In victory, you deserve Champagne; in defeat, you need it. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, French military leader Champagne! The beverage of love. And of sorrow, too. I remember my first glass of champagne. In Paris, of course, at a small restaurant on the Left Bank, far from the hubbub of Place Saint Michel. And my first … More Champagne and War: 1940-1945
Entering into a Dreamscape of Words “Paris, as I have said, is loath to surrender itself to people who are in a hurry; it belongs to the dreamers …” ~ Julian Green, Paris, p. 59 Who? Julian Green. Or Julien Green, as he preferred to be called. An American, but not an American. Born in … More Julian/Julien Green’s “Paris”
Last Days of an Iconic French Cultural Figure This photo hangs on a wall in my kitchen. It sums up the stereotypical essence of traditional concierges of the past. I stayed once in a garret in Paris on the Île Saint-Louis for a month. Unlike the woman in Robert Doisneau’s iconic photo, the building’s concierge … More The Dying of the French Concierge
A Meditation on Éric Vuillard’s The Order of the Day The thing about history I love most is that we know how certain events came to an end. Or we think we know. Most of the time, that is. Living through historical events, on the other hand, presents challenges, often life-threatening, with the outcome never … More The Art of Writing History: A Satirical Approach
Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance. JAMES JOYCE, ULYSSES Just about every book-loving tourist visiting Paris knows about Shakespeare & Company, a funky and unusual bookshop. Located at 37, Rue de la Bûcherie, overlooking the Seine, with a magnificent view of Notre Dame to boot, it’s usually … More A Bookshop in Paris: Living the Dream … Until a Dictatorship Destroyed Free Thought
This year – 2024 – scares me more than does Stephen King’s The Shining, published decades ago, 1977 to be exact. And that’s saying a lot, an awful lot. Truth be told, I have never been able to neither read the book all the way through nor watch the film to the ghastly end. (I … More What Scares Me More than Stephen King’s “The Shining”
Being alive, being in the world has always been a desperate struggle for survival. We sometimes dub this state of affairs “dog-eat-dog.” However, the root of this phrase actually means the opposite in its original Latin: canis caninam non est. Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro recorded this Latin proverb in his De Lingua Latin (About … More Chronicling Survival in the Face of Evil
In today’s America, there’s a certain glorification of tyrants, certain ideologies. Most of the time, when reading of Germany’s Nazis and World War II, it’s easy to lump people together, to believe that everyone followed the party line. One exception to that, I recently discovered while doing research for my new writing project, was Ernst … More A Different Slant: A German Officer in Occupied Paris
CYNTHIA D. BERTELSEN 
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