Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey

la merde dans un bas de soie

Jonathon Delacour, over at The Heart of Things, has an entry examining the misinterpretation of a Talleyrand quotation by Bertolucci at the end of his Prima della rivoluzione (1964):

He who has not lived in the years before the revolution cannot know what the sweetness of living is.

Or so read the English subtitled translation that he and I both read and interpreted as the regret of an aging reactionary pining for the good old days. The original quotation, (from François Guizot’s Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de mon temps, 1858), is different:

M. Talleyrand me disait un jour: “Qui n’a pas vécu dans les années voisines de 1789 ne sait pas ce que c’est que le plaisir de vivre.”

(Monsieur Talleyrand said to me one day: “He who has not lived during the years around 1789 can not know what is meant by the pleasure of life.”)

Not before the French revolution, but immediately before and after the pivotal year 1789, the very year of the revolution. Go, read his entry.

My entry title is from Napoleon regarding Talleyrand after it was discovered by the former that the latter was negotiating with foreign powers.

Ah! tenez, vous êtes de la merde dans un bas de soie.

(Oh, get out of here, you piece of shit in a silk stocking!)