DE L’ANGLAIS

https://www.academia.edu/7748673/COURS_COMPLET_DE_GRAMMAIRE_ANGLAISE_AVEC_EXERCICES_CORRIGES

Pour étudiants ou enseignants d’anglais francophones

Cette grammaire de 301 pages et de 153 mille 153 mots (dixit Word) fut commandée par un éditeur pour le public des étudiants préparant le CAPES ou l’Agrégation, ainsi que les professeurs du secondaire. Chaque chapitre a une unité presque totale au niveau de ses références et citations. Toute la grammaire est fondée uniquement sur des exemples tirés d’œuvres littéraires récentes.

C’est un corpus de citations sur un point ou un chapitre de grammaire, toutes issues d’un même auteur qui permet d’éviter l’éclectisme des citations et qui donc permet d’arriver à une vision plus synthétique.

L’ensemble de cette grammaire a été mis en ligne sur le site de l’Université de Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, à disposition gratuite pour les étudiants en 2007 (et doit toujours y être) après avoir été mis à disposition informatique gratuite des étudiants de l’IUP Tourisme de l’Université de Perpignan à Mende (Lozère) en 2002-2003.

J’ai mis les cinq parties en ligne sur www.academia.edu il y a déjà quelques années. Je propose ici les cinq liens des cinq parties sur ce site pour faciliter la navigation.

1^ère partie : Le syntagme nominal

https://www.academia.edu/1406591/La_Grammaire_dynamique_de_langlais_Partie_1

2^ème partie : Le syntagme verbal

https://www.academia.edu/1406601/La_Grammaire_Dynamique_de_lAnglais_Partie_2

3^ème partie : L’énoncé

https://www.academia.edu/1406614/La_Grammaire_Dynamique_de_lAnglais_Partie_3

4^ème partie : Les utilitaires

https://www.academia.edu/1406648/La_Grammaire_Dynamique_de_lAnglais_Partie_4

5^ème partie : Introduction aux exercices (tous corrigés)

https://www.academia.edu/1406746/La_Grammaire_Dynamique_de_lAnglais_Partie_5

Je vous prie instamment d’utiliser sans modération ces 301 pages. Si vous remarquez des erreurs – et je suis sûr qu’il y en a – veuillez avoir la gentillesse de me les signaler. Je mettrai à jour régulièrement.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

ADDENDUM : REFERENCES

Africa, Frank, in Mumia, Abu-Jamal, 1995

Alex, T.S., Mind Mine, recueil de poésies autoédité, San Antonio, Texas, 1999

Bellow, Saul, Ravelstein, Viking, New York, 2000

BizRate.com®, Online Research Panel, Official Sweepstakes Rules, The Internet, Los Angeles, 2000

Borland, Hal, When the Legends Die, Bantam, New York, 1984

Bunyan, John, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Whitaker House, New York, 1981

Burghardt DuBois, W.E., The Souls of Black Folks, Fawcette Publications, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1961

Chapman, Robert L., PhD, American Slang, Harper and Row, New York, 1987

Conrad, Earl, The Premier, Lancer Books, New York, 1963

Dickens, Charles, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, OUP, Oxford, 1956

Drapeau, Louis L., The Future of Risk Management : Are You Reading the Signs of the Times ?, The Internet, 2000

Ellis, Bret Easton, American Psycho, Picador, Londres, 1991

Ellison, Ralph, Juneteenth, Vintage International, New York, 1999

Garland, Alex, The Beach, Penguin Books, Londres, 1996

Goddard, Robert, Set in Stone, Bantam, Londres, 1999

Harris, Robert, Archangel, Jove Books, New York, 1999

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter, Washington Square Press, New York, 1970

Hodge, John, The Beach A Screenplay, Faber & Faber, London, 2000

Huebner, Andrew, American by Blood, Anchor, Londres, 2000

Hull, Raymond, « Introduction », in Peter, Dr Laurence J., 1970

Joyce, James, Ulysses, Penguin, Londres, 1975

Marlowe, Christopher, Doctor Faustus, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1993

Mumia, Abu-Jamal, Live from Death Row, Avon Books, New York, 1995

Murdoch, Iris, Bruno’s Dream, Dell Publishing Company, New York, 1970

Murdoch, Iris, The Green Knight, Chatto and Windus, Londres, 1993

Peter, Dr Laurence J., The Peter Principle, Bantam, New York, 1970

Reed, Ishmael, The Free-Lance Pallbearers, Bantam, New York, 1967

Rice, Anne, The Queen of the Damned, Futura, Londres, 1990

Seeger, Pete, American Favorite Ballads, Oak Publications, New York, 1961

Shakespeare, William, Antony and Cleopatra, Spring Books, Londres, 1965

Skeat, Walter W., Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1965

Taylor, Richard J., « The Art of Digital Techniques in the Broadcast Studio », SMPTE, Scarsdale, New York, 1982

Townsend, Sue, The Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾, Methuen, Londres, 1982

Tropper, Jonathan, Plan B, St Martin’s Press, New York, 2000

Walker, Margaret, Jubilee, Bantam, New York, 1967

Synchrosome II-Ilya and Vanya

Kévin Thorez, compositeur et interprète

Jacques Coulardeau, auteur et interprète

NadXka, interprète.

A small article essentially centered on the technical side of things, the machines used to produce the CDs. Do not expect anything like a real critique, or review, or even artistic presentation of the music itself. But that is always funny to have your name page 16 of a national magazine you will not be able to read online, only on paper, issue n° 304, February-March 2015. http://www.kr-homestudio.fr/

*****

Notre musique vise au dépaysement sonore, à la recherche d’un univers où instruments, langue et chant se conjuguent en un tout surprenant et même parfois bouleversant.. . .

            Ces thèmes sont d’autant plus développés qu’un récit ou dialogue entre Ilya et Vanya prend corps liant les chansons et révélant deux êtres se torturant par et pour leur propre amour dans l’album Synchrosome II, Ilya and Vanya.

            Les visuels sont des peintures de ma cousine, Caroline Guille, tableaux visibles pour certains, sur son site : caro-paint.com .

*****

AMAZON.fr MP3 STORE

1:19:14 – Langue : anglais/English – Indie & Alternative – Explicit Lyrics - ASIN: B00J0B57BC - EUR 9,99 TTC

LA VIE TRÈS PRIVÉE DE MONSIEUR SIM – 2015

Il s’agit d’une comédie un peu molle mais plutôt surprenante en fonction de l’angle de vue, de la visée du spectateur. Si vous voulez de l’action, un rythme fort ? de comédie certes mais fort quand même, vous vous êtes trompé d’adresse.

Le personnage principal qui est le sujet même du film et donc de la comédie n’est pas à proprement parler comique. Il est même plutôt du bois dont on pourrait faire des portes de prison. Il est hautement dépressif après une séparation résultant de son incapacité à écouter l’autre et à se mettre au niveau de l’autre. Il ne parle que de lui et il ne juge rien autrement que par lui et en fonction de lui, non pas de ses intérêts, car il semble avoir très peu d’intérêt pour ses intérêts, mais en fonction de ce que lui penserait ou comment lui réagirait s’il était dans la situation concernée.

Il vit ainsi une psychose grave qui s’alimente du manque de communication avec d’autres, du rejet même de la communication quand elle se présente car cela limiterait son auto-expression et en conséquence du rejet par les autres du fait de cette absence de communication. C’est un cercle vicieux dont on ne peut pas sortir. Dommage. Point d’orgue et point final. Premier point de vue que l’auteur du film lentement repousse.

Le mérite du film est d’essayer de faire remonter le personnage dans son passé pour voir où les choses ont bloqué. Pour ce faire il a besoin d’interlocuteurs, au moins d’un, et il va prendre son GPS qu’il appelle Emmanuelle comme interlocutrice, et elle va d’autant mieux jouer le jeu que tout se passe dans la tête de ce pauvre Monsieur Sim. Et Emmanuelle va faire sortir le tigre de sa cage.

Pour ce faire Monsieur Sim guidé par son GPS a besoin de quelques outils et ce sont trois choses.

D’abord une nouvelle qu’il extorque à son ex-épouse en entretenant avec elle une relation internet par un chat quelconque et en se faisant passer pour une femme mariée. Enfin bref la persona parfaite. L’ex-épouse mord à l’hameçon et de confidence en confidence elle lui envoie la nouvelle qu’elle vient d’écrire et qui concerne un événement récent qui l’a amenée à rompre avec son mari, qui ne l’oublions pas est derrière la persona qu’il assume sur ce chat. Ce texte sera révélateur. La fosse aux lions du prophète Daniel.

Puis il rencontre l’oncle d’une connaissance qu’il s’est faite dans un aéroport et sur un avion. Cette jeune femme l’invite à un repas de famille pour qu’il devienne l’interlocuteur personnel, privée, intime de sa propre mère qu’on comprend veuve (bien qu’elle ne l’ait pas prévenue par avance), mais c’est en fait avec l’oncle de cette connaissance qu’il va établir un lien et celui-ci lui donnera un livre sur un navigateur solitaire anglais qui va le bouleverser dans les jours qui suivront et qui surtout va l’amener à regarder un autre cas de solitude et d’engagement non tenu parce que non tenable. Il refuse l’hypothèse du suicide car se projetant en lui il refuse d’envisager sa propre mort par transfert de celle de ce navigateur solitaire. Les transferts de Freud, ici un cas impossible. Bien vu donc, Monsieur l’auteur du film.

Enfin il récupère à Roanne un manuscrit de son père qu’il lit bien sûr. C’est un manuscrit autobiographique qui révèle les circonstances dans lesquelles il a été, lui Monsieur Sim, conçu. Pur accident conséquent à un déboire sentimental gay qu’il n’est pas capable à l’époque d’assumer d’abord et qu’il manque par la plus simple négligence, très peu de temps après.

C’est là que le film devient un peu douteux. Avec les souvenirs de Monsieur Sim adolescent, avec un rendez-vous à Saint Etienne qui tourne mal avec son grand amour d’adolescent qu’il n’a jamais réussi à réaliser, l’auteur du film nous oriente vers une espèce de transmission de l’homosexualité du père sur le fils, peut-être pas génétique mais au moins comportementale. C’est là un behaviourisme à l’américain, à la Skinner, facile qui a prouvé plus que souvent qu’il était raciste et ségrégationniste.

L’orientation sexuelle est le résultat de bien des paramètres mais elle est aussi un choix. A père gay refoulé il ne saurait y avoir fils gay refoulé. Si c’était aussi simple les pires personnes anti-mariage gay et anti-homoparentalité aurait absolument raison, et on sait parfaitement que cela est faux. On a aujourd’hui trop de cas observés, légaux ou non, d’enfants élevés par deux parents de même sexe, qu’ils soient amants ou pas, hommes ou femmes, pour qu’on puisse dire qu’il n’y a aucune transmission automatique de l’orientation sexuelle de ces parents aux enfants qu’ils élèvent. D’ailleurs de nombreuses personnes gay ou lesbiennes sont issues de familles hétérosexuelles à l’orientation claire et bien définie.

Ce film donc touche à un sujet assez poignant mais il implique une conclusion qui n’est absolument pas justifiée, pour une raison simple : l’amour n’est pas l’échange de fluides hormonaux. On peut aimer sans cela. On peut aimer avec rapports physiques. On peut aimer une personne avec ou sans rapport physique intime et avoir une pratique physique purement hormonale sans amour en dehors de cette relation. Si on devait avoir des échanges hormonaux avec toutes les personnes qu’on aime, nous n’en finirions pas, et il faudrait commencer avec ses propres parents et frères et sœurs. Les rapports physiques intimes libérés du 21^ème siècle ne remettent en rien en cause l’amour qui est tellement plus que cela, et parfois n’est pas cela du tout.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

COLM McELWAIN – JAMES CLYDE AND THE DIAMONDS OF ORCHESTRA – 2012

Do not enter this book believing that the adventure will come to a full end. You would be mistaken. This is a first volume OF a series though I cannot tell you if it is going to be two or three or more volumes.

This being said you will find the book interesting. This novel is written for an audience between 12 and 16, when young people, and I think mostly boys, are still very much uncultured in the fantasy genre of literature written for young teenagers. If they were they would react like adults would and that’s where I am going to start because the deeper meaning comes from there, but it would destroy the pleasure of these young teenagers.

This story is original but it is great patchwork. The human world on top and a fantasy world under, that’s a classic in teenage literature. It is first active in Stephen King’s The Talisman (1984) in which King is associated with Peter Straub. The human world on top is polluted and irresponsible and that has severe consequences on the fantasy world underneath in which the young teenager hero has to retrieve a talisman to save his mother in this world. Strangely enough the human world is superior in the fact that what happens in it determines what happens in the world underneath. Stephen King will use the fantasy world again in The Eyes of the Dragon (1987) that takes place in what is the fantasy world of The Dark Tower. But it is mostly self-contained; the superior human world is not really used as such. In the series of novels known under the generic name of The Dark Tower (started in 1982, hence before the two titles I have just quoted, and officially terminated in 2004, with yet an extension in 2012) is fundamentally based on that division of the world in two, the real human world, essentially New York, and the fantasy world that is going through a deep crisis of death due to the mismanagement of the human world, yet this fantasy world has no real future since the vast picaresque journey officially to salvage it ends at the exact same point as when it started, hence it starts all over again, hence it is circular, not cyclical, since there is no change between the starting point and the finishing points that are exactly the same.

None of that in this book where the human, world is an escape or refuge world and nothing else for the endangered people in the world underneath.

You will of course think of Tolkien or even George Martin, but in these authors there is no superior human world. The whole story is absolutely contained in the fantasy world. There are many authors along that line. It is in fact a whole genre per se.

But you cannot avoid thinking of C.S. Lewis and his Narnia saga. The great difference is that in Narnia we are dealing with books that are all self-sufficient. Each volume brings the story of the volume to a complete end. It starts most of the time from this world, concerns young teenagers who pass to the other world where they have some adventure and they come back to this world when the adventure has come to a close. You can have some follow-up elements from one volume to another but they are not basic, meaning they do not build the architecture of each volume, they build a wider architecture you do not need to enjoy each volume.

There is one essential difference. This here volume is a first volume that does not bring to a close the various plots and stories. It calls for a subsequent sequel, which is slightly frustrating, but which is in full similarity with Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, though maybe more suspenseful since the epilogue of this here volume is really dropping all business in absolute suspension.

The world underneath is divided between a white Zara and a black Darken, the two antagonistic parts of this fantasy world known as Orchestra, whose inhabitants are Orchins. There are two kingdoms that are hostile and we enter the story when the two kings have been eliminated, when the son of the good Queen Belle has been saved into the human world and when the bad Queen Abigail is dominating the whole Orchestra but yet misses one element to be supreme, one of three diamonds, the one that was evacuated into the human world along with Queen Belle’s son, James Clyde. The whole story is to bring James Clyde back to his Zara throne as the Savior, to bring the green diamond back to this Orchestra world. And we find ourselves in the middle of the war started by Queen Abigail to conquer the green diamond, to kill James the Savior and to establish her power as paramount with the help of a sorcerer, Imorex. You can note I totally push aside the plot elements that take place in the human world. So far they are not significant in the Orchestra plot.

It all ends up as unfinished business at all levels, but rather advanced in a couple of domains.

This black and white world cut in two spheres is the typical world Salman Rushdie imagined in his story book for young teenagers Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), and I am sure it has an older model or pattern in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) with the Queen of Spades against the Queen of Hearts as an adapted extension of the original story that only has one bad queen, the Queen of Hearts, and further becoming the good White Queen and the bad Red Queen in the more than famous adaptation by Walt Disney. We cannot attribute this split to Lewis Carroll himself but it was introduced rather fast into the story by various adaptors and plagiarists. We could also think of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1904) though then the two worlds are really defined differently, one being the world of normal life when awake, and the other the world of children’s dreamlike fantasy.

When all that is said – for adults – we can wonder about the meaning of the story. Such stories are always based on simple ethics that can be made more or less complicated, subtle and refined. In this case it is an all-out opposition good versus bad; white versus black; knights versus monsters (Volen and Dakotas); human and empathetic versus inhuman, un-human and by principle cruel; faithful and trustworthy versus treacherous and deceitful. Then the only subtleties you can have are about the level of intelligence of the characters (swift, smart, brilliant, etc., or the opposites) and the level of self-pride that can reach total vanity. That makes simple-minded people and heroes. They could be worked upon slightly more in depth.

The reference to twelve knights is a real schematic symbol because there is never any list of them. But being obstinate I found the following names: Gabriel, Joel, Lance, Joseph, Nathan, Tobias, Eric, David, Noah, Wilmore, Ethan, Matthew, to which we have to add Kila, which makes twelve since Wilmore is dead, and moreover Gilbert cannot be considered as a member, though he used to be their leader, since he is the traitor. We can note of course the pattern of twelve containing a traitor and that traitor being taken out we come back to twelve again and the twelve knights are at the service of the Savior, James who is of course the brother of Jesus, close enough, from a father who was Jacob, hence the same reference again.

More complex is the diamond trinity. Since the first one we meet (in fact the third one of the trinity) is associated to the color green we would like it to lead to the three audiovisual colors Red Blue and Green, in which green is naturally the third diamond, the last diamond, the missing diamond. Our author here knows these three colors since he must have a computer that tells him regularly Red Green Blue or RGB. But we saw the second diamond when it was stolen by Gilbert, then transferred by Imorex to Queen Abigail, and it never had anything more than a glint and no color. Too bad. This trinity would be enriched if it were a trinity of colors, the audiovisual trinity or the painting trinity (Red Yellow and Blue). But it is a trinity nevertheless and as such a pattern, the most distant and ancient pattern of all divinity in all civilizations: the divine is always ternary in a way or another, three gods for example, and the most famous trinity in European mythology is the Triple Goddess that became the three weird sisters of Shakespeare. We cannot of course ignore that it is also the basic nature of the Christian god, though the Jewish god is binary and the Muslim god is absolutely unitary.

To thus bring a ternary pattern in a basically binary world is quite significant and it reflects the impossibility of our modern world to clearly choose between one way or the other, between progressive reform or conservative reform, constantly questioning that binary choice with ternary election results that create a third power somewhere that slows down or blocks the basic binary choice. Maybe after all it is not that simple and the world should not be reduced to two contradictory antagonistic elements. Note in this story the earth, the world of the humans is the ternary element, the escape and the refuge from the binary world underneath.

All those are patterns and they all are significant and signifying. They build in the child’s mind some fuzzy structure in which there is a dual existential swinging or swaying movement between two poles and yet some kind of magical, supernatural and superior escape from this into a third universe. That should build in the readers the idea that you always have to keep some option in store in case the basic dual options did not work. Between two black and white (or black and red if you prefer) extremes it is most of the time a complex combination of the various hues and shades of the in-between grey(s) that is the alternative, the escape, the refuge. This is the main post-post-modern consciousness of our world. After the fundamentalisms of the 19^th century that outlived themselves up to the early 1950s we thought there was no truth but only a myriad of points of view, and now after 50 years of post modern belief we come to this simpler approach that humanity is always divided between two contradictory and antagonistic extremes and yet the truth can only be in-between in the palette of all the grey(s) you can imagine.

Between the extreme red and blue, infra-red and ultraviolet, the existential truth is in the vast spectrum of yellow and green provided the two extreme margins are never completely annihilated, even if they could ever be.

This is rich literature for teenagers, though it could be make even richer by working more on the in-between shades of plot, characters, genders and monstrosities. The next volume might enrich this vision. Let’s hope so.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

LOONY-LU & LULU

THE BELOVED SACRIFICED TO AND BY THE BELOVED

A MYSTICAL PARODY

Jacques COULARDEAU

This is the love story of two people who cross all limits of moderation or even intensity to reach beyond into the land where suffering becomes pleasurable, where dependence becomes bliss because submission is real happiness. They get and find their inspiration in real life for sure but also in their culture deeply animated by all kinds of blood sacrifices from Jesus to the Incas, from Isaac to the Mayas. 

These two, a man and a woman, do not believe one moment they are perverse or abnormal. They are just doing to each other and to some other more or less, often less, consenting actors what they see going on in all war zones. For them life is a war and living is survival, a constant battle against forces that want their doom, their end, their death. 

For them, both of them who are both dominant and submissive, master and slave or mistress and slave, suffering is an offering to the person you love, to the person who loves you. It is an honor just like it was for Jesus to die for his father and for the sacrificed young men to die for their Sun god, the sun god of the Mayas or the Aztecs. 

Enter that deep jungle of sorrowful pleasure and blissful pain. 

Jacques COULARDEAU

Olliergues, November 13, 2014

Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk; Amazon.fr; and all other Amazon stores. KDP Edition

File Size: 1067 KB

Print Length: 96 pages

Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited

Publisher: Editions La Dondaine; 1^st edition (November 12, 2014)

Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

Language: English

ASIN: B00PKFVNVU

Text-to-Speech: Enabled 

http://www.amazon.com/LOONY-LU-LULU-BELOVED-SACRIFICED-MYSTICAL-ebook/dp/B00PKFVNVU

Price: US$4.63 – EUR 3,72 – IndR 277.00 – ￥ 516

C’est un long voyage au cœur des arts de la scène que nous allons faire à travers dix siècles d’histoire.

Tous nos arts poussent leurs racines dans un héritage judéo-chrétien fort ancien, sans parler de la  mythologie grecque. L’histoire des dix derniers siècles d’arts dramatiques est marquée par un long parcours progressif d’une acceptation de la téléologie judéo-chrétienne à sa négation absolue au profit d’une téléologie « humaniste » dont la forme ultime est le scientisme naturaliste ou social de Darwin et Marx (et surtout de leurs continuateurs). Depuis une dizaine d’années, […] [n]ous vivons aujourd’hui les prémisses du siècle des religions.

Nous allons ainsi parcourir environ vingt-cinq siècles d’histoire humaine occidentale. Nous partirons des bases judéo-chrétiennes de la Bible, Ancien et Nouveau Testament, pour planter le décor. Puis nous passerons au théâtre (même si certains considèrent que la Bible est une mise en scène, sans jeu de mot sur ce dernier item lexical). Le Moyen Âge nous offrira des illustrations de la première phase d’une référence biblique triomphante. Puis les temps baroques nous montreront comment une distanciation progressivement se construit avec une référence à la nature et à la psychologie des personnages. Ensuite nous regarderons de prêt le révélateur « FAUST » de Marlowe à Gounod. Nous y verrons Dieu en train de mourir avant même la notice nécrologique de Hegel écrite en lettres d’or à la cheminée de la philosophie, sans parler de celle de Marx gravée dans le marbre de la stèle funéraire et mortifère de la lutte des classes comme explication finale et absolue du monde. Puis nous suivrons cette mort de Dieu chez le Juif (et cela est capital) Gustav Mahler et le Slave Igor Stravinsky (associé à Jean Cocteau). Nous déboucherons alors sur l’ère du cinéma et sur un monde qui n’a plus de Dieu, mais qui pourtant recherche une téléologie qu’il construit de toutes pièces, avec parfois le vieux modèle de la Genèse au fond des yeux. Et ce cinéma est le livre sacré des auditoires les plus larges qui sont formés, informés et même déformés ou conformés par ces images colorées et animées qu’on leur projette à longueur de journée, et de nuit, sur toutes sortes d’écran.

Nous finirons ce voyage avec deux métaphores dramatiques. D’une part Good Bye Lenin, la métaphore de la disparition de la téléologie communiste, marxiste ou stalinienne, comme on veut. D’autre part La Passion du Christ de Mel Gibson, la métaphore du retour en force du modèle téléologique christique. […]

QU’AS-TU FAIT, HARRY ? WHAT’VE YOU DONE, HARRY?

UNE AVENTURE BILINGUE DANS NOTRE PASSÉ FONDATEUR

La pièce se déroule dans le salon ovale de la Maison Blanche à Washington le 6 Août 1945, c'est-à-dire le jour du lancement de la première bombe atomique sur le Japon. Elle commence au moment de l’envol du B29 depuis l’ile américaine de Tinian avec la bombe dans sa soute.  Les noms et les fonctions officielles des principaux personnages sont authentiques mais leurs paroles sont de la pure imagination de l’auteur tout en étant vraisemblables. Le Major HINSMITH est imaginaire. Les évènements et les discussions qui ont eu lieu à la Maison Blanche sont à peu près connus mais ils se sont déroulés pendant au moins une semaine. J’ai souhaité contracté le temps, le lieu et l’action. De manière à donner aux évènements relatés authentiques la dimension d’une tragédie classique qui implique unité de lieu, unité de temps, unité d’action. Il s’agit de théâtre !

« Une pièce écrite est toujours un projet de pièce. Seule la représentation après le travail de répétition avec les interprètes permet de trouver la musique juste avec ses rythmes et ses couleurs.

Car, pour moi, le théâtre c’est avant tout un genre musical, un concerto dont les instruments, les acteurs, ne sont pas définis à l’avance. Cette déclaration surprendra peut-être ceux qui constateront qu’il s’agit d’une pièce très réaliste inspirée d’évènements (Hélas !) réels.

Et ils ne sont jamais définis. Les acteurs changent mais aussi le public et le temps qu’il fait dehors dans le temps du dedans. Une pièce n’existe que dans le temps éphémère d’une représentation.

C’est avec ceux qui monteraient ce « projet de pièce » metteur en scène et acteur qu’il conviendrait d’en donner une version plus provisoirement définitive avec ou sans ma complicité active. » (José Valverde, p. 4)

The play takes place in the Oval Office at the White House, Washington, on August 6, 1945, that is on the day of the dropping of the first atom bomb on Japan. The names and official functions of the main characters are real but their declarations are entirely fictitious as imagined by the author, though quite believable. Major Patricia Hinsmith is entirely fictional.

Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk; Amazon.fr; and all other Amazon stores. KDP Edition

Nombre de pages en édition imprimée : 129 pages

Editeur : Editions La Dondaine; 1st edition (July 10, 2014)

Vendu par : Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

Langue : French and English 

ASIN : B00LPP3C2M

PRIX :  US$10.05, EUR 7.39, ￥ 995, IndR 375.00, …

LA CHAISE DIEU - 3015

UNE VISITE INTERSIDÉRANTE

Loukardill débarque du satellite Europa de Jupiter dans son Vaisseau Spatial Individuel (VSI) à La Chaise Dieu en 3015 pour l'ouverture du Festival. Il découvre l'Abbatiale et ses secrets ou ses charmes parfois cachés, et surtout une musique "sucrée" comme on dit sur Jupiter (en fait "sweet" car on parle anglais partout dans le cosmos sauf en France), qui serait en langue française standard de la musique sacrée.

Et il prend un sacré pied - de nez bien sûr - à utiliser ses pouvoirs cosmiques pour ajouter un peu de piment et de piquant dans le concert. Il en invente alors le concept de Maladie Spirituellement Transmissible appelé à avoir une longue carrière universelle dans l'univers des millénaires à venir. Il est sûr que l'introduction de Rap dans l'Abbatiale entre deux morceaux baroques a pu semblé un peu rococo aux esthètes patentés de la presse bien en vue - mais bien mal en vie - de Paris. Inutile de dire que Loukardill est reparti ce soit là plein de souvenirs fantasques.

Il nous a laissé à rêver de ce que ce Festival pourrait être s'il était interrompu de façon intermittente par des artistes alternatifs intermittents pour des divertissements anachronistiques (en anglais dans le texte) intermittents. Certains diraient bien des choses, mais Loukardill n'en pense pas moins.

Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk; Amazon.fr; and all other Amazon stores. KDP Edition

37 pages

Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited

Publisher: Editions La Dondaine; 1 edition (July 4, 2014)

Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

Language: French

ASIN: B00LJXWIL6

Lending: Not Enabled

Price: US $8.24, EUR 6,04 

BBC – PEAKY BLINDERS – 2014 – SERIES 2

This second series widens the geographical frame and leads the Shelby’s to London. The Irish are definitely on the back burner and Winston Churchill is quite obviously playing a game of his own against the “new cop who came from Ireland” and cannot think in other terms than the IRA. Winston Churchill must be seeing beyond the Irish problem and seeing that the inner English problem is more dangerous for the crown than the Irish rebellion to which anyway they yielded then.

That’s where moving to London and trying to start an export business the Shelby’s came in full confrontation with two other organized shady and fuzzy business gangs in this field of entertainment, alcohol and tobacco. The Italians and the Jews. The Italians want to be over everyone, so the Shelby’s who are identified as the Gypsies tie up an alliance with the Jews against the Italians who saw the danger and then tie up a new alliance with the Jews against the Gypsies. Three groups that are defined ethnically, culturally and religiously who try to take control of the entertainment business with the enormous US market presently shaken by prohibition and yet next door to Canada which is not concerned but is a marvelous entry gate.

Those three groups are in a struggle that looks more like a war but it is essential to understand modern England. England had a bill of rights and other more common law than constitutional basic civil rights but for a long time limited to the Protestants, the Catholics being excluded. When they had to move away from this segregation they introduced or maintained (since Italian and Gypsies are Catholics and Jews are not exactly Protestants) other discriminations against other communities essentially seen as non-English. The Italians are obvious since they are of foreign origin and Mussolini is going to come to power and Italian refugees, mostly communists, are going to increase in numbers. The Jews are less obvious but anti-Semite feelings in England have always been high in the past, Shakespeare being a good example there, or Dickens. And these Jews have strange customs that are kind of shocking to the English. Finally the Gypsies have always been some kind of social enemy and social marginal group that was always engaged in shady business with the reputation of practicing prostitution, drug dealing, illegal betting and illegal fights, and many other niceties of the type.

The most dangerous fact is that they are all back from the First World War where they learned how to use weapons and how to fight and they do not want to be downtrodden any more.

In this society the real danger is the possibility for the communists to conquer a vast influence based on discontentment. So the best way is to come to terms with some of the shady groups so that they will entertain the lower classes and prevent discontentment from becoming dangerous revolutionary enterprises or adventures. In this second series this communist danger is mostly marginalized and Winston Churchill wants to take the control of the entertainment business and he considers the gypsies are the least dangerous in that line.

So while the “new cop” from Ireland, who does not from my point of view deserve a name because he is not doing police work but civil war military action, is going on with his plan of getting rid of one higher up military officer who has in a way or another in the “new cop’s” mind betrayed his ideals in Ireland, and what’s more he is going on with his secondary plan of using Thomas Shelby to fulfill the first, Winston Churchill plans saving Thomas Shelby from the hands of this “new cop from Ireland” and keeping him in store for some objective we cannot know.

This exploration of discriminatory and racist England is interesting because we would not think it was like that so little time back, and yet it is the lessons learned from this period that explains the policy with various communities who have their autonomy and their self governing powers in various fields like education. What others in the world call communitarianism is totally recognized in England and it works rather well when connections and relations are established between and among the communities within city councils and borough boundaries. We are here at the roots of English reformist conservatism which kills the left most of the time who wants to impose some principles that go against practical realism in social matters.

Of course this series has to get rid of a couple of people who are blocking the future and to save a couple more without whom there would be no future. In other words the next series is thus clearly prepared.

TERENCE CRIMMINS – HOSTAGES – 2013

This thriller is interesting, though not so much as a thriller, AND rather as a way the author uses to express and air some ideas about this world.

He deals with Chile first and more or less reflectS some historical consensual ideas about Allende and Pinochet. It is a cliché that the landless and the poor were going to seize the land and the possessions of the rich. Yet it was true that Allende was a fundamentalist Marxist, or at least his party was referring to Stalin as one of their main figures; Marx, Lenin and Stalin. When you used such symbols in the early 1970s it could only generate fear and hostility. Then the author is true about the military coup organized by Pinochet though he is wrong about Allende being killed. We know today he committed suicide before being taken. But that is more or less consensual. His character Amado is one of the sons of a land-owning military family that supported Pinochet. That is intended to more or less give us some sympathy for the chap, though he is not a victim of his social origin. He is a privileged person in Chile and in the USA where he managed to become a citizen by buying himself an American wife for 1,500 dollars and he got a job in some American Agency thanks to his father’s connections in diplomacy in Washington DC.

The second opportunity comes with Tom O’Malley and his girlfriend Amy who just graduated from Georgetown University earlier in the day when Tom is taken hostage in Washington DC. The vision of these upper middle class white students who yet work part time at least to pay for their expenses are more than naïve about the world: they are described as purely blind and maybe it is better like that because otherwise they would get completely berserk: they do not have the human strength it takes to face the real world. These young people do not seem to have any altruistic ideals either. They only believe in their welfare and in their pleasure that can include an elephant walk or strutting naked on the top of an apartment complex provided it is done within the normal codes of a celebration after a rugby match though it could also be after a football game. But do not panic, the version of the elephant walk in this book is a civilized and prudish one. The Urban Dictionary would give you a completely different description not for sports events celebration but for hazing – which is illegal though widely practiced. Here is their description though slightly edited by me: “Often used for hazing where a group of guys form a straight line and grab the e**** c*** of the guy in back of them with one hand and put the thumb of the other hand in the s******** of the guy in front of them then they walk in a circle.” You must understand they are naked of course. Their only objective beyond their university years is to marry and start a family with several kids. And probably one dog and a cat and several cars. That’s the middle and upper middle class ambition in the USA.

The third opportunity is the originally Christian André, the son of a hotel developer in Beirut, turned Muslim Abdul when his three many star hotels are bombed down during one episode of civil war in Lebanon. He becomes the main agent of some kind of kinky propaganda operation in the USA where he takes twenty, twenty-one or twenty-two hostages in the Agency for World Peace in Washington DC. This is in no way in conformity with the methods used by Islamic terrorists. If they take hostages and do not kill them it’s because they have a particular demand, which is implied in the book but never specified, and because these demands are satisfied, which is impossible since the USA do not bargain with terrorists as it is clearly expressed in the book. So their killing only one after liberating two, Amado and Tom, who were supposed to carry demands that never came, sounds totally illogical. I am not good at suspending my disbelief too much, and here it is a lot. Terrorists just want to make as many casualties as possible at the lower human cost possible, generally only one terrorist agent, and when they do not reach a dozen or more casualties it’s the result of bad planning or hostile circumstances.

André-Abdul is the weak point in this novel. He is not believable. But we can make do with that.

The general frame of the plot is slightly loose though it is tightly kept within some clear cut limits. Loose since after the hostage operation the two freed hostages go on a radio and TV show tour without any police protection to be celebrities for two weeks because it cannot last more than two weeks. After two weeks the American public needs a change. That’s loose since they go to Washington, San Francisco, LA, Houston and Miami and probably a few more stops but can’t make much more in two weeks, which is tight.

But the whole thing is based on the very silly character of Amado. He is hired by André-Abdul for a double hostage taking operation, the second episode being right at the end of the celebrity tour, and this Amado thinks (since Tom was not included in the original plan: he comes into the picture as a pizza delivery boy in the wrong place at the wrong time) the second operation was just to be as fake as the first one and that he was going to go through with one millions US dollars. You sure must be a dullard if you believe that. But he believes it and though he is told that at the end the pizza boy will have to killed he never believes he will be killed too. What’s more he falls in “love” with Tom and Tom falls not in love but for Amado anyway who is only a boy-version of Amy his girlfriend except that Amado is only one of the boys Tom like many male American around 20 is used to go out with crawling from one bar to the next for beer and alcohol, at least in the states where they do not have to be 21 to be served. I could call that a bar pilgrimage whose only objective is to get drunk slowly and to end up doing some dumb things like smoking marihuana, taking cocaine, injecting heroin, and of course biting in the flesh of girls who may slap you for it but you will do it again on the slapper or on the one next to the slapper.

But do not ask me why these two rescued or freed hostages did not have an FBI agent going along with them in their tour. It sounds like very bad precautionary police work. I find the FBI rather under all expectations here. It is true we are used to Dexter, CSI of all shades, NCIS of several coasts and many others. So we seem to know better, and we probably do. And do not forget in this case the Department of Homeland Security and the CIA. Maybe Pizza Boy was an accident, but Amado, from Chile mind you, was one of the original hostages and the end of the first hostage episode should have brought up a strong suspicion that there was some kind of bizarre planning especially since André-Abdul had disappeared from the scene when the SWAT stormed the building. And the fact that he could be a “mole” had to be taken seriously by security services.

But it is funny ah ah and rather dense enough to be enjoyable. It maybe turns a little bit long at some stops along the tour. But it is purely coincidental if American, Amy and Amado start with the same two letters.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU