Paris encore

 The Writing's on the Wall

I was 22 when I took this picture in a poky little zinc, just by the Bouquinistes on the Rive Gauche of the Seine. I had a Zenith 35mm camera and I perched it on the bar and shot the unsuspecting woman as she chatted with another.

Just the other day, only 52 years later, I had a small glass of white wine in the same bar  with the same tables and mirrors.....  However, sadly, it was a different woman, which blurred my vision.....

Funny how time confuses us. As Paul Verlaine wrote:

Je fais souvent ce rêve étrange et pénétrant

D'une femme inconnue, et que j'aime, et qui m'aime

Et qui n'est, chaque fois, ni tout à fait la même

Ni tout à fait une autre, et m'aime et me comprend.

Mon rêve familier

Verlaine died in this building in 1896.  25 years later Ernest Hemingway came here.

39, rue Descartes

Although Papa H only worked here, he lived with Hadley just nearby:

74, rue du Cardinal Lemoine

While, just round the corner, was James Joyce:

71, rue du Cardinal Lemoine

Valery Larbaud supervised the translation of Ulysses into French.

Prenez donc tout de moi : le sens de ces poèmes,

Non ce qu'on lit, mais ce qui paraît au travers malgré moi:

Le Don de Soi-Même

I can see these guys, now, sipping vin blanc (electricity - JJ) in a bar like this:

Although legend has it that Joyce (not to mention Hemingway) enjoyed more than a glass or two in various bars:

While a few blocks away Sylvia Beach had started a bookshop, Shakespeare & Co, and published Joyce's masterwork.

12, rue de l'Odeon

While a little further off, near the Jardins du Luxembourg, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were the talk of the town, with their literary and artistic parties:

27, rue de Fleurus

Which a little later on would have included Pablo Picasso who wasn't to be left out (and nor were Matisse, Gauguin or Ezra Pound):

7, rue des Grands Augustins

Yes, the writing is on the wall, all over the Left Blank (sic), and the bodies are piled high.  Balzac (Who he?  Ed.) died in 1850.  More recently, Oscar Wilde lost his duel with his wallpaper (One of us has got to go):

13, rue des Beaux Arts

Those inter-war years must have been something?  William Faulkner was at 42 rue de Vaugirard in 1925; George Orwell stayed at 6 rue Pot de Fer in 1928;  Henry Miller was on the fifth floor of 36 rue Bonaparte in 1930.  Joyce lived at 19 different addresses between 1920 and 1939, and Hemingway certainly lived in a number of apartments, and drank nearly everywhere, causing mayhem and getting F Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda very drunk at times, and all the while Josephine Baker was performing in Paris (and drinking at La Coupole in Montparnasse - possibly with my Great Grandmother and Anna Pavlova).  Samuel Beckett lived much of his life in Paris from 1928 until his death in 1989, and worked closely with Joyce on Finnegan's Wake.

Then, after the Second World War, it was the turn of the Beat Generation, some of whom (though not Jack Kerouac) stayed here:

There are plaques all over the city, and streets and squares named after some of these writers and artists.  They all tell stories, and, for me, the  interest is in being where these people were, seeing some of the buildings they would have known.

Place du Panthéon, 75005 Paris France

It's an emotional thing, I guess, not historical, nor in any way exact (there wouldn't have been so many cars in the 1920s, nor would there have been so many tourists, like me, wandering about.)

I have written about Paris before and, should you be interested, you can see my earlier piece, Paris: City of Light, at https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2014/07/paris-city-of-light.html

and in that piece I had pictures from some of the high spots, including the towers of Notre Dame.  I had actually come to the city on this occasion with the express intention of seeing the 'new' Notre Dame, but found it impossible to get tickets.  According to the official website between 10 and 15 thousand tickets are issued two days in advance of admission, but, try as I might, not one came my way.  So I went down there to see if there was any chance of getting in, but the queues were so enormous I gave up - it would have been more like Paris Gard du Nord (or Euston) station at rush hour than a cathedral (and it is still a building site).....

And so I meander about the city streets.  The fashionable cafes and restaurants are full, and, as a solo traveller, there is no joy in even asking for a table.....

I am not the only one, of course.  Others manage on their own:

Though how exactly on your own you are depends on your speed dial, I suppose:

One tablet, however, hits me hard.  Not something from La Belle Epoque, but a reminder of how things have changed:

Georges Wolinski was an 80 year old cartoonist and comics writer, who was killed in cold blood, with eleven others, at about 11.30 am on January 7th 2015 in the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo by two men claiming membership of Al Qaeda.  

It is hard to try and connect the mass of humanity, from all sorts of cultures and nationalities, who squeeze into Notre Dame de Paris, with those who use religion as a basis for brutal assassinations.  It is hard to square the hordes of tourists with the inequalities of the world - though where I fit into that paradox is also hard to explain. 

La belle époque appartient maintenant au passé.  

It is evening.  I stroll up to Montmartre, where the crowds are happy.  Windmills still exist, though not as Van Gogh would have seen them.

The old places are still old, but somehow they seem like stage sets:

I have un Ricard in a bar, and write in my diary.  The waiter asks if I am writing my memoir.  I reply that I am writing his.....  Neither of us knows the whole story.

Out in the street, I reach out to touch a cat's nose.  Memories of Meadow.  But l'accordioniste slaps me away.  He is right, of course, but neither of us knows the full story.....

It is busy on the steps of the Basilica of Sacré Cœur de Montmartre.  Youthful spirits curl in the wreathing air, the city a mosaic carpet stretching away below:

And when I turn to look back, the basilica seems to crown the  crowd:

But back in my room the view is somehow more complex.  I have to travel away, and I think of my home.  Greatness is not everything.  I am conflicted, always wanting something else. 

 

I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young man

James Joyce

So take everything from me: the meaning of these poems,

Not what one reads, but what appears through them despite myself:

The Gift of Oneself

Valery Larbaud

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[Dedicated to the memory of Lindsay Webster, À la recherche du temps perdu]

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