Good morning.

This week we went from the Gates of Hell in Paris to a first night at La Scala… and from a farmhouse in New Hampshire to Benjamin Franklin’s garden.

Let’s review.

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The Week in Review

Monday 2 – Thursday 5 November

T	his week. Four works that began as something else, or were judged a failure, and ended up meaning far more than their makers planned. Here is what to remember.

What We Covered

I	Monday · Art The Thinker Was Never Meant to Think Alone

In 1880, Auguste Rodin began a pair of bronze doors based on Dante’s Inferno for a museum that was never built. Above them sat a small figure of the poet, which Rodin called The Poet. The line to keep: taken off the doors, he became The Thinker… and anyone at all.

Auguste Rodin, “The Thinker,” Musée Rodin, Paris. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

II	Tuesday · Theater One Fine Day

On 17 February 1904, La Scala booed Puccini’s new opera off the stage. Three months later, revised, it triumphed in Brescia. The line to keep: a room full of experts can be wrong on the night, and Madama Butterfly is now one of the most performed operas in the world.

Leopoldo Metlicovitz, poster for “Madama Butterfly,” 1904. Public domain.

III	Wednesday · Poetry The Poet America Turned Down

In 1912, The Atlantic Monthly had “no place” for Robert Frost’s verse, so he moved to England and published there first. In 1915, the same magazine printed The Road Not Taken. The line to keep: the poem quoted as a call to be different was partly a joke about a friend who could never decide.

Robert Frost, between 1910 and 1920. Library of Congress. Public domain.

IV	Thursday · Le Mot Juste “Mesmerise”

In 1784, a royal commission led by Benjamin Franklin proved that Franz Anton Mesmer’s “animal magnetism” was all in the patients’ imagination. The line to keep: Mesmer lost the argument and won the dictionary, because “mesmerising” now simply means spellbinding.

“Le Baquet de Mesmer,” engraving. Wellcome Collection (CC BY 4.0).

America’s New Money Has Arrived

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Sometimes the world changes, and no one notices.

On the morning after Henry Kissinger's petrodollar deal with the Saudis in 1974, the bills in your wallet looked exactly as they had the night before.

The U.S. Treasury didn't issue any new money -- and nothing was announced, voted on or passed through Congress. America's new monetary order was created in secret.

Yet over the five decades that followed, that one deal helped take America from roughly 180,000 millionaires to nearly 24 million – creating extraordinary wealth for those who owned the right assets.

At the same time, the dollar lost more than 84% of its purchasing power, quietly draining the savings of millions of families.

I believe the same thing is happening again, and once more the dollar in your pocket won't look any different.

It’s got nothing to do with crypto, CBDCs or gold.

And you'll only see the change later – in what could be a radical repricing of assets, goods and services across America.

To help explain what's happening, and before it’s too late for you to prepare for this shift…

I sat down for an interview with financial reporter Kimi Weintraub:

Watch it here.

You'll discover how President Trump has assembled his new monetary order in the shadows, executive orders, closed-door deals with tech billionaires and a reported 13-nation agreement almost nobody has heard of…

I also share the five critical assets I believe sit at the heart of this historic shift…

Including the name and ticker of my No. 1 move to make today.

Time is a factor. When world leaders gather at Trump's resort in Miami on December 14, I believe the President could unveil this new monetary order to the world as a done deal.

Go here for the full interview.

A Way of Looking

✦	Criticism The intentional fallacy

In 1946, two American critics, W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, published an essay with a provocative title: “The Intentional Fallacy.” Their argument was simple. What an author meant to do is not the final key to a work. Once a poem, a statue or an opera is out in the world, its meaning lives in the work itself… in its words, shapes and sounds, not in its maker’s private plans. In other words, the artist does not always get the last word. Now look back at the week. Rodin made a poet brooding over Dante’s Hell, but the world took him off the doors and saw every thinking person in him. Frost wrote The Road Not Taken partly as a joke, yet generations have read it as a hymn to bold choices, and the poem supports both readings. Mesmer believed he had made a medical breakthrough. His name now stands for being spellbound instead. Even Puccini’s opera is now staged and judged in ways he never imagined. Next time someone tells you what an artist “really meant,” ask a second question: and what does the work itself say?

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Curious & Controversial: The Week’s Extras

◆	Before he became the most famous sculptor in France, Rodin was turned down three times by the École des Beaux-Arts, the country’s official art school. For years he earned his living carving ornaments on other people’s buildings.

◆	In 1970, a bomb exploded at the foot of the Thinker outside the Cleveland Museum of Art and blew off part of the legs. The museum chose not to repair it, and still displays it damaged.

◆	Puccini gave the American officer in Madama Butterfly his own theme: a fragment of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Listen for it whenever Pinkerton talks about home.

◆	Did a coin decide that Frost would try England rather than British Columbia? It is a family legend, so treat it with care. But it is true that he had sold his farm and staked everything on one last attempt.

◆	The eerie glass harmonica that played at Mesmer’s sessions had been invented in 1761 by Benjamin Franklin… the very man who would lead the commission that brought Mesmer down.

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For the Weekend

Worth Seeing

If Tuesday’s opera stayed with you, Washington National Opera opens its new Madama Butterfly on Saturday 7 November, with the Korean soprano Karah Son making her company debut in the title role.

Where: DAR Constitution Hall, 1776 D Street NW, Washington, DC 20006. Opening night Saturday 7 November at 7 p.m.; the run continues to 20 November. Tickets: prices vary by seat and date; see the event listing for booking. Insider tip: Listen to “Un bel dì” and the Humming Chorus before you go. Knowing them in advance makes the second act land even harder. Event details at washington.org →

This Week’s Quiz Answers

Monday: The Thinker was originally called The Poet, and represented Dante.

Tuesday: The revised Madama Butterfly triumphed in Brescia in May 1904.

Wednesday: The Atlantic Monthly rejected Frost’s “vigorous verse” in 1912.

Thursday: Benjamin Franklin led the 1784 royal commission that investigated Mesmer.

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That’s all for this week.

On Monday, a wave printed in Japan around 1831 to be sold cheaply… that became one of the most reproduced images ever made.

Until Monday,
Charles T. Mayfair

Editor, Connoisseur Daily

P.S. A weekend experiment with this week’s lens: pick a song you have loved for years and look up what its writer said it was about. Then decide, honestly, whether that changes what it means to you. Most people find it does not.