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Letters & Essays: 1950s

Letters & Essays of the Day

Women Sweeping

By Ishion Hutchinson

The woman in Édouard Vuillard’s Woman Sweeping, painted between 1899 and 1900, is Marie Michaud Vuillard, the painter’s mother. She is tall and stocky, her posture—that slight give of the back to the broom, without bending—marking a nonchalant style of carrying out a chore that routine hasn’t made any less complex. As Madame Vuillard sweeps, her gaze seems to fall on the broom or the floor. We might detect deference or humility in such a pose, but the turn of her head, her face ringed with a whitish glow as if lit by an inner ardor, conveys ease. We cannot see her gaze; we are given only the black slash of her eyelashes, which suggests an almost closed-eye intensity. Madame Vuillard is invested in her work and in herself, though perhaps in this moment she does allow herself to be mildly flattered by her painter son’s attention. The slash also conveys a quiet authority; you know that she need not look up to be heeded.

The Year in French Literature

By C. Chesnaie

In Saint-Germain-des-Prés, there is a lot of talk about publishers; in France as a whole, much less. In Saint-Germain people like to speculate about whether the winner of the Prix Goncourt will be published by Gallimard or Julliard; in France people look for and buy novels which they think they will enjoy. The war of the literary prizes is of interest primarily to publishers, and it would be a mistake to think that it influences opinion or affects the history and the future of the French novel. Here, at any rate, are some of the prize-winners:—