Showing posts with label Ryner (Han). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ryner (Han). Show all posts

13 September 2016

Cimetière Saint-Vincent, Montmartre (continued): #2 Cécile Cassot


Cécile Cassot (1843-1913) was a novelist whose works include Un Amour de prêtre (1883), Honorée (1886), Le chant de l'alouette (1887, with a Foreword by Henri Fouquier), Trop aimée (1888), Pourquoi ne le dit-elle pas ? (1890), Le Secret d'Ursule (1890), La Vierge d'Irlande (1890), Autour d'un tableau (1891), La Fleur de résurrection (1894), Les Femmes de demain (1907), Les Éperviers de la Régence (1908), Outragée ! (1909), and Dompteuse (1912).

In Le Massacre des amazones : étude critiques sur deux cents bas-bleus (lit. 'The massacre of the Amazones: Studies of Two Hundred Blue Stockings') (1899), Han Ryner finds (among a number of other negatives) that Cassot has 'as much as any other political orator, the genius of imprecision'. He also sees her as 'the genius of pleonasm': 'The Cassot can hardly say 'That wasn't possible' without adding 'That couldn't be.' The language he uses to attack her is so fierce that I can't help but wonder if his brief analysis of Cassot's work tells us more about Cassot or Ryner himself.

1 October 2014

Cimetière parisien de Thiais, Val-de-Marne (94), Île-de-France #5: Han Ryner | Henri Ner


'HAN RYNER
HENRI NER
3 DÉCEMBRE 1861
5 JANVIER 1838'

The dates of Henri Ner (who preferred to be call himself Han Ryner) are in conflict here with Wikipédia, which claims he was born on 7 December and died on the 6 December, but these are minor matters of little importance.

Of much greater importance to me (as Ryner is a fascinating character) is the inscription lower down on the upright stone, which is difficult to read because of the weathering and the slight blurring of the image, but even more difficult to understand (for me at least) is the meaning of the inscription itself. What are the 'trois jours' he's referring to, and how does the inscription relate to the Greek (which I don't understand anything of anyway) below the French? I suspect that the French is a quotation from one of his many books, although I can find nothing online, and I've searched a number of his books. This is my reading of the French:


'HONORÉ[,] COMBIEN DURERONT
MES "TROIS JOURS" [?]
MAIS JE SUIS DE CEUX
QUI LIRONT CETTE INSCRIPTION [:]'

And then the Greek begins.

Ryner was a pacifist anarchist and a very prolific writer of novels, stories, essays, plays, and poetry. For Ryner, freedom is interior and he was much influenced by the ancient Greeks, particularly the Stoics. Two books give an idea of the range of his interests: Prostitués, études critiques sur les gens de lettres d'aujourd'hui (1904) (a critique of writers of the day) and L'Homme-fourmi (1901), about a man who turns into an ant. Some of his works were kinds of parables.