French President Macron presents PM Modi Proust’s novels, Charlemagne chessmen’s duplicate

By Press Trust of India: French President Emmanuel Macron has gifted Prime Minister Narendra Modi a framed facsimile of a 1916 {photograph} of a Parisian presenting flowers to a Sikh officer and a duplicate of the Charlemagne chessmen, courting again to the eleventh Century, officers mentioned right here.

Macron additionally gifted Modi a sequence of novels – A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) – by Marcel Proust printed between 1913 and 1927 and regarded a very powerful works of French literature of the early twentieth century.

The {photograph} courting again to 1916 was clicked on the Champs-Elysees through the army parade on July 14 by a photograph reporter from the Meurisse information company. The authentic is situated on the National Library of France.

The picture depicts a passer-by giving flowers to a Sikh viceroy’s commissioned officer (VCO) from the Indian Expeditionary Force (IEF) deployed in France.

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At the time this snapshot was taken, the Battle of the Somme, wherein the IEF had been preventing, had already begun.

In World War I, some 1.3 million Indians volunteered to struggle for Britain, together with 8,77,000 combatants. Over 70,000 of them misplaced their lives, together with about 9,000 in France and Belgium.

Most of those combatants had been from “warrior peoples” within the north of the Indian subcontinent, just like the Sikh troopers marching on the Champs-Elysees.

This picture pays tribute to the Indian troopers who fought in Europe alongside France in 1914-1918, within the context of a number of Indian battalions partaking within the parade on 14 July 2023.

It additionally evokes India and France’s long-standing shared battle to defend common values.

Officials mentioned Chaturanga, the widespread ancestor of European and Chinese chess, appeared in India from the seventh century CE.

The “Charlemagne” chessmen get their title from the legend that they got as a present to the Frankish Emperor by the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid.

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In actuality, they had been made on the finish of the eleventh century, most likely in Southern Italy, given the tools utilized by the characters and the presence of elephants as bishops.

The authentic chessmen are saved on the Cabinet des Medailles on the National Library of France and had been previously on the Treasury of the Basilica of Saint-Denis.

This copy, gifted to the Prime Minister, is manufactured from bronze-filled PLA comprising the 16 items out there to the participant at first of a sport of chess – king, queen, two bishops, two knights, two rooks and eight pawns.

The chessmen had been made by the French start-up Cosmyx 3D, which specialises within the 3D printing of artwork and technical objects, and which took half within the Fabriqué en France (Made in France) exhibition this yr.

“This unique item represents both the long history of trade between India and Europe, with the elephant piece recalling the Indian origins of the game of chess, and the expertise of French companies in terms of innovation and new technologies,” officers mentioned.

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Macron additionally gifted Modi Le temps retrouve (Time Regained), the seventh and remaining quantity of Proust’s acclaimed sequence of novels A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time).

This quantity IV of A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) from the Bibliothèque de la Pleiade consists of the ultimate two volumes of the unique work, Albertine disparue (The Fugitive) and Le temps retrouve (Time Regained), numerous drafts and descriptions by the writer and far educational commentary. It was printed in 1989.

Macron additionally gifted Modi the English version, Everyman’s Library, which additionally consists of the ultimate two volumes of A la recherche du temps perdu.

The translation is by C Ok Scott Moncrieff (1889-1930), a recent of Proust and the unique translator of Proust into English, as revised by Terence Kilmartin (1922-1991).

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This model is taken into account to be among the best English translations of Proust.

The Bibliotheque de la Pleiade assortment represents educational excellence and probably the most excellent contributions of French authors to world tradition. As Prime Minister Modi doesn’t communicate French, this version comes with an English translation.