12 September 2021 - VOLTAIRE - A WISE WRITER AND PHILOSOPHER

 

VOLTAIRE

 - A WISE WRITER & PHILOSOPHER -

 

G'day folks,

As he lay dying on this day, the great French writer Voltaire noticed that the lamp next to his bed was violently flickering and flaring up. "What? The flames already?" he quipped. They were the last words he spoke. Earlier, when a priest asked him to renounce Satan he refused, allegedly declaring: "This is no time to make any more enemies!"

Both anecdotes are of questionable authenticity but they so fit the personality of this remarkable man that they have been attributed to him in many quarters without hesitation.

Born in Paris as François-Marie Arouet in 1694, he was to become a novelist, poet, dramatist, philosopher, satirist and historian. Writing under the pen-name Voltaire he was one of the greatest writers that France has produced, but his caustic wit and unconventional ideas on religion, ethics and the State often got him into trouble.

In 1716 he was exiled from Paris for a short term after writing poems that mocked the French Regent's family. His banishment proved to be ineffective, however, because a year later he produced more verse suggesting that the Regent and his daughter enjoyed an incestuous relationship. As a result he was imprisoned in the Bastille for 11 months.

After a couple more run-ins with the authorities Voltaire went to live in England for three years. But the French Government continued to pursue their troublesome citizen, censoring or suppressing much of his work and ordering some of his books to be burned. In 1734 Voltaire made a decisive break from France by moving to Switzerland where he was to spend much of his later life.

He was able to afford such extravagance and live comfortably thanks to the French lottery. Voltaire had teamed with mathematician Charles Marie de La Condamine and other gamblers to exploit a loophole in the way the lottery was run so that their syndicate repeatedly won huge prizes and they all became very rich.

In 1778 he returned to Paris for the first time in nearly 30 years to oversee the production of one of his plays, but within a few months he was dead at the age of 83.

Catholic priests repeatedly visited this lifelong critic of organised religion in the hope of persuading him to retract his opinions and make a deathbed confession. As far as is known, they failed.

An outspoken advocate of civil liberties, Voltaire wrote more than 2,000 books and pamphlets and thousands of letters. He was one of those writers who was adept at producing memorable one-liners.

Examples:

"I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

"This body which was called, and still is called, the Holy Roman Empire, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

Clancy's comment: He certainly sounded like a sharp man. Two-thousand books!

I'm ...

 

 

 

 

4 November 2020 - JACQUES COUSTEAU - AMAZING PIONEER

 JACQUES COUSTEAU

 - AMAZING PIONEER -

G'day folks,

Welcome to one of my heroes. 

Born in 1910 off of the French east coast, the great blue expanses of the ocean which were at the backdrop of his childhood remained a constant in the life of Jacques-Yves Cousteau. The draw of the ocean never relented its hold on Cousteau, and in 1930, he enrolled with the French navy. 

It was during this time, serving on a French battleship, that Cousteau turned dream to action and started conducting his first underwater experiments. It was during the tumultuous war that Cousteau began filming prize-winning underwater documentaries, as well as innovate diving technology in ground breaking ways. The Aqua-Lung, which he helped design, was the first open-circuit, self-contained breathing apparatus ever created.

 Of course, films and underwater excursions weren’t the only things that Cousteau did in those years, and as a member of the French Resistance movement, he took part in several complicated operations to thwart the Nazis and their axis powers, and help the allied armies.

Sadly, during that very same time, his brother Pierre-Antoine was busying himself with far darker endeavors. Pierre-Antoine Cousteau was a writer for the ominously-named "Je Suis Partout" (“I am everywhere”), a fascist magazine with pro-Nazi leanings, which called for the internment of all French Jews. He remained an unrepentant white supremacist until his death of cancer in 1958.

The stark contrast between the two brothers only serves to shine a light on the one-of-a-kind character of Jacques Cousteau.

 After the war, Cousteau helped clear the Mediterranean of mines, using his excursions as an excuse to continue his sea explorations and filming, including the very first unassisted underwater archaeology outing, exploring the wreckage of a Roman vessel off the coast of Tunisia.

It wasn’t just the wrecks that littered the bottom of the sea that caught Cousteau’s attention, as the creatures of the ocean enthralled Cousteau even more, and he was actually the first man who correctly predicted the presence of some kind of echolocation system in cetaceans, like dolphins and porpoises.

But it was in the early 60's that he began advocacy for environmentalism when the French Commission for Atomic Energy set in motion a plan to dump radioactive waste into the Mediterranean. It was only due to his activism that wide protest arose against the CAE’s plan and they were forced to nix it.

 His growing fame as an author and film-maker earned him a slot in television with the eye-opening program "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau"(1966-1976), which brought Cousteau’s underwater adventures to every living room.

His one of a kind documentaries were the first and only ones to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, until 2004 when Michael Moore won one for “Fahrenheit 9/11”.

 It is told that during filming in Cuba, Cousteau met with leader Fidel Castro and befriending him, subsequently talking the dictator into releasing some 80 prisoners.

Perhaps most importantly in his efforts to protect marine environments, in 1990, Cousteau got all major powers to sign a petition banning oil drilling in Antarctica, and we can only shudder, imagining what the condition of the ice shelves of the South Pole would have been like today if it were not for this great pioneer of diving.

 

Clancy's comment: I've probably seen all of his documentaries. What a legend.

I'm ...

 

29 December 2020 - ABANDONED FRENCH CASTLE BEFORE IT WAS DESTROYED

 

ABANDONED FRENCH CASTLE

 BEFORE IT WAS DESTROYED

 

G'day folks,

Romain Thiery is a professional photographer specializing in abandoned pianos photography in Europe. 

While searching for abandoned pianos, he was lucky enough to photograph a castle in France which has been abandoned for several years―Château de Le Quesnel. This 18th-century castle of more than 700m² was used by the Germans during the two World Wars and, despite major post-war restoration work, it remained uninhabited. In 2018, a huge fire destroyed the entire building. Here you will find photos that Romain took before it burned down.

 

Clancy's comment: Wow. These places fascinate me. I often wonder who lived in them, and what happened within. 

I'm ...