#french classics

Practical sauce moutarde for potatoes, seafood, meats, vegetables, noodles, rice, and everyday plates Sauce Moutarde is a creamy, umami-rich French recipe built from veal or chicken demi-glace, dry white wine, Dijon mustard, wholegrain mustard. It is made for spooning over hot plates, coating proteins, or finishing vegetables and starches, using clear gram and milliliter measurements so the…

Practical demi-glace sauce for potatoes, seafood, meats, vegetables, noodles, rice, and everyday plates Demi-Glace Sauce is a smoky, umami-rich French recipe built from brown veal stock, red wine, mirepoix, tomato paste. It is made for spooning over hot plates, coating proteins, or finishing vegetables and starches, using clear gram and milliliter measurements so the flavor can be repeated…

Practical velouté sauce for potatoes, seafood, meats, vegetables, noodles, rice, and everyday plates Velouté Sauce is a creamy, tangy, umami-rich French recipe built from unsalted butter, plain flour, chicken or fish stock, fine salt. It is made for spooning over hot plates, coating proteins, or finishing vegetables and starches, using clear gram and milliliter measurements so the flavor can be…

“Les prostituées qu’il rencontrait aux feux du gaz, les cantatrices poussant leurs roulades, les écuyères sur leurs chevaux au galop, les bourgeoises à pied, les grisettes à leur fenêtre, toutes les femmes lui rappelaient celle-là, par des similitudes ou par des contrastes violents. Il regardait, le long des boutiques, les cachemires, les dentelles et les pendeloques de pierreries, en les imaginant drapés autour de ses reins, cousues à son corsage, faisant des feux dans sa chevelure noire. À l’éventaire des marchandes, les fleurs s’épanouissaient pour qu’elle les choisît en passant ; dans la montre des cordonniers, les petites pantoufles de satin à bordure de cygne semblaient attendre son pied ; toutes les rues conduisaient vers sa maison ; les voitures ne stationnaient sur les places que pour y mener plus vite ; Paris se rapportait à sa personne, et la grande ville avec toutes ses voix bruissait, comme un immense orchestre, autour d’elle.”

Il y a quelque chose dans la plume de Flaubert qui me touche profondément. Quand je le lis, je pourrais croire que c’est un auteur du XXème. Son style m’a littéralement portée au fil des pages. J’y pense chaque jour depuis que je l’ai terminé, et j’ai déjà envie de le relire car je sais qu’à la lumière du dénouement, bien des passages me paraîtront différents.

Recently, I have been reading some mythology related texts (the recent release of The Vengeance Saga may or may not have something to do with it) and I’ve stumbled into a play I’ve read in high school : Andromaque by Racine.

Andromaque takes place after the Trojan War, and involves an absolutely fascinating (and tragic, of course) love square/pentagon. There are many versions of that story, so the summary below will only refer to Racine’s version, who seems to have been inspired by Virgile.

After the Trojan War ends, Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, takes as his captive Andromaque, widow of Hector, and her son Astyanax. Pyrrhus falls desperately in love with Andromaque and tries to seduce her, to no avail for very understandable reasons (some of the most notable ones being the fact that he threatens her son’s life to make her accept his love and that he is the son of the man who violently killed her husband). However, Pyrrhus is also engaged to Hermione, the daughter of Menelas and Helen, who is in love with him while he doesn’t return her love and very much doesn’t care about her. She is aware of his love for Andromaque and, like many women scorned, develops a violent hatred for Andromaque but not for Pyrrhus. Meanwhile, Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra (who has just been divinely acquitted for the murder of his mother and her love), is in love with Hermione, who is aware of his love and doesn’t dislike him, but neither does she return his love. The play starts when Orestes is commissioned by the other Greek kings to go to Pyrrhus and demand that he kills Astyanax, who might decide to avenge his father and fallen city once he grows older.

… yeah no wonder this is a tragedy. With all this mess it would have been more surprising if they actually did manage to get a happy ending.

What really caught my attention in this play was the behaviour of the male participants of the love pentagon : Pyrrhus and Orestes. They present a scary picture of male entitlement, refusing the women they claim to love any agency over their own feelings and interpreting their lack of interest in them as a personal slight. This is particularly scary in the case of Pyrrhus, who seems to take Andromaque’s distress at losing literally everything except her son as a minor inconvenience on his quest to pursue her. The way he plays hot and cold, confess his love for her and claim that he will face all of Greece for her, only to start abusing her (physically and emotionally) when she refuses him is a standard abuser technique, and it is scary to see it depicted so accurately, especially by a 17th century playwright. I have not been looking much into recordings of the play, but I would love to see one that fully plays into this aspect of their dynamic.

Looking back, male entitlement over women’s feelings seems to be the cause of all the problems in this play. Yes, Hermione’s hatred of Andromaque and rage against Pyrrhus are what put in motion the events that lead to the end of the play, but the entire situation is set up by Pyrrhus and by Orestes.