I was reading "The Last Lesson" written by Alphonse Daudet.
In the following para:
Once some beetles flew in; but nobody paid any attention to them, not even the littlest ones who worked right on tracing their fish-hooks as if that was French, too.
Here I didn't understand the meaning of the line "who worked right on tracing their fish-hooks as if that was French, too".
Can anyone explain this to me? English is not my native language.
This would be a translation from the French, of course, but fish-hooks must refer to the curved strokes in letters of the alphabet which the youngest children were learning to write. They used to be called pothooks in English (from the curved iron hooks used for hanging pots and kettles over the fire in old kitchens).
This is a reference to a style of writing. The children were being taught how to write in a formal calligraphic way. The fish hook is an analogy for the shape of the curves used in the lettering.
For an example, see https://www.iampeth.com/lesson/script-in-the-copperplate-style-the-needle-stitch-script-variant
The children were practicing beautiful writing. Some letters included shapes similar to actual fish-hooks used in fishing:
The students were feeling emotional about the big changes, and about how the older people appeared to feel about the big changes. They noticed that their teacher was explaining things especially well that day, and they too wanted to do their best on their last day of schooling in French.
What I understood from the line you had trouble with was that objectively, beautiful writing in German might turn out to include the fish-hook shape too, similar to beautiful writing in French, but the students tried extra hard that day, as though the fish-hook shapes they were making were unique to the French language.
You might want to stop reading my post at this point. But if you like, you could keep going and see how I learned about the beautiful writing exercises of yore.
My mother was born in Germany in 1927. She attended first grade in Berlin before a lot of upheaval started. Here are two excerpts from a partial memoir she wrote:
Berlin school was a cheerless, serious, full-time job. Classes occupied mornings, homework afternoons and evenings. Every week we had exams, and were seated, back to front, according to our previous week’s score. I was never quite the best; that was a girl twice my size with ten times my confidence, who more often than not had a higher score and thus sat behind me. She was calm and pleasant, never said a mean word, but I was a bundle of undersized nerves. Her very presence tortured me, showing me and the world my inadequacy at being best, as was expected of me, and I hated her. She was even good at “Beautiful Writing,” my weekly downfall. Once a week we had to dip pens in inkwells and copy something in the old German script Hitler had invoked to make us more distinctively German, different from all the other western countries using Latin script. This was really hard for me; I would get ink all over my fingers, and often, my face and my clothes. Sometimes I peeked, and my successful competitor’s letters proceeded across the page in evenly curved strokes and curls, unlike my assortment of smudges, blots, and sprays. I still have trouble writing in ink. Most people put the caps of their pens on the ends of their pens and then write. I still can’t manage that. The cap overbalances my pen, and there I go, making a mess. The invention of the ball point pen has helped reduce smudging, but I still write funny in ink, and much prefer a pencil. Not a fine, precise accountant’s pencil, or worse yet, a superfine artist’s 4H. No, I need a soft 2B whose blurring hides the details of my awkward script.
In my family’s view my failure to stay consistently in the back row, week in, week out, already threatened my preordained career as an intellectual. Bad enough that I tended to put wrong shoes on wrong feet, was considered too small to start school a year early like my brother and sisters; worse that I got caught reading fairy tales instead of essays on social revolution; now flunking Beautiful Writing forever defined me as family idiot. In other respects life was not so bad; the mountain-town housekeeper’s compromise breakfast followed us to Berlin, and I was no longer obliged to share a room with my mean big brother, alternately his shadow or his unwilling smaller twin.
Skipping ahead to a year of schooling in England:
Our school, formerly located in Germany, had catered to the children of affluent liberal intellectuals in Germany, and when Hitler gained power, its administrators obtained parents’ permission, and moved, lock, stock, and children, to southern England. Most parents signed up, glad to send their children to safety. The teachers were mixed, half speaking German, half only English, and the children were even more mixed. Some were German speaking, Jewish or not, and some spoke French; together we spoke a mix of languages, a lingo we called the “schönste Slanguage,” that is, “the most beautiful slang.”
My brother and I were separated, since the school assigned him to live and attend classes at a cottage for older boys that was some distance away, while I was housed and schooled with the youngest children. Without my brother’s familiar bossing and parentally-ordered servants’ strict discipline, I was frightened and begged to leave, but after a while, freedom grew on me. This school offered food that they thought children would like, turned kids loose on it, and no one watched who ate what. For the first time in my life I got really hungry. I ate and ate, grew a foot, and outgrew much of the wardrobe bought and pre-wrinkled with such care in Berlin. I rode a bike, played games, learned to print in English by copying nursery rhymes, and left Beautiful Writing and academic competition behind. It was a happy year.
Thanks for including a link to the Daudet text. It was helpful for me to get more context.
Responding to Peter Shor's comments. Here's the original for the paragraph in question:
La leçon finie, on passa à l'écriture. Pour ce jour-là, M. Hamel nous avait préparé des exemples tout neufs, sur lesquels était écrit en belle ronde: France, Alsace, France, Alsace. Cela faisait comme des petits drapeaux qui flottaient tout autour de la classe pendu à la tringle de nos pupitres. Il fallait voir comme chacun s'appliquait, et quel silence! on n'entendait rien que le grincement des plumes sur le papier. Un moment des hannetons entrèrent; mais personne n'y fit attention, pas même les tout petits qui s'appliquaient à tracer leurs bâtons, avec un cœur, une conscience, comme si cela encore était du français...
Note the "belle ronde." That definitely refers to cursive. And note that cursive writing is in the bedrock of the French educational system.
You've written some comments about the word "bâtons." Maybe the smallest children were practicing their slant lines while the others were doing the copying exercise. If the classroom was mixed age, it would make sense that a whole-group activity would have a different version for the little ones, who would have been taking their first steps in penmanship.
Whether that seems plausible to you or not, I don't wish to continue debating the translation with you. I did not write either of the translations you've cited! So, please let's just agree to disagree. At any rate, I stand by the basic idea of my original post: slant lines or fish-hooks, the point is that the students put their heart and soul into their penmanship exercise that day, as though even the basics of penmanship were quintessentially French.
