Reception
The young writer Françoise Quoirez (1935–2004), in reading a passage of Marcel Proust evoking a duke of Sagan around 1950, was seduced by its sonority and chose "Sagan" as her "nom de plume".
“(..) With large dark blue eyes, very beautiful, so burning that they appeared black to some people. There was in her something bold, wild, dauntless and burning one which held the gaze". (Casimir Ensconce, "Talleyrand amoureux", edition France-Empire, 1975).
The opinions she inspired are various; those of men, admiring her beauty and intelligence, praise her, but those of women, jealous of her position and wealth, are more venomous. It is strange that she had no close female friends but instead was a solitary figure, despite keeping up a wide correspondence with many personalities of her era. She was a true European, in an era where that word was unknown. Born between two cultures, speaking three languages, in contact with all the political personalities of Europe, she could have been, in another era, thanks to her intelligence, a scholar or politician. But in that era, only men had a career, and so she was unable to realize her numerous talents. As Guizot said of her: "une personne rare et grande".
The duchess of Dino also has a descendant in Touraine, a "calm and human region, of a pure, very poetic beauty", in the person of Béatrice of Andia, one of her great-great-great granddaughters, president of the association of the "Friends of Château d'Azay-le-Rideau", owner of Château de La Chatonnière.
Read more about this topic: Princess Dorothea Of Courland
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)