Moliere : pseudonym of Jean Baptiste Poquelin (1622-73), French dramatist, actor, & master of comedy. He was eventually acclaimed as one of the greatest of French writers. In 1673 Molière collapsed on the stage during an early performance as the lead actor of his new play Le malade imaginaire, & died the same night.
... understanding of human nature has created a tender bond between Moliere and his audiences. Moliere never judges. Rather there is a deep compassion in his acute observation of man and society and a sorrow that humanity is as it is. Moliere s way of expressing all this is through comedy. Born in Paris in 1622, Jean-Baptiste Pocquelin (Moliere was his stage name) belonged to a bourgeois family. His future... "Oh, father and mother, " he cries, "why didn't you teach me this?" The ynius of Moliere lies partly in this ability to manifest the complexity of a human being even while caricaturing him. Moliere was a master observer of human nature. A contemporary writer once wryly labeled him "The Contemplator". What was Moliere contemplating? His was the world of theatre, a world of theatere, a world of fiction... create his illusion by voice, movement, and gesture in patterns of colour and sound.... From John Wood, Introduction, in Moliere, The Miser and Other Plays (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1962), pp. xvii-xviii. Moliere: His Life and Works Moliere was born in Paris in 1622 and died there in 1673. His father, Jean Poquelin, was a merchant upholsterer and a man of some substance ...
... because they were young and with the revolution had not had too much time to go to university. They could ask Him everything. Some wanted to learn languages, French, for instance; so, going straight to Moliere, he selected L’Avare, which was there amidst the piles of Sanskrit, English, German and Italian books scattered about his room and right on his cot, for they were too poor to afford even a cupboard... table—the only table—to find a scattering of books in Greek and Latin ... and walk out, throwing up his hands in the air: “He knows Greek! He knows Latin!” Such a man obviously could not make bombs. And Moliere, somewhere between the Rig-Veda and Aristophanes, burst out laughing. All of life was there. The Supramental Such was the life they led until Mother’s arrival. He was forty-two years old ...
... field of medicine; at one time indeed not only did they pullulate, but the system of medicine itself seemed so defective that there were plenty of clear and enlightened minds who were inclined with Moliere to denounce the whole thing as a gross pseudo-science, an elaborate and solemn system of ignorance, humbug and quackery. Supposing that view had prevailed,—it could not, merely because men are too ...
... Finally the Mother said that She would pay him his price and name it after him, calling it Harpagon. Amrita asked me if I knew this name which I did as it was the name of the Miser in the play by Moliere "L'Avar" which I had read in English many years back. But the great paradox is that the Mother put to work in this place called 'The Miser' a man by the name "Udar" given by Sri Aurobindo which means ...
... Fteire. We took extracts from Magister Ludi, the beautiful and thoughtful book by Herman Hesse. We have also presented extracts from Richard Bach's book, Jonathan Seagull Livingstone; and text from Moliere which gives counter-example as to how teaching ought not to be. And also The Little Prince, Saint-Exupery. We took Letters from a Father to his Daughter which show how as a good father he trains ...
... arteriosclerosis, and dropsy. Many eminent men had syphilis (Henry VIII, Benvenuto Cellini, Baudelaire), and sufferers from tuberculosis can be listed with out end — Voltaire, Kant, Keats, Dostoevsky, Moliere, Schiller, Descartes, Cardinal Manning, Spinoza, Cicero, St. Francis. But in the realm of physical deformity names are not so numerous. Several celebrated writers were eunuches or eunuchoid. Peter ...
... apparently with sense, having such insensible notions! But there are and have been plenty with sense who have held that view about allopathy (and homeopathy also and all medicine). What about Moliere? A man of sense, if ever there was one! But our allopathic medicine is a science developed by painstaking labour—experiments researches, etc. To a certain extent. The theory is imposing, but ...
... Mill, 140 Milton, 194, 251 Minerva, 222 Mitra, 9 Modem Age, 145, 152 Moghuls, 58, 239 Mohammed, 208,215 Mohenjo-daro, 238, 243 Moliere, 197 Moloch, 220 Montesquieu,212 Morris, 151 Mother, The, 366, 372 Mysteries, -Christian, 153 -Druidic, 151, 153 -Eleusinian, 150, 151 ...
... bringing down the entire edifice that we built over it, and without crushing the small cell along with it? That is where we really need a divine magician. We even suspect, along with Aristophanes, Moliere and Sri Aurobindo, that this magician must be something of a humorist. But let us be serious (for the time being). There are even those disquieting bombs that we are piling up like moles in their ...
... Quixote was a satire and so much more. In the writings of John Donne we may detect the direct imitation of the Roman satirists. Most of the great dramatists of the 17th century were satirists, Moliere being the prince among them. Samuel Butler's Hudibras was a great example of unadulterated satire. Dignified political satire was carried to perfection in Dryden's Absolm and Achitophel. The ...
... golf club than we would Antonio or the Doge of Venice or King Lear. He'd make a bigger hit." 1 And what about Monsieur Jourdain, that delectable creation of the unsurpassed genius of comedy, Moliere? "Polish me", entreated Jourdain who was a nouveau riche and who intensely desired to pay anything to anybody if only he would acquire the 'polish of the world of the court' of the Sun King, Louis ...
... State. Whether I did complete the translation I cannot now recollect. I began my Latin with Virgil's Aeneid, and Italian with Dante. I have already told you about my French, there I started with Moliere. I should tell you what one gains by this method, at least what has been my personal experience. One feels as if one took a plunge into the inmost core of the language, into that secret heart ...
... even there one single Name can be pointed out as the life and soul, the very cream of the characteristic poetic genius of the nation. I am, of course, referring to Racine, Racine who, in spite of Moliere and Corneille and Hugo, stands as the most representative French poet, the embodiment of French resthesis par excellence. Such a great name is Rabindranath Tagore in Bengali literature. We ...
... tell you why Gurudev had called me!! At any rate, 'Mon-si-o Fouquet' was my first acquaintance with the French. But not so for Gurudev. He had visited France several times. He had also translated Moliere and Victor Hugo into Bengali. He not only knew famous men like Romain Rolland and Silvain Levy, but his family was very intimate with the Karpelés family. Rathindranath Tagore, the Poet's son, wrote ...
... After he had finished with his work connected with the two papers, he would drop in on the young men, join in their talks or teach them languages, like French. Nolini began straight away with Moliere's L'Avare. Nolini and Moni and Bejoy were the permanent residents. Ganen Maharaj, of Ramakrishna Mission, was a frequent visitor. Biren Ghosh, Saurin Bose and Ramchandra Majumdar turned up almost ...
... me. Sri Aurobindo took up the young men's education from where he had left off at Shyam Pukur Lane, at the Karmayogin office at Calcutta. Remember how he taught Nolini French beginning with Moliere's L'Avare? Nolini had studied only Bengali and English in his school and college days. Here he continued to learn French, and having such a wonderful teacher he did not miss knowing Greek and Latin ...
... iousness than its true supra-physical profundity, its genuine plumbing of mysterious universes behind the one we know in ordinary waking moments. I was now in a hypersensitive condition. Moliere's Monsieur Jourdain was surprised to find he had talked prose all his life: I was discovering that, when I talked prose, there came suddenly in the midst of commonplace language bright poetic phrases ...
... He said, "At the National College (National Council of Education, now Jadavpur University) they have got the books I loaned to them. You take this note from me. They will give you a volume of Moliere's Works." I started right away with Page 36 a play from this volume, L' Avare. At several places in the margins he wrote out in his own hand the English equivalents for my convenience ...
... term is employed the patient experiences great relief as if he felt the doctor knew the occult evil causing the suffering and therefore possessed the power to deal with it. In a scene in a play of Moliere's we find this practice illustrated: Patient: I suffer with my head, Doctor. Doctor: Oh I know. That's Cephalalgia. Patient: My digestion is also bad. Doctor: Don't worry at ...
... usness than its true supra-physical profundity, its genuine plumbing of mysterious universes behind the one we know in ordinary waking moments. I was now in a hypersensitive condition. Moliere's Monsieur Jourdain was surprised to find he had talked prose all his life: I was discovering that, when I talked prose, there came suddenly in the midst of commonplace language bright poetic phrases ...
... ramifications, they employ terms which, alas, instead of revealing the secrets of diseases to the worried patients visiting their clinics, only dumbfound them beyond measure. In a scene in a play of Moliere's we find this practice humorously illustrated: Patient: I suffer with my head, Doctor. Doctor: Oh, I know. That's Cephalalgia. Patient: (very much worried): My digestion is also... it? Sri Aurobindo: Injections are all the fashion; for everything it is 'inject, inject, and again inject'. Medicine has gone through three stages in modern times - first (at the beginning in Moliere's days) it was 'bleed and douche' — then 'drug and diet' - now it is 'serum and injection'. Praise the Lord! not for the illnesses, but for the doctors. However, each of these formulas has a part truth ...
... young Ashram ladies who were to work with her. She taught them to speak English as well. The Mother also gave Udar a small shed for his work. She called it Harpagon, which is the name of the miser in Moliere’s play L’Avare (The Miser). She said that the land had belonged to a very wealthy man and he could have given the land freely but instead he doubled the price! At first the Mother said “No”, but then ...
... remarkable humorous characters created by the great masters of fiction. Some of the more well-known names in this field are: Cervantes's Don Quixote with Sancho Panza beside him, Shakespeare's Falstaff, Moliere's Monsieur Jourdain the 'Bourgeois Gentilhomme', Dickens's Mr. Picwick, Daudet's Tartarin of Tarascon, Wode-house's Jeeves, Harry Leon Wilson's Mr. Ruggles, etc. Here is a small piece illustrating ...
... continue. I was not concerning myself in the least with his cures and knew nothing at all about them. And you say all that was luck because his ideas differ from yours? Are you not reasoning like Moliere's doctors who declared that a patient's audacity in living contrary to the rules of Science was intolerable or like the British Medical Council which refused any validity to Sir Herbert Barker's cures ...
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