Jacques Deval’s Rives Pacifiques (1937)
Posted: May 29th, 2014 | 1 Comment »Jacques Deval (who’s real name was Jacques Boularan) was a French writer, playwright and director born in 1875. His is perhaps now best remembered for his play Tovaritch that became a 1937 film of the same name starring Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer, a classic tale of White Russians fled to Paris.
However Boularan/Deval also wrote a journal of his trip to the Far East entitled Rives Pacifiques (Pacific Rivers, I guess, though to my knowledge it’s never been translated into English), published by Gallimard in 1937. Therefore Deval straddles two interests of mine – Paris and Asia in the 1930s.
First of all, thank you for your interesting blog. I discover a lot of details about Chinese (and Paris also) history, and I love also the digging up of all the old books and pictures.
This book sounds promising, and I’ll have to see if I can find it!
Just one point though: I think that “Rives Pacifiques” would better translate as “Pacific Shores”. “River” should be “rivière” in French, and not “rive”.