![servant-of-fate:
Saber [Julie D’Aubigny] Requested by: panncakez
Another new representation of La Maupin. With moustache!](http://25.media.tumblr.com/3a0dce5084c5ee38da8ec2798a132ed8/tumblr_mjis40o1el1s70trlo1_500.png)
So as it turns out Natalie Dormer is a mezzo soprano and is a member of the London Fencing Academy.
So yeah, bring on that Julie D’Aubigny biopic.
Hell yeah.
Making final tweaks to the manuscript of Tragedie. I think I’m on my last round. A week ago I was sick to death of it, which is always a sign of an imminent finish. But today I liked it again, so we’re friends.
Saber[Julie D’Aubigny]
Requested by: panncakez
Another new representation of La Maupin. With moustache!
[video]
Halfway through what I hope will be the final draft of Tragédie: The singular adventures and lamentable demise of Mademoiselle de Maupin.
Though it’s always hard to know which draft is the last draft. I hope from now on there will be more tweaking than OHMYGODWHATWASITHINKING.
But I could be wrong. Very wrong.
“Why do you weep? Did you think I was immortal?” — Louis XIV (last words)
(Source: paris, via coeurdelhistoire)
Probably nobody cares but me, but I’ve just assembled the most comprehensive table of Julie d’Aubigny/Mademoiselle de Maupin’s opera performances ever. EVER, I tell you.
“Monsieur de Pourceaugnac”*
Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Pater (1695-1736)
Previously attributed to Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721)
c. 1728-36
Oil on canvas
Monsieur de Pourceaugnac is a five-act comédie-ballet—a ballet interrupted by spoken dialogue—by Molière, before the court of Louis XIV at the Château of Chambord. The music was composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully.
* Julie has no desire to wed Pourceaugnac and is in love with the young and handsome Parisian Éraste. In order to avoid the impending marriage, Julie and Éraste use a series of clever deceits.
Julie, wearing a green and red dress, introduces Monsieur de Pourceaugnac to five children who she claims are his. He, wearing a blue coat, tries to fend them off.
Paris, hôtel de Boisgelin ou de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville, salon de la Mappemonde, Jacques de La Guépière, c. 1715
I am sitting at my desk, staring up at a huge metaphorical pile of paper. The next draft of Tragédie.
I returned to my office after a few weeks away to find this, hurriedly scribbled in my own handwriting:
I do not transgress. I transcend.
I’ve been writing in the voice of Julie d’Aubigny for so long, it seems she is now leaving notes for me.
So next…
I’ve read everything from detailed architectural plans of 17th century theatres to historical analyses of cross-dressing in literature to academic arguments about the Baroque.
Today I read another yet article* which suddenly made a whole lot of things abundantly clear. I love how that happens.
I’m torn between recording the process and theory, and focusing on the fiction.
But I will go tackle the redraft.
This is how I want it to be:
- An entertaining romp
- A heartbreaking tragedy
- A riff on celebrity, on gender, on queer, on redemption
- A picaresque, a song, an elegy, an aria
- Theatre on the page. Or possibly cinema.
- A rakish hat, a swirling cloak, a flashing blade.
Most of all, I want people to know about the real Mademoiselle de Maupin, even if she is viewed through lenses of my making.
Yes. There’s lots going on there. But I want you to be able to read it without knowing all the theory behind it, want it to fly on invisible strings. I want it to burst out of its formal structure and out of its historical context. I want you to laugh and wonder and pity her. I want it to be a ripping yarn.
I want it to be worthy of her.
[Rolls up sleeves.]
Best get to it, then.
* ‘Crossing Borders with Mademoiselle de Richelieu: Fiction, Gender, and the Problem of Authenticity’, Carolyn Woodward, Eighteenth Century Fiction, Volume 16, Issue 4, McMaster University, 2004.