tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90991603640480824562024-03-16T19:53:01.769+01:00David Burke's Writers in Paris Walking ToursAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-35071307647852196032017-04-03T16:49:00.000+02:002017-04-03T16:49:58.617+02:00Back to work<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Hello, literary lovers, here you find me in front of Shakespeare and Company, home of my book <i><b>Writers in Paris</b></i>, <i><b>Literary Lives in the City of Light</b></i>, happy to have April at last and starting my literary walks for the year. So please take a look in the heading called <b>The Walks</b> in my website and see what juicy things are to be found there. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As the book says, "'A magnet,' a 'Mecca,' an 'incubator,' a 'hothouse' for writers -- all these we things Paris has been called, and rightly so. No other city has attracted so much literary talent, launched so many illustrious careers, or produced such a wealth of enduring literature."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And, "Just as our writers were enriched by living in Paris, our appreciation of their lives and their works -- and indeed in the city inself -- is heightened by follow them from place to place in our imaginations, or even better, in our walking shoes." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>ENJOY!</b> </span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-20667936061136255422017-01-07T17:53:00.000+01:002017-01-07T17:53:05.424+01:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Hello, Literary Lovers in Paris,<br />
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As usual, I wait for Spring to get my literary walks going again. My schedule will start in April. In the meantime, please read my blogs and read my book <i><b>Writers in Paris, Literery Lives in the City of Light</b></i>. In Paris you can buy it at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, on the Left Bank across the Seine and the Notre-Dame, and it can be found easily from Amazon.. Note that <i><b>Writers in Paris</b></i> is in the Second Edition. It came out in 2016. I hope to be walking with you on the streets of Paris with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, George Orwell, and many other great writers. <br />
See you in the good weather!<br />
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Best, David </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-36536884627778054002016-09-02T18:43:00.000+02:002016-09-02T18:49:09.389+02:00Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin in Montparnasse: A Walk<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This season I will be introducing an entirely new walk that explores the intellectual and sensual connection between two writers in Paris through the places in Montparnasse where their relationship and writings blossomed. To tantalize your interest I am sharing two places and stories from this walk that illuminate facets of these authors’ lives in Paris.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">To take this walk and learn the whole story, or explore other tours, please view my <a href="http://writersinpariswalkingtours.blogspot.com/p/schedule-fees.html">schedules page.</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Nin on the Rue Schoelcher</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">From 1925 to 1928, Anaïs Nin lived in the complex of artists’ studios at No. 11 </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">bis</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">,rue Schoelcher along the eastern wall of the Montparnasse Cemetery, a studio complex where Simone de Beauvoir later lived. Then in her mid-twenties, Nin had come from New York to Paris because her American husband Hugh had been posted to France by his New York bank. The young couple occupied one studio, her Danish mother another. Nin was born in Neuilly, but her mother took her to New York at eleven and raised her there after her father, the Cuban-born musician Joachim Nin, abandoned the family. The sensuality of Paris repelled Nin at first, but in December 1926, she wrote in her diary, “I shall try to turn my hate of Paris into writing and make it harmless.” She started with close observation of the Lost Generation crowd at the Café Dôme. One year later she was able to write, “I faced and accepted Paris as a test of my courage.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Miller and Nin at the Hôtel Central</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Thanks to freelance work as a copy editor at the </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Chicago Tribune</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, lined up by his friend Alfred Perlès (Carl in </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Tropic of Cancer</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">), Miller was able to stay at the Hôtel Central at No. 1 </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">bis </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">rue du Maine, just off from the saucy rue de la Gaité, several times during his crucial year of 1931–1932. He began writing </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Tropic of Cancer </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">in August 1931. That fall his friend Richard Osborn (Fillmore in the book) introduced him to Anaïs Nin and her husband Hugh at their home in Louveciennes outside of Paris. Miller’s intellectual exuberance electrified her, and a passionate literary friendship began, with both of them channeling their erotic attraction into delight in each other’s ideas and work. For five months they avoided any mention of sex, afraid it could undermine their connection. To complicate matters further, Nin was attracted to Miller’s bisexual wife, June, who made a brief appearance in Paris that winter. But desire eventually got the better of them. On March 6, 1932, Nin joined Miller in Room 401. She did not regret having her “tight secrecy . . . broken for a moment by a man who calls himself ‘the last man on earth.’”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931–1934</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, she wrote:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After our first encounter I breathed some notes, accents of recognition, human admissions. Henry was stunned, and I was breathing off the unbearable, willing joy. But the second time, there were no words. My joy was impalpable and terrifying. It swelled within me as I walked the streets.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The sexual excitement brought into her life by Henry and June engendered a new fire in the writing of her diary. For Miller, who wanted to marry her, she was the only woman he ever loved completely.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-26211849950661165152016-08-05T01:17:00.000+02:002016-08-05T02:06:07.651+02:00Exploring the France that Josephine Baker Loved<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Below is a riveting article on Josephine Baker by Sloane Crosley of the New York Times, which I was lucky enough to contribute to by sharing some of the stories I have gathered for my own Josephine Baker documentary. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The original online article can be found <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/travel/josephine-baker-paris-france.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=2">here.</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The American entertainer had a rich relationship with her adopted country — and it with her.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The first time I saw</span><a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/person/80445/Josephine-Baker?inline=nyt-per" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Josephine Baker</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> up close I was in London. I went to the Alexander Calder exhibition at the Tate Modern and there, at the entrance to the exhibition, was a wire sculpture of Baker.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You can see why it was one of the very first wire sculptures that Calder made — the subject demanded a new medium. With all due respect to Beyoncé, Josephine Baker has the most famous physique in showbiz history — a body so often compared to a spring, it’s only natural that an artist would try to capture her in that form, complete with spiraling breasts.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Zv2LTfPUR1Y/V6PHVhi8VuI/AAAAAAAABK0/udF0u2Q5tuMbyvmazWPbdvZVZzjC2lDPgCLcB/s1600/17JOSEPHINEJP9-blog427.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Zv2LTfPUR1Y/V6PHVhi8VuI/AAAAAAAABK0/udF0u2Q5tuMbyvmazWPbdvZVZzjC2lDPgCLcB/s200/17JOSEPHINEJP9-blog427.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span class="caption-text">The town of Sarlat-la-Canéda.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Four months later, I left for a writer’s retreat in the Périgord region of</span><a href="http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/europe/france/overview.html?inline=nyt-geo" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">France</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, no longer thinking about Josephine Baker. This is an area comparatively light on American tourists. It’s not that it’s lacking in visual splendor — the Dordogne River, Marqueyssac gardens, the medieval town of</span><a href="https://www.lonelyplanet.com/france/the-dordogne/sarlat-la-caneda" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Sarlat-la-Canéda</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and Castelnaud Valley, fittingly named considering its collection of castles perched on cliffs — but no beaches were stormed, no patron saints burned, no water lilies painted. The region’s primary claim to fame is the prehistoric caves of Font de Gaume, Grotte de Rouffignac and Lascaux (</span><a href="http://www.projet-lascaux.com/en/lascaux-4" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Lascaux 4</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, the latest reproduction of the original, opens in December).</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The area’s other extremely popular attraction happens to be the</span><a href="http://www.milandes.com/gb/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Château des Milandes</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, a breathtaking Renaissance castle overlooking the Dordogne. This, it turns out, is where Josephine Baker, who was born in St. Louis in 1906, lived during the second half of her life. She married and raised her children here. “I have two loves,” sang the queen of the Jazz Age in “J’ai Deux Amours,” her most enduring tune, “my country and</span><a href="http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/europe/france/paris/overview.html?inline=nyt-geo" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Paris</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.” If she had recorded a late-in-life remake, she might have added a third love to the list: Milandes. And seeing as how I was staying a mere 15 minutes away, in the one-roundabout town of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, I decided to pay it a visit. I thought perhaps I could learn more about Baker’s passionate relationship with France — and its mutual fascination with her.</span></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZllQkUTpMoM/V6PHygzKiNI/AAAAAAAABLA/ZFZ3jV8OwYUyE3V5wHKncq8iEZv5FSUyQCEw/s1600/17JOSEPHINE1-superJumbo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZllQkUTpMoM/V6PHygzKiNI/AAAAAAAABLA/ZFZ3jV8OwYUyE3V5wHKncq8iEZv5FSUyQCEw/s400/17JOSEPHINE1-superJumbo.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">Baker's Renaissance Castle <span class="caption-text">in the Périgord region of France.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The chateau is up a twisting, idyllic road bordered by ivy-covered trees and stone walls. When you walk in the front door, you are greeted by the sound of radio interviews with Baker and an exhibition of her stage costumes. There are over a dozen gowns, bustiers and jumpsuits, most involving crystals, all in size remove-a-rib. I was not prepared for such a display.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Because most French chateaus are privately owned (including this one, currently inhabited by the Sarlat native Angélique de Saint-Exupéry, whose husband is a relative of “The Little Prince” author), most are limited in access. But here visitors may wander through a labyrinth of children’s bedrooms furnished with gramophones and trunks, Art Deco bathrooms, a huge kitchen and a vaulted gun room (not the official name of the room, but there’s a rifle on a tripod pointed at your head as you enter). There are also cases of military medals and a commendation letter from Charles de Gaulle for Baker’s efforts during World War II.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Baker was a spy for her adopted country. She hid weapons for the French Resistance and smuggled documents across the border, tucking them beneath gowns like the ones on the first floor.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The crown jewel of the tour is Baker’s famous banana belt, which she wore — along with nothing else — in the Danse Sauvage at the Folies-Bergère in 1926. Baker did more for the sexualization of bananas than the collective sex-ed class demonstrations of the last century. The bananas are gold, not yellow — something impossible to tell in the black and white footage. As I admired the belt, a British tourist next to me turned to her husband and said: “She wasn’t actually naked all that much, it’s just what everybody chooses to remember.”</span></span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pRglOEL6fKw/V6PHxJz481I/AAAAAAAABLQ/L4BZ9WlYoCk-meM0GE7T8S57IIfDAzrrQCEw/s1600/JosephineBaker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pRglOEL6fKw/V6PHxJz481I/AAAAAAAABLQ/L4BZ9WlYoCk-meM0GE7T8S57IIfDAzrrQCEw/s1600/JosephineBaker.jpg" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">A portrait of Josephine Baker ca. 1930<br /><span class="credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder">Popperfoto/Getty </span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Everybody” included me. It’s exactly what I saw when I looked at the Calder piece and it’s probably what Calder saw when he looked at Josephine Baker: an outline. But on the 110th anniversary of her birth, it’s worth noting that there is so much more to Baker — and to Baker’s France — than meets the eye. In addition to being a performer and a spy, she was the last speaker before the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 march on Washington.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Slightly less celebrated is the fact that, in her 40s, she began adopting children from different countries. There were 12 in all and they would come to be known as the Rainbow Tribe. For Baker, they were the living embodiment of a Utopian racial ideal. The easy contemporary parallel would be Angelina Jolie — except that when Baker’s children became an attraction for tourists, she fully embraced the gawking. Then, after World War II, Baker firmly settled at Milandes. She employed half the town. Her brother married the postwoman. Unlike her hectic nights of performing, her days in the Périgord were peaceful. Or as peaceful as anyone’s days can be with 12 small children, multiple monkeys and a pet cheetah.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Once I started listening for Josephine Baker, I heard her everywhere. Back in Les Eyzies, I ran into Josette Garrigue, the 69-year-old woman who owns the farm down the road. I told her where I had been and she nodded and smiled.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“I remember her well,” she said, “Back then, this place was only little roads, just a romantic spot where she could drive around in her old cars. It’s tragic what happened to her.”</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What happened was bankruptcy. Baker, who once claimed to be the richest woman in the world, fell into insurmountable debt, despite the help of high-profile friends like Grace Kelly and Brigitte Bardot. In 1968, she was forced to give the chateau over to creditors. After the bananas, the second most famous image of Baker is of</span><a href="http://www.anp-archief.nl/page/240033/nl" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">her sitting in the rain</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, locked out of her home by the new owner. The local loyalty to her is unwavering to this day; Ms. de Saint-Exupéry referred to the new owner in an email as “a bad guy.”</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“I don’t want to speak about him!” she responded quickly. “Josephine sold because she was without money, and a lot of people exploited the situation.”</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">That evening, I sat at my neighbor’s kitchen table with her friend, Michel Salon, a retired career waiter who has served everyone from Serge Gainsbourg to the king of Belgium.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“The first time I saw her was a Sunday,” Mr. Salon, 70, recalled. “She was cleaning dishes in the castle cafe. A little girl was watching her and Josephine called to her, picked her up and hugged her. She loved children but couldn’t have any of her own. The girl’s mother yelled at her husband for not bringing a camera.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Oh, she was so famous. But she was an artist and she didn’t know how to manage money. She employed people who billed her for projects she didn’t order. I know one waiter who would steal money from the cafe while Josephine was in Paris. Can you imagine someone doing something like that to her in Paris?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I could not. Then again, I imagined Baker’s life as a young woman in Paris was light on the dishwashing in general — but who knew? So after seeing where she spent the latter half of her life, I decided to head back to the beginning.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I contacted Julia Browne, who runs</span><a href="http://www.walkthespirit.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Walk the Spirit Tours: Black Paris and Beyond</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, which offers specialized tours with themes like “Pioneers of the Left Bank,” “Great Black Music Walk” and, of course, “Josephine Baker.” Ms. Browne paired me with David Burke, 79, an American author and film producer who is working on a documentary about Baker. Thirty years ago, he and his wife decided to live in Paris for a year — and they never left. We met outside the boutique Hotel Joséphine, right at the Baker epicenter of Montmartre and Pigalle.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“It’s funny,” Mr. Burke said, “Josephine wasn’t really a jazz person and she was a dreadful singer at first, but she was involved with the whole Jazz Age community. She’s the most famous person in the whole group, the most famous of any American to ever live in France.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I raise my eyebrows. Really? Mr. Burke mostly gives Lost Generation tours: Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Really.”</span></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3hb4vW7Uqgc/V6PJZPQOJyI/AAAAAAAABLY/N1fTNM45YgI3ukiY_G7y-jWWuPxEcGgyQCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-04%2Bat%2B4.01.18%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3hb4vW7Uqgc/V6PJZPQOJyI/AAAAAAAABLY/N1fTNM45YgI3ukiY_G7y-jWWuPxEcGgyQCLcB/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-04%2Bat%2B4.01.18%2BPM.png" width="238" /></a></span></div><br/>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We begin our walk on the Rue Fontaine, which leads to the Moulin Rouge. Mr. Burke described the area in its heyday as being “like 52nd Street back in the bebop days.” The street used to be dotted with jazz clubs, none of which still exist. It took a bit of an imaginative leap to picture the scene; our conversation took place between a nail salon and a pizzeria. The one structure still standing is the former Le Grand Duc, where Langston Hughes was employed as a busboy and where Ada Smith, a.k.a. Bricktop, who later took Baker under her wing, first performed.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Six Degrees of Josephine Baker would be too easy a game to play in France. Or in America, for that matter. Baker was a star even before she arrived in Paris (starring in “Shuffle Along,” one of the first all-black musicals, a revival of which opened on Broadway in April). But Paris made her a megastar.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“People just went wild for her,” Mr. Burke said. “There was a need for something fresh and Josephine brought this combination of Africa, jazz, humor and America in her presentation. And she was personable. Everyone loved her.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, not everyone. I broach the subject of “The Hungry Heart</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">,”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> a scathing portrait of Baker I read on the train up to Paris. It’s written (with a co-writer) by Jean-Claude Baker, her unofficial 13th son, who met Josephine when he was already a young man. Mr. Burke said he finds the book “unreliable and worrisome.” I can see why. In it, Baker is an oversexed fabulist who, “like a black Chaplin,” stepped on anyone “to get where she wanted to get.” She answers the door naked for Balanchine and repeatedly refers to Marlene Dietrich as “that German cow.” He recommended I read “Josephine Baker in Art and Life” by Bennetta Jules-Rosette instead. I eventually did, and it was twice as sophisticated and half as fun.</span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We turned onto the Rue de Clichy. The stained-glass arch of the Casino de Paris — Baker’s third musical hall home, where she performed with feathered wings — rose up in the distance.</span></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Josephine almost never played an American,” Mr. Burke said. “She was always playing a woman of color from somewhere else. So she would play a Vietnamese girl who was in love with a French planter in occupied Vietnam.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“That’s quite the colonial fantasy,” I said. “ ‘Thank you for occupying us, how can we serve you?’”</span></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-32QWiNqGaSE/V6PHwKyi6BI/AAAAAAAABLQ/QXNFJuGizBUTB8CE9vnhxkDykFP4Wpa3wCEw/s1600/17JOSEPHINEJP8-master675.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-32QWiNqGaSE/V6PHwKyi6BI/AAAAAAAABLQ/QXNFJuGizBUTB8CE9vnhxkDykFP4Wpa3wCEw/s400/17JOSEPHINEJP8-master675.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span class="caption-text">The Moulin Rouge, on Boulevard de Clichy in Paris.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“And it was Josephine,” Mr. Burke said, “so it’s everyone’s fantasies at once.”</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Next, we make our way over to the Avenue Montaigne off the Champs-Élysées, a Céline- and Fendi-flanked stretch that was familiar to Baker. One side effect of immense fame is a fluency in fashion: Josephine was beloved by designers like Balmain and Dior. Were she alive now, she surely would have had her own line of perfume. Instead, she had the lucrative Baker Fix, a hair pomade inspired by her own shellacked curls.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But the area also symbolizes the end and the beginning of Baker’s Parisian life. At one end of the street is the lovely</span><a href="http://www.theatrechampselysees.fr/en/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Théâtre des Champs-Élysées</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. It was here, in October 1925, that Baker performed in La Revue Nègre, her first performance in Paris. And a short walk away is L’Église de la Madeleine, the site of her funeral procession in April 1975; she was given full French military honors and drew over 20,000 mourners.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mr. Burke and I attempted entry, but it was the middle of the afternoon and all efforts to talk an usher into opening the doors were thwarted. We were left on the outside, looking in — a bit like I felt at the end of the tour. As informative as it was, it was more walk and less spirit. I finished with a greater sense of where Baker led her life, but why she could be considered the most famous American expat remained a mystery. So I did what anyone would do: I contacted a man who has devoted the majority of his professional life to paying homage to Josephine Baker on stage.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The cabaret singer and choreographer Brian Scott Bagley, 37, hails from Baltimore; like Mr. Burke, he came to Paris temporarily — in 2006 — and simply never left. I met him on the bustling Boulevard Beaumarchais in the Marais and we took a stroll through the neighborhood, Mr. Bagley’s black-and-white patent leather shoes clicking along. The Marais is not Josephine Baker’s Paris, but it is, objectively, a good place to get lunch.</span></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nLGMnqRxUy8/V6PHy_i8vAI/AAAAAAAABLQ/fRWiVdVCRV4wyHnt9hdptWjZWfaYhg-WwCEw/s1600/17JOSEPHINEJP11-master675.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nLGMnqRxUy8/V6PHy_i8vAI/AAAAAAAABLQ/fRWiVdVCRV4wyHnt9hdptWjZWfaYhg-WwCEw/s400/17JOSEPHINEJP11-master675.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span class="caption-text">From the exterior of the Folies-Bergère theater in Paris, where Josephine Baker entertained.</span></span></td></tr>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> “Honey boo,” Mr. Bagley said, taking my arm. “I </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">dream</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> in French now. I have different accents for American people and for French people. I’m kind of like a spy in that way, like our girl.”</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mr. Bagley believes that Baker’s charisma was so stupendous, it still “latches on” to performers like him (“I am the love child of Sammy Davis Jr. and Liza Minnelli adopted by Josephine Baker”). She brings people together from the great beyond. I expressed a healthy degree of skepticism about this — right before “J’ai Deux Amours” came dripping out of some cafe speakers and Mr. Bagley and I discovered that we were born the same day of the same year. O.K., maybe.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Once seated, we flipped through his collection of vintage Paris Matches with Baker on the cover and he elaborated on what makes her so important.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Everybody imagines something different when they come to Paris, but it’s the Harlem of Paris that not everyone knows about but should, because that’s where the energy is still so potent. Josephine was the center of it,” he said. “She came here and — boom — she could live in a world without segregation. Boom, she was a major star. She lived that European dream we all want, of liberation and sexual freedom. We all want to come here and meet some amazing French guy, make love in some chambre de bonne and then fall in love with some European aristocrat.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Paris had long been “the Bermuda triangle of the muses,” as Mr. Bagley put it, one of the world’s great magnets for writers, painters and musicians. But like Mr. Burke, he thinks that Baker was much more than an artist. She was a lifestyle. She was “the ultimate connector,” inspiring fellow performers, sitting with audience members and chatting long after the curtain closed. And, she “did everything.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">He, too, has his preferred Baker narratives (he’s partial to “Remembering Josephine Baker” by Stephen Papich). “But it doesn’t matter what you read,” he said. “What matters is embracing Paris the way she embraced it.” (Mr. Bagley was recently named assistant artistic director of le Parc de Josephine Baker, an events space and resort, complete with J-shaped pool, just down the road from the Château des Milandes.)</span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Baker’s last show was self-titled. She was 69, and she died in her sleep a few days later. But Mr. Bagley is right — she’s not gone. Not just in the sense that she is remembered or in the sense that there is a square named after her in Montparnasse, but in the sense that she is present. There are still many walls up for black performers around the globe but, as Mr. Bagley noted, “Josephine broke down a ton of them.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Like Paris itself, Baker is at once idolized and familiar — once you fall in love with her, you both want to share that love and keep it for yourself. This is evidenced by the fact that not a single person with whom I spoke referred to her by her last name, as they did with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein and Porter. Everyone feels as if Josephine was theirs.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Correction: July 24, 2016</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">An article last Sunday about exploring Josephine Baker’s relationship with France misstated the name of a street in Paris. It is Avenue Montaigne, not Rue de Montagne. The article also misstated the location of L’Église de la Madeleine, the church where Baker was given a funeral procession. It is at the Place de la Madeleine, not at the end of Avenue Montaigne.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">All content and photographs are the property of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The New York Times </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Photographs (unless otherwise noted) by Andy Haslam for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The New York Times </span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-28368852242163646402016-07-05T06:19:00.000+02:002016-07-05T06:19:42.233+02:00A Tale of Two Books: Mary's & Mine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eQuMrDzcx6o/V3szxyd0_hI/AAAAAAAABI4/Ki6m9cI3rycOx-gXePofqOEpakUJtFVOgCLcB/s1600/Burke1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eQuMrDzcx6o/V3szxyd0_hI/AAAAAAAABI4/Ki6m9cI3rycOx-gXePofqOEpakUJtFVOgCLcB/s320/Burke1.jpg" width="239" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-3c669681-b931-52c8-2c55-d2275803383b" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">One day in the fall of 2015 I received a message from Shakespeare and Company saying that they wanted to get more copies of my book <i>Writers in Paris, Literary Lives in the City of Light</i>, but they were unable to come up with any. So I emailed the head of my publisher in Berkeley to find out what’s what. Bad news. They love the book, but sales have slipped, and the company has decided not print any more. However, they offered to release the book freely to me as the copyright owner if I found a solid publisher with a contract. </span></span></div>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">By a remarkable bit of luck, only two days earlier, I had been the guest speaker at the monthly meeting of the <a href="http://pariswritersgroup.net/" target="_blank">Paris Writers Group</a>. Its chief is the delightful and knowledgeable Mary Duncan, a writer and the publisher of the <a href="http://pariswriterspress.com/" target="_blank">Paris Writers Press</a>. She liked my Writers in Paris! So I called her and she said come on over. Mary led me to her computer and showed all the steps of her favorite publishing app works. I’ve written books, but have no experience in publishing. We could both see that I was not up to it. So Mary said that, if I like, she could be my new publisher. Wow, what luck!</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a_3Ps2ROvWo/V3szyWA6ERI/AAAAAAAABJA/_9Tc9viRex8C0pns3wM05K7UEvCEfmwpgCKgB/s1600/Burke4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a_3Ps2ROvWo/V3szyWA6ERI/AAAAAAAABJA/_9Tc9viRex8C0pns3wM05K7UEvCEfmwpgCKgB/s200/Burke4.jpg" width="149" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A few days later we met at the new Shakespeare and Company Café and discussed our contract. The paperwork was in order, but at this time of the year (Dec.) both Mary and I were leaving Paris for three-month jaunts. She was off to California to be with her family and to work on her project of translating to English the autobiography </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">by Lynn Jeffress </span>of the fearless publisher Jean-Jacques Pauvert , who savaged censor laws in the France of the 1950s and ‘60s, and is best known for the Marquis de Sade. Meanwhile my wife Joanne and I went off to China. But before leaving Paris I let my Berkeley publisher know that Mary and I had an agreement for <i>Writers in Paris</i>, but would not be taking it over until we were back to Paris in spring. They were perfectly at ease with that.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mary got back to Paris in late March, wrapping up her Jean-Jacques Pauvert book, which now had a title, <i>Sade’s Publisher, A Memoir</i>, and in early April the transferring of Writers in Paris from Berkeley to Paris began. Mary did it all by herself. There were a few glitches along the way, but it was remarkably smooth overall. </span></span></div>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br /></span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bFvVK7CMafU/V3szxwHe0TI/AAAAAAAABI8/ziojIiZlw4M1mX-oGmDGFAS1_w7ua505wCKgB/s1600/Burke3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bFvVK7CMafU/V3szxwHe0TI/AAAAAAAABI8/ziojIiZlw4M1mX-oGmDGFAS1_w7ua505wCKgB/s200/Burke3.jpg" width="149" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">Mary Duncan, Me, & Sylvia Whitman</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">On April 22, 2016, Mary and I signed our contract in the Shakespeare and Company Café, with owner Sylvia Whitman our witness. </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">While Mary was on business in New York in early May, UPS dropped a box from her printing press. It was early proofs for both books, <i>Sade’s Publisher </i>and <i>Writers in Paris</i>, Second Edition in it. They were almost spotless, Mary told me on email. Just a few little things to be altered. And when she handed it to me in Paris, I found it at least as attractive as was the original version– which is saying plenty, because Counterpoint in Berkeley had done a beautiful job. Mary was very pleased too with her brand new <i>Sade’s Publisher</i>. And seeing the two books together was a treat. </span></span></div>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My first batch of Writers in Paris arrived in Paris on May 25th. Ten copies went to the shelves of Shakespeare and Company. And from the photos sent to me from the D. G. Wills bookshop in La Jolla, California, the two books have stayed together come the long way from la Belle France. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I thank for Mary for everything.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SvfgGUKBi24/V3szx_kKe4I/AAAAAAAABI0/oezKukC_0NU3xHdCv4CX8zv6ffpe836zACKgB/s1600/Burke2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SvfgGUKBi24/V3szx_kKe4I/AAAAAAAABI0/oezKukC_0NU3xHdCv4CX8zv6ffpe836zACKgB/s200/Burke2.jpg" width="161" /></a></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-81302989182951835362016-05-20T18:54:00.004+02:002016-05-20T18:54:59.827+02:00Happy Birthday Balzac<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Nn_S0vRtqEs/Vz9BNtnByzI/AAAAAAAABFg/_JjIemW6OsIu19TEQqojvSlmaBt2ULaXACLcB/s1600/Balzac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Nn_S0vRtqEs/Vz9BNtnByzI/AAAAAAAABFg/_JjIemW6OsIu19TEQqojvSlmaBt2ULaXACLcB/s320/Balzac.jpg" width="253" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I most recently wrote about an interesting sculpture of Honoré de Balzac that stands on the boulevard du Montparnasse (read below). Two hundred and seventeen years ago on this day the very man was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France. </span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Balzac is known for his plays and short novels, many of which take place here in Paris. His works were written with such keen observation of human nature that he is attributed as a founder of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">realism</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> in European literature. Much like today’s “fail fast” mentality, Balzac transitioned through a multitude of attempted professions before finding his calling in writing. After failing through school, he continued on to fail in his attempts to be a lawyer, publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician. Balzac even failed to complete his first three novels, only to be followed by great success in his later works and eventually his own statue. </span></span></div>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The author’s life serves as inspiration for all those struggling in their pursuits. Sometimes the shoe doesn’t fit, and other times you just have to work a little harder to get it on. As Balzac himself said, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.”</span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-79284385808123500612016-05-10T19:04:00.000+02:002016-05-10T19:04:35.390+02:00Balzac in a Bag<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KBHAvDWTpsI/Vwc5PHm1sgI/AAAAAAAABEk/Z_LkoBy_WP4CVk8j8rYdjz6R8kxWJKOHA/s1600/Balzac1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KBHAvDWTpsI/Vwc5PHm1sgI/AAAAAAAABEk/Z_LkoBy_WP4CVk8j8rYdjz6R8kxWJKOHA/s400/Balzac1.jpg" width="300" /></a></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-3257d305-f437-5aef-a08f-00d0624a6f39" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The spot where I meet my groups for the start of my “Lost Generation” Montparnasse walking tour is at the foot of Auguste Rodin’s mighty, larger-than-life bronze statue of Honoré de Balzac. This walk is about the expatriate writers in this part of Paris of the 1920s, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and others. That’s what my walkers are here for. But before we move off on the walk itself, everyone wants to know about this statue -- and rightly so. It is a very strange sculpture with a very strange history to match. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In 1891, Emile Zola talked the Société des Gens de Lettres, of which he was the president, into commissioning a statue honoring the founder of their literary society, Balzac, who had died forty years earlier. Rodin, a great fan of Balzac’s writing, was awarded the commission. He promised to deliver it in eighteen months. After missing several deadlines he finally came up with a model that pleased him: a squat barrel of a Balzac exploding with raw vigor and, other than a band of cloth covering the massive bulge in his crotch, utterly naked. “Indécent et hideux” was the judgment of the literary society.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TroEjkalVEA/Vwc5Ow2omUI/AAAAAAAABEo/-3hxyuxwpLAU-RTTf0KQLpOmRPHAK-IpA/s1600/Balzac2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TroEjkalVEA/Vwc5Ow2omUI/AAAAAAAABEo/-3hxyuxwpLAU-RTTf0KQLpOmRPHAK-IpA/s200/Balzac2.jpg" width="150" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So Rodin went back to his studio and eventually created the final version: the giant Balzac we see today with the famous monk’s cowl he wore when he was writing cloaking his body from shoulder to foot, a blur of a face, and deep, dark pits for his visionary eyes. Rodin exhibited the work in a full-sized plaster model at the Salon of 1898. The critics threw up their hands. They called it “a colossal fetus,” “Balzac in a bag,” “an obese monstrosity,” “a snowman” … Zola liked it, but he was no longer president of the society, and his role in the Dreyfus Case (1898 being the year of “J’accuse”) made him too controversial to be any help to Rodin. The Société des Gens de Lettres rejected the statue.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Four decades later, on July 2, 1939, the statue, now cast in bronze, was installed here on the leafy traffic island at the central crossroads of Montparnasse, the Carrefour Vavin, where the Boulevards du Montparnasse and Raspail intersect, facing the Café Rotonde and Le Dôme. Another bronze casting of this Balzac statue stands in the garden of the Rodin Museum on the Rue de Varenne in Paris, and inside the museum is the “indécent et hideux” version which was so shocking to the literary society.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-46190872884249568802016-05-05T17:50:00.000+02:002016-05-05T17:50:09.089+02:00Samuel Beckett - Résistant<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p33jgtRuYxQ/Vwc01xuzXQI/AAAAAAAABEE/bSTRicth9i8PYxJ5QuhmyA8RPNTufEg2A/s1600/S.Beckett3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p33jgtRuYxQ/Vwc01xuzXQI/AAAAAAAABEE/bSTRicth9i8PYxJ5QuhmyA8RPNTufEg2A/s400/S.Beckett3.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In a corner of Paris not known at all for its literary figures, a plaque here commemorates one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. “Irish Writer, Nobel Laureate for Literature, Samuel Beckett,” it reads. The plaque stands in the Allée Samuel Beckett, a block-long stretch of the leafy esplanade of the Avenue René Coty, in the 14th Arrondissement, just down from the Place Denfert-Rochereau. Unimposing though this area may look, it was a key place for Beckett when he was part of the Gloria SMH Résistance network during the Nazi Occupation. Gloria SMH conducted widespread espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance activities in Paris and Northern France for the British Special Operations Executive, the SOE, in London. It was life-risking business. More than 50 members of Gloria SMH would be captured by the Gestapo and sent to German concentration camps. Many died there, including Beckett’s closest French friend and literary associate Alfred </span></span><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Péron. </span></span><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">(Péron
is seen in the snapshot, below, in his French Army uniform - taken just before
the German invasion in 1940, his wife Mania at his side). </span></span><br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jo8F0BqD2Xs/Vwc01ocyNYI/AAAAAAAABEU/k_SZsuKYdw0N-UhEtoLf1gC2oPWiX4GwQ/s1600/S.Beckett2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jo8F0BqD2Xs/Vwc01ocyNYI/AAAAAAAABEU/k_SZsuKYdw0N-UhEtoLf1gC2oPWiX4GwQ/s200/S.Beckett2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Beckett needed
no coaxing when Péron recruited him for the network on September 1,
1941. He despised Hitler, Nazism, and racial hatred and was incensed by
the forced wearing of the yellow Star of David by Jews. Thirty-five at
the time, Beckett had been living full-time in Paris since 1937, and
with Suzanne Deschevaux-Daumesnil, his future wife, since the following
year. She fully supported what he was doing, despite the risks. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Beckett’s work involved translating French documents provided to him by Gloria SMH spies into English and delivering them to a photographer, code name “Jimmy the Greek” or “Tante Léo,” in the vicinity of today’s Allée Samuel Beckett. The documents would be microfilmed, then smuggled by courier into Vichy France and on to the SOE headquarters in London. The risks for Beckett were many: He could be arrested by Gestapo agents when documents were delivered to him, documents could be found in searches of his apartment, he could be stopped while crossing the city with the translations, caught as he delivered the documents to the photographer, or -- always a threat -- a member of the network could name names during torture by the Gestapo, or pro-Nazi spies could infiltrate the network. In the end, a pro-Nazi Catholic priest was the one. The network was broken.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-llhPuS_7UZE/Vwc02Pd1SmI/AAAAAAAABEM/r57aX8yWtrI1W3ra_YajFNiAcjD2BcC-A/s1600/S.Beckett4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-llhPuS_7UZE/Vwc02Pd1SmI/AAAAAAAABEM/r57aX8yWtrI1W3ra_YajFNiAcjD2BcC-A/s320/S.Beckett4.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">Allée Samuel Beckett</span></td></tr>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">On August 16, 1942, the Gestapo arrested Alfred Péron. Fortunately, his wife Mania was able to telegram Beckett and Suzanne and warn them to leave their apartment immediately. They did as she said, and just in time. Gestapo agents came to their 15th Arrondissement apartment, ransacked the premises, and stationed guards to wait for them to return. They holed up for a few nights at their friend Mary Reynolds’s apartment at No. 24 rue Hallé, only steps from today’s Allée Samuel Beckett, then moved from hideaway to hideaway in Paris for a month before escaping to the South. They lived clandestinely in the Lubéron for the rest of the war.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As for Beckett’s friend Alfred Péron, he was incarcerated in three prisons in France before being deported to the huge Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where brutal treatment and malnourishment destroyed his health. The Swiss Red Cross freed him when the camp was finally liberated, but too late. He died on May 1, 1945. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ToaDF3TJBRY/Vwc012GmStI/AAAAAAAABEQ/Sw9GHsaxdyA6lEPLxUJx3nZhKq-kEj7dw/s1600/S.Becker1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ToaDF3TJBRY/Vwc012GmStI/AAAAAAAABEQ/Sw9GHsaxdyA6lEPLxUJx3nZhKq-kEj7dw/s400/S.Becker1.jpg" width="303" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">Samuel Beckett</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #9fc5e8;">Reference:</span> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-3257d305-f42b-607c-0372-18eb344d91d5" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Damned to Fame, The Life of Samuel Beckett</span>, by James Knowlson, Bloomsbury, London, 1996.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-63615621760058778762016-04-28T18:34:00.000+02:002016-04-28T18:34:01.268+02:00Rilke and Rodin: How the Musée Rodin Came into Being<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UEWHPZl1ZTw/Vwcxl-wxPLI/AAAAAAAABDY/bekVu1cOWF4APZNEBPBu4T4pH8gr2JFHA/s1600/Rodin3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UEWHPZl1ZTw/Vwcxl-wxPLI/AAAAAAAABDY/bekVu1cOWF4APZNEBPBu4T4pH8gr2JFHA/s400/Rodin3.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">On August 31, 1908, the greatest German poet of his time, Rainer-Maria Rilke, moved into a studio in an 18th century mansion in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. He was immediately inspired to write this note:</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Dear Great Friend, </span></span></div>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You must see this beautiful building and the room I have been living in since this morning. Three bay windows open prodigiously on an abandoned garden where from time to time we see naïve rabbits leap over the trellises as in an ancient tapestry. If you are in town one of these days it would be my greatest joy if we might lunch together…”</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The “dear great friend” was none other than Auguste Rodin. This note marked the first time Rilke had communicated with Rodin in two years, since the great sculptor had abruptly fired him from his job as his secretary.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-J-tbdDnEZQQ/Vwcxl1ewbDI/AAAAAAAABDc/wnh0Q_82VTUHyLmgG9N96dMy2bGcajMRw/s1600/Rodin1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-J-tbdDnEZQQ/Vwcxl1ewbDI/AAAAAAAABDc/wnh0Q_82VTUHyLmgG9N96dMy2bGcajMRw/s320/Rodin1.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This is the story of the on-again/off-again relationship of these two geniuses and how it ultimately led to the existence of the Musée Rodin. This magnificent property includes not only the handsome 1730 mansion the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Hôtel Biron</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, but also the third-largest garden of any house in Paris (after the Elysées Palace and the Hôtel Matignon), dotted with one Rodin masterpiece after another – </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-3257d305-f416-6f1a-1021-2374e99e39fa" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Thinker, The Burghers of Calais, The Gates of Hell, </span>and dozens of others. But at the time Rilke wrote to Rodin it looked nothing like today. It was an elegant dump, abandoned four years earlier when the convent school occupying it lost its government subsidy.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Writers and artists began to move in. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">The Thinker</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Auguste Rodin was Rilke’s artistic idol. The Prague-born poet first came to Paris in 1902 to write an essay about him. A generation older, Rodin took a liking to the gifted but emotionally and artistically immature poet, then twenty-six, and he loved what Rilke wrote about his work. So in 1905 he hired the young man as his secretary and brought him to live with his family at his home in Meudon, outside Paris, where his vast sculpture atelier was located. Rilke reveled in his chance to see Rodin at work every day, to feel the intensity of his work ethic, and observe his ability to make, as if by magic, solid material come to life. At night Rilke would enter a room, lamp in hand, to look at the small sculptures: “As they wake up, one by one, like animals, life comes back into them, hesitantly, still heavy with dream.” He was in heaven. But six months into the job, Rodin suddenly dismissed him without explanation. Devastating though the shock of being fired was, it set off a poetic explosion. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In July 1907, Rilke wrote to his wife Clara that he had spent a whole morning watching three gazelles in the zoo of Paris’s Jardin des Plantes: “As women gaze out at you from pictures, so they gaze out with something, with a soundless final turn.” This became the inspiration for his poem “The Gazelle,” one of his so-called “thing poems,” heavily influenced by Rodin – but going the opposite way. Whereas Rodin made inanimate objects come to life, Rilke turned animate objects into things, sculpted by the words of his poems. Thanks to such poems as “The Gazelle” and “The Panther,” also based on his visits to the Jardin des Plantes, his two volumes of New Poems in 1907 in 1908 were tremendous hits. And they gave him the confidence to invite Rodin to lunch. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ljiKzzytVfQ/Vwcxm6txevI/AAAAAAAABDs/eXVTWzl2IxkW44AkkE_eGt4Z1j_bOOsPw/s1600/Rodin6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ljiKzzytVfQ/Vwcxm6txevI/AAAAAAAABDs/eXVTWzl2IxkW44AkkE_eGt4Z1j_bOOsPw/s200/Rodin6.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rodin accepted. He loved the place. He signed a lease for the ground floor right away and moved in a month later. Now on a relatively equal artistic basis, their previous woes forgotten, Rodin and Rilke were able to converse freely. Their only disagreement was about women. Rodin could not separate them from their sexuality (his “French temperament", as Rilke saw it), whereas Rilke defended the model of Nordic women, whose purity did not make them obstacles to art. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In 1912 the government decided to demolish the Hôtel Biron. To prevent that from happening, Rodin offered to will a large body of his works to the French government if it would preserve it as a museum after his death. Thanks to a massive outpouring of support, the government agreed. And when he died five years later the Hôtel Biron and its grounds became the Musée Rodin.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But what about Rilke? Does he get any credit? Take a look at the wall to the left of the massive wooden carriage doors at the entrance to the compound, and you will see a little plaque. It says:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In this mansion, to which he introduced Auguste Rodin, Rainer-Maria Rilke lived from 1908 to 1911.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-72654147707357124112016-04-19T21:15:00.000+02:002016-04-19T21:15:15.469+02:00A Literary Pilgrim Goes to Paris<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H18YI54ywQ4/VwFWw35EvGI/AAAAAAAABCw/NjjIV0Rs8K0OWCp6WlemP4ZYB-Mg21aEg/s1600/top.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H18YI54ywQ4/VwFWw35EvGI/AAAAAAAABCw/NjjIV0Rs8K0OWCp6WlemP4ZYB-Mg21aEg/s400/top.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-3257d305-dd25-1db8-c9ae-8d8b9cbfb85b" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Four years ago during my first full year of literary walks </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Bill Collis</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and some fellow Aussies took the walk I call “A Band of Outsiders." This stroll takes place in the colorful </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Place de la Contrescarpe-rue Mouffetard</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> neighborhood of the Latin Quarter, home to no less than the likes of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and George Orwell in the 1920s and other very great writers earlier. Bill liked it so much that he wrote about it when he returned home. His article ran in the Sunday Australian newspaper and subsequently<i> </i></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-3257d305-dd27-6aa5-3f00-644ecef08564" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonjour Paris</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. He called it </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“A Literary Pilgrim Goes to Paris.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Below is Bill’s article, accompanied by pictures that illustrate the walk. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #9fc5e8;"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"A Literary Pilgrim Goes to Paris"</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;">By Bill Collis</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Walking along the boulevards of Paris, becoming a flâneur, is an essential Parisian experience – more so if you have a passion for the literary history of the city. For the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">‘The Band of Outsiders’ Literary Walking Tour</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> in Paris, I met the expatriate American writer, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">David Burke</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, with my fellow walkers at </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Place de la Contrescarpe</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> He began by explaining that just as writers were enriched by living in Paris, our appreciation of their lives and work is heightened by following them from place to place in our imaginations or, even better, in our walking shoes.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In spite of the snobbish idea that tourism is not really travel I was hoping, as I arrived in Paris, that it was still possible to have a life-enhancing, even life-changing, experience in a short time away from the humdrum world of daily life. Like everyone else interested in literature I had read that Paris in the first half of the twentieth century was a haven foreign writers and artists, attracted by its great artistic and social freedom. I read </span><span id="docs-internal-guid-3257d305-dd2f-4525-b31c-5c8c9b2881bc" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Being Geniuses Together 1920-1930</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, </span><span id="docs-internal-guid-3257d305-dd2f-ad84-4a82-79314377e23b" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">by Robert McAlmon and Kay Boyle</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> about expatriate American writers and artists living in Paris, which had inspired me to read </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Hemingway, Fitzgerald</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and many others. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Gertrude Stein</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> wrote: “Paris was where the twentieth century was.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I also had a fascination with the vast series of novels, </span><span id="docs-internal-guid-3257d305-dd30-c73e-8982-ba33d85d468c" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">La Comédie Humaine</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, by Honoré de Balzac</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. When I started reading them in my twenties I found it all so different and foreign from anything else I had read. My acquaintance with this city seems to have spanned my whole adult life; in my dreams and in my reading.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So, now I stood with David and our group at the centre of the ancient Fauberg Saint Medard, an area which in the Middle Ages lay outside the city walls. He described how wine was cheap and untaxed then and this area teemed with traders and travelers. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Francois Villon</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and later, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rabelais</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> were known to have caroused at the taverns there.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lrlD6rEmF1g/VwFWwvkHHKI/AAAAAAAABC4/b5iwnLmCUR0fcpYXQyCUw_TGOk-hoxmRQ/s1600/Rue74.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lrlD6rEmF1g/VwFWwvkHHKI/AAAAAAAABC4/b5iwnLmCUR0fcpYXQyCUw_TGOk-hoxmRQ/s200/Rue74.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In 1922 the young </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ernest Hemingway</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and his wife, Hadley, moved into an apartment around the corner in rue du Cardinal Lemoine. The old building is still there with a plaque indicating their stay there. David reminds us of Hemingway’s character, Harry, in </span><span id="docs-internal-guid-3257d305-dd31-a43c-1f3a-1ec0d45e7ad6" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Snows of Kilimanjaro</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, thinking about this area: “And in that poverty, and in that quarter…he had written the start of all he was to do. There was never another part of Paris that he loved like that.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And it is a rich quartier. Down the hill a block from Hemingway’s we stopped at </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Valery Larbaud’s</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> apartment where </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">James Joyc</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">e</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> finished writing </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-3257d305-dd32-3482-14bd-dcaa86a6ca33" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ulysses.</span> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Then we strolled on through the colorful market street Rue Mouffetard to Rue du Pot-de-Fer where</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">George Orwell</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> once was living a life of poverty that he described in such detail in his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It was beginning to rain as we stopped outside the house Balzac used as a model for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mme Vauquer’s</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> pension bourgeoise in </span><span id="docs-internal-guid-3257d305-dd32-9acf-84a2-644ae62570b7" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Le Père Goriot</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. For shelter we ducked into a nearby art gallery, and David took the opportunity to entertain us with the stories about characters Balzac used in his novels, like the young law student Rastignac and the evil</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Vautrin</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Paris is a tangible mix of the past and present, and the longer we stay in Paris we will come to agree with </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Balzac</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> when he claimed: “while searching the dead I only see the living.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I would like to give recognition here to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Patti Miller</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, the literary mentor of my Australian walkers and an outstanding writer whose latest book is the memoir</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span id="docs-internal-guid-3257d305-dd2c-3cd5-4168-5e7d2adbfc21" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ransacking Paris</span><span id="docs-internal-guid-3257d305-dd2c-3cd5-4168-5e7d2adbfc21" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span> </span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-7098361694890782572016-04-05T23:45:00.000+02:002016-04-05T23:45:51.678+02:00Spring & the First Walks of 2016<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Chestnuts in blossom, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Holiday tables under the trees . . .”</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And moi, David, I’m blossoming too, as I launch my season of literary walks in Paris in 2016. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, George Orwell, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, and James Baldwin are among the Anglophone giants with me. So are such world-famous French writers as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo, Dumas, Balzac, Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Verlaine for a few of these towering literary figures, every one with a dramatic personal saga to tell.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As one of my walkers put it, “It seemed that the writers’ spirits were walking along with us, pointing out their favorite haunts and whispering their stories in our ears.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">View my <span style="color: #9fc5e8;"><a href="http://writersinpariswalkingtours.blogspot.com/p/schedule-fees.html">Schedule of Walks</a></span> and join me this beautiful Spring season.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-7121699451452257182015-12-17T00:18:00.002+01:002015-12-17T00:20:18.317+01:00Farewell to 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;">It's time to say good bye to <b>David Burke’s Writers in Paris Walking Tours</b> for the year 2015, but fear not! My walks will be off and running in April 2016. In the meantime, please dig in and explore my archives of literary Paris blogs which you can find right here. The website will be my way of keeping in touch, because I’ll be in a certain big country where Facebook, Google, the NY Times and other modes of communication are forbidden. <br /><br />I wish you joyful times in the months where I’ll be missing you, but I will be digging out new literary nuggets for when we get together. <b> </b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><b>À bientôt! </b></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-43963032306338013772015-11-05T04:09:00.002+01:002015-11-05T04:46:14.215+01:00Victor Hugo in the Marais & Elsewhere<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;">In October 1832, thirty years old and already the titan of French letters,Victor Hugo moved with his wife Adèle and their two sons and two daughters into the spacious second-floor apartment in the Hôtel Rohan-Guéménée at No. 6 Place des Vosges, looking over the park. Now the Musée Victor Hugo, it is a rich part of my “Great Days of the Marais” walking tour.<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9GLm4z2LuZE/Vjq_9Oxs9nI/AAAAAAAAA-Q/YoubWFOgKDI/s1600/6a00d83451b0bd69e201b8d16ca182970c-800wi.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9GLm4z2LuZE/Vjq_9Oxs9nI/AAAAAAAAA-Q/YoubWFOgKDI/s200/6a00d83451b0bd69e201b8d16ca182970c-800wi.jpg" width="200" /></a></span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br />Riding high on the success of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, several lavishly praised books of <span id="goog_934573183"></span>lyrical poetry, and his riot-igniting play Hernani already behind him, Hugo was the Romantic Movement’s acknowledged leader. Here he wrote his most successful play Ruy Blas, three other dramas, poetry, and drafts of sections of Les Misérables. In 1841 he was elected to the Académie française and four years later elevated to peer of France as viscount by King Louis-Philippe. But during the Revolution of 1848, Hugo switched to the democratic side and was elected deputy to the Second Republic ‘s National Constituent Assembly.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br /></span><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br /><br />Casting a pall over Hugo’s triumphs, however, was the calamitous state of his marriage. Adèle, his childhood sweetheart, came to see him as an egotist and a tyrant, and she entered upon an affair with Hugo’s close friend Sainte-Beuve. The double betrayal crushed him. But in January 1833 he met a lovely young actress engaged for a bit part in his play Lucrèce Borgia. From his first night with Juliette Drouet to her death half a century later, they spent hardly a day apart. “Jugu,” as he called her, unleashed in her “Toto” a passion for the erotic, and she thrilled to his poetry, as Adèle never had. Juliette became his copyist, putting his unruly scrawl into legible form until her eyes gave out in old age. Although they saw each other almost daily, they managed to exchange seventeen thousand notes and letters.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br />Toto set Jugu up in a modest apartment nearby on Rue Sainte-Anastasie. The back door of his house opened onto the Impasse Guéménée, providing convenient cover for his visits to her, and eventually, to many others. Juliette managed to live with his dalliances, but his serious affairs hurt.<br /><br />Hugo loved being on the Place des Vosges, but on June 24, 1848, after street fighting broke out during a workers’ uprising, he wrote in his journal:<br /><br />“Fourteen bullets hit my coach house door, eleven outside, three inside. A soldier of the line was mortally wounded in my courtyard. We still see the streak of blood on the paving stones.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"> Hugo quickly moved his family to the then-countrified neighborhood of Saint-Georges, in today’s Ninth Arrondissement. Three years later, in 1851, his fiery denunciation of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s coup d’état forced him to flee from France, and he, his family, and Juliette went into exile, first in Brussels, then in the Channel Islands, remaining there until the fall of “Napoléon le Petit,” as Hugo dubbed him, in 1870.</span><br />
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<br />
<br />
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<br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;">The rooms in the Musée Victor Hugo are devoted to three periods of Hugo’s life:</span><br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="color: #eeeeee;">his dwelling place on the Place des Vosges …</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #eeeeee;">his
exile in the island of Guernsey (we see a Medieval-themed room from his
Hautville House and a Japanese-style room from Juliette Drouet’s house
Hautville Fairy, pictured below)…<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TmLeSiaEPUY/VjrGo1ncsgI/AAAAAAAAA-0/YnONKL2TT78/s1600/Hugo.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="147" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TmLeSiaEPUY/VjrGo1ncsgI/AAAAAAAAA-0/YnONKL2TT78/s400/Hugo.png" width="400" /></a></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #eeeeee;">and his last fifteen years in Paris. </span></li>
</ol>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a8tVFPnIGig/Vjq__JPuEiI/AAAAAAAAA-E/kBjjAEVRDvw/s1600/6a00d83451b0bd69e201bb0886a51d970d-800wi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a8tVFPnIGig/Vjq__JPuEiI/AAAAAAAAA-E/kBjjAEVRDvw/s200/6a00d83451b0bd69e201bb0886a51d970d-800wi.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">An elderly Victor Hugo</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br />The reconstituted bedroom from his final home on Avenue Victor-Hugo (named for him during his lifetime, a very rare honor) is dominated by the Louis XIII bed in which he died on May 22, 1885, at eighty-three. His last words were “Je vois la lumière noire”—“I see the black light.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7MCnRcUv5OA/VjrBxdV-0rI/AAAAAAAAA-g/yoAbOrIacBI/s1600/6a00d83451b0bd69e201b7c7e2d7c3970b-800wi.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7MCnRcUv5OA/VjrBxdV-0rI/AAAAAAAAA-g/yoAbOrIacBI/s200/6a00d83451b0bd69e201b7c7e2d7c3970b-800wi.jpg" width="148" /></a></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-7214496153311263452015-10-21T05:39:00.000+02:002015-10-21T18:42:28.141+02:00Jean Rhys in Montparnasse<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7vd-y_0znp0/VdPtgC4zuLI/AAAAAAAAA20/v-iELlSaWUg/s1600/Rhys2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7vd-y_0znp0/VdPtgC4zuLI/AAAAAAAAA20/v-iELlSaWUg/s320/Rhys2.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The classic 1920s Art Deco café </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Le Sélect</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> is one of the key stops on my </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Lost Generation”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> literary tours. Standing at the corner of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the rue Vavin, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Le Sélect</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> opened its doors at the height of the expatriate frenzy, in 1925, and remains the best preserved café of the era. This was a hotbed for writers. In </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Sun Also Rises,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Hemingway</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> here set no less than four scenes in his first novel, published the year after the cafe’s opening. But other outstanding writers also made fine use of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Le Sélect –</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jean Rhys</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> among them, in her first novel</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Quartet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, published in 1928.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KcrRIPx4BBE/VdPtgdahxBI/AAAAAAAAA3E/5208QI5lAxE/s1600/Book.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KcrRIPx4BBE/VdPtgdahxBI/AAAAAAAAA3E/5208QI5lAxE/s200/Book.jpg" width="136" /></a></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In a scene in the café, her fragile heroine Marya has to endure a nasty scene at with her lover </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Heidler</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and his testy wife Lois. Trying to lighten the tension, Heidler beckons Guy Lester to the table, but the utterly plastered Guy calls Marya a hussy.:</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br /></span>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Darling Marya,” said Lois, laughing on a high note. “You don’t know her,</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">you don’t. She’s as harmless at they’re made, Guy. A sweet young thing on the</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">sentimental side.”</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br /></span>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The thinly disguised models for Heidler were</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Ford Madox Ford</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, Lois for his long time mistress the Australian artist </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Stella Bowen</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, and Marya for Rhys herself.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br /></span>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7discXhGzPg/VdPtg2cjKiI/AAAAAAAAA3Q/2ZEEp_S_RJg/s1600/Rhys4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" padding-right="10" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7discXhGzPg/VdPtg2cjKiI/AAAAAAAAA3Q/2ZEEp_S_RJg/s200/Rhys4.jpg" width="149" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ford Madox Ford</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was a British literary powerhouse, famed for his 1916 World War I novel </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Good Soldier</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. He moved from London to Paris in 1922, in time to attend Proust’s funeral as the self-appointed representative of English letters. In Paris he joined </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ezra Pound</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> in promoting </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">James Joyce’s</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> work and in 1924 founded the Transatlantic Review. He and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Stella Bowen</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> moved to No. 84 Rue Notre Dame des Champs in 1925.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br /></span>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ford</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was a wheezy middle-aged fat man with a walrus-like moustache, but had remarkable success with women. His friend Joyce wrote:</span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“O Father O’Ford you’ve a masterful way with you,</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Maid, wife and widow are wild to make hay with you.”</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s20Vxk-eBaY/VdPtgUcxrHI/AAAAAAAAA3I/rOZdTZpYNdU/s1600/JeanRhys1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" padding="10" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s20Vxk-eBaY/VdPtgUcxrHI/AAAAAAAAA3I/rOZdTZpYNdU/s200/JeanRhys1.jpg" width="149" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Stella Bowen</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jean Rhys</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was one of those wives. She was officially </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mme Jean Lenglet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, married to a Dutch man of that name.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Ford</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> hired her in 1924 to work on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Transatlantic Review</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. He tutored her in the craft of writing, published her first story in the Review, and took her birth name of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> to the pseudonym he created for her of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jean Rhys</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. She was thirty-four (hardly the young thing Marya seems to be in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Quartet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">), a beautiful woman, but emotionally shaky and painfully shy.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Their affair began early in 1925, after her husband </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Lenglet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> went to prison for embezzlement.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At the time that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ford and Stella Bowen</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> moved to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rhys</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Juan les-Pins,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> helping a rich American woman write a book (as does Rhys’s heroine Sasha Jansen in her later novel </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Good Morning, Midnight</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">), but Ford managed to get her fired by the lady, forcing Rhys to come back to Paris, where he installed her in a hotel by the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Gare Montparnasse</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. It was just such a place as the one Heidler installs Marya in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Quartet:</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“It was impossible, when one looked at that bed, not to think of the succession</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">of petites femmes who had extended themselves upon it, clad in carefully</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">thought out pink or mauve chemises, full of tact and savoir faire and savoir</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">vivre and all the rest of it.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ford’s final break with </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jean Rhys</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> came in the fall of 1926, when, after much griping from Bowen, he left for an extended book tour in the United States. Rhys then returned to her husband in Holland, where she wrote </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Quartet.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Its publication two years later was successful – and sparked alternate versions of it by the three other concerned parties: a novel apiece by </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ford Madox Ford</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jean Lenglet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and a frontal attack on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rhys</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> by </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Stella Bowen</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> in her autobiography, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Drawn from Life.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Ironically, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Quartet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> turned a quartet.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-4424371333257490492015-10-16T05:30:00.000+02:002015-10-16T17:46:31.011+02:00Ezra Pound's Atelier, at Last!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NDnY3sNt9bw/VdEve-944CI/AAAAAAAAA1o/qfo1lLnrI-0/s1600/EraPound1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NDnY3sNt9bw/VdEve-944CI/AAAAAAAAA1o/qfo1lLnrI-0/s400/EraPound1.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m fascinated by the relationship of people and their places, especially when it comes to writers in Paris -- where they were and what they did there. Take this photo from 1922. \From left to right, they are </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Ezra Pound</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, and Joyce’s lawyer </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">John Quinn</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. I knew that it was photographed in front of the big wooden door to Pound’s atelier at No. 70, bis,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> rue Notre Dame-des-Champs in Montparnasse</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. I had stopped at the sturdy steel street gate there many times during my </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Lost Generation”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> literary walking tours, but must to my frustration the sturdy steel gate was always closed, making it impossible to go in and see Ezra Pound’s place. But then last November when I was doing a walk with four jolly Swedes, the steel gate was wide open. Construction work was going on. I was through the gate with a flash, with my team of Scandinavians racing behind, down the long, narrow corridor to the little courtyard in front of Pound’s atelier, where modernization was going on.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At last I know where it was. Note the bulky wooden door in the 1922 photo with </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ezra Pound</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and his visitors and look at the one of me standing before that same wooden door in November 2014. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Here are the photos from last year: </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QzVHOk8548I/VdEvfOxLGdI/AAAAAAAAA2U/B2PcbwSZ6-Y/s1600/EzraPound2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QzVHOk8548I/VdEvfOxLGdI/AAAAAAAAA2U/B2PcbwSZ6-Y/s320/EzraPound2.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A9lWQJVAc4U/VdEvfEtpbmI/AAAAAAAAA2Q/PP1q86hmmG8/s1600/EzraPound3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A9lWQJVAc4U/VdEvfEtpbmI/AAAAAAAAA2Q/PP1q86hmmG8/s320/EzraPound3.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lq1WaMcZPZ8/VdEvfgHtIOI/AAAAAAAAA14/mYwKC2Ay9zY/s1600/EzraPound4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lq1WaMcZPZ8/VdEvfgHtIOI/AAAAAAAAA14/mYwKC2Ay9zY/s320/EzraPound4.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1I2Zjjz2Hrs/VdEvgMs7TSI/AAAAAAAAA2E/9vHMa0Wgzj4/s1600/EzraPound5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1I2Zjjz2Hrs/VdEvgMs7TSI/AAAAAAAAA2E/9vHMa0Wgzj4/s320/EzraPound5.jpg" width="245" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hUswfYsLTH8/VdEvgC77psI/AAAAAAAAA2A/cL0hR-ELBw8/s1600/EzraPound6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hUswfYsLTH8/VdEvgC77psI/AAAAAAAAA2A/cL0hR-ELBw8/s320/EzraPound6.jpg" width="240" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZgDWr52nlSA/VdEvghvwOZI/AAAAAAAAA2M/RAaTTU1bbEk/s1600/EzraPound7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZgDWr52nlSA/VdEvghvwOZI/AAAAAAAAA2M/RAaTTU1bbEk/s320/EzraPound7.jpg" width="239" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Poet, editor, and all-round cultural gadfly, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ezra Pound</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> lived with his artist wife, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dorothy</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Shakespear</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, at No. 70, bis, rue Notre Dame des Champs from the summer of 1921 until the winter of 1924.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A brilliant and omnivorous student and translator of ancient poetry, including Chinese and Japanese verse, this Idaho-born American settled in London in 1908, where he wrote influential poetry (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“In a Station of the Metro,”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Hugh Selwyn Mauberly cycle</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">), edited the little magazines </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Poetry, the Egoist, and Blast</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, and became a guru to younger poets, most notably </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">T. S. Eliot</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. But feeling that London had lost its literary edge (“an old bitch, gone in the teeth”) and having talked </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">James Joyce</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> into moving to Paris, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Pound</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> decided that he should be there too. He arrived in December of 1920. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sylvia Beach</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was in for a surprise when he first paid a visit to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Shakespeare and Company</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">: </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“His costume—the velvet jacket and open-road shirt—was that of the English aesthete of the period. There was a touch of Whistler about him; his language, on the other hand, was Huckleberry Finn’s.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The tall, lanky, red-bearded </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Pound</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was one of the most influential figures on the expatriate scene as magazine editor, advisor to</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Bill Bird’s Three Mountains Press</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, and champion of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Joyce and Eliot.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> In Pound’s words, this was “a grrrreat litttttterary period.” He was also a mentor to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Hemingway</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, giving him lectures on literary style in exchange for boxing lessons. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Gertrude Stein</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was Pound’s only known enemy. She called him “the village explainer, excellent if you were in a village, but if you were not, not.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">He called her “that tub of guts.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Besides his work for others,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Pound</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> started writing his </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Cantos</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, the vast cycle of poems that would occupy him for the rest of his life.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After four years, he felt that the city had become too crowded with Americans who were “anything but the Passionate Pilgrims of James’s day or the enquirers of my own.” At the end of 1924,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Pound</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, his wife and his mistress, the concert violinist and musicologist</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Olga Rudge,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> moved to Rapallo, where </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rudge</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> had a daughter by him the following year.Pound’s unbridled support of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mussolini,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> capped by pro-Fascist, anti-Semitic broadcasts during World War II, irremediably tarnished his reputation and led to his incarceration in a Washington, D.C., mental hospital in 1946 (though he could have faced the death penalty for treason). Twelve years later a group of literary supporters, including his old protégés </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Hemingway and Eliot,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> successfully petitioned for his release. He returned to Italy, where he died at eighty-seven in 1972.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-59330795063287724162015-10-06T05:00:00.000+02:002015-10-06T17:47:42.529+02:00Camus Goes to Thailand<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rLI2ULbegl8/VdErpEyDG5I/AAAAAAAAA0c/wdho5Q2LVXg/s1600/Camus1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="126" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rLI2ULbegl8/VdErpEyDG5I/AAAAAAAAA0c/wdho5Q2LVXg/s200/Camus1.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Camus</span></span></td></tr>
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<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-25c66829-3912-032d-6d71-ad0d287ffe5b" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The other day I did a walk in Paris with an unusual literary bunch -- a jolly TV crew from Bangkok shooting a film about </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Albert Camus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Renowned author of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">L’Etranger</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> (The Stranger), </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">La Peste</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> (The Plague), other novels, plays, and major essays,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> L’Homme révolté</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> (The Rebel) and others, and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Nobel Prize for Literature</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Camus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> remains one of the most beloved of writers -- not only in France and the West -- but also in Thailand. They love him too. To wit: a 50-minute television documentary is in the works. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QzjDOTjqeFo/VdEskb7EUbI/AAAAAAAAA1U/Cuw8M8lnE_k/s1600/No18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QzjDOTjqeFo/VdEskb7EUbI/AAAAAAAAA1U/Cuw8M8lnE_k/s200/No18.jpg" width="149" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Here are the places where I took my new Thai friends, in order of our walk. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">1946 to 1950: No. 18 rue Séguier </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">(right)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When the Nazis were chased out of Paris in 1944, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Albert Camus,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> then 30, suddenly became famous all across France, revealed as the editor-in-chief of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Combat</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, the most important clandestine newspaper during the Occupation. And when the paper went above ground, he continued as chief. In 1946 he rented an apartment for his wife Francine and their year-old twins here in Saint Germain-des-Près. Besides editing the paper, he completed his novel </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Plague</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> in 1947, a huge best seller, with 52,000 sold in the first two months, and considered by many his finest work of fiction. But </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Combat</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> could not compete with the big Paris, and he had to close it down at the end of the year. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Camus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> had become friends with </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jean-Paul Sartre</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> 1943 and remained close at the start of this period, with Camus commissioning </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sartre</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> in 1946 to go to America to report for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Combat</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. But politically, they were moving apart. S</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">artre,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> never a member of the Communist Party, nevertheless hued to the Stalinist line, whereas </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Camus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, once a Party member in Algeria, began speaking openly about the Soviet gulags and other forms of political repression. “It is better to be wrong by killing no one rather than be right with mass graves,” he wrote.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tJBR34j7Nn4/VdErre0yyDI/AAAAAAAAA1I/Wkrl3TycC6g/s1600/Sartre_Simone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="296" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tJBR34j7Nn4/VdErre0yyDI/AAAAAAAAA1I/Wkrl3TycC6g/s400/Sartre_Simone.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Jean Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">1943: La Louisiane, No. 60 rue de Seine</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> lived in the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Hotel La Louisiane</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> during the last couple of years of the Occupation and after the Liberation. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Camus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> first met them at a rehearsal of Sartre’s play </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Les Mouches</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> (The Flies) in 1943, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Camus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> being a playwright too. He was eight years younger than </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sartre</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, and a sort of older brother/younger brother relationship began. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Beauvoir</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> would invite </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Camus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> for dinner at </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">La Louisiane,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> even during the severe food shortage in the Occupation. In her memoir</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> La Force de l’age</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> (The Prime of Life), she calls Camus “a simple, cheerful soul,” ignoring </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Camus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">’ status on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Combat</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, and certainly frowning at the fun he and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sartre</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> were having.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_TQR6Brj6oo/VdErqGoVPQI/AAAAAAAAA1E/SeToHlYAij0/s1600/Camus2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_TQR6Brj6oo/VdErqGoVPQI/AAAAAAAAA1E/SeToHlYAij0/s400/Camus2.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AR20Ve331Qo/VdErpxdwvPI/AAAAAAAAA0o/dRxLRvwy6wU/s1600/CafeDeFlore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AR20Ve331Qo/VdErpxdwvPI/AAAAAAAAA0o/dRxLRvwy6wU/s200/CafeDeFlore.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Surprisingly, despite the restrictions of the Occupation, literature thrived in France during these years. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Camus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> published his first books</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The Stranger</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Myth of Sisyphus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> in 1942, and</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Sartre</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> his philosophical tome</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Being and Nothingness</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and his play </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Flies</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> the following year, and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">No Exit</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> in 1944. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Place Saint Germain-des-Prés</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was literary ground zero. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sartre and Beauvoir</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and their “family” took over the upstairs room at </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Café de Flore</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> as their work and socializing place, away from the German officers below. Camus was not one to hobnob with groups of intellectuals. So he and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sartre</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> would lunch or dine, just the two, across the boulevard at</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Brasserie Lipp.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sartre</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> did not consider </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Camus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> a philosopher, but he admitted that he was the better writer.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-btdFdS8FF8s/VdErq77h7KI/AAAAAAAAA04/PNp-DY6ElFk/s1600/CareMairie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-btdFdS8FF8s/VdErq77h7KI/AAAAAAAAA04/PNp-DY6ElFk/s400/CareMairie.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Café de la Mairie du 6ème Arrondissement</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After moving to the Saint Suplice area in 1950, the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Café de la Mairie</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> became Camus’s local. He’d stop in for his</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> petit déjeuner</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and paper on his way to his office at</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Gallimard</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, the company that published all his books and put him their elite readers’ committee in 1942, and became practically a family member of the large </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Gallimard</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> clan. Their solid welcome helped make up for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Camus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> troubled upbringing in Algeria, his father dead in World War I when Albert was just a baby, and his mother poor, Spanish-born, and illiterate.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l3_BIPuslqM/VdEro0ir6zI/AAAAAAAAA0U/DLhSWJ7F7WE/s1600/29Madame.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l3_BIPuslqM/VdEro0ir6zI/AAAAAAAAA0U/DLhSWJ7F7WE/s320/29Madame.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The last house: No. 29 rue Madame</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In 1950 Camus, Francine and the twins moved to this attractive building right near the Luxembourg Garden, convenient for him to take the kids there. Things went smoothly at the beginning, but the most painful period of his professional life came the following year, when </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Rebel</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, Camus’s “intellectual genealogy of totalitarianisms,” came out in October, 1951. The far-Left-leaning Saint German-des-Prés literati turned viciously against him. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Sartre</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> roasted him in 19 vitriolic pages in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Les Temps Moderne</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, attacking him for his “somber self-importance” and “mournful moderation” in his politics. The press played it up as a personal feud, but it was essentially a dispute about the nature of the Soviet Communism.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In 1956 Camus wrote</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> La Chute</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> (The Fall), his last finished book, and the following year came </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Nobel Prize</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. At age of 43, he was the second youngest Nobel laureate, after </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rudyard Kipling</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> 50 years earlier, at 42. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But little over two years later, on January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car crash.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sx-kmW_lWnU/VdEr4u_1spI/AAAAAAAAA1Q/E6HnqosSdEo/s1600/Camus3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sx-kmW_lWnU/VdEr4u_1spI/AAAAAAAAA1Q/E6HnqosSdEo/s400/Camus3.jpg" width="298" /></a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-7592855244722840952015-10-01T05:00:00.000+02:002015-10-01T17:47:55.821+02:00Rabelais in the Marais<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pqqjCO7vchc/VdEoZ34jfrI/AAAAAAAAAzs/oSGNU3tKclo/s1600/Rabelais2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pqqjCO7vchc/VdEoZ34jfrI/AAAAAAAAAzs/oSGNU3tKclo/s400/Rabelais2.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The other day I was walking in the Marais, in the part down by the Seine, and as I cut up the rue des Jardins Saint-Paul, heading toward the big church of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Saint Paul</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, I couldn’t help thinking about one of my favourite French literary heroes, F</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">rançois Rabelais,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> who lived on this street in the mid-1550s. </span></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eGSuUjtPSXI/VdEoaI7hccI/AAAAAAAAAz8/Tyu8u3y6Ex0/s1600/Rabelais.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eGSuUjtPSXI/VdEoaI7hccI/AAAAAAAAAz8/Tyu8u3y6Ex0/s200/Rabelais.jpg" width="161" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Today we freely banter the adjective of his name, Rabelaisian – “marked by gross robust humour,” </span>as the dictionary says – but let’s not forget that </span></span><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">François Rabelais</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was the first French novelist, famed for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Most Fearsome Life of the Great Gargantua and Pantaguel</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, rollicking tomes about two brilliant prank-loving giants, father and son, let loose on Renaissance Paris, both books published in the 1530s. Much of the writing consists of wildly comical satire by this off-beat Benedictine lay priest of the strict Catholic-run </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">University of Paris’s</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> theological dogma – this in the early days of the Protestant Reformation. Dissenters were being burned at the stake for far less, Rabelais’s own publisher </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Etienne Dolet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> being one of them. But luckily for him, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rabelais</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> had a stalwart protector: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Bishop of Paris</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But the books deal with many other things as well: the Medieval wall of Paris, for instance. Built by </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">King Philippe Auguste</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> at the turn of the 13th century, a 100-yard stretch of it still stands, the largest vestige extant, nine meters high with two round towers standing. It boards on a large sports field just down from the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Lycée Charlemagne. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> In Rabelais’s time it stood directly across from his house on the rue des Jardins Saint-Paul. In</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Pantagruel</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, published in 1532, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rabelais</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> makes fun of the ancient ramparts, which were still the first line of defence on the Left Bank of Paris. In it, Pantagruel’s sidekick </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Panurge</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> (“a mischievous rogue, a cheat, a boozer, a roisterer”) says:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Oh, how strong they are! They’re just the thing for keeping goslings in a coop. By my beard, they are pretty poor defences for a city like this. Why, a cow could knock down more than twelve foot of them with a single fart.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V75yT1WTH-s/VdEpGrW2FcI/AAAAAAAAA0A/uvJbEnTcIDs/s1600/Rabelais4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V75yT1WTH-s/VdEpGrW2FcI/AAAAAAAAA0A/uvJbEnTcIDs/s320/Rabelais4.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In his final years, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rabelais</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> lived on a sinecure, the salaries of two curacies at churches outside of Paris in which he seems never to have set foot. He died in 1553 at age fifty-nine and was buried in a little local cemetery called Saint-Eloï. It no longer exists. In 1791, during </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Revolution</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, it was cleared for real estate development. But unlike the ancient </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Cemetery of the Innocents in Les Halles</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, whose skulls and bones were sent to the Catacombs before construction began, houses were built on the land of the former </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Saint-Eloï cemetery</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> with without the remains having been removed. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So the unquiet ghost of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">François Rabelais</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> roams the Marais.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-30106198487939867702015-09-23T04:45:00.000+02:002015-09-23T17:39:10.870+02:00Victor Hugo: The "Stovepipe" and the Elephant<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BLmsWuYuR7w/VdEmNRICdwI/AAAAAAAAAy8/i-LIZIaSjog/s1600/Hugo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BLmsWuYuR7w/VdEmNRICdwI/AAAAAAAAAy8/i-LIZIaSjog/s400/Hugo.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Place de la Bastille</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Although the mother of all revolutions has no monument to commemorate it at the spot where it started, there is one for a far lesser upheaval four decades later. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">La Colonne de Juillet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the July Column</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, poking up in the cobblestone vastness of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Place de la Bastille</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, honors Parisians who lost their lives in the Revolution of July 1830, which toppled </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Charles X,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> the last Bourbon king, and brought his cousin </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Louis-Philippe</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> to power.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Lq_APAAKF8g/VdEmNvpcJ8I/AAAAAAAAAzQ/B5ulJRKpM1g/s1600/Hugo2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Lq_APAAKF8g/VdEmNvpcJ8I/AAAAAAAAAzQ/B5ulJRKpM1g/s200/Hugo2.jpg" width="141" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hugo</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Victor Hugo</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> watched </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the July Column</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> going up in the early 1830s when he was a neighbor at </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Place des Vosges</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. A “gigantic stove adorned with a stovepipe,” he called it. But the elephant was another story. This was a giant plaster and wood mock-up of an elephant that was supposed to be the centerpiece of a magnificent fountain dreamed up by Napoléon. The mock-up was built in 1812, but the empire collapsed before it could be bronzed. The poor pachyderm was removed from its base to make way for the “stovepipe” and shunted to the edge of the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Place de la Bastille</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, near where the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Opéra</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> is now. Punished for decades by wind, sun, and rain, the aged eyesore moved Hugo deeply. In </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Les Misérables</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> he wrote:</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"In that open and deserted corner of the Square, the broad front of the colossus, his trunk, his tusks, his size, his enormous rump, his four feet like columns, produced at night, under a starry sky, a startling and terrible outline. One couldn’t tell what it meant. It was a sort of symbol of the force of the people. It was gloomy, enigmatic, and immense. It was a mysterious and mighty phantom, visible standing by the side of the invisible specter of the Bastille."</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-79-x1DbTeNY/VdEmN521JpI/AAAAAAAAAzg/dvGk-Eh4yUU/s1600/Hugo3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-79-x1DbTeNY/VdEmN521JpI/AAAAAAAAAzg/dvGk-Eh4yUU/s320/Hugo3.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In one of the most touching scenes in the novel, the resourceful street urchin </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Gavroche</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> takes two little lost boys he finds wandering on Rue Saint-Antoine into the comfy nest he has built for himself in the belly of the beast, protected from the rats infesting the structure by a cage made of copper mesh appropriated from the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jardin des Plantes</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. The little boys are the brothers </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Gavroche</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> did not know he had.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-2688988247472432642015-09-18T05:30:00.000+02:002015-09-18T17:45:27.979+02:00Monsieur Nicolas On The Ile Saint-Louis<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UrHWhsV9hyI/VdA90XOyFlI/AAAAAAAAAxw/lf6wwpOcUJE/s1600/Nicolas2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UrHWhsV9hyI/VdA90XOyFlI/AAAAAAAAAxw/lf6wwpOcUJE/s400/Nicolas2.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">One of my favourite characters on my </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Notre Dame and the Ile Saint-Louis” walking tour</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> is the self-described “perverted peasant” </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Nicolas Edmé Restif de la Bretonne,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> the most prolific writer of the 18th century. The secluded quays of the Ile Saint-Louis in those years were popular places for lovers’ trysts. But they were not as alone they thought, thanks to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Monsieur Nicolas</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Every night this obsessive nightwalker (an owl was his emblem) would cross from his lodgings in the Latin Quarter, spy on the doings of couples, scratch coded notes on the walls, and continue his rounds. The next day he would come back and copy his notes for use in his chronicles </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Le Paysan perverti and Les Nuits de Paris</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. But the scratches are gone, erased over the centuries by prudes and the elements.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Slpl8yaOwPk/VdA90pmvaTI/AAAAAAAAAx8/XZwIiFiMpyw/s1600/MonsieurNicolas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Slpl8yaOwPk/VdA90pmvaTI/AAAAAAAAAx8/XZwIiFiMpyw/s320/MonsieurNicolas.jpg" width="235" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Monsieur Nicolas</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was the first writer to see ordinary Parisians as worthy subjects for literature, launching a genre. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Les Nuits de Paris</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, his vibrant, accurately observed multi-volume chronicle of his prowls in pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary Paris, was wildly successful. But forced into retirement by ill health, he ended in poverty. All the same, two thousand admirers, from streetwalkers to duchesses, followed the “perverted peasant” to the cemetery after his death on February 3, 1806.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-16599361876317407232015-09-14T05:30:00.000+02:002015-09-14T17:45:23.920+02:00Writers in the Luxembourg Gardens - The French<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g721zih6fEY/VdA6l2eOOHI/AAAAAAAAAwk/USb0ektwl5U/s1600/Garden1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g721zih6fEY/VdA6l2eOOHI/AAAAAAAAAwk/USb0ektwl5U/s400/Garden1.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">More than at any other time in French literary history, the 19th century saw the high point of popular adoration of writers. As evidence of that, all we need do is stroll through the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Luxembourg Gardens</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and see all the statues and busts of poets and novelists from that era. </span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Le Marchand de Masques</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My personal favorite is the 1883 sculpture called</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Le Marchand de Masques – The Mask Merchant – by Zacharie Astruc</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. It shows a boy hawking masks of famous writers, artists, and composers. He is waving one of the masks on high; others are seen at his feet. One of these of is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Honoré de Balzac,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> who lived near the park in the 1830s, during the period of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Le Père Goriot</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and other great novels. At night he would circle the garden in his monk’s cowl, candelabra in his hand. The mask in the young merchant’s hand is that of the most idolized writer of the century, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Victor Hugo</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. He lived nearby as a boy, loved roaming the park, and later, in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Les Misérables</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, he had Marius catching his first glimpse of Cosette on a pathway by the tree nursery. Soon they would be exchanging amorous sighs.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Only steps from the Boulevard Saint-Michel gate of the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Luxembourg Gardens,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> on the same woodsy plateau as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Mask Merchant</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, we find a marble statue of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">George Sand</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. She and her lover </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Alfred de Musset</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, the boy wonder of Romantic poetry, strolled the secluded pathways together. He later wrote about their storm-tossed affair in his bitter novel </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Confessions of a Child of the Century</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. She wrote about it more calmly in her autobiography. </span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SyqTCs45xdU/VdA6mOIcQ8I/AAAAAAAAAws/0_nCVeBTq8M/s1600/GeorgeSand1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SyqTCs45xdU/VdA6mOIcQ8I/AAAAAAAAAws/0_nCVeBTq8M/s400/GeorgeSand1.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">George Sand</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DevqBkHLvBw/VdA6oScODrI/AAAAAAAAAxU/rU-XEuMhrAE/s1600/Stendahl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="148" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DevqBkHLvBw/VdA6oScODrI/AAAAAAAAAxU/rU-XEuMhrAE/s200/Stendahl.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">On the same path as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">George Sand’s</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> statue is a stele honoring </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Stendhal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, the author of two of the century’s greatest novels, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Just steps beyond him is a bust of Sand’s dear friend </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Gustave Flaubert</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, whose scandalous masterpiece </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Madame Bovary</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> got him tried for obscenity in 1857. The same year, same charge, and in the same Paris courtroom, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Charles Baudelaire</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was put on trial for his shocking poems in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Les Fleurs du Mal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Flaubert and Baudelaire</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> wrote back and forth condemning the Second Empire for the </span>hypocritical and ultimately damaging ordeal it had put them through. A bust of <span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Baudelaire</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> is to be found – if you look carefully -- over by the orchard. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qkyl9kz4mBk/VdA6lFvP7xI/AAAAAAAAAwU/xzyepB-5VZM/s1600/Baudelaire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qkyl9kz4mBk/VdA6lFvP7xI/AAAAAAAAAwU/xzyepB-5VZM/s200/Baudelaire.jpg" width="148" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">On a path to the east of the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Palais de Luxembourg</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, the seat of the French Senate, we find novelist </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Henri Mürge</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">r, the author of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Scènes de la vie de bohème</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, looking no way bohemian at all. Up the hill on the same path is the bust of “art for art sake” poet </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Théodore de Banville</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. He is bare-chested. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Verlaine</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> called him “the one with the tits.”</span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pF6d3j0NTbg/VdA6oyg6sbI/AAAAAAAAAxc/MMyEFm0HGfQ/s1600/Verlaine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pF6d3j0NTbg/VdA6oyg6sbI/AAAAAAAAAxc/MMyEFm0HGfQ/s200/Verlaine.jpg" width="148" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Paul Verlaine</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Paul Verlaine</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, his elaborate bust is all the way to the west of the garden. As famed in his time for his debauchery as for his exquisite poetry, </span></span></span><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Verlaine</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was elected as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Prince of Poets</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> in 1894 by the leading poets of France. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Verlaine</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was deeply moved by the honor. From the window of his shabby hotel the newly crowned prince gestured toward the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Luxembourg Gardens</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and said, “I have no palace, but this is my royal park.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-35879224783769613642015-09-09T05:03:00.000+02:002015-09-09T17:59:31.670+02:00Writers in the Luxembourg Gardens - The Americans<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Surrounded as it is by such intensely literary areas as the Latin Quarter, Saint Germain-des-Prés and Montparnasse, it’s no surprise that “the Luco” has long been a magnet to writers, foreign as well as French. But as we are English-speakers, most of us, anyway, we start with a batch of American writers who succumbed to its charm and wrote about it -- </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and William Faulkner</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> – and will look at the French writers the next time.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In James’s 1903 novel </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Ambassadors</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> the trusty </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Lambert Strether</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> has been sent from his home town of Wollett, Massachusetts, by the formidable Mrs. Newsome, his fiancé and boss, to find out what’s going on with her son Chad. The young man has spent five years in Paris and shows no sign of coming home. With Chad out of town when </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Strether</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> arrives, he takes a few days to put himself “in relation” to the city,revisiting scenes from his own stay when he was a young man:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“In the Luxembourg Gardens he pulled up; here at last he found his nook, and here, on a penny chair from which terraces, alleys, vistas,fountains, little trees in garden tubs, little women in white caps and shrill little girls at play all sunnily ‘composed’ together, he passed an hour in which the cup of his emotions seemed truly to overflow.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xN2hLUK1JeI/VdA4hsus3fI/AAAAAAAAAv8/tIeQmmpmO8Y/s1600/Ambassadors.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xN2hLUK1JeI/VdA4hsus3fI/AAAAAAAAAv8/tIeQmmpmO8Y/s320/Ambassadors.jpg" width="187" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Two decades after </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Ambassadors</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> came out another American coming here was the “very poor and very happy” young </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Hemingway</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> in the years he would write about in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A Moveable Feast</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. As he says in the memoir, he would walk in the park when he was “belly-empty, hollow hungry” to escape the tantalizing odours of food on the streets. “You saw and smelled nothingto eat all the way from the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Place de l’Observatoire</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> to the rue de Vaugirard.” Besides protecting himself from smells, he would go in the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Luxembourg Museum</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, where</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Cézanne’s</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> paintings were on display. Being hungry made him understood </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Cézanne’s</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> work more truly,</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">he believed.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Young Hem would also cut through the park to visit Gertrude Stein at her atelier on the rue de Fleurus, just down the street from the western gate. Stein loved the Luxembourg Gardens. She and Alice took their daily walks in the tree-lined alleyways. Coincidentally, Stein landed in Paris the same year The Ambassadors came out. She was deeply influenced by James’s writing. In the 1920s she would tick off for her visitors the four greats of American literature: “Poe, Whitman, James, and myself.” And since James had passed away a few years earlier, she was the only one left standing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In 1925 </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">William Faulkner</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> lived in a garret room overlooking the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Luxembourg Gardens</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> on the rue de Vaugirard. It was the only place he liked in Paris. He planned to stay for two years, but left after only five months and went back to his true creative milieu in Mississippi</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">and future home to his mythical </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yoknapatawpha County</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. The only literary use of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Faulkner’s</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> stay in Paris is set in the final pages of his 1931 novel </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sanctuary</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, where we find the young heroine Temple Drake, unhinged by her kidnapping at the hands of the pervert Popeye, having been brought to Europe by her father to help her forget. The scene takes place at a concert in the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Luxembourg Gardens</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3PJBfxDLhpc/VdA4h2_3Y6I/AAAAAAAAAv4/ocYZ4pIwsls/s1600/Hemingway.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3PJBfxDLhpc/VdA4h2_3Y6I/AAAAAAAAAv4/ocYZ4pIwsls/s320/Hemingway.jpg" width="193" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Rich and resonant the brasses crashed and died in the thick green twilight, rolling over them in rich sad waves. Temple yawned behind her hand, then she took out a compact and opened it on a face in miniature sullen and discontented and sad. Beside her her father sat, his hands crossed on the head of his stick, the rigid bar of his moustache beaded with moisture like frosted silver. She closed the compact and from beneath her smart new hat she seemed to follow with her eyes the waves of music, to dissolve into the dying brasses, across the pool and the opposite semicircle of trees where at somber intervals the dead tranquil queens in stained marble mused, and on into the sky lying prone and vanquished in the season of rain and</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">death.”</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-32578912107189350632015-09-03T04:53:00.000+02:002015-09-03T17:35:55.669+02:00Walking the "Lost Generation" Art Deco<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Me with Martha’s daughter-in-law Rebecca</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">There's more than just writers on my </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"Lost Generation" Montparnasse</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> literary walking tour, and one of my recent walkers shows us why. She is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Martha Bardach</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, a retired photo editor, whose eye for the significant architectural detail is as sharp as ever. This we shall see in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Le Select, La Coupole, the former Dingo, and the Closerie des Lilas</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, haunts of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Hemingway</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, and many other writers in the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Art Deco</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> days of the 1920s. And, oh yes, there's a glimpse of me in action!</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">No less than four scenes are set in the cafe</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Le Select</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> in Ernest Hemingway's first novel </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Sun Also Rises</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, published in 1926, just a year after the cafe opened.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_Uuiwi7uNPg/VdEjqHStgpI/AAAAAAAAAyQ/oxm-e0kzmmw/s1600/LostGen2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_Uuiwi7uNPg/VdEjqHStgpI/AAAAAAAAAyQ/oxm-e0kzmmw/s200/LostGen2.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The massive cafe and restaurant </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">La Coupole</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> opened on December 27th, 1927, and has been popular with writers and everyone else ever since. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Josephine Baker</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> used to parade among the tables with her pet cheetah Chiquita in a diamond leash and collar.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A Pillar Fresco</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Local Montparnasse artists volunteered to paint frescos on the pillars in exchange for meals.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In May 1925</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> F. Scott Fitzgerald</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> first met </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ernest Hemingway</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> at this literary relic, the old wooden bar at the then-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dingo American Bar</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, now the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Auberge de Venise</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Hem writes about their encounter (not very kindly) in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A Moveable Feast. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><u><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Right:</span></u><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The Closerie des Lilas, Hemingway's </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">writing headquarters when he lived down the street from 1924 to 1926.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-91882309494407163442015-08-25T06:00:00.000+02:002015-08-26T20:04:23.413+02:00Edith Wharton on the Rue de Varenne<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PZN-8rLYmgI/VdAvYBl8gaI/AAAAAAAAAuo/BwrtsTXGXa0/s200/Edith_Wharton.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="103" /></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Edith Wharton</span></span></td></tr>
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<div id="docs-internal-guid-9e7039b9-353d-4048-ebd6-8529b5d5a520" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In 1906 </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Edith Wharton</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and her husband Teddy sublet </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">George Vanderbilt’s</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> spacious apartment at No. 58 Rue de Varenne, now an annex of the Prime Minister’s office. She was forty-four years old, a famous novelist thanks to her second novel, </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The House of Mirth</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, a critical and financial success the previous year, but she was suffocating intellectually in the high society circles of New York and Newport. </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Wharton</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was fluent in French thanks to a childhood spent in Europe, and she wanted to challenge her mind in the vibrant cultural climate of Paris, which she adored. “Je l’ai dans mon sang,” she wrote in her diary. </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Henry James</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> called her the “pendulum woman” because of her clockwork-like annual visits. Between 1885 and 1914, she made sixty to seventy Atlantic crossings. This time she meant to stay through the winter. The Whartons arrived with six servants, a cook, their automobile and chauffeur, and two dogs.</span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3HMyzWXaQ7g/VdAvYS9eBrI/AAAAAAAAAvY/Rs-Jci5z2g8/s1600/58RueDeVarenne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3HMyzWXaQ7g/VdAvYS9eBrI/AAAAAAAAAvY/Rs-Jci5z2g8/s320/58RueDeVarenne.jpg" width="239" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">58 Rue de Varenne</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">She was a close friend of other Americans with equally strong ties to Europe, including </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Henry Adams, Walter Van Rensselaer Berry, Bernard Berenson,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and her literary idol </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">James</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. And in the spring of 1907 she met a dark, handsome, mustachioed American in Paris named</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Morton Fullerton</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, a Harvard graduate, correspondent for the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Times of London</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, and friend of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Henry James</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> since 1890. Three years her junior at thirty-nine, he was cultivated, seductive, and “very intelligent, but slightly mysterious, I think,” she told a friend. She saw in him the possibility of something she dreamed of, but had never experienced: a complete relationship with a man. They became regular theater and travel companions and, early in 1908, lovers. As her letters and poems to him make clear, she took enormous joy in their lovemaking and experienced at long last her erotic awakening. In the second year of the affair, however, <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Fullerton alternated between brief periods of passion </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YygejWWQ-NQ/VdAvZSGu5hI/AAAAAAAAAvc/wJEOunl7_uw/s1600/Morton_Fullerton.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YygejWWQ-NQ/VdAvZSGu5hI/AAAAAAAAAvc/wJEOunl7_uw/s200/Morton_Fullerton.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Morton Fullerton</td></tr>
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</span>and long unexplained silences, very painful to her. Though she never learned his full range of his erotic involvements, they included numerous lovers of both sexes, a short-lived marriage to a French opera singer, and a current affair with his young cousin Katherine. He was also being blackmailed by a woman who had proof of his homosexual past. The affair ended in 1910, but </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Wharton</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> continued to see him as a friend and advised him about his writing. Most importantly for her readers, her fiction took on a new emotional depth thanks her ability to describe love in the full range of emotions it arouses -- jealousy, sadness, guilt, rejection, possessiveness, bliss -- in such novels as </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ethan Frome, The Reef</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> (with Fullerton the model for George Darrow), and her masterpiece </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Age of Innocence</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LwBNLDRF-00/VdAvYIUZ_HI/AAAAAAAAAu8/DJeHsvMKBaM/s1600/53RueDeVarenne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LwBNLDRF-00/VdAvYIUZ_HI/AAAAAAAAAu8/DJeHsvMKBaM/s320/53RueDeVarenne.jpg" width="239" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">53 Rue de Varenne</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In 1910, having decided to live in Paris, she moved with her husband Teddy to a larger apartment in the house across the street at No. 53, where a plaque quotes her saying:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“My years of Paris life were spent entirely in Rue de Varenne – rich years, crowded and happy years.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But these years were also blighted by her relationship with Teddy, a mentally unstable man twelve years her elder with whom she had never had an emotionally, intellectually, or sexually fulfilling marriage, who secretly squandered her money, and was a philanderer to boot. His wayward manipulations eventually forced her to sell the splendid house she built in Lenox, Massachusetts, the Mount. In 1913, after twenty-eight increasingly painful years of marriage, she finally divorced Teddy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">With the outbreak of World War I, she threw herself into war work, creating a network of orphanages, hostels, clinics, and crafts workshops to aid displaced people in Flanders and northeastern France. Her friends </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">André Gide and Jean Cocteau</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> worked for </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Mrs. Wharton’s Charities,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">” as they were known. In 1916 she was made a chevalier of the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Legion d’Honneur.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After the war </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Wharton</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> moved to the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Pavillon Colombe,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> an elegant 18th century house she bought in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Saint Brice-sous-Fôret</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> north of Paris, wintering at her </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Château Sainte-Claire</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> overlooking the Mediterranean in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Hyères</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Her final years were rife with rewards, including the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Pulitzer Prize</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> for </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Age of Innocence</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> in 1921 and an honorary doctorate from </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yale</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> two years later, the first woman to be so honored by the university. As the grande dame of American letters, she received countless literary admirers, most embarrassingly,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> F. Scott Fitzgerald</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> when he visited her in 1925. He was in such awe of her, both socially and artistically, that he kept fortifying himself with little nips on the drive to her house and ended up making a complete ass of himself. She, gracious lady, took it in stride.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Edith Wharton</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> died in 1937 and is buried at the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">American Cemetery in Versailles.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E5IK6FoMhQo/VdAvY3aJOOI/AAAAAAAAAvE/bbX52AaR2zs/s1600/Edith_Wharton2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E5IK6FoMhQo/VdAvY3aJOOI/AAAAAAAAAvE/bbX52AaR2zs/s400/Edith_Wharton2.jpg" width="357" /></a></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-89208921335967048662015-06-24T23:29:00.001+02:002015-06-24T23:29:50.593+02:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>DEATHLESS
WRITERS IN THE PERE LACHAISE CEMETERY</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Second in
popularity in my series of Writers in Paris Walking Tours, the first being the
ones dominated by Ernest Hemingway and his 1920s “Lost Generation” associates,
is the moody, magnificently verdant Pere Lachaise Cemetery. This walk features the final resting places -- fascinating
all -- of Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Richard Wright, Marcel Proust, Guillaume
Apollinaire, Balzac, Moliere, Jim Morrison, Colette, the medieval lovers Heloise
and Abelard and others. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Where could
you find such an illustrious bunch of writers as these? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Irresistibly
drawn to this cemetery was explorer <i>extraordinaire</i>
Dale Dunlop (<a href="http://www.themaritimeexplorer.ca/">www.themaritimeexplorer.ca</a>),
who had previously written that marvellous piece about my “Lost Generation”
Montparnasse walk (scroll below for that piece), and who now wrote another of
his remarkable text-and-photo spreads entitled “Walking Pere Lachaise with
David Burke.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Here’s the
link: http://themaritimeexplorer.ca/2015/04/30/walking-pere-lachaise-david-burke/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Check it out. </span></div>
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You will
enjoy Dale’s sprightly take on it. I guarantee!<o:p></o:p><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17846430502023699589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9099160364048082456.post-67933121794833688032015-04-29T10:39:00.001+02:002015-04-29T10:46:07.557+02:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Welcome back to Writers in Paris Walking Tours for 2015. <br />
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I am pleased to tell you that I received a great honor this year in Lonely Planet's book BEST IN TRAVEL 2015. It features Top 10 bests in many travel categories, one of them being "Top 10 Literary Walking Tours of the World." And in that lot of 10 you will find -- you guessed it already --moi, David Burke. Thank you, Lonely Planet!<br />
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And adding to that pleasure, here is a wonderful piece about my "Lost Generation" Montparnasse walk by Canada's extraordinary world explorer Dale Dunlop, who joined me on it with his wife Alison and sister Anne last week. I urge you to take a look at his take on it in superb pictures and astute text. Here is the web link:<br />
themaritimeexplorer.ca/2015/04/22/search-hemingway-david-burke/<br />
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NOTE: make that: www.themaritimeexplorer.ca/2015/04/22/search-hemingway-david-burke/<br />
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