverse.

Ainsi elle entretient, mais aux frais des entretenus, une cour d’amoureux et de victimes. Elle a un contrat de mariage (promesse qui peut être rompue) avec un « cassier » que l’on comprend comme étant un ancêtre des banquiers ; elle entretient une liaison de précieuse intéressée avec un Chevalier pour qui de toute façon ce sport courtois n’est qu’un sport et rien d’autre ; elle flatte un autre homme, capitaine de vaisseau de commerce, qui lui a confié tout son bien avant de partir sur son dernier voyage qui se termine par la destruction du bateau par des pirates – tiens, tiens on dirait Candide – et qu’elle envisage de voler hardiment ; et elle joue à l’amour avec un jeune Turc, qui est en fait la nièce d’un autre personnage masculin mais déguisée en garçon, et notre prude tombe dans le panneau jusqu’à la fin malgré les révélations intermédiaires que ce garçon est une fille.

Pour compliquer la chose l’oncle de cette jeune fille est amoureux de la nièce de notre prude, mais cela risque simplement de n’être qu’une amourette distractive, et la jeune fille elle-même est amoureuse du capitaine qui est amoureux de la prude et que la prude a décidé de plumer. La jeune fille, prise jusqu’au bout pour un garçon, est celle qui va révéler à cet homme grugé que la prude n’est qu’une grugeuse, si ce mot peut être inventé.


Il s’agit donc d’un plagiat mais à la sauce voltairienne, donc terriblement appauvri, même si l’auteur plagié, William Wyncherley, dûment listé dans Wikipedia, n’a rien pour rivaliser avec le dernier auteur dramatique sérieux en Angleterre avant le 19ème siècle, à savoir Ben Jonson qui a fait mieux, beaucoup plus fort et infiniment plus spirituel que notre prude de Voltaire. Et nous ne dirons rien de Marivaux cent fois plus léger, subtil et fin.

Il n’en reste alors ici qu’une charge satirique contre la classe moyenne supérieure de l’époque, les bourgeois juste en dessous de la noblesse, qui est une classe sociale non reconnue et qui n’a qu’un but dans la vie, s’enrichir et s’amuser sans rien faire pour gagner à la sueur de leurs mains les moyens de cet amusement. L’intrigue est cousue de fil blanc et le déguisement de la fille en garçon et en fille à la fin est risible mais non amusant. Ben Jonson et « The Silent Woman » a fait cent fois mieux. Marivaux est aussi un expert des déguisements, sans compter l’ancêtre de tous, Shakespeare. La volonté de Voltaire de distraire la classe supérieure des nantis, nobles ou non, avec les babioles comportementielles des nouveaux riches de l’époque est devenue pitoyable aujourd’hui et absolument risible, sans le moindre plaisir de ce rire qui n’est pas jaune mais totalement hostile.

Concluons avec la nièce de la prude qui déclare sans la moindre profondeur, ni pudeur intellectuelle : « Point de mémoire est ma philosophie. » Mais elle n’est qu’un personnage secondaire. Cependant Dorfise, notre prude qui plus ets veuve, a de l’amant parfait une vision idyllique :


DORFISE :
« Un ami tendre, aussi vif que prudent,
Qui possédât les grâces du jeune âge,
Sans en avoir l’empressement volage ;
Et je me trompe à votre air tendre et doux,
Ou tout cela parait uni dans vous. . .
Vous possédez aussi l’art de vous taire !
Ah ! vous avez tous les talents de plaire.
Jeune et discret ! » (Acte III, Scène 2)

Et tout cela dit à une fille que le texte prétend être de 18 ans, mais aussi de moins de 18 ans, et que j’évaluerais plutôt aux alentours de 15, déguisée en garçon et courtisée comme tel. Plus gay et plus pédophilique que moi tu meurs, mais Shakespeare a tellement fait mieux, sans compter Marivaux. Définitivement « Adin’, cachez ce sein que je ne saurais voir. » Ou bien « Voltair’, cachez ce sex’ que je ne saurais voir ! »

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

VOLTAIRE – LA FEMME QUI A RAISON – 1949

Petite pièce en trois faux actes qui eût du être en un (brouillon corrigé dans les papiers de Voltaire) qui n’a que l’ambition d’être distrayante tout en dépeignant une philosophie de la vie économique plus qu’économe, jouisseuse plus que jouissive, matrimoniale plus que débauchée. Comment vivre heureux dans la jouissance de son bien entre amis et en famille. Le confort et le plaisir bourgeois en quelque sorte dans le mariage incontournable.

La fortune de la famille vient des Indes, sans que nous sachions de quelles Indes il s’agit, par le père parti douze ans dans cette aventure. Il semble que nous dussions comprendre qu’il s’agit des Indes occidentales, c'est-à-dire des Antilles où le père serait allé faire fortune dans l’agriculture coloniale fondée sur l’esclavage et le commerce des épices et denrées de luxe, le célèbrte commerce triangulaire qui fit la richesse de Bordeaux, Nantes, Rouen en France. Ce ne peut pas de toute façon être autre chose au milieu du 18ème siècle.


La mère est restée derrière. Enfin et finalement une mère qui a le sens de la misère d’où le couple et la famille sont sortis et le sens des affaires par des placements judicieux et juteux des finances retournant du père. La mère cependant est aussi judicieuse dans la gestion de la famille qu’elle dote d’un hôtel digne de sa fortune avec du personnel, et dans la gestion de ses enfants qu’elle dote d’une éducation décente mais il ne semble pas d’une carrière vraiment époustouflante. On ne peut pas assurer la jouissance de la vie à des jeunes gens en définitive désœuvrés et en même temps leur assurer une carrière. Ils vivent donc des revenus des placements financiers faits par la mère et que le père va simplement doubler en revenant. Deux millions c’est beaucoup et cela doit bien rapporter quelques bonnes et trébuchantes dizaines de milliers d’unités de la monnaie en cours à l’époque.

Mais Voltaire défend cette vie de placements financiers :

Madame DURU :
« On doit compte au public de l’usage du bien ;
Et qui l’ensevelit est mauvais citoyen ;
Il fait tort à l’État, il s’en fait à soi-même.
Faut-il sur son comptoir, l’œil trouble et le teint blême,
Manquer du nécessaire, auprès d’un coffre-fort,
Pour avoir de quoi vivre un jour après la mort ?
Ah ! Vivez avec nous dans une honnête aisance.
Le prix de nos travaux est dans la jouissance,
Faites votre bonheur en remplissant vos vœux.
Être riche n’est rien : le tout est d’être heureux. . .
Ne craignez rien, vivez, possédez, jouissez… » (Acte III, Scène 5)

Et une variante supprimée est encore plus explicite sur cette moralité bourgeoise avant même l’acceptation du terme dans le cadre d’un capitalisme pas encore établi. Mais ce discours économique jouissif n’est pas l’intérêt de la pièce. Ce qui en fait du théâtre c’est la situation hirsute composée par les personnages.


La mère, Madame DURU, a deux enfants, un fils et une fille, comme il se doit dans la tradition Voltairienne. Ces deux enfants devaient épouser les deux enfants du « caissier » qui gère les finances de Monsieur Duru et sa famille, à savoir Isaac Gripon, une fille et un fils bien sûr. Ce Gripon est un peu fripon car il veut forcer la main à tout le monde sur la base du désir d’un père bien lointain et ainsi marier un jeune homme à peine sorti de l’adolescence à sa fille qui a 37 ans, ce qui est probablement ou à peu près l’âge de la mère de ce jeune homme et un âge canonique à l’époque, un siècle avant la femme de trente ans de Balzac. Le fils cadet de ce fripon Gripon doit être en proportion, et bien sûr ces deux enfants arlésiens, puisqu’on ne les verra pas, Philipotte et Philipot Gripon, n’ont pas de mère et n’ont pas de profession détaillée, sinon que le fils prendra la succession de son père et la fille est ménagère selon une morale de vie qui a peu à voir avec celle de Madame DURU :

M. GRIPON :
« On se lève avant jour ; ainsi fait votre père :
Imitez-le dans tout, pour vivre heureux sur terre ;
Soyez sobre, attentif à placer votre argent ;
Ne donnez jamais rien, et prêtez rarement… » (Acte I, Scène 5)

Digne morale de vie d’Isaac Gripon. Isaac, comme Isaac Newton, est un nom biblique d’importance et Voltaire sait très bien ce dont il s’agit puisque les Arabes de La Mecque se définissait dans sa pièce « Le Fanatisme ou Mahomet le Prophète » comme fils d’Ismail, l’autre fils d’Abraham, le modèle même du patriarche post-Noétique et post-Mosaïque, le patriarche qui obéit en tout à dieu même quand ce dieu lui ordonne de sacrifier son fils, que ce soit Isaac du côté juif ou que ce soit Ismail du côté islamique. Le nom n’est pas gratuit et bien que Isaac Newton ne soit pas juif, le prénom qu’il tient de son père dont il est orphelin à la naissance est-il un prénom juif ou simplement biblique et quand on sait que Newton était un érudit hébraïque et Biblique, j’entends de l’Ancien Testament, sans compter un historien fort lettré sur l’histoire du peuple juif et du peuple d’Israël, on ne peut guère douter que Voltaire, qui reconnaît dans son  œuvre l’importance scientifique et philosophique d’Isaac Newton, jouait ici avec un gripe-sous Gripon portant un prénom juif d’usurier.

Et les deux enfants DURU vont, avec la complicité de leur mère et juste avant l’arrivée de leur père, épouser un autre couple de jeunes gens, frère et sœur bien sûr, issus d’une noblesse qui n’a pas de problèmes financiers et est donc dotée. Trois couples frère-sœur et fils-fille et deux mariages. Mais Shakespeare est allé jusqu’à quatre mariages dans une pièce (« As You Like It » avec Hymen, dieu du mariage, venu bénir les mariages de Rosalind et Orsino, Celia et Oliver, Phebe et Silvius, Audrey et Touchstone). Symbolique union de la noblesse et de la bourgeoisie, rêve impossible mais Voltaire ne le sait pas encore.


De là à dire que l’on a deux éthique qui s’affrontent, il n’y a qu’un pas que je franchis allègrement. Voltaire défend une éthique bourgeoise de confort, de jouissance et de spéculation plus que de travail qu’il oppose à une éthique du travail, de la parcimonie et de l’austère gestion visant au profit maximum de biens financiers et immobiliers. Il est très clair qu’il rejette les enfants de ce grippe-sou dans la marge arlésienne, et l’éthique de ce fripon Gripon hors de son entendement. Son Gripon est comme un Scrooge célèbre d’un auteur du 19ème siècle, si merveilleusement rendu par le couple antagonique Gripsou et Picsou sur la planète Walt Disney créés respectivement en 1956 et 1947.

Vivent les nouveaux riches, mais hors de l’emprise des spéculateurs austères, qu’ils soient calvinistes, luthériens ou juifs. Mais est-ce là un thème encore présentable dans notre siècle connecté ?

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

VOLTAIRE – NANINE – 1749

Voilà une pièce dont le sujet est en or mais qui est arrivé sur la scène 29 ans trop tôt, c'est-à-dire 29 ans avant « Le Mariage de Figaro » de Beaumarchais. Il s’agit De l’amour d’un noble pour une servante du plus bas état. Est-il concevable qu’un noble, veuf et donc d’un certain âge, tombe amoureux d’une servante jeune et donc qui pourrait être sa fille ou presque alors qu’il a le droit de la prendre sans même demander sa permission ?

On a alors dans tout cela la matière d’une comédie sociale qui pourrait être gentiment satirique tout en étant amusante. Même le père soldat retiré du service pourrait ajouter une touche patriotique à la fable délurée d’une lutte contre justement ce droit de prendre femmes et hommes comme on l’entend quand on est noble pourvu que la cible ne le soit pas. Beaumarchais fera de ce sujet un chef d’œuvre immortel. Voltaire en a fait une comédie mélodramatique franchement larmoyante.

La volonté du Comte – tient cela me rappelle quelque chose – non seulement de prendre Nanine mais de l’épouser est tout à fait inacceptable tant pour la noblesse que pour le tiers état. Nanine ne cesse de le répéter et le Comte ne prouve rien avec ses déclarations humanistes imposées de par son autorité de noble qu’il fait reconnaître comme incontournable, à laquelle tout un chacun se doit d’obéir. Ou est l’amour dans tout cela ? Et effectivement on voir mal comment Nanine pourrait dans un seul souffle appeler son soldat de père démuni de tout revenu « père » et la marquise de mère du Comte son mari si elle l’épousait « mère ».


On peut rêver mais dans ce cas on fait une pièce de science fiction. Pour le théâtre au 18ème siècle ce n’est pas vraiment possible. Alors on écrit un roman ou on écrit un conte de science fiction, mais on ne prétend pas écrire une pièce comique et réaliste avec un tel sujet dramatique et totalement irréaliste quarante ans avant la Révolution Française qui abolira ces privilèges. Un noble peut sans déchoir entretenir une maîtresse roturière dans une chaumière de son domaine, mais certainement pas en faire son épouse légitime.

On comprend alors l’impression de décousu et de cousu au fil blanc que l’on ressent scène après scène de fuite en avant dans un drame psychologique que Voltaire n’a même pas compris vraiment. Il fait lire à cette pauvre Nanine un livre en anglais sur l’égalité de tous les hommes. Combien de servantes même un peu éduquée au point de savoir écrire et lire pouvaient en 1749 lire l’anglais ?

Mais Voltaire n’en est pas à une invraisemblance près. Dans la préface il se moque de Corneille qui dans Rodogune attribue à Rodogune, sœur de Phaartes, roi des Parthes, les vers suivants :

« Il est des nœuds secrets, il est de sympathies,
Dont par le doux rapport les âmes assorties
S’attachent l’une à l’autre, et se laissent piquer
Par je ne sais quoi qu’on ne peut expliquer. » (Corneille, Rodogune, Acte I Scène 5)

en ces termes : « De bonne foi, croirait-on que ces vers du haut comique fussent dans la bouche d’une princesse de Parthes, qui va demander à son amant la tête de sa mère ? » Notons d’abord que la dite Rodogune ne parle pas à son amant à ce moment-là mais à Laonice, sœur de Timagène, gouverneur des deux princes en question dans cette discussion entre lesquels le cœur de Rodogune balance, et confidente de Cléopâtre. C’est en plus de la part de Voltaire ignorer complètement la culture des gens allant au théâtre en 1645, le public éduqué du moins en latin et qui savait l’expression de Tertullien qu’ils ont appris à traduire à l’école ou à l’université, expression suffisamment connue de ce public pour que Bossuet dans son oraison funèbre du Père Bourgoing en 1662 la cite ainsi :

"La chair changera de nature, le corps prendra un autre nom; même celui de cadavre, dit Tertullien [ca. 160-220, Carthage], ne lui demeurera pas longtemps; il deviendra un je ne sais quoi, qui n'a point de nom dans aucune langue"; tant il est vrai que tout meurt en nos corps, jusqu'à ces termes funèbres par lesquels on exprimait nos malheureux restes: Post totum illud ignobilitatis elogium, caducae carnis in originem terram, et cadaveris nomen; et de isto quoque nomine periturae in nullum inde jam nomen, in omnis jam vocabuli mortem. »


Si ainsi l’amour est lié à la mort, l’amour devient tragique et cette allusion à la mort devient une préparation sinistre à la demande de la tête de la susdite mère. Et si Voltaire avait cité la suite de ces quatre vers il aurait alors vu la profondeur tragique de cet amour quand Rodogune dit quelques vers plus loin concernant les deux princes :

« Je voudrais être à lui si je n'aimais son frère ;
Et le plus grand des maux toutefois que je crains,
C'est que mon triste sort me livre entre ses mains. » (Acte I, Scène 5)

Il rejette sur la base de cet argument faussé le mélange des genres et ne comprends pas que c’est une limite du théâtre classique français qui veut que le tragique ne côtoie que du tragique, ce qui tourne l’amour en conflit tragique chaque fois qu’il apparaît dans une tragédie des auteurs classiques comme Corneille ou Racine, alors qu’il deviendra un élément comique dans un auteur comme Molière. Ce refus du mélange des genres amène Voltaire à faire de la comédie qui en devient larmoyante quand il veut ajouter à l’amour une dimension non pas tragique mais dramatique et il se retrouve dans le mélodramatique qui en devient pathétique bien avant son invention au 19ème siècle, mais il est vrai assez pratiqué par Jean Jacques Rousseau et surtout en peinture par Greuze.

Je crois qu’il aurait du méditer un peu sur cette exergue de l’oraison funèbre de Henriette-Anne d’Angleterre de 1970 par Bossuet : « Vanitas vanitatum, dixit Ecclesiastes; vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas. » Il lui manque en théâtre le sens de la mesure dramatique et probablement de culture. Il eût pu apprendre de Shakespeare l’art du mélange des genres qui ne devient jamais mélodramatique, mais qui est rarement pratiqué il est vrai au théâtre en général parce qu’il produit des relâchements de tension qui peuvent détruire l’effet dramatique et le suspens, bien que cela n’arrive jamais chez Shakespeare. Finalement dans cette pièce sur ce sujet, en évitant la science fiction et le mélodramatique, Beaumarchais va produit peu de temps après un chef d’œuvre universel, alors que cette pièce-ci de Voltaire est désolante.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU



ISAAC NEWTON AND JUDAISM

Date: Fri Jul 3 09:31:53 1998
Posted By: Robert Macke, Grad student, Physics, Washington University
Area of science: Science History
ID: 899255273.Sh

Message:

Robert,

Alas, no, Isaac Newton was not a jew. However, you ask a good question which requires a somewhat more elaborate answer than just 'no.'

Isaac Newton was born in Woolsthorpe, England on December 25, 1642, and was given the name of his then-deceased father Isaac.  He was baptised into the Church of England on January 1, 1643.  However, his early education had some very strongly Puritan influences.  As well, his grammar school education in Grantham included Biblical studies and he learned to read Hebrew.

There is strong evidence that in the early 1670's, Newton became an Arian.  (That is, a follower of the ideas of a 4th century Alexandrian priest by the name of Arius, who believed that Christ was not equal in stature to God the Father.)  This was a heresy that he kept secret, though he carried his beliefs with him to the grave.

At the time, he became very well versed in all of the Biblical texts, as well as the writings of many of the more prominent theologians, and published a number of theological papers of his own.

In the latter part of his life, Newton took an interest in ancient history.

He wrote a text entitled "Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms," published posthumously in 1728, which used as a basic reference the Old Testament, and supported Jewish history at the expense of all other accounts, which he believed were exaggerated at best.

I believe the following passage best describes Newton's views toward Judaism:

"Tracing the history of the Church back to the earliest days of Judaism, Newton wrote that all nations were originally of one religion based on the moral precepts of Noah's sons.   This religion was passed on to the great Hebrew patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Moses later carried it to Israel...."  [Christianson, G., In the Presence of the Creator; Isaac Newton and His Times, The Free Press, New York, 1984, pp 566-567.]

Newton saw Judaism as the progenitor of the Christian Church, and as such early Jews stood apart from all other ancient people.  His writings give strong support to the Jews' special place in history.

Well, I hope you find this answer as fascinating as I did.

---Bob Macke
MIT S.B. Physics 1996 in St. Louis Ph.D. candidate, Physics





January 4, 1643 – March 31, 1727

Isaac Newton was not Jewish. Clearly. However, there are some connections: he knew Hebrew, was very well versed in Jewish history, and considered Christianity a derivative of Judaism.
So, we'll just slap a verdict here and go back to writing about Duffman...
One minor problem. Should we say "Not a Jew", or "Sadly, not a Jew"? Yes, questions like these keep us awake at night.
On one hand, gravity, laws of motion, the reflecting telescope, one of the smartest men ever, etc, etc, etc. Sounds like a lock for "Sadly".
On the other hand, calculus. Thanks for that invention, Sir Isaac. We were forced to take three semesters of calculus in college. Those long nights struggling with double and triple integrals are not easily forgotten. Or forgiven.
And when, in our last calculus class ever, the professor told us that everything we'd worked so hard to learn was not only essentially useless but could be better done by computers, well...
Verdict: Not a Jew.


 BUT what about his father, his mother, his grandparents, etc? JC



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