Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
Madame de Genlis appears twice in War and Peace. First, as the author of books for children, “de nombreux ouvrages édifiants à l’usage de la jeunesse” to quote Wikipedia, much disliked by some of her involuntary readers for her oppressive…
In the Ahmanson building of the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts (LACMA), the portrait of Mme de Genlis by Adélaïde Labille-Guilard hangs next to a seated statue of old Voltaire by Jean-Antoine Houdon. The philosopher posed for the sculptor…
Sir JCass has reminded me that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in all likelihood, suffered from a paranoid disorder. One can pick out distant echoes of mental distress from this episode, as told by Mme de Genlis in her memoirs: He [JJR] often…
From Erik McDonald’s translation of It Didn’t Come Off (1867) by Ol’ga N. (Sophie Engelhardt, 1828-1894): Once I started a sentence this way: “I think…” Madame Petitpierre, my governess, interrupted me: “You think? In that case you will have dinner in…
Erik McDonald is translating a novella by Sophie (Sof’ia) Engelhardt (Engel’gardt), nėe Novosil’tseva (1828-1894), a Russian author who published her fiction under the pen name Ol’ga N. In 2016, Erik translated another long story by Ol’ga N., The Old Man, now available as a free .mobi…