284 results in Journalism
Regulators of Last Resort
- Whistleblowers, the Limits of the Law and the Power of Partnerships
- Kate Kenny
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- Expected online publication date:
- November 2024
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- 30 November 2024
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Chapter 9 - Polar Violets
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 79-84
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Summary
Around that time, Rodolphe was very much in love with his cousin Angele even though she couldn't stand him. Meanwhile, Chevalier's thermometer had plunged to twelve below zero.
Mlle Angele was the daughter of M. Monetti, the stove maker we encountered earlier. Mlle. Angele was eighteen years old and had come from the Bourgogne region where she’d spent five years with a female relative who was expected to leave everything to her when she died. The relative was an elderly woman who had never been young or beautiful, but who had always been unpleasant although (or perhaps because) she was very religious. When Angele left to live with her, she’d been a charming child and her adolescence was already bringing her the promise of a charming youth. When she returned after five years she’d become a beauty but also cold, hard and unfeeling. Her life of rural seclusion, her excessive religious observance and an education based on narrow-minded principles had filled her with coarse and ridiculous prejudices, shrunk her imagination and made her heart into an organ that was satisfied with merely carrying out its function like a pendulum. In other words, Angele had holy water running in her veins instead of blood. She welcomed her cousin with icy reserve when she returned and he was wasting his time whenever he tried to play on the tender strings of memory, recalling the time when they were in the early stages of a love like Paul and Virginie, a love that traditionally arises between a male and female cousin.2 Still, Rodolphe was very much in love with this cousin who couldn't stand him and when he learned one day that the young woman was to attend a wedding party for one of her friends, he found the courage to promise Angele a bouquet of violets for the occasion. After asking her father for his permission, Angele accepted her cousin's gallant offer, on the condition that the violets must be white.
Delighted with his cousin's kind acceptance, Rodolphe danced and sang all the way back to Mont Saint Bernard, the place he called home. We will soon see why. As he crossed the Palais-Royal and passed the shop of Mme. Provost, the famous florist, he saw white violets in the shop window.
Chapter 18 - Francine’s Muff
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 153-168
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Summary
Among the real bohemians of the real bohemia I once knew a young man, Jacques D_____, a sculptor who showed signs of great talent. But poverty denied him the opportunity to realize his potential. He died of exhaustion in the month of March 1844, at Saint-Louis Hospital, in the Saint Victoire room, in bed 14
.I came to know Jacques in the hospital, where I myself was staying during a long illness. Jacques, as I mentioned, was an extremely promising artist but he didn't let it go to his head. During the two months I was near him, even while he felt cradled in the arms of death, I never once heard him complain or give way to those lamentations that make neglected artists seem so ridiculous. He died without any posturing, but with an awful grimace of agony. As I think back on his death, in fact, I’m reminded of one of the worst scenes I’ve ever witnessed in the whole parade of human suffering. Learning what had happened, Jacques's father came to claim his son's body and he haggled with the hospital office for a long time over the thirty-six francs they were charging. He also haggled so aggressively over the cost of the church service that they gave him a six franc discount. As the corpse was being placed into the coffin, the nurse removed the hospital sheet and asked one of Jacques's friends who would be paying for the shroud. The poor fellow didn't have a sou so he turned to the father, who became enraged and demanded to know if they ever going to stop bothering him.
The nurse, a nun who was present for this whole dreadful discussion, looked over at the body, and the words she spoke were tender and innocent: “Oh monsieur! We can't bury him like that. The poor boy! He’ll get so cold. At least give him a shirt so he doesn't arrive stark naked to meet our good Lord.”
The father gave the friend five francs to get a shirt but told him to go to a second-hand shop in Rue Grange-aux-Belles that sold used clothes.
“It’ll be cheaper,” he added.
I came to understand the cruelty of Jacques's father later; he was furious that his son had chosen to become an artist and his anger never subsided, not even as he faced the coffin.
Chapter 2 - A Gift from the Gods
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 35-40
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Summary
Schaunard and Marcel, having maintained a valiant focus on work all morning, suddenly suspended their labors.
“My God, I’m so hungry!” said Schaunard. And, as an afterthought, he added, “Don't we get to have lunch today?”
Marcel seemed astonished by this highly inopportune question. “Since when do we have lunch two days in row?” he asked. “Yesterday was Thursday.” He finished his answer by waving his maulstick in the air and reciting the church commandment:
On Friday you must take no meat
Nor anything like it may you eat.
Schaunard was at a loss for a reply so he turned back to his painting, an image of an open field on which a red tree and a blue tree could be seen shaking hands with their branches. It was a clear allusion to the pleasures of friendship and was, without a doubt, profoundly philosophical.
Just then the concierge knocked at the door to deliver a letter for Marcel.
“That will be three sous,” he said.
“Are you sure?” the artist replied. “Well that's alright, you can pay us later.”
And he closed the door in the concierge's face. Taking the letter, Marcel broke the seal.
After reading the first few words, he began leaping around the studio like an acrobat and singing the following famous ballad at the top of his lungs, thus demonstrating that he had attained jubilation's summit:
Four young men who lived in the town
With sickness they were all struck down
To hospital they were taken away
Hey hey! Hey hey! Hey hey! Hey hey!
“Yes!” Schaunard said as he joined in:
They were placed side by side in a very large bed
Two at the foot and two at the head.
“We both know it!” said Marcel as he continued:
A Sister of Mercy soon came their way
Hey hey! Hey hey! Hey hey! Hey hey! “
If you don't quiet down,” said Schaunard, who was starting to feel symptoms of madness closing in, “I’ll play the allegro from my symphony The Influence of Blue in the Arts.” And he began to approach the piano.
This threat had the effect of cold water falling on a boiling liquid. Marcel became quite calm almost as though a spell had been cast on him.
“But wait!” he said, handing the letter to his friend. “Look at this.”
Chapter 22 - Epilogue to Love
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 201-220
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Summary
In the days following his final breakup with Mlle. Mimi, who, as you will recall, left him for the caresses of Viscount Paul, the poet Rodolphe tried to distract himself by finding another lover.
She was fair and we’ve seen how he dressed up as Romeo for an interlude of pleasure and laughter, but this relationship arose from his unhappiness and her yearning for a good time, and it wasn't made to last long. After all, she was a foolish young woman: she had perfect pitch when it came to singing the songs of manipulation, she was smart enough to recognize the intelligence of others and sometimes use it for her own benefit, and she was barely sensitive enough to feel bad when she’d overeaten. In addition to all that, her pride was unbridled and her vanity was so strong that she’d rather see her lover break a leg than to have one flounce less on her dress or a faded ribbon on her hat. An ordinary creature, her beauty was questionable and she was naturally endowed with every bad instinct, but she had a way of being quite seductive as well when the time was right. It didn't take her long to realize that Rodolphe was only with her to help him get over his lost love, but it wasn't working and instead he missed her even more. Never before had Mimi's hold on his heart been so strong, so compelling.
One day Juliet, the poet's new lover, was chatting about him with a medical student who was courting her and he said, “My dear child, this boy is using you the way we use nitrate to cauterize a wound. He wants to cauterize his heart and you’re making a mistake if you get upset about him or even stay faithful to him.”
“Oh!” the young woman exclaimed as she burst into laughter, “do you really think I’m worried about that?” And that very evening, she provided the student with clear proof that she was not.
Thanks to the indiscretion of a so-called friend who didn't know how to keep a secret if it held back news that might make someone miserable, Rodolphe caught wind of her affair and used it as an excuse to break things off with his interim mistress.
Chapter 17 - The Graces Adorned
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 141-152
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Summary
For the past five or six years, Marcel had been working on his great painting, which he claimed was a representation of the biblical passage of the Red Sea. And for five or six years, this colorist masterpiece was stubbornly refused by the Salon's jury. It had been back and forth from the studio to the gallery and from the gallery to the studio so many times that if someone had put wheels under it, the painting could have found its way to the Louvre all on its own. Marcel, who had reworked the canvas ten times from top to bottom, insisted it was personal, that jury members’ hostility toward him had led to the annual ostracism keeping his work out of the exhibition hall. In honor of the Cerberuses of the Academy, in his spare time he compiled a small catalogue of insults complete with remarkably savage illustrations. The collection had become famous. In artists’ studios and the École des Beaux-Arts, it had achieved a level of success equal to the popularity of the immortal complaint of Giovanni Bellini, official painter for the Grand Sultan of Turkey. Every struggling painter in Paris had it committed to memory.
For a long time, Marcel was not discouraged by the harsh rejections he received from each exhibition. He was settled comfortably in the opinion that his painting was, though to a lesser degree, the long-awaited companion piece for Veronese's The Wedding at Cana, that enormous masterpiece whose overpowering brilliance was uncompromised by three centuries of dust neglect. And so every year at the time of the Salon, Marcel sent his painting to the jury for assessment. But in order to throw the jurors off track and thwart the obvious prejudice that led to the annual refusal of The Passage of the Red Sea, Marcel would alter certain details in the painting without altering the overall composition, and he’d give it a new title.
On one occasion it appeared in front of the jury with the title Crossing the Rubicon, but the Pharaoh, poorly disguised in Caesar's cloak, was recognized and turned away along with all the honors he was due.
Chapter 1 - How the Bohemian Society Was Established
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 13-34
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Summary
This is the story of how chance, which skeptics consider God's business manager, one day brought together the individuals whose fraternal affiliation would later transform them into members of a bohemian society, part of the bohemia this book's author hopes to introduce to the public.
One morning, it was the 8th of April, Alexandre Schaunard, who studied painting and music, two of the liberal arts, was rudely awakened by notes ringing out to him from a neighbor's rooster, which served as his alarm clock.
“Oh my God,” Schaunard exclaimed. “My feathered clock must be running fast. It can't possibly be today already.”
As he spoke these words, he propelled himself out of a piece of furniture he’d built himself, an ingenious invention that served as his bed by night (though it must be said that it served very badly) and served as all the rest of his furniture by day, since everything else had been burned as firewood during the bitterly cold weather the previous winter. Only this all-purpose piece remained.
To protect himself against the morning's bitingly cold drafts, Schaunard quickly slipped on the pink satin petticoat with sequins that sparkled like the stars, an item he used as his dressing gown. This fine garment had been forgotten at the artist's home one night after a masked ball by a reveler who’d been foolish enough to fall for Schaunard's empty promises. He’d been disguised as the Marquis de Mondor2 and she’d heard the sounds of a dozen silver coins clinking seductively in his pocket, though in fact these were counterfeit, theater props cut from a metal plate with a punch and borrowed by Schaunard.
Once he was dressed for the day, the artist went to open his window and shutters. A beam of sunshine, like an arrow of light, suddenly penetrated into the room and his eyes, still veiled with the mists of sleep, were forced open into a wide-eyed stare. At precisely that moment, nearby bells pealed five o’clock.
“It is Dawn herself,” he murmured. “It's amazing, but,” he continued while consulting the calendar hanging on the wall, “it's an error all the same. Scientific research clearly affirms that the sun cannot rise until five thirty at this time of year, yet it's only five and here it is up already.
Chapter 16 - The Passage of the Red Sea
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
-
- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 135-140
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Summary
For the past five or six years, Marcel had been working on his great painting, which he claimed was a representation of the biblical passage of the Red Sea. And for five or six years, this colorist masterpiece was stubbornly refused by the Salon's jury. It had been back and forth from the studio to the gallery and from the gallery to the studio so many times that if someone had put wheels under it, the painting could have found its way to the Louvre all on its own. Marcel, who had reworked the canvas ten times from top to bottom, insisted it was personal, that jury members’ hostility toward him had led to the annual ostracism keeping his work out of the exhibition hall. In honor of the Cerberuses of the Academy, in his spare time he compiled a small catalogue of insults complete with remarkably savage illustrations. The collection had become famous. In artists’ studios and the École des Beaux-Arts, it had achieved a level of success equal to the popularity of the immortal complaint of Giovanni Bellini, official painter for the Grand Sultan of Turkey. Every struggling painter in Paris had it committed to memory.
For a long time, Marcel was not discouraged by the harsh rejections he received from each exhibition. He was settled comfortably in the opinion that his painting was, though to a lesser degree, the long-awaited companion piece for Veronese's The Wedding at Cana, that enormous masterpiece whose overpowering brilliance was uncompromised by three centuries of dust neglect. And so every year at the time of the Salon, Marcel sent his painting to the jury for assessment. But in order to throw the jurors off track and thwart the obvious prejudice that led to the annual refusal of The Passage of the Red Sea, Marcel would alter certain details in the painting without altering the overall composition, and he’d give it a new title.
On one occasion it appeared in front of the jury with the title Crossing the Rubicon, but the Pharaoh, poorly disguised in Caesar's cloak, was recognized and turned away along with all the honors he was due.
Chapter 15 - Donec Gratus
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
-
- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 129-134
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Summary
We’ve told the story of how Marcel, the painter, came to know Mlle. Musette. They were brought together one morning by the intervention of chance, who is the mayor of the thirteenth arrondissement and, as so often happens there, they believed this marriage would let their hearts remain independent. One evening after an angry quarrel they decided to break up right then and there but as they shook hands to say goodbye, they noticed that their hands were unwilling to separate. Almost without realizing it, their affair had turned into love. Laughing quietly, they admitted it to each other.
“This is really serious,” Marcel said. “How in God's name did we let it happen?”
“Oh,” answered Musette, “We’re such idiots! We didn't take enough precautions.”
“What's going on?” asked Rodolphe as he came in. He’d recently become Marcel's neighbor.
“I’ll tell you what's going on,” Marcel said gesturing toward Musette. “This lady and I have made a happy discovery. We’re in love! It must have happened while we were asleep.”
“Oh right! Asleep,” Rodolphe replied. “I don't believe you. And what proof have you got that it's love? Maybe you’re exaggerating the danger.”
“Damn it!” Marcel said, “we can't stand each other.”
“And now we can't leave each other either,” Musette added.
“Ah, my children, the situation is clear! You thought you were just playing a game, but you both lost. It was the same story with me and Mimi. Soon we’ll have gone through two calendar years arguing day and night. It's the system for making marriages last forever. Put a ‘yes’ together with a ‘no’ and you have the household of Philemon and Baucis. Your home life will become like mine. Schaunard and Phémie are threatening to come here and live with us too and if they move in our three households will make a very agreeable community.”
At that moment, Colline walked in, and he was told about the accident that had happened to Musette and Marcel.
“So,” they said, “you’re a philosopher. What do you think about all this?”
Colline scratched the fur hat that served as a roof over his head and muttered, “I knew it all along. Love is a game of chance. If you look for trouble, you’ll find it. It isn't good for a man to be alone.”
Chapter 21 - Romeo and Juliet
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 195-200
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Summary
He was all dressed up, just like one of the pictures in his magazine, The Scarf of Iris. Gloved, polished, freshly shaven, hair curled, mustache tips twisted, a slender walking stick in hand, a monocle in one eye, young again, in full bloom and very handsome: this is how our friend Rodolphe, the poet, appeared one evening in the month of November, pausing on the boulevard as he waited for a carriage to take him home.
What's this? Rodolphe was waiting for a carriage? Some cataclysm must suddenly have transformed his life.
At that very moment, as our friend Rodolphe, a poet and a new man, was twirling his mustache, holding a large cigar between his teeth, and drawing admiring glances from beautiful women, one of his closest friends passed by on the same boulevard. It was Gustave Colline, the philosopher. Rodolphe saw him approaching and recognized him immediately—but then, anyone who’d ever met him even once would recognize him. As always, Colline was loaded down with a dozen books. He was wearing his immortal nut-brown coat, so sturdy it looked like the Romans had built it, and he was crowned with his famous broad-brimmed hat with the beaver dome, a hat that had been referred to as the Mambrino's helmet of modern philosophy, and beneath it a swarm of hyperphysical dreams was buzzing. Colline walked at a slow pace and ruminated quietly about the preface to a book that, in his imagination at least, had been in print for three months. For a moment, as he neared the spot where Rodolphe was standing, Colline thought he recognized him, but the poet's astonishing display of elegance threw him into doubt and uncertainty.
“Rodolphe wearing gloves? Carrying a walking stick? Chimera! Utopia! What an aberration! Rodolphe with curls? A man who has less hair than Occasio. No! What was I thinking? Besides, at this time of day my unlucky friend is occupied with his lamentations and writing melancholy poems concerning the departure of young Mademoiselle Mimi, who betrayed him, or so I’ve heard.
Chapter 5 - Charlemagne’s Coin
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 53-58
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Summary
Near the end of December, Bidault's messenger service was hired to deliver about one hundred copies of an announcement. We certify that what follows is an accurate transcription of its contents:
Monsieur -------,
Messieurs Rodolphe and Marcel request that you honor them with your company next Saturday evening, which is Christmas Eve. There will be laughter!
PS We only live once!
Throughout the festivities, air ventilation will be in operation.
NB: Any person attempting to read or recite poetry will immediately be removed from the premises and handed over to the police. In addition, we request that guests refrain from taking the candle stubs.
Two days later, copies of this letter were in circulation among the lower echelons of the literary and artistic community. This led to intense speculation.
Even among those who were invited, some could be found who doubted whether the two friends could really achieve the splendors they’d announced.
“I’m very suspicious,” one of the skeptics said. “I’ve been to Rodolphe's Wednesday evening events a few times before, on Rue de La Tour-d’Auvergne, and you couldn't really sit down and relax—except morally. We drank water that was barely filtered and we drank it out of some peculiar pottery.”
“This time they’re more serious,” said another. “Marcel showed me the schedule for the party and it could be amazing.”
“Will any women be there?”
“Oh yes, Phémie Teinturière asked to be Queen of the Ball and Schaunard's going to bring some society women.”
Here, in short, is how this event originated and came to provoke so much astonishment in the bohemian world living beyond the bridges of Paris. For the past year or so, Marcel and Rodolphe had been announcing a grand gala that was always about to take place next Saturday. But their impoverished situation resulted in a continuing postponement week after week for fifty-two weeks. It got to the point that they couldn't take a step outside without coming up against the ironic remarks of their friends, some of whom were so indiscreet as to complain quite vociferously.
Frontmatter
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp i-iv
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Chapter 23 - Only Young Once
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 221-224
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Summary
A year after Mimi's death, Rodolphe and Marcel, who had remained close friends, shared a fine meal to mark their entry into the official world of culture. Marcel had finally found his way into the Salon. Two of his paintings were exhibited there and one was bought by a rich Englishman who’d been Musette's lover some time before. As a result of this sale and a government commission, Marcel had partly paid off the debts he’d accumulated. He had a comfortable apartment and a serious studio. Around the same time, Schaunard and Rodolphe became known to the public, which is the distributor of fame and fortune. One had begun to make his reputation with an album of songs that were being sung at all the concerts and the other had published a book that held the attention of the critics for a month. As for Barbemuche, he had renounced bohemia long before, and Gustave Colline had come into an inheritance and made a very good marriage. He hosted soirees with music and cakes.
One evening, when Rodolphe was sitting in his own chair, with his feet on his own carpet, Marcel came to see him in a state of great agitation.
“Do you know what just happened to me?” he said.
“No,” the poet replied. “But I do know I went to visit you, and I do know for sure you were there, and I do know you wouldn't open the door.”
“As a matter of fact, I did hear you. Take a guess who was with me.”
“How would I know?”
“Musette. She dropped in last night, dressed as though she’d come from a costume ball.”
“Musette! She caught up with you again?” Rodolphe asked in a tone of grave concern.
“It's nothing to worry about. We’re not going to resume our hostilities. Musette came to spend her last night in bohemia with me.”
“What?”
“She's getting married.”
“Bah!” Rodolphe exclaimed. “And tell me my Lord, who's she getting married against?”
“Against a postmaster. He was her last lover's tutor and he does seem a bit odd. Musette said to him: ‘My dear, before I give you my hand in marriage forever, I want one week of freedom. I have some business to take care of.
Notes
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 233-245
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Chapter 12 - A Reception in Bohemia
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 97-110
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Summary
On the evening he’d paid out of his own pocket for the meal consumed at the Café Momus by the bohemians, Carolus arranged things so that he’d accompany Colline as they left. Since he’d begun observing the bohemian meetings at the shabby café where he rescued them from a difficult situation, Carolus had been particularly interested in Colline and felt drawn to this Socrates, whose Plato he would later become. For this reason, he chose Colline to sponsor him to become a member of the bohemian association. Along the way, they found a café that was still open and Barbemuche suggested they stop in. Not only did Colline refuse, but he also quickened his pace as they passed the café and carefully pulled his hyperphysical hat down lower over his eyes.
“Why don't you want to go in there?” asked Barbemuche insistently but with tactful politeness.
“I have my reasons,” Colline replied. “A woman who works at the bar is very interested in the exact sciences. I wouldn't be able to avoid having an extremely long discussion with her so I try to stay away from this street at noon or at any other daylight hour. It's quite simple,” Colline added candidly, “I used to live in this neighborhood with Marcel.”
“Well anyway, I’d very much like to buy you a drink and talk for a while. Do you know any other place around here that you can enter without being delayed by … mathematical problems?” said Barbemuche, who judged that it would be appropriate to say something extremely witty.
Colline reflected for a moment.
“There's a little place where my presence is less complicated,” he said, and he pointed out a nearby wine merchant.
Barbemuche frowned and seemed to hesitate.
“Is it an agreeable place?”
Seeing this cold and reserved response, his reticence, his discreet smile and, above all, noticing his watch and its ornamented chain, Colline imagined he must work at an embassy and thought he was worried about compromising himself by going into such a place.
“There's no danger of being seen,” he said. “At this time of day all the diplomatic corps have gone to bed.”
Chapter 13 - The Housewarming Party
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 111-116
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The following events took place after Rodolphe, the poet, and young Mlle. Mimi moved in together. He’d vanished so suddenly that for the next week or so the rest of the bohemian group was filled with concern over his mysterious disappearance. They searched for him in all the places he could usually be found, but everywhere they went they heard the same answer: “We haven't seen him all week.”
Gustave Colline was particularly worried. The reason for his concern was this: several days before he’d given Rodolphe an article on philosophy to be included in the “Miscellaneous” section of The Beaver. This journal was devoted to the fashionable hat trade and Rodolphe was its editor in chief. Had the article appeared yet? Had the eyes of Europe widened in astonishment? Such were the questions that gripped the unfortunate Colline. His anxiety is more understandable if the reader recalls that he had not yet had the honor of having his work published and he was burning with desire to see the effect his prose produced when typeset. To satisfy his pride he’d already spent six francs for reading privileges in literary salons around Paris but he’d never come across a copy of The Beaver. Unable to restrain himself, he vowed not to rest for a minute until he’d come face to face with the publication's elusive editor.
With the help of a few chance events that would take too long to recount, the philosopher fulfilled his vow. Two days later he learned Rodolphe's address and presented himself there at six in the morning.
Rodolphe was then living in a furnished room in a hotel on a deserted street in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Since there was no sixth floor, he was on the fifth. When Colline arrived, he could find no key and he pounded on the door for ten minutes without any response from within. This early morning commotion eventually caught the attention of the porter, who emerged and asked Colline to be quiet.
“Can't you see that the man is sleeping?”
“And that's why I have to wake him up,” replied Colline as he began knocking again.
“But he doesn't want to be disturbed,” the porter said and he placed the two pairs of boots he’d just polished beside Rodolphe's door—one pair of men's boots and one pair of women's boots.
Chapter 19 - Musette’s Whims
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 169-184
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Summary
One day, as you may recall, Marcel the painter sold his masterpiece—The Passage of the Red Sea—to Médicis the Jew, and it ended up as the sign over a grocery store. To celebrate the deal, Médicis put on a lavish dinner for the bohemians, and Marcel, Schaunard, Colline and Rodolphe woke up very late the next morning. Still groggy one and all from the lingering traces of the previous night's drunkenness, they could not, at first, remember what had transpired. At midday when the church bells rang out the Angelus, the call to prayer, they exchanged melancholy smiles.
“There it is. The bell whose pious notes call humanity to worship,” said Marcel.
“Indeed,” added Rodolphe, “we have arrived at the solemn hour when devout people proceed to the dining room.”
“In that case, we must become devout,” Colline muttered. For him, every day was Saint Appetite's Day.
“Ah,” Schaunard added, “my nursemaid's milk! The four daily meals of my infancy! Where have you gone? Where have you gone?” He repeated the question sorrowfully, in a soft and dreamy tone.
“I’d estimate that at this very moment, right here in Paris,” Marcel pronounced, “more than ten thousand cutlets are being grilled.”
“And just as many beef steaks,” Rodolphe added.
As an ironic antithesis, even as the four friends were discussing the terrible daily problem of lunch, the waiters in the restaurant on the ground floor below them were shouting out customers’ orders at the top of their lungs.
“Those wretches won't be silent,” Marcel said, “and every word is like a pickaxe driven into my stomach.”
“The wind is to the north,” Colline intoned gravely as he gestured toward a weather vane in motion on a neighboring rooftop. “We shall have no lunch today. The elements oppose it.”
“Please explain,” Marcel replied.
“It's an odd meteorological pattern I’ve observed. A wind from the north almost always signifies abstinence, just as a wind from the south generally indicates pleasure and good cheer. In philosophic terms, this is known as a warning from on high.”
Chapter 20 - Mimi’s Fine Feathers
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
-
- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 185-194
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Summary
“Oh no, no, no! You’re not Lisette any more. Oh no, no, no, you’re not Mimi anymore.
“Today, you are Madame la Vicountess. After tomorrow you might be Madame la Duchesse, for you have placed your foot upon the first step ascending the stairway to greatness. The double doorway to your dreams is now wide open, ready for you to walk through, and you are about to enter, victorious and triumphant. I knew you’d arrive here in the end, one night or another. It was inevitable, of course; your white hands were made to be idle and they have long called out for a ring to join you in an aristocratic alliance. You’ll have a coat of arms at last! But we still prefer the one that beauty placed upon your youth: your blues eyes and your pale face seemed like two quarters of azure over a field of lilies. Whether you are in the cream of society or down among the dregs, you are always charming. And yes, I did recognize you when you passed me in the street a few evenings ago, your feet gliding quickly in fine shoes, your gloved hand helping the breeze to lift your new dress, partly to keep it from getting dirty but mostly to show off your embroidered petticoat and your sheer stockings. Your hat was perfectly stylish and you seemed to be plunged deep in contemplation of the luxurious lace veil floating on that luxurious hat! And much was indeed at stake! After all, it was a matter of knowing which would be worth more, which would best enhance the value of your attractions: the veil raised or lowered. If you wore the veil down, you’d risk not being recognized by those friends you might encounter. And so they might pass you by ten times without suspecting that this opulently wrapped parcel contained Mademoiselle Mimi. On the other hand, if you wore the veil up, there was the risk it might not be seen, and then what would be the good of having it?
Chapter 11 - A Bohemian Café
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
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- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 91-96
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Summary
This is the story of the circumstances that led Carolus Barbemuche, a man of letters and a platonic philosopher, to become a member of the bohemian group in the twenty-fourth year of his life.
At that time, Gustave Colline, the great philosopher, Marcel, the great artist, Schaunard, the great musician, and Rodolphe, the great poet—for this is how they referred to each other—regularly went to the Café Momus, where they were known as the four musketeers because they were always seen together. Most of the time, they came and went together, they played together and sometimes they didn't pay the bill, but always with the togetherness worthy of a Conservatory orchestra performance.
For their meeting place, they’d chosen a room that once held forty people comfortably, but now they always found themselves alone because they’d succeeded in making the place unbearable for all the other regulars.
Anyone who just happened to be passing by and ventured into their den immediately became the victim of this uncontrollable quartet, and while these unfortunate customers would usually escape, they would not have succeeded in getting newspapers or coffee. In any case, their outrageous commentaries on the arts, human feelings and political economy were enough to turn the coffee cream sour. The conversations of the four companions were of such a nature that the waiter who served them, a man in the very prime of life, went mad.
After some time, things had gotten so out of control that the café owner finally ran out of patience. He approached them very seriously one evening to discuss his grievances:
First, M. Rodolphe comes in at breakfast time and takes all the cafe's newspapers to their room. He takes this to such an extreme that he becomes angry if he finds the newspapers have already been opened. As a result, the other customers are deprived of access to these organs of news and opinion and thus remain until dinner time as ignorant as fish on all political matters. The Bosquet Society hardly even knows the names of the members of the government's most recent cabinet.
Chapter 14 - Mademoiselle Mimi
- Henry Murger
- Edited and translated by Robert Holton, Carleton University, Ottawa
-
- Book:
- Scenes of Bohemian Life
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 03 October 2023, pp 117-128
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Summary
Oh Rodolphe, my friend, what's happened to you? What could have changed you this way? Should I believe all the rumors I’ve been hearing? Love of life has always been your guiding principle but now you seem overwhelmed by sadness. Can this really be true? And how can I, the faithful chronicler of your bohemian epic, a story so full of laughter, how can I find a melancholy tone sad enough to recount the painful events that have left you in a kind of mourning and brought the cheerful sounds of your witty banter to a sudden stop?
Oh Rodolphe, my friend! I know you’ve been through something awful, but still, it's really no reason to give up on everything. My advice is just to lay the past to rest as soon as you can. Above all, avoid solitude: it's crowded with phantoms who will feed on your grief and prolong it. Avoid silence, where your echoing memories will resound with the joys and sorrows of the past. Be brave—take the name you loved and toss it to the four winds of forgetfulness. And along with it, rid yourself of everything of hers you still carry with you. Those curls of her hair you tasted, your lips inflamed with desire. That Venetian flagon with just a few drops of perfume still slumbering inside, but more dangerous for you to inhale right now than all the world's most deadly poisons. Into the fire with the flowers, flowers made of cloth, silk and velvet. The white jasmine flowers, the anemones turned crimson with the blood of Adonis,1 the blue forget-me-nots, and all the bouquets she arranged during those days of love, days so brief and so long ago. I loved her too, your Mimi, and I didn't foresee the danger that loving her would bring. But take my advice: into the flames with those ribbons, those pretty ribbons, pink and blue and yellow, that she wore around her neck to hold your gaze. Into the flames with the lace and the bonnets, the veils, and all the seductive clothes she dressed herself in to make calculating love with M. César, M. Jérôme, M. Charles, or whatever other admirer she had scheduled, while you waited at the window for her, shivering from the icy wind and winter frost.