Curé de Cucugnan

[Allan]

The grandkids are coming soon and I would like to take them to Cucugnan and tell them the story of the curate. Does anyone know where I can get an English translation.

I can get the gist of the story from the original version but it is quite hard to put into English.

[martyn94]

There is a penguin edition of Lettres de Mon Moulin
if you want Daudet's version
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/014044 ... 4080035078

[Allan]

There is a penguin edition of Lettres de Mon Moulin
if you want Daudet's version
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/014044 ... 4080035078

Thanks Martyn, I had seen this but wrongly assumed it was in French.

Even better there is a Kindle edition

[russell]

Also available from Project Gutenberg here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30442

Russell.

[Allan]

Brilliant and free on Gutenberg

Thanks Russell and Martyn

Next challenge is the story of the Cathars. Again, I'd like to teach my grandkids some local history and visit a few of the castles.

I need a child friendly story preferably one that doesn't involve wholesale slaughter and mass burnings.

[Allan]

I searched google for Cathar stories and came up with this:-

The planet was conquered by the Mandalorians during the Battle of Cathar, leading to the enslavement and near-extinction of the Cathar species. The few survivors were forced to flee offworld to survive. After the end of the Mandalorian Wars Cathar began to resettle their world and by the time of the Galactic Civil War, it had fully recovered from the damage the Mandalorians had done. Prior to the planet's devastation, it was not a member of the Galactic Republic.

I didn't realise that the Cathars featured in the Star Wars saga.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cathar

[martyn94]

I searched google for Cathar stories and came up with this:-

The planet was conquered by the Mandalorians during the Battle of Cathar, leading to the enslavement and near-extinction of the Cathar species. The few survivors were forced to flee offworld to survive. After the end of the Mandalorian Wars Cathar began to resettle their world and by the time of the Galactic Civil War, it had fully recovered from the damage the Mandalorians had done. Prior to the planet's devastation, it was not a member of the Galactic Republic.

I didn't realise that the Cathars featured in the Star Wars saga.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cathar

This is the classic text about the Cathars

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Montaillou-Cat ... 8&qid=&sr=

It's not entirely devoid of gore, but mostly of a low key kind. If you wanted to be sure of a good afterlife, you had to commit yourself as one of the "perfecti". If you committed no more sins, ever, you were a shoo-in, but if you did you were irretrievably doomed. If you were a failed "perfecti" you could essentially do what you liked: nothing you did next could make things worse. But normally you waited until you were on the point of death, and then your family tied you down to your death bed, just in case you got sinful ideas.

It's not seemed to me a wholly attractive system of ideas, though the castles are stunning.

[martyn94]

It's not entirely devoid of gore, but mostly of a low key kind.

Having said that, it's a few decades since I read it. You might want to skim it yourself (well worth anyone's time) before delivering chunks to the grand kids. But it does give a picture of what it was like, in human terms, to be caught up in what would otherwise seem to be mad theological nonsense.

[Sus]

Allan, thanks for sharing the role of the Cathars in Star Wars, that just made me laugh out loud.

Same as Martyn, the best book I would recommend is Montaillou, I find that an extraordinary book to read as a record of the lives of normal people, even just some chapters on their own will give a good impression.

[Allan]

It's not entirely devoid of gore, but mostly of a low key kind.

Having said that, it's a few decades since I read it. You might want to skim it yourself (well worth anyone's time) before delivering chunks to the grand kids.

I'm probably over sensitive, they happily watch Star Wars films where entire planets are destroyed

[martyn94]

Getting back to the curé de Cucugnan, the odd thing is that almost no-one would have understood it in Daudet's perfect French in a rural parish in the Aude in the mid-19th century.

Daudet said that he had translated it from a version in provençale which was taken from an original collected by one Blanchot: the Wikipedia entry gives every interesting detail

https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Curé_de_Cucugnan

except for the original text, but it was presumably some sort of patois (and not in any event delivered in Cucugnan).

If it seems interesting, there is a wonderful book about the emergence of French fluency, and something like a unified French culture, here

https://www.amazon.fr/Peasants-into-Fre ... 0804710139

A lot more expensive than the last copy I bought, but still worth every penny.

[jethro]

While on the subject of interesting Curés, look up the heroism of the Curé de Dorres and his involvement in saving the lives of so many escaping airmen and resistance fighters. The French being rudely anti-clerical, this man does not seem to get his due. As usual ( Greece, Spain, Italy, France ) resistance to Fascism was almost entirely the work of the Left and particularly of the Communist Party, whose detestation of the Church may account for the relative obscurity of this fine man.

[jethro]

And here's a link. For non-readers of French, Rosemary Bailey's history of the Pyrenees gives our man a mention .

http://www.bains-de-dorres.com/resistance.php

[Sus]

Getting back to the cur� de Cucugnan, the odd thing is that almost no-one would have understood it in Daudet's perfect French in a rural parish in the Aude in the mid-19th century.

Daudet said that he had translated it from a version in proven�ale which was taken from an original collected by one Blanchot: the Wikipedia entry gives every interesting detail

https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Cur�_de_Cucugnan

except for the original text, but it was presumably some sort of patois (and not in any event delivered in Cucugnan).

If it seems interesting, there is a wonderful book about the emergence of French fluency, and something like a unified French culture, here

https://www.amazon.fr/Peasants-into-Fre ... 0804710139

A lot more expensive than the last copy I bought, but still worth every penny.

Thanks for recommending this book, I am about 2/3 through and it makes a very interesting read, lots of details, i.e. I never knew why there was suddenly such a surge in building bread ovens and that women's hair was such a hot commodity in rural France.

[martyn94]

Getting back to the cur� de Cucugnan, the odd thing is that almost no-one would have understood it in Daudet's perfect French in a rural parish in the Aude in the mid-19th century.

Daudet said that he had translated it from a version in proven�ale which was taken from an original collected by one Blanchot: the Wikipedia entry gives every interesting detail

https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Cur�_de_Cucugnan

except for the original text, but it was presumably some sort of patois (and not in any event delivered in Cucugnan).

If it seems interesting, there is a wonderful book about the emergence of French fluency, and something like a unified French culture, here

https://www.amazon.fr/Peasants-into-Fre ... 0804710139

A lot more expensive than the last copy I bought, but still worth every penny.

Thanks for recommending this book, I am about 2/3 through and it makes a very interesting read, lots of details, i.e. I never knew why there was suddenly such a surge in building bread ovens and that women's hair was such a hot commodity in rural France.

I'm glad you're enjoying it. It's 40 years old, so I believe that more recent historians present a more nuanced picture. But he opened a whole area of study in a way that I suspect only a non-French historian was likely to do. The only problem I have had is that the binding comes apart (almost as bad as French paperbacks): I have had three copies over the years, and still have two: one to read and one for best.

[martyn94]

While on the subject of interesting Curés, look up the heroism of the Curé de Dorres and his involvement in saving the lives of so many escaping airmen and resistance fighters. The French being rudely anti-clerical, this man does not seem to get his due. As usual ( Greece, Spain, Italy, France ) resistance to Fascism was almost entirely the work of the Left and particularly of the Communist Party, whose detestation of the Church may account for the relative obscurity of this fine man.

The Abbé Kir is damned from the mouths of tens of thousands of Frenchmen every day. Though the politics of the resistance remains endlessly interesting. As does the persistence of the catholic right: have you ever read "Valeurs Actuelles"? I don't buy it, but I occasionally find it abandoned on trains.