The There There Letter: Reading Aloud, Rabelais, and Red Chinon
Three things from DAH.
DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. I write, organize, plan, produce, manage, direct, act, sing, promote, and make change (not the coin kind).
First up this week, Reading Aloud …
We read aloud to one another almost every day, Christine and I. We're always working our way through one book or another: Fiction, sometimes young adult fiction (easiest to read aloud), sometimes mysteries (we're enjoying Louise Penny's Gamache series … thank you, Beth), sometimes classics (Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was fun). It's something we can really do together, swapping reading chapter by chapter. It helps us wind down and center: Sharing words aloud.
Why you should read this out loud
Second up this week, Rabelais …
"Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil." François Rabelais wrote that in his masterpiece, Gargantua and Pantagruel in 1534 (well, perhaps that year, since Gargantua and Pantagruel is five books, the last published after Rabelais had been dead for nine years). The fifth book was the quest for The Divine Bottle, and the answer to its mystery seems to be "trinch," which could mean clinking glasses or breaking bottles, or simply to drink: wine, knowledge, truth, love, and life down to the lees. The reputed last words of Rabelais: "I go to seek the Great Perhaps."
Like Dickens, like Joyce, Rabelais revels in the way people talk
Third up this week, Red Chinon …
"Trinch!" is a Cabernet Franc wine produced by Catherine & Pierre Breton in Bourgueil (in France's Loire Valley). The "Trinch!" label shows two silhouetted figures clinking glasses. But it's the Cabernet Franc wines of Charles Joguet in Chinon, across the Loire from Bourgueil, that seduced me long ago. I admired these peppery-berry wines, typically intended for early enjoyment. I convinced the winery where I worked to make a similarly styled red since we had Cabernet Franc grapes. That evolved into a "Spring Release" Cabernet that was quite fun. Charles Joguet has an image of Rabelais (a native son of Chinon) on the label. Our "Spring Release" Cabernet had only an image of a mountain. These wines brought me great happiness.
Charles Joguet: The Chinon Estate that Champions Single-Vineyard Cabernet Franc
And a bit more … From the introduction to Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais (translation by Burton Raffel, 1989):
Readers, friends, if you turn these pages
Put your prejudice aside,
For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous,
Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious.
Not that I sit here glowing with pride
For my book: all you'll find is laughter:
That's all the glory my heart is after,
Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.
I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.
BE HAPPY!
That's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver's poem "Sometimes" …
DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. I write, organize, plan, produce, manage, direct, act, sing, promote, and make change (not the coin kind).
First up this week, Reading Aloud …
We read aloud to one another almost every day, Christine and I. We're always working our way through one book or another: Fiction, sometimes young adult fiction (easiest to read aloud), sometimes mysteries (we're enjoying Louise Penny's Gamache series … thank you, Beth), sometimes classics (Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was fun). It's something we can really do together, swapping reading chapter by chapter. It helps us wind down and center: Sharing words aloud.
Why you should read this out loud
Second up this week, Rabelais …
"Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil." François Rabelais wrote that in his masterpiece, Gargantua and Pantagruel in 1534 (well, perhaps that year, since Gargantua and Pantagruel is five books, the last published after Rabelais had been dead for nine years). The fifth book was the quest for The Divine Bottle, and the answer to its mystery seems to be "trinch," which could mean clinking glasses or breaking bottles, or simply to drink: wine, knowledge, truth, love, and life down to the lees. The reputed last words of Rabelais: "I go to seek the Great Perhaps."
Like Dickens, like Joyce, Rabelais revels in the way people talk
Third up this week, Red Chinon …
"Trinch!" is a Cabernet Franc wine produced by Catherine & Pierre Breton in Bourgueil (in France's Loire Valley). The "Trinch!" label shows two silhouetted figures clinking glasses. But it's the Cabernet Franc wines of Charles Joguet in Chinon, across the Loire from Bourgueil, that seduced me long ago. I admired these peppery-berry wines, typically intended for early enjoyment. I convinced the winery where I worked to make a similarly styled red since we had Cabernet Franc grapes. That evolved into a "Spring Release" Cabernet that was quite fun. Charles Joguet has an image of Rabelais (a native son of Chinon) on the label. Our "Spring Release" Cabernet had only an image of a mountain. These wines brought me great happiness.
Charles Joguet: The Chinon Estate that Champions Single-Vineyard Cabernet Franc
And a bit more … From the introduction to Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais (translation by Burton Raffel, 1989):
Readers, friends, if you turn these pages
Put your prejudice aside,
For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous,
Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious.
Not that I sit here glowing with pride
For my book: all you'll find is laughter:
That's all the glory my heart is after,
Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.
I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.
BE HAPPY!
That's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver's poem "Sometimes" …
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
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