David Prashker's Book Of Days

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

http://davidprashkersbookofdays.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

January 21

1854

My diary for January 21 2003 has a quote from Tolstoy - I like the idea of having a quote from someone else’s diary on as many pages as I can find them.

“Here is a fact which needs to be remembered more often. Thackeray spent thirty years preparing to write his first novel, but Alexandre Dumas writes two a week.”
Tolstoy: Diary: Jan 21 1854

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

http://davidprashkersbookofdays.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

December 9

1897

The launch today of "La Fronde", founded and edited by Marguerite Durand, the first newspaper, ever, to be run entirely by women, and yes, focused on women's issues, but not exclusively; you have to go much, much broader to justify an initial print run of fifty thousand copies - and it did; by 1905, the year it switched from being a daily to a monthly, it was selling two hundred thousand copies.

Interesting woman too, educated at a convent, so you might not predict feminism or journalism for her future. And you would be correct, because, aged fifteen, it was the world of the theatre that she chose, winning a place at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse, and then joining the company of the Comédie-Française when she graduated.

But being a stage-actress, and being stunningly beautiful, in that male world, also meant being expected to provide positive responses to calling-cards left by male admirers at the stage door, and she was not interested in what was effectively prostitution by gifts instead of money. So she left, and got married, to the lawyer Georges Laguerre, a man with strong political aspirations, and close contacts with "Général Revanche", Georges Boulanger really, a French army officer who had risen very high on the "populist" scale of polling-predictions, obtaining that nickname when he led the responses to France's defeat in the Franco-German war of 1870, wounded when he led the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871, war minister at one point, a key player in the Radical Party of Georges Clemenceau, the icon and idol of a "Boulangist" movement that wanted him to become the head of government and bring down the Third Republic... a new Napoléon...

But then the common sense people in government realised where this was leading, turned against him, put him on trial... you can read about his suicide and the collapse of the movement for yourself. The point for Marguerite Durand was that she lived through these years of crisis, very close to the centre, and detested and despised all of it, including herself for marrying a man with the name Laguerre. Yes, it had given her a way-out of the whoredom of the theatre, and an entry to the world of journalism, but beyond that? Alpha-maledom in another of its vile forms of self-expression. When Boulanger committed suicide in September 1891, Marguerite said goodbye to her husband, slamming the door behind her literally as well as metaphorically.

And headed straight for "Le Figaro", where she discovered that getting jobs in newspapers was little different from the world of the theatre; she had a child with Antonin Périvier, one of the directors, who then threw her out, but kept the child, until she managed to get legal assistance to recover him. And then got thrown out of the paper, having being sent to cover the 1896 International Feminist Congress in Paris, but with an expectation that she would mock, deride and disparage it. She refused. They fired her.

So "La Fronde" as her way of throwing back the slingshot (click here for an explanation of that). Including taking the Dreyfus side in that particular controversy. And not just fighting for feminism, but against misogyny, which in this case was made manifest by her journalists, being women, being barred from places like the National Assembly or the Bourse, required to obtain special permission in order to report on a debate or interview a Minister. She won that battle, but most of the others would take another several decades after her death. Amongst her campaigns: admission to the Bar association and the École des Beaux-Arts; women to be named to the Légion d'Honneur and to participate in parliamentary debates... many more, including the organisation of several trade unions for women...

And next time you're in Paris, don't forget to visit the gorgeous library named in honour of the vast collection of papers she donated at her death, the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand

Amber pages

John Milton, English poet, born today in 1608. Two entries in my "Private Collection", click here, and here

and a very different piece being prepared for Prashker's London - well, you can't spend as much time as I do in the Barbican Centre, staring out the window at the church of St Giles Cruplegate, and then leaving for the train via Milton St, without wanting to follow through the links and connections, and find out whether any sort of Paradise may be recoverable from the utter wilderness of Brutalist architecture.

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

October 24

Two of Uranus' moons discovered, today in 1851, by William Lassell. He named them Ariel and Umbriel.

The Cuban missile blockade began, today in 1962

The Instruments of Independence were signed in Zambia, today in 1964.

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

October 11

Amber pages

Huldrych Zwingli (some prefer Ulrich), Swiss humanist and author killed, today in 1531. By whom, and how, and where, and why?

François Charles Mauriac, novelist, born today in 1885

Second Vatican Ecumenical Council opened in Rome, today in 1962 - in what ways if any was it significant enough to merit inclusion?

The "Gang of Four" arrested in Peking, today in 1976 - or should this go on the date of the outcome of the process?

You can see why I have amber pages!

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

September 5

11 Israeli athletes, and 6 others, killed by Palestinian terrorists at the Olympic Games in Munich, today in 1972

Mark Slavin, Eliezer Halfin, David Berger, Ze'ev Friedman, Yossef Romano, Andre Spitzer, Moshe Weinberg, Yossef Gutfreund, Amitzur Shapira, Yakov Springer, and Kehat Shor

ז״ל

Amber pages

Three birthdays.

The first, in 1638, at St Germain-en-Laye, a son to Anne of Austria and Louis XIII of France, also yclept Louis, though history recalls him by his epithet - The Sun King. Twenty years old when Cromwell died across the Channel - and what a contrast of rich velvets with bare, black bones! The selfsame despotism though, however differently they dressed themselves and dressed it up. Where Cromwell tantrumed, Louis offered his ringed fingers for a tongue-manicure. Some nine thousand "lettres de cachet" ensured justice for his supporters. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 did for Protestants what Cromwell had done for Catholics in England. We learn best about our rulers from their legacies. After Cromwell, the restoration of the monarchy; after Louis its downfall. Both mere reactions against tyranny, not truthfully ideologies unto themselves.

Yet Louis’ reign, unlike Cromwell’s, did have its vindications - even Voltaire could not deny them. Corneille, Racine and Molière all flourished under Louis (but then so did Shostakovitch under Stalin, and Solzhenitsyn under Khrushchev, and Thomas Wyatt under Henry VIII).

The second birthday? A different sort of criminal, the sort that didn't get legitimised by obtaining power: Jesse Woodson James, in 1847, in Clay County, Missouri. Son of a preacherman, as Dusty Springfield might have sung it!

And speaking of Solzhenitsyn and the prisoners of Communism, Arthur Koestler, Hungarian author of "Darkness At Noon", born today in 1905

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/