Tecserion | Litsy

Tecserion | Marie-Madeleine de Lubert

I came across this thanks to @swynn & remembered the author was featured in Libération & Gallica's list of female writers in history https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/fr/html/fieres-de-lettres-une-chronique-gallica-d... & that I meant to read them all, so I downloaded the pdf of a 1st edition, complete with long s, 17th-c spelling, etc. Very much of its time: the Enlightenment. Delightful, eye-roll-worthy & slow-going all at the same time.

Dilara Pic of the park in Richelieu, created by Cardinal Richelieu a century before the publication of Tecserion, but I thought it illustrated the text rather well. (Taken in July when I spent the afternoon there.) 2w

swynn Delightful and eye-roll-worthy for sure. And I swear the pic looks just like Venus. 😄(Well, Mme. de Lubert's version of it anyways.) 2w

Dilara @swynn That planet Venus with its well-tended gardens and pretty shepherds and shepherdesses wearing gauzy outfits was something! 😂 2w

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swynn

Tecserion | Marie-Madeleine de Lubert

pick

(1737) It's a sort of amatory fairy-tale about a beautiful princess facing an arranged marriage to a wicked king. (How wicked, you ask? Well, he turns his subjects into ostriches whenever they fall in love, which is wicked enough.) it's very busy, with many transformations and a visit to -- I swear I am not making this up -- a libertine shepherds' colony on Venus. A little bonkers but also much fun, and accessible to my very basic French.

Dilara Ooh! I don't think I've ever heard of this, but I am interested! Where did you find it? Gallica? 3w

swynn @Dilara Good guess! Yes, it was Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1510867k 3w

Dilara @swynn Thank you! I've downloaded it 😁 3w

swynn @Dilara Hope you like it! Looking forward to your thoughts 3w

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swynn

Tecserion | Marie-Madeleine de Lubert

In a country near the Kingdoms of Romance, there once was a wicked king named Tecserion: no one ever saw him smile; he knew no pleasures but doing evil; in addition he had a figure that Nature seemed to have given him to make him hated all the more; in a word, his ugliness equalled the wickedness of his character.

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swynn

Tecserion | Marie-Madeleine de Lubert

Any French speakers able to help me with this quote:

... souvent il vaut mieux faire des riens que de ne rien faire du tout ...

Google Translate renders it as: “... it is often better to do nothing than to do nothing at all ...“, which matches the sense from my very elementary French but which is no sense at all. I expect I'm missing a nuance, maybe between the plural “riens“ and the singular “rien“?

Merci d'avance!

squirrelbrain I understand the same sense as you. I looked it up in my (very large!) French dictionary and there‘s a section on faire + rien but nothing that would offer a different translation. The only thing I wondered would be to translate ‘riens‘ as ‘sweet nothings‘ or ‘little somethings‘. Better to do little things than nothing at all? (edited) 3mo

swynn @squirrelbrain I think you're right. That interpretation makes sense in context. I also found a few sourceson line that say “rien“ or “des riens“ can mean trivialities or things of no consequence. The Collins Dictionary has an example: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/french-english/des-petits-riens

I'm calling it solved. Thanks! 3mo

vlwelser Better to do little nothings than to do nothing at all. This doesn't translate well. Like better to do useless things (like picking flowers or something that has no purpose) 3mo

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rwmg @vlwelser @swynn Maybe a more idiomatic translation would be something like:

It's better to do nothing much than to do nothing at all. 3mo

squirrelbrain Yay! I‘m glad we worked it out! 3mo

swynn @vlwelser Thanks for confirmation of this! 3mo

swynn @rwmg I like this rendering, and wonder whether a French reader would have a parallel problem puzzling over the meaning of “nothing much“ 3mo

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