French Lit

Parlons de literature au'jourd'hui, d'accord?  I wish I liked French poetry more.  Perhaps I just haven't been introduced to the right author.  Yes, Baudelaire can be good, and Rimbaud and his side-kick, Verlaine (actually I like V. better), but I've just never found specific poets that I admire enough to learn to read well in French.  I have plenty of favorite Spanish and Italian poets, but French poetry sometimes leaves me cold.  That's in no way saying that I'm denying its importance or it popularity with other people.  I just haven't found a poet who keeps me coming back.

I do a little better with prose fiction.  I've enjoyed reading Flaubert and Zola in their original tongue and have almost navigated the whole of Proust's gargantuan series of novels.  There is certainly a wider selection of novels and short stories available in French, the list of famous novelists is striking:  Balzac, Stendhal, Hugo, Camus, Gide....  To be truthful, though I do like Gide quite a bit, I find that it is the fluffier stuff that I return to, e.g., Jules Verne. 

Just as when I'm practicing reading Spanish or Italian fiction, in French I often find myself reading French translations of English novels--most because the stories are already familiar and the French seems a bit easier and less idiomatic.  Naturally, this is really just cheating.  One eventually needs to read French unfiltered and get used to the unique 'flavor' of the prose.

One nice thing about having an i-Pad or Kindle, or some other type of hand-held, is that there are a lot of absolutely free public domain works in every major language.  There are many sites that offer not only ebooks, but also audio-book renditions of many classic French novels and stories and poems.  Just Google 'free ebooks' or 'free audiobooks.'  Happy reading.

A la prochaine...