Category Archives: In between

on literary tourism

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Awhile back I groaned at the rap-ification of Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud" in order to promote tourism (but what sort of tourist would be attracted by such a thing?) to the Lake District. In the Chronicle Review, Randy Malamud takes a closer look at the commodification of literary works and sites.  It's not a recent phenomenon, born of an obsession with existentialism and code-breaking, but something that began to occur a couple of centuries back:

In the 18th century, travelers began visiting the graves, birthplaces,
and preserved homes of dead literary figures, Watson writes, which led
eventually to "reinventing whole regions of the national map as
'Shakespeare Country,' 'Wordsworth's Lake District,' … 'Dickens's
London,' 'Hardy's Wessex,' and so on." 

But some academics say it is a means of interacting with literature which curtails the power of literature itself–snidely suggesting it's a pastime for amateurs: 

Watson calls literary tourism "a deeply counterintuitive response to
the pleasures and possibilities of imaginative reading." She describes
"the embarrassment palpable among professional literary scholars over
the practice of literary pilgrimage" because, in the age of Barthes and
Foucault, "only the amateur, only the naïve reader, could suppose that
there was anything more … to be found on the spot marked X." Using a
phrase from Jacques Derrida, she calls the landscape sought by literary
tourists a "dangerously supplementary" text.

The urge to interact with a book in a way that goes beyond just reading it is one I think about a lot– for example, I think it's what drives some of us to be literary critics.  (It is also the drive behind fan fiction.) But for those souls too sane to write fan fiction (or literary criticism), taking a trip to the place the book was written, or the place the book is set, can allow them to become some ideal version of themselves inspired by the book. It's the closest they can come to inhabiting the book itself.

A cottage industry aimed at these people has built up in books about literary Paris, but most of them just repeat the same things over and over again– Writers in Paris being an exception, along with The Select Crowd, not to mention the incontournable Thirza Vallois. 

Living in Paris, I often come across these traveling readers. 
Sometimes they're legitimately seeking a deeper connection to the works
they love, and sometimes they're just a little borderline.  Remember
that scene in Julie Delpy's film "Two Days in Paris" where Adam
Goldberg's character sends the Bush-loving Da Vinci Code-cracking
tourists in search of the Louvre into the rough neighborhoods around
the Gare du Nord? Priceless.

A little romantic imagining from time to time is the best thing to spur creativity and wistful contentment. I mean, just last week, walking down the stairs to the bathroom at Le Select, I took a moment to wonder about all the writers who have descended those same stairs to take a leak after drinking too much Pernod, and felt united with them, if not in talent, at least in our common need to pee.

Obviously I'm exaggerating here. (Or am I?) Malamud concludes that before we get sanctimonious about literary tourism, we should consider our own traveling habits.

In fact, I flatter myself that I've invented the perfect mode of literary tourism. When I travel, I always read in situ: Dracula among the ruins of Whitby Abbey, overlooking the River Esk; A Confederacy of Dunces in New Orleans; The French Lieutenant's Woman
in Lyme Regis; "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn" on the D Train; "Paul
Revere's Ride" outside the Old North Church. It's the best of both
worlds, making me a tourist and a reader at the same time. Cheap and
easy, no commercial or hermeneutic qualms whatsoever: I recommend it
highly.

Meanwhile, I'll get to work on my Beauvoir rap, just in case Paris tourism ever needs a lift. I guess it'll go something like this– "A woman ain't born, she's made, yo/boyeee better be afraid/cause this Second Sex is killah, huh/and this two volume book ain't fillah, whut."

Or not.

Close Reading: Carine Roitfeld in NY Magazine

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Photo: Hedi Slimane

C’est la guerre! An article on Carine Roitfeld in this week’s New York Magazine, called "The Anti-Anna," really highlights some of the pressure points of Franco-American conflict– chez les filles, that is.

American women love to effuse over how innately stylish French women are; entire forests have been levelled for books telling them how not to get fat, how to tie their scarf correctly, how to infuse their life with savoir faire, savoir vivre, joie de vivre, French flair, etc.  Tell us how we can be stylish like the French! they cry. So pragmatic, such dedicated students. As if style is something one can learn from a book.

But underneath this clichéd worship there is a certain undercurrent– of what? resentment? dislike? impatience?– which is far more compelling, that I wasn’t aware of until I read Amy Larocca’s article this morning.  You’re left at the end of the article pretty much expecting a war to break out, even though everyone is all smiles and styles.

It all seems encapsulated in this one quote:

“The American editors are very, how you say, slick,” Roitfeld says.
“Very perfect. Hair is perfect, they have a manicure. They are very
clean, they follow fashion. I don’t think they take many risks. They do
the total look of Prada. Me, I wear a lot of Japanese piece mixed with
a bit of classic Hermès and Prada. Even though jeans suit me, I never
wear jeans.”

Judging from the tone of the article, Roitfeld’s veiled insult doesn’t
sit well, somehow, with Larocca. She is not provincial enough to get
defensive about it,  but once the reader is attuned to the discord, all the details of the profile fall into place, and the deep ambivalence with which Americans regard the French becomes very clear.

Throughout the article, Larocca repeats verbatim what Roitfeld said to her in their interview, and any Anglophone who’s lived in France long enough will instantly recognize the cadences of a French person speaking English:

On why she is staying at the Carlyle Hotel in NY instead of someplace trendier, like the Mercer:

“For me, it is best to be the youngest in hotel,” she explains, “and I was not having this feeling at the Mercer.” (…) “It makes me happy because there is vewy gweat lighting,” she says
about the restaurant. “Vewy flatter.” (Roitfeld has reached a
compromise with the hard American r by converting them all to ws.)

On her entry into the fashion world:

“Some editors, they have that, they know all the designer from the
beginning of the nineteenth century. They know this is triple cashmere,
this is simple cashmere. Maybe they went to fashion school. Me, I
don’t. I just get a feeling about what is exciting. It is all just from
feeling. So I don’t know”—she pulls her lips into a pout and gives one
of those poufy little French exhales—“I think maybe I have a talent.”

Or her disdain for sneakers and those furry Australian Eskimo boots: "She has outlawed (…) what she calls "Hugg boots" in her office because "they are hugly.’"

Or her work at Missoni: “I like not to shock,” she says, “but there must be a bit of
provocation. The girl can never be with bruise or violence, but there
must be sex.

Do all New York Magazine interviews with foreigners reproduce their grammatical mistakes so faithfully?I don’t know, and I don’t have the time to check. But somehow, Larocca’s constant inclusion of Roitfeld’s accent smacks of passive-aggressiveness.

The putdowns keep coming, and always in response to a criticism
Roitfeld has made about America.  "She still finds the idea of an
office with a door where she’s expected
every day (at least by telephone) somewhat troubling. All she ever
wanted was to be surrounded by very attractive people and very
expensive clothes." This segues into a passage where Roitfeld confesses
to being no good at business, and then saying that being good at
business is very American.

Larocca points
out that Roitfeld "clogs" the back part of the magazine with photos of
herself and her daughter, then "claims" not to like the attention and
calls Anna Wintour "so iconic that she becomes a puppet." She calls
Roitfeld "Rizzo to America’s Sandy," which anyone who grew up in
America in the late seventies and eighties will immediately recognize
as a diss.

To an American reader, it’s hard to ignore the meanness behind some of Roitfeld’s comments. Like this one on her recent trip to Thailand:

“You think this will be so glamorous,” she sighs. “You have the idea in
your mind and then you get there and the people in the hotel …” She
grimaces and gestures hugely in the hip area. “There were lots of
people who were so fat and like that.”

It’s sad, but she sounds just like my (French) boyfriend. Maybe someone should write a follow-up book called French Woman Don’t Get Fat, and Laugh at Women Who Do. Roitfeld says she only hires skinny models and skinny girls to work for her with an attitude that could only come from a skinny woman (and Larocca reminds us of how skinny Roitfeld is several times). 

It’s repugnant in any language (and pottery has been thrown when said boyfriend has uttered such inanities), but fashion does not exist in an ethical realm (just ask PETA). Which is what makes the American fashion industry, who promise that you too can look like a model, if you buy this dress or try this diet, that much more complicit than the French, who simply say "you’ll never be this cool or this thin." At least they’re honest about it.

Larocca’s respect for French Vogue and for Roitfeld’s personal style (if not her person) comes through– but at the end of the article we are left with a feeling of strong ambivalence, one which is echoed in the comments left by readers, which range from "I love her" to "What a ridiculous, self-absorbed git."

When it comes to someone as creative, infamous, and successful as Roitfeld, the point is not that you love her or think she’s a git. She doesn’t care so much what you think, because so many of the right people find her impossibly stylish, and want to "be sitting and looking like her." And this insouciance is, in fact, quite French. That’s the thing American audiences respond to (thus the popularity of self-help books), and the thing that drives them crazy.

Ikea showdown: France, 1; Japan, 0

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Fact: When I bought my bed from Ikea in France in 2005, the customer service rep made sure I got everything I needed: bedframe, mattress, sommier à lattes.  There were some problems with the delivery  (see here and here) but there was never a problem on the level of service.

Fact: Three years later, N and I are in the land of service with a smile (and a bow), where those who designed  the system thought of everything– like, what am I to do if I want to take a bath in precisely 10 minutes but am busy in the kitchen until then? I can push this button and the bathtub will magically fill! problem solved!– except this: when you buy a bed from Ikea, you have to order the middle bar separately. The Hamar, it’s called. And Ikea lets you know oh so politely on their website, to which customer service so kindly referred us only after we’d bought our bed, had it delivered, built the frame, and then discovered we were missing that middle beam. We called, perplexed, wondering if the delivery men had accidentally left this piece of heavy metal in their truck by mistake. No, no, you have to buy the thing separately. It only costs $10 but its absence insures you will continue to sleep on the floor until such time as you go back to the store and buy it. For you cannot order by phone at Ikea in Japan, nor by internet. You much purchase in person, at the store.

Analysis: In Paris, this bar appeared magically with the rest of the bed, without my even knowing I had to order it. In Tokyo, N has had to go trekking out to Ikea again (in Minami Funabashi) while I have stayed home with a headache. I hope he finds his way home soon and I hope he has the beam.   

Conclusion: French customer service wins out over Japanese. For once! Service with a shrug is better than no service at all.

dépaysée, still

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I have a confession to make: I don’t really like Tokyo.

I know I’m supposed to be really into living here, I’m supposed to feel really lucky that I flew business class and live in a luxury high-rise  with a gym and automatically-opening toilets, but I could have skipped the plane ride and stayed home in Paris in my 5th floor 30m2 walk-up. Sure, the food’s good here, and the Japanese have great style and a flair for design, and I can appreciate that, but two weeks is all I really would have needed here.  I’m not a japanophile. Never have been. Didn’t know what a tatami mat was ’til a few weeks ago. Don’t eat sushi. Don’t speak a word of Japanese.  Would be willing to learn but I don’t have the time, and really, I’d rather learn Italian. And, with rare exception, it is god-awful ugly here.

But if circumstances were different, I could be a huge japanophile. Had you plunked me down here five years ago, or, who knows, five years hence, I could have been the biggest japanophile going.  But I’m here now, and I have too much on my mind to navigate my surroundings.  I don’t have the mental energy to deal with being here– I want to be in a place where I feel comfortable, where I know how the nearest research library works, where I go to the supermarket and can read the labels. And I feel guilty that I’m in Tokyo and I sit in my apartment every day and read.  I try going to a Starbucks (there are no cafes in this part of town) but can’t concentrate for all the Japanese clattering about my ears. It is not a language you can tune out, not when the guy next to you keeps going "Hai! Hai!" So I gather up my grande cappuccino irritatedly and go back upstairs. And then I feel guilty for being irritated, and guilty for the involuntary Gallic exhalation expressing my irritation. Je ne suis pas faite pour un pays aussi poli. Je suis New Yorkaise et Parisienne, bordel! All those rude New Yorkers and Parisians everyone complains about? I’m one of them! I’m impatient and superior! Get out of my way! Get into the subway car! Walk faster! Get to the point! Stop yapping in my ear! Stop walking on the wrong side of the sidewalk! Stop bowing! Stop smiling! For the love of God, stop being so accommodating, you’re freaking me out!

So. Next time you’re reading this blog and thinking how lucky I am to get to live in Tokyo and Paris, cut it out. It’s not luck. It’s a bizarre twist of fate. Maybe things will improve when I come back this summer, after my orals, when I can chill out a bit and go do some tourist stuff, go see some shrines, get out of town a little, see Kyoto, Osaka, whatever. For now, though, thank the Lord above I’m going back to Paris in a week and a half. You can be jealous about that, if you want. That’s freaking cool. But Tokyo? I’ll pass.

[NDLR: Sorry for the rant. I'm feeling disagreeable. And blogs are made for ranting.]

   

Akasaka apartment stories

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Akasaka_night
We moved to new digs on Friday: a 16th floor aerie with a view that looks like midtown Manhattan: concrete, steel, and glass.  The buildings capture the sunset and twinkle at night, when a million red lights blink in the dark, and the lights in the buildings are never turned off.  In the morning helicopters drift across the sky like mosquitoes. It’s in a neighborhood called Akasaka, a 5 minute walk from N’s office, not far from the mall at Tokyo Midtown and the home of the Crown Prince of Japan. Nothing fancy.

Everything is automated here. The bathtub is set to a timer and fills up by itself. You can set the temperature you want. If the water cools while you’re sitting in it, you can reheat it.  In one apartment we saw, there was a button on the wall in the kitchen to fill the tub in the bathroom.  The flowers on the balcony water themselves.  The "shower toilets" have a whole range of functions (as Anthony Bourdain discovered last week on a visit to Tokyo) that include seat-warming, butt-cleaning, music-playing, and automatic flushing. Ours opens automatically when you approach it– this is the only prerequisite N had for the apartment, apart from wanting double vitrage.  It’s a cool idea in theory, but in practice, not so much. The thing is, the cover opens every time you come near the toilet, whether you need to use it or not. The cover lifts, and the thing beeps and whirs expectantly– it wants some action. It’s like waking a sleeping dog. And we have some cabinets next to the toilet that I go into a few times a day. The opening and beeping and whirring are really getting on my nerves.   

We’ve spent the last few weekends frequenting design showrooms and
homeware stores, deciding on mattresses, bedframes, tables, chairs,
curtains, duvets, duvet covers, bathmats, the works. We are now home
design enthusiasts, if not experts. Bo Concept rules. They have cool stuff that costs way less than Ligne Roset or Cassina but is a major step up from Ikea or the dorm-like furniture at Muji.

Nevertheless, in these lean times even investment bankers can’t afford to give Ikea the brush-off; and so Saturday we struck out for Little Sweden in Funabashi.  It took nigh on
two hours to find the place– we took the wrong trains, got off at the
wrong stations, and when we finally got to Minami-Funabashi (that’s
right, not Nishi-Funabashi or just plain Funabashi) we realized how
simple it was to begin with, and the trip back took under a half hour. We are now the proud owners of a Malm bed and a Bjursta dining table.  (Or at least, we will be when Ikea delivers our stuff this week.)

For the moment, though, we have no furniture, while we wait for the boat from Paris and the truck from Ikea. We eat dinner off of a cardboard box and sleep on mattresses direct on the floor. It’s a little like camping, but with a shower toilet and a view of Tokyo.

LE SILENCE DES POLYGLOTTES

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The previous post, en VO

LE SILENCE DES POLYGLOTTES

Ne pas parler sa langue maternelle. Habiter des sonorités, des logiques
coupées de la mémoire nocturne du corps, du sommeil aigre-doux de
l’enfance. Porter en soi comme un caveau secret, ou comme un enfant
handicapé -chéri et inutile-, ce langage d’autrefois qui se fane sans
jamais vous quitter. Vous vous perfectionnez dans un autre instrument,
comme on s’exprime avec l’algèbre ou le violon. Vous pouvez devenir
virtuose avec ce nouvel artifice qui vous procure d’ailleurs un nouveau
corps, tout aussi artificiel, sublimé – certains disent sublime. Vous
avez le sentiment que la nouvelle langue est votre résurrection:
nouvelle peau, nouveau sexe. Mais l’illusion se déchire lorsque vous
vous entendez, à l’occasion d’un enregistrement par exemple, et que la
mélodie de votre voix vous revient bizarre, de nulle part, plus proche
du bredouillis d’antan que du code d’aujourd’hui. Vos maladresses ont
du charme, dit-on, elles sont même érotiques, surenchérissent les
séducteurs. Personne ne relève vos fautes, pour ne pas vous blesser, et
puis on n’en finirait plus, et à la fin on s’en fout. On ne vous
signifie pas moins que c’est agaçant quand même: parfois, une levée de
sourcils ou un "Pardon?" en volute vous font comprendre que "vous n’en
serez jamais", que "ce n’est pas la peine", que "là au moins on n’est
pas dupe". Dupe, vous ne l’êtes pas non plus. Tout au plus êtes-vous
croyant, prêt à tous les apprentissages, à tous les âges, pour
atteindre- dans cette parole des autres imaginée comme parfaitement assimilée un
jour – Dieu sait quel idéal, par-delà l’aveu implicite d’une déception
due à cette origine qui n’a pas tenu sa promesse.

Julia Kristeva, Etangers à nous-mêmes Fayard 1988

This excerpt was the subject of a recent controversy on the Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur (SAES– basically a group of English profs in France, like a mini French MLA) listserv. The text was used for the CAPES interne examination, a concours which would-be English teachers must pass (less prestigious and difficult than the agrégation but still pretty difficult and formulaic); the CAPES interne, if I’m not mistaken, is for those who have already been working as English teachers but want to move up in the ranks, as opposed to the CAPES externe, which is for people wanting to enter the English-teaching corps.

Test-takers had an hour and a half to translate the excerpt from French into English. This exercise is called "thème," as opposed to "version," or translating from English to French. It’s pretty difficult to translate from your native language to another language, and it was suggested by several members of the SAES (some of whom are jury members who create and grade the CAPES and agrég) that the ideas in this passage are too theoretical. One SAES member called this passage "charabia"–gobbledygook– and another said it was not, but would lead to charabia from those attempting to translate it.

I think the whole enterprise of the CAPES and agrégation are formulaic and don’t test either your capacities or your knowledge, but your educational background. The real issue as far as I’m concerned is not "is this too hard" but "how does this test even serve teachers or students?" The educational system in France, particularly as concerns the teaching of English, needs a massive overhaul, and the charabia of French theory is the least of our problems.

Native English-speakers, what do you think of the difficulty of this passage? Anyone want to attempt a translation?

The Silence of Polyglots

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‘Not speaking one’s mother tongue. Living with resonances and reasoning
that are cut off from the body’s nocturnal memory, from the bittersweet
slumber of childhood. Bearing within oneself like a secret vault, or
like a handicapped child–cherished and useless–that language of the
past that withers without ever leaving you. You improve your ability
with another instrument, as one expresses oneself with algebra or the
violin. You can become a virtuoso with this new device that moreover
gives you a new body, just as artificial and sublimated–some say
sublime. You have a feeling that the new language is a resurrection: new
skin, new sex. But the illusion bursts when you hear, upon listening to
a recording, for instance, that the melody of your voice comes back to
you as a peculiar sound, out of nowhere, closer to the old spluttering
than to today’s code. Your awkwardness has its charm, they say, it is
even erotic, according to womanizers, not to be outdone. No one points
out your mistakes, so as not to hurt your feelings, and then there are
so many, and after all they don’t give a damn. One nevertheless lets you
know that it is irritating just the same. Occasionally, raising the
eyebrows or saying “I beg your pardon?” in quick succession lead you to
understand that you will “never be part of it”, that it “is not worth
it”, that there, at least, one is “not taken in”. Being fooled is not
what happens to you either. At the most, you are willing to go along,
ready for all apprenticeships, at all ages, in order to reach–within
that speech of others, imagined as being perfectly assimilated, some day
–who knows what ideal, beyond the implicit acknowledgment of a
disappointment caused by the origin that did not keep its promise.’

–Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves (NY: Columbia University Press, 1994,  p.5).  Trans. Leon S. Roudiez

via SAES

Why the French don’t suck; and, a blogging wake-up call

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"Why the French don’t suck." That’s the theme of the first episode of Anthony Bourdain’s show on the Travel Network, "No Reservations," which I just watched for the first time. I laughed, of course, in that programmed way (it’s a tired subject, mutual Franco-American disdain), and then thought again, and stopped laughing, and started making notes for this blog post.

I’ve lived out of the States for so long that I forgot there are people in my native country for whom "French" is synonymous with many, many adjectives, none of which have any meaning for me, whether they are true or false. "Snobby. Sophisticated. Rude. Smelly." Whatever.  I guess they’re all of those things and none of them.  When provoked* I’ve been known to make some sweeping generalizations about the French, but over time I’ve found they’re not on the whole particularly snobby or sophisticated or rude or smelly.

The point is, the French don’t suck and I forgot anyone thought they did.  Until the other day.

I signed up to do the Great Interview Experiment, initiated by dear Neil at Citizen of the Month, and was placed in an blogger sandwich, quizzed by DaveX of Startling Moniker and assigned to interview Pocket CT.  Here is the result of my interview with DaveX.  His questions surprised me, mainly because reading them I got the distinct sensation that this cool radio guy would not normally be interested in my blog and probably thought the French kind of sucked. He might not have intended to imply that at all, but the idea that it could be so shook me out of my complacent expat bubble, where it’s perfectly normal to live in Paris, and what’s abnormal is being obliged to now split time between Paris and Tokyo. 

Dave also made a comment to me, privately, that he thought this blog had changed so radically from its beginning to now that, in reading my archives, he had to check a few times to make sure he was reading the right blog.  It’s still fun to read, he said, just more "studied" now than it was then.

That was kind of sad, in a way.  When I started this blog it was a way to tell all the people at home about my new surroundings, and I was really invested in documenting my Parisian life. Then as traffic started to build up I became much more self-conscious about writing so openly about my life. And as my PhD has advanced I’ve become more concerned about the effect the blog could have on my professional reputation. "I don’t want my students and colleagues to see me blogging about mini-skirts," I explained to Dave.  So I started blogging less about my life and more about the life of the mind, and in the transfer I took for granted that my lifestyle was banal and uninteresting, which is, in a way, a snobbish thing to do, in that it assumes the reader is in on the game and doesn’t bother to explain the rules.

That’s when I started to feel sort of cramped here. I see some of the other Paris bloggers having more fun with their writing, and I miss the earlier days of being able to say whatever I wanted, telling crazy stories and still finding everyday life meaningful. I don’t want the blog to come across as "studied." It should be high-minded, but not snobby. It should invite the reader into an experience and a place and an idea, not leave him feeling stuck on the outside.  And a good blog should actually serve some informative service, rather than being a monument to the vanity of its writer. As a small beginning towards addressing that, I’ve instituted a little calendar in the left sidebar, featuring upcoming literary events in Paris, along with a link to the complete monthly events calendar maintained by Jennifer K. Dick. (Please let me know, Internet Explorer users, if this has screwed up the way the blog loads for you.)

So thanks to Dave, for helping me get some perspective on what I’m doing here.  Maybe being in Tokyo half the time, where once more I am an outsider, will help me loosen up a bit. And I hope I’ll continue to show, though I’m no Anthony Bourdain, why the French don’t suck.

*As I was, for example, in this post.

flying east

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I have so much to say about the Simone de Beauvoir centennial this week, among other things, but we are leaving for Tokyo today and my morning has to be taken up with more mundane activities like going to the pharmacy, packing up toiletries, figuring out exactly how many books I can hide in the bottom of N’s backpack before he catches on to me, etc.  So I will leave you with a few links and a promise to write more, soon.  Sayonara for now!

The Guardian’s really useful overview of the centennial and the issues raised this week.

L’Express

Le Figaro (with movies!)

From Le Monde’s dossier on Beauvoir: "En marge des études universitaires"; "Féminisme et Temps Modernes"

From “Maîtresse” to “Concubine”

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Olympia
Edouard Manet, Olympia (1863)

Today my mother can be proud.  No doubt for the last 4 years she has  been secretly cringing that her elder daughter has been swanning around the internet under the pseudonym "Maîtresse"; perhaps she has taken comfort in the idea that it is, after all, just a pseudonym. 

Well, today is an important day in the life of any mistress, for today is the day I became a concubine.

Yes, a concubine.  I’m a graduate of Barnard College, a feminist literary critic, a Virginia Woolf scholar, and I am also my boyfriend’s concubine.

But it’s okay, because he’s my concubine, too.

I love the cultural décalage between what this term signifies to an Anglophone versus a Francophone.  Let’s take a look via Wikipedia:

Concubinage: La situation de concubinage décrit la situation des couples non mariés.
And from the page "Concubinage en France": L’article 515-8 du Code civil français
définit le concubinage comme « une union de fait, caractérisée par une
vie commune présentant un caractère de stabilité et de continuité,
entre deux personnes, de sexe différent ou de même sexe, qui vivent en
couple ».

So what’s the problem with that? it’s just two people who live together who aren’t married! I’m his, he’s mine, we’re concubines.

Yeah.  You know what it means in English.

Concubinage: is the state of a woman or youth in an ongoing, quasi-matrimonial
relationship with a man of higher social status. Typically, the man has
an official wife and, in addition, one or more concubines. Concubines
have limited rights of support from the man, and their offspring are
publicly acknowledged as the man’s children, albeit of lower status
than children born by the official wife or wives; these legal rights
distinguish a concubine from a mistress.

So clearly being a concubine is a step up from being a mistress! Why’s it better? *Shrugs.* I don’t know. At least it’s legally recognized.

Like I said, today my mother can be proud.