"Today " interview

[doug rogers]

No: HPFGUIDX 173690

> Lady Potions:
> To me Rowling comes off like that princess that was told that the
> peasants do not have bread - the princess not understanding that that
> meant they had no food to eat, replied (knowing only of her own
> lifestyle) "well then let them eat cake."
>
> doug:
> That princess to whom you attribute the phrase, was Marie Antionette,
> to whom the phrase, "Let them eat cake!" has been attributed. Cake is
> the scrapings from the pan in which the bread was baked.

doug; corrections, curiously on topic

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/16892

> Q:
>
> Did the French queen, Marie Antoinette, ever actually utter the  
> phrase, "Let them eat cake"? I have a friend who claims that Crazy  
> Marie actually said something in French that, in phonetic spelling,  
> merely sounded like "Let them eat cake." ...
>
> A:
>
> I have a dream that someday one of these alleged facts of history  
> is actually going to pan out. However, today is not the day. While  
> Marie Antoinette was certainly enough of a bubblehead to have said  
> the phrase in question, there is no evidence that she actually did  
> so, and in any case she did not originate it. The peasants-have-no- 
> bread story was in common currency at least since the 1760s as an  
> illustration of the decadence of the aristocracy. The political  
> philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions it in his Confessions in  
> connection with an incident that occurred in 1740. (He stole wine  
> while working as a tutor in Lyons and then had problems trying to  
> scrounge up something to eat along with it.) He concludes thusly:  
> "Finally I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess  
> when told that the peasants had no bread: 'Well, let them eat cake.'"
>
> Now, J.-J. may have been embroidering this yarn with a line he had  
> really heard many years later. But even so, at the time he was  
> writing--early 1766--Marie Antoinette was only ten years old and  
> still four years away from her marriage to the future Louis XVI.  
> Writer Alphonse Karr in 1843 claimed that the line originated with  
> a certain Duchess of Tuscany in 1760 or earlier, and that it was  
> attributed to Marie Antoinette in 1789 by radical agitators who  
> were trying to turn the populace against her.
>
> As for your friend's suggestion, I suppose it's possible that one  
> day, while under the influence of powerful hallucinogens, Marie  
> said Le theme est quete ("The theme is quest"), and was overheard  
> by an English-speaking tourist--thus giving rise, as your friend  
> suggests, to the "Let them eat cake" legend. But frankly I doubt it.

I suggested that 'cake' was scrapings. I heard the reference from a  
baker of bread. I can find nothing to back it up anyway.

"I suppose it's possible that one day, while under the influence of  
powerful hallucinogens, Marie said Le theme est quete ("The theme is  
quest"), and was overheard by an English-speaking tourist"

Isn't The Quest what Potter is about?

The story that Marie Antoinette said such a thing can be investigated  
also and shown to be apocryphal and sourced, earlier, in one  
instance, to Rousseau when Marie Antoinette was merely ten years old,  
and yet from any other sources. Rather like Christianity. There is  
Alchemy, Shamanism and much magical thinking in Potter.

A reminder that we all see things from our own cultural, religious  
and philosophical biases, and many ideas may have sources in cultures  
other than our own. Resurrection, the second rising of the loaf from  
the dead, may be such a thing.

from

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=c&p=1

> cake 
  ----------

>
> c.1230, from O.N. kaka "cake," from W.Gmc. *kokon-, from PIE base  
> *gag-, *gog- "something round, lump of something." Not related to  
> L. coquere "to cook," as formerly supposed. Replaced its O.E.  
> cognate, coecel. Originally (until c.1420) "a flat, round loaf of  
> bread." Caked "thickly encrusted" (with) is from 1922. Let them eat  
> cake is from Rousseau's "Confessions," in reference to an incident  
> c.1740, when it was already proverbial, long before Marie  
> Antoinette. The "cake" in question was not a confection, but a poor  
> man's food.
> "What man, I trow ye raue, Wolde ye bothe eate your cake and haue  
> your cake?" ["The Proverbs & Epigrams of John Heywood," 1562]

Not a confection, but a poor man's food.

I don't believe in any case that, no matter what shortcomings the  
book may have, that it was intended by Rowling as a sop to the poor.

___<http://home.golden.net/~samu>
__<http://dougsamu.wordpress.com/>




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