Research = Painful + Exciting

About half the time I spend in the library, this is what I'm looking at. That's right - I read letters on microfilm.

Actually, scratch that. What I should have said was, I painstakingly attempt to read nearly illegible, hand-written letters whose authors either never learned or never cared enough to correct their undifferentiated, early-20th-century French scrawl . . . on microfilm reels magnified by 40-year-old, extremely unergonomic, mostly unmanageable contraptions. And don't even get me started on the card catalogue.

In any case, for the time being I read letters, and if they contain something interesting, I write it down. Sometimes I read books - which usually lead me back to microfilm. (It turns out the BN doesn't trust lowly grad students to handle original documents, and I don't entirely blame them. Once in a while I get to leaf through a folder, but most of the time, when I'm not reading books, I'm reading microfilm.)

The letter you see here* was written by one of the major protagonists of my study, the Princesse Edmond de Polignac, née Winaretta Singer. Nadia Boulanger, the recipient of the letter, entertained a lively correspondence with the Princesse, most of which is on the same reel of microfilm at the BN. Allow me to share with you my weak attempt at a transcription (forget translation) of this letter:

... ou la nouvelle édition - pour beaucoup moins - ou toutes les cantates dans quelques volumes séparés - à environ 4 ou 500 f.

Je vous regrette sans cesse. Vous n'en doutez pas j'espère. Il fait encore merveilleusement beau - seule ?Pser eut chez moi a nous ???? des amis de ???? que nous promenons en motorcage? - à ??? gre? une s'il manque de musique pour la moment - Giorgio Levi ??? qui je jouais ...

It's an uphill climb, but I have another 8 months to get really, really good at this. And sometimes, when I can actually read a letter, I find something truly interesting/relevant/useful, and that's when things get exciting!

* Don't tell anyone I took a picture of this letter. They would have let me print a copy if I'd asked, but I didn't, so mum's the word. (This kind of intrigue is another part of what makes research exciting!)