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A Note on Translations

Depending on the context, I have either rendered in English or, more often, kept in the original the following terms used in the French aristocratic discourse of politeness:

aisance—The rough English equivalent is “ease” or “effortlessness,” but those translations do not evoke the emphasis on performance in the French social aesthetic of play.

complaisance—Only indirectly related to what “complacency” has come to mean in the Anglophone world. The French word connotes the art of “pleasing”—of being agréable—in rituals of politeness.

délicat—Literally “delicate,” with the implication of weakness or fragility, but sometimes implying the strength of a kind of intellectual acuity.

esprit—Connotes “mind,” “spirit,” “wit,” etc., depending on its usage in the text.

honnête (honnêteté)—The best translation is probably “polite,” but the French word evokes an entire way of life in Parisian elite circles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In some contexts its older meaning of “honesty” or “integrity” continued through the early modern era.

mondain (mondanité)—Of “The World,” the elite milieu of Paris. The word suggests a secular worldliness, a certain indifference to religious strictures, but has a much wider range of meaning.