Find Page One on APPLE PODCASTS or STITCHER.

(Background noise might make this episode a challenging listen.)

Season 1 Episodes

On the day of recording, Claire was leaving the Wilton Way Café to return to Australia, where she lived before coming to London, and Claire is French! Enough reason, perhaps, to dedicate the whole of this 37th edition to some of the magnificent literary and musical outpouring of the people of France. These, though, are just the books and songs that came out when Charles Adrian gave his library a shake.

You can read about Philippe Gaulier on Wikipedia here.

This episode was recorded at the Wilton Way Café for London Fields Radio.

This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.

Episode transcript is below.

Episode released: 28th May, 2013.

Book listing:

Thérèse Desqueyroux by François Mauriac (trans. Gerard Hopkins)

Salammbô by Gustave Flaubert

Hiroshima Mon Amour by Marguerite Duras

The Devil In The Flesh (Le Diable Au Corps) by Raymond Radiguet (trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith)

Links:

Philippe Gaulier on Wikipedia

Charles Adrian

Episode transcript:

Jingle
You're listening... you're listening to London Fields Radio.

Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 37th Page One. I'm Charles Adrian and I'm in the Wilton Way Cafe recording for London Fields Radio. Today, my theme is France. I know I should maybe have saved this for Bastille Day but I was impatient. So it's happening today. This will go up on or around the 28th of May. Eh bien, la France existe quand même en mai.

I'm going to start by reading you something in English, however, just to ease you in. This is Thérèse by François Mauriac. I think the full title in French is Thérèse Desqueyroux. This... So: “Of this, his most famous literary creation...” I'm reading from the back of the book now, “Mauriac wrote: ‘She took form in my mind as an example of that power granted to all human beings, no matter how much they may seem to be the slaves of hostile fate, of saying no to the law which beats them down. She belongs to that class of human beings - and it is a huge family - for whom night can end only when life itself ends. All that is asked of them is that they should not resign themselves to night's darkness.’” I think that gives you some idea of the... of the content and maybe even the tone of the book.

This was given to me by a French teacher I had, who was trying to educate me in, kind of, important French milestones. It's a Penguin Modern Classics from 1983, translated by Gerard Hopkins. I'm not sure if that's Gerard Manley Hopkins. I think Thérèse has tried to murder her husband. I think, at some point... What I remember of this book is that she's... she goes away, she marries somebody, she goes away and she's incredibly bored. They're in Les Landes, down below Bordeaux, where everywhere you look they're just pine trees. And I myself have driven through Les Landes and it's true: everywhere you look, pine trees in these endless rows. And I think this... this drives her mad and she tries to poison her husband. But I don't... I don't remember very well. Anyway, this is referred to on the first page. She's definitely done something.

Thérèse Desqueyroux

I

THE barrister opened a door. Thérèse Desqueyroux, in that out-of-the-way corridor of the Court-house, felt the fog upon her face and took deep breaths of it. She was afraid lest someone might be there to meet her, and held back. A man with his coat collar turned up moved out from the shadow of a plane-tree. She recognized her father.
‘Case dismissed!’ called the barrister; and then, turning to her:
‘You can come out: there's no one here.’
She went down the damp steps. True, the small square seemed utterly deserted. Her father did not kiss her. He did not even look at her, but addressed a question to the barrister, Duros, who answered in a low voice, as though he were afraid of being overheard. The words they spoke came to her, but not plainly.
‘Tomorrow I shall be officially notified that the case has been dismissed.’
‘No danger of any last-minute surprises?’
‘Not the least in the world. We've got it, as they say, served up on a plate.’
‘After my son-in-law's evidence it was a foregone conclusion.’
‘Hardly that - one can never be quite certain.’
‘Once they'd got him to admit that he never counted his drops...’
‘But in cases of this kind, you know, Larroque, the evidence of the victim...’
Thérèse spoke in a loud voice:
‘There was no victim.’
‘Victim of his own carelessness, I meant, Madame.’
For a brief instant the two men looked at the young woman standing there huddled in her coat. Her pale face was quite expressionless. She asked where the carriage was. Her father had...

Now, a word about the music this week. Obviously, it's all French music. This is in no way intended to be a comprehensive survey of what is or has been going on in France. It's just some stuff that I happen to like. And it's not all the stuff that I happen to like either. It's all men, for a start. And we all know that there are plenty of women who have sung amazing things in French. This first track is not even the best track that I have ever come across by a French artist but I love it. It's Qui Je Suis by Kyo - who I have a feeling may be the product of some kind of reality... you know, like... like a sort of X Factor-style programme but I'm not totally sure. They're a boy band. And this song is all about the strain of being different. Wink wink. I think that the band thinks that they are singing about being artists.

Music
[Qui Je Suis by Kyo]

Charles Adrian
That was Qui Je Suis by Kyo.

My next book is Salammbô by Gustave Flaubert. Somehow I've got hold of a lovely little hardback Collection Nelson edition from 1960 which has a nice, colourful dust jacket - lots of reds and yellows and purples and blues. This book... it's not probably one of Flaubert's more famous novels but it's fabulous. It's... It's about the destruction - or the near destruction, I should say - of Carthage by a rebellion of mercenaries a generation before Hannibal almost crushed Rome. I suddenly thought... a gen... a rebellion of mercenaries sounds like I'm using that as a collective noun. I don't know whether that's... [laughs]. I mean, a rebellion instigated... is... whatever. The mercenaries rebel, essentially, because they're not being paid or because they're unhappy or they get drunk or something. And it's wonderful. So you... you... you read about the battles and you read about them going around and becoming... you know, they almost... they very nearly win. And then they are totally destroyed.

The descriptions are absolutely sumptuous - descriptions of food and drink, of emotional and spiritual states, of glory, of cruelty. There's an extraordinary section where most of the rebel army is trapped in a... kind of... in a part of the mountains by the... by the Carthaginians and just starved to death. It's... it's just... it's magnificent. I won't try to do justice because I will... I will fail. Here is the first page, which I will read in French. I used to have beautiful, lightly-accented French when I was living in Paris but it's no longer so lightly accented as it was.

SALAMMBÔ

I

LE FESTIN

C'ÉTAIT à Mégara, faubourg de Car... thage... Carthage, dans les jardins d'Hamilcar.
Les soldats qu'il avait commandés en Sicile se donnaient un grand festin pour célébrer le jour anniversaire de la bataille d'Éryx, et, comme le maître était absent et qu'ils se trouvaient nombreux, ils mangeaient et ils buvaient en pleine liberté.
Les capitaines, portant des co... cothurnes de bronzes, s'étaient placés dans le chemin du milieu, sous un voile de pourpre à franges d'or, qui s'étendait depuis le mur des écuries jusqu'à la première terrasse du palais ; le commun des soldats étaient répandu sous les arbres, où l'on distinguait quantité de bâtiments à tout [sic] plat, pressoirs, celliers, magasins, boulangeries et arsenaux, avec une cour pour les éléphants, des fosses pour les bêtes féroces, une prison pour les esclaves.
Des figuiers entouraient les cuisines ; un bois de sycomores se prolongeait jusqu'à des masses de verdure, où de grenades resplendissaient parmi les touffes blanches des cotonniers ; des vignes, chargées de grappes, montaient dans le branchage des...

My second song, which is Je Me Voyais Déjà by Charles Aznavour is certainly a classic. This is essentially about someone famous pretending that he's not famous and complaining about that state of affairs. I can identify completely with this scenario. This is Charles Aznavour singing Je Me Voyais Déjà.

Music
[Je Me Voyais Déjà by Charles Aznavour]

My next book was bought for €2,30 from Gilbert Jeune in... in Paris, probably at Saint... what's it called... Saint Michel? I don't remember. It's also marked «occasion», which means second hand. So there's... there's no doubt about this. When I was studying with Philippe Gaulier in Paris, he used to use this author as a paragon of tedious theatrical writing. I have no real opinion on the subject. I've never seen the film that this screenplay is of and I've never seen any of her other plays, assuming that she wrote them. I have read one other book by her and all I retain is the impression of much whispering and sighing.

This, though, is Hiroshima Mon Amour by Marguerite Duras. It's the screenplay from the 19... or for the 1959 Alain Resnais film of the same name. Here is the... Here is the opening.

[NB In the absence of the original French text, the following transcription is an attempt to render what Charles Adrian is reading; apologies for any inaccuracy.]
Parti 1
Le film s'ouvre sur le dévelopment du fameux «champignon» de Bikini. Il faudrait que le spectateur ait le sentiment à la fois de revoir et de voir ce «champignon» pour la première fois. Il faudrait qu'il soit très grossi, très ralenti, et que son dévelopment s'accompagne des premières mésures de J. Fusco. À mésure que ce «champignon« s'élève sur l'écran, au dessous de lui apparaissent, peu à peu, deux épaules nues. On ne voit que ces deux épaules - elles sont coupées du corps à la hauteur de la tête et des hanches. Ces deux épaules s'étreignent. Elles sont comme trimpées [sic]... trempées de cendres, de pluie, de rosée ou de sueur comme on veut. Le principal, c'est qu'on ait le sentiment que cette rosée, cette transpiration, a été déposé par le «champignon» de Bikini à mésure de son éloignement, à mésure de son évaporation.

And there's a little note to say that “Ce qui est entrecroché et abondoné”. That essentially refers... So any reference to the «champignon» de Bikini was apparently taken out when they actually made the film.

I'm just going to read... Now, having done that, I also want to read you the first [laughing] two lines of dialogue and you can decide whether or not you think Philippe Gaulier is correct in his assessment of Marguerite Duras.

LUI: Tu n'as rien vu à Hiroshima. Rien.
ELLE: J'ai tout vu. Tout...

There you go.

This - this next track that I'm going to play you - is by somebody that I was at theatre school with. Not... Not at the Gaulier School but in Paris nevertheless. It's called Daddy It's On Me and it's by Girbig. I like this. I was very happy when I saw that he'd released it.

Music
[Daddy It's On Me by Girbig]

Jingle
London Fields Radio... it's London Fields Radio.

Charles Adrian
It is, it's London Fields Radio. My last book for today is The Devil In The Flesh by Raymond Radiguet and you will know already from the title that I am again reading in English - this is a translation. It's the book of the film Le Diable Au Corps so it shares that with the last book I read. And this, like the first book, is also a book that my French teacher gave me. So many connections!

This was published in 1988. It was bought, apparently, for either $10.95 in New York or £6.95 in London. Published by Marion Boyars Publishing Ltd and translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. It says on the back:

The Devil In The Flesh, one of the finest, most delicate love stories ever written, is set in Paris during the last year of the First World War. The narrator, a boy of sixteen, tells of his love affair with Martha Lacombe, a young woman whose soldier husband is away at the front. The liaison soon becomes a scandal and their friends, horrified and incredulous, refuse to accept what is happening, even when the affair reaches its tragic climax. Raymond Radiguet wrote The Devil In The Flesh between the ages of sixteen and eighteen about his own adolescent love affair with an older woman. He died from typhoid fever at the age of twenty. His only other novel is Comte d'Orgel, also available from Marion Boyars Publishers. Jean Cocteau said of him: [in French accent] “He belonged to the solemn race of men whose lives unfold too quickly to their close.”

sound
[dog barking]

Charles Adrian
This... And it was first published in 1923. This was one of the first books I ever read that really dealt with sex - or lovemaking, as perhaps I should call it. I remember the main character's desire to take possession of his lover's body and to find a part that his... that her husband hasn't already laid claim to. It's... Yeah, that stuck in my memory. Unless... I think this was this book, unless it's another book. I'm going to read you the first page.

I'm sure to incur a good deal of reproach but what am I to do? Is it my fault that I celebrated my twelth birthday a few months before war was declared? The disturbance I experienced during that extraordinary period was probably of a kind never given to a boy of that age. But since nothing has the power to age us, despite appearances to the contrary, it was as a child that I had to conduct myself in an adventure that might well have disconcerted a man. I'm not alone in this. My school friends will retain a memory of that time quite different from that of their elders. Let those who are already reproaching me try to imagine what the war meant for so many of us very young boys: four years of holiday.
We lived at F..., on the banks of the Marne. My parents disapproved of friendships between the sexes but our sensuality, which is born with us, though for a time it remains dormant, was aroused rather than quelled by their disapproval. I have never been a dreamer. What appears dream to others more credulous than I seems to me to be as real as cheese to a cat, in spite of the glass that covers it. Yet the glass does exist. If the glass breaks, the cat takes advantage, even if it is his master who breaks it and cuts his hand in the process.

I think I need to reread this book. I think it's probably even more wonderful than I remember.

This has been the 37th Page One. I've been Charles Adrian, reading - recording indeed - at the Wilton Way Cafe in Hackney for London Fields Radio. I should probably say, something that I forgot even while I was preparing this edition is that it's entirely appropriate that I've done a French edition today because Claire, who is French - is that right?

Claire
[in the distance] Yeah, yeah.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Are you French? It's her last day today at the Wilton Way Cafe. So there's something of a, kind of, sad celebration. Are you going to Australia? Is that right?

Claire
[in the distance] I'm... I'm moving back to Australia. Yeah. Sydney.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Wow. Amazing. Amazing. So hopefully you'll be there in time for the weather to warm up and the summer to arrive.

Claire
[in the distance] [laughs]

Charles Adrian
And so this, in a way, has been a homage to Claire...

Claire
[in the distance] Awww.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] ... this... this week's [laughing] Page One. In fact... Oh yeah, no, it'll already be summer. It'll be full summer, won't it, in Sydney now?

Claire
[in the distance] Yeah it will. Yeah.

Charles Adrian
Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. By the time this goes out in May, you will be shivering, unfortunately. So...

Claire
[in the distance] Well [indistinct]... probably not, no.

Charles Adrian
[laughing] Where are you going to be living?

Claire
[in the distance] Sydney.

Charles Adrian
Okay, yeah...

Claire
[in the distance] Yes. [indistinct]

Charles Adrian
... it's not going to get that cold. Okay, okay. [laughs]

Claire
[in the distance] [laughs]

Charles Adrian
I'm just... you know... [laughing] It seems so unfair. This last track that I'm playing you now is... is by Francis Cabrel. It's his rather beautiful elegy for a bull with last minute support from the Gypsy Kings. Enjoy the end of May or the beginning of June or whenever you're listening to this. This is La Corrida by Francis Cabrel.

Music
[La Corrida by Francis Cabrel]

[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]