{"id":6915,"date":"2015-04-10T16:53:57","date_gmt":"2015-04-10T16:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=6915"},"modified":"2015-04-10T16:53:57","modified_gmt":"2015-04-10T16:53:57","slug":"george-frederic-and-valldemossa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=6915","title":{"rendered":"George, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric and Valldemossa"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Early
Early morning moon, Valldemossa, Mallorca<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Morning, Valldemossa.\u00a0 Defeated by the insomnia of jet lag, I rise and open the curtains to a full moon shining on me.\u00a0 It\u2019s four o’clock.\u00a0 Sheep down below the valley wall shuffle through grass, chewing and bleating.\u00a0 No other sound; no other presence; it’s the other extreme of Valldemossa.\u00a0 Twelve hours ago the streets crawled with tourists, Europeans on spring holiday spending their money in the restaurants and terrace caf\u00e9s, in the souvenir and art shops.\u00a0 Their numbers surprised me.\u00a0 I’d expected this small village to be of minor touristic interest, but I was wrong.\u00a0 It\u2019s all because of George Sand.\u00a0 Well, more precisely, because of Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin.<\/p>\n

His is the famous name.\u00a0 Even the non-musical could tell you he composed music in some past century.\u00a0 Without him, Valldemossa\u2019s caf\u00e9s wouldn\u2019t be nearly as profitable.\u00a0 It began when he fell in love with one of nineteenth-century-France’s gifted writers, George Sand, a woman six years older with two children in tow. In need of a warmer, healing clime for his bad chest, they ventured to Mallorca in the Mediterranean.\u00a0 After a few weeks of hurdles and blocks (inevitable when travelling abroad) they found themselves on the west coast of the island, temporary residents of three monk cells in a recently secularised monastery, the Real Cartuja de Valldemossa. Real for Royal. Cartuja for Carthusian.\u00a0 Once a king’s residence, then a Carthusian monastery.\u00a0 Now a museum and tourist attraction.<\/p>\n

\"Real
Real Cartuja, Valldemossa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’m quietly, very quietly, celebrating the publishing of my translation of Spiridion<\/em><\/a>, George Sand’s novel that she finished in the cells of the Real Cartuja while Chopin, in his poor health, composed several pieces \u2013 Preludes, a Polonaise, a Ballade, a Scherzo.<\/p>\n

When you wake at three, the morning is long.\u00a0 I wait for the new day by writing, and eating scraps of leftover food, my First Breakfast, like the hobbit.\u00a0 Now it’s ten to seven and the ragged Mallorcan mountains are silhouetted in the east. It\u2019s seven o\u2019clock and church bells in the monastery are ringing. It\u2019s twenty past seven and there\u2019s light, soft and shaded by mountains. The warm yellow street lamps are still on. It\u2019s a quarter to eight and the lamps are now off.\u00a0 It’s half past eight and the hotel owners have set the tables.\u00a0 Time for Second Breakfast.<\/p>\n

\"Valldemossa
Valldemossa village with sheep<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Morning, Valldemossa.\u00a0 Defeated by the insomnia of jet lag, I rise and open the curtains to a full moon shining on me.\u00a0 It\u2019s four o’clock.\u00a0 Sheep down below the valley wall shuffle through grass, chewing and bleating.\u00a0 No other sound; no other presence; it’s the other extreme of Valldemossa.\u00a0 Twelve hours ago the streets crawled … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “George, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric and Valldemossa”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157,20],"tags":[241,718,719,358,156,69,720,463,41,7,8,21,3,721,270],"class_list":["post-6915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-french-literature-and-translation","category-my-photos","tag-19th-century-literature","tag-cartuja-de-valldemossa","tag-chopin","tag-france","tag-french-literature","tag-george-sand","tag-mallorca","tag-novels","tag-photo","tag-photography","tag-photos-2","tag-postaday","tag-translation","tag-valldemossa","tag-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}