For thirty days this year and every year, you can read my latest novel The Fountain in the Forest in synch with the French Republican Calendar. Conversion between the Republican and Gregorian Calendars is imprecise, but by common reckoning today’s date 8 March 2020 converts to Nonidi 19 Ventôse CCXXVIII in the Revolutionary Calendar. Factoring in Fabre d’Eglantine’s system of everyday rural imagery, 19 Ventôse 228 and Chapter 7 of the novel are dedicated to Chervil, a herb sometimes known as ‘French parsley’.
Fresh Chervil is not so easy to get hold of in the UK, so you might be better off buying seeds and growing your own, and it seems that March is a good time to start sowing. I’m tempted to give it a go.
Illustration: Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé, Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. Vol3, plate 381, 1888, Gera, Germany
While you’re waiting for them to grow, you might like to read ‘Into Day One of the Revolutionary Period: a Conversation’ by Sanja Perovic and Tony White [Opens as PDF], an edited transcript of a discussion from 2013 between Perovic and me with the artists Stuart Brisley and Maya Balcioglu, in which we discuss Brisley’s use of the Republican Calendar in a number of his performance works dating back to the late 1960s.
‘Into Day One of the Revolutionary Period: a Conversation’ by Sanja Perovic and Tony White was published by Domobaal editions in Stuart Brisley – Before the Mast (2013) (ISBN 9781905957507) on the occasion of Stuart Brisley’s exhibition at Domobaal – 04.10.13 to 30.11.13 and at Mummery + Schnelle – 16.10.13 to 30.11.13.
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Buy chervil seeds from Marshalls
The Fountain in the Forest was a Guardian ‘Book of the Day’ – read Sukhdev Sandhu’s review
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