Paris, p.1
Paris, page 1
Contents
Map
Introduction
LONGING FOR A LOST PARIS GUSTAVE EIFFEL
Artists’ Protest against the Eiffel Tower
Response to the Artist’s Protest
VICTOR HUGO
from The Hunchback of Notre Dame
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
The Swan
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.
from The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE
from Le Flâneur des Deux Rives
PARIS, CENTRE OF THE WORLD LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
from Letters from the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS
from Letters on the Events Which Have Passed in France Since the Restoration in 1815
WILLIAM WELLS BROWN
from Three Years in Europe
MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF
from The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff
F. BERKELEY SMITH
from How Paris Amuses Itself
PARIS, LOVE, LOVERS, AND THE LONELY HONORÉ DE BALZAC
from A Street of Paris and its Inhabitant
EUGÉNE FRANÇOIS VIDOCQ
from Jean Monette
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
An Adventure in Paris
MARK TWAIN
The Story of Abelard and Heloise
SIDONIE-GABRIELLE COLETTE
from Claudine in Paris
PARIS, CITY OF POETS AND POETRY WILLA CATHER
Paris
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
from Aurora Leigh
ALAN SEEGER
Paris I
AMY LOWELL
Two Travellers in the Place Vendôme
SARA TEASDALE
Paris in Spring
INJUSTICE, REVOLUTION, WAR MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ
from The Letters of Madame de Sévigné to her Daughter and Friends
JULES MICHELET
from The History of the French Revolution
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
from Sentimental Education
EDITH WHARTON
from Fighting France
EXILES, ADVENTURERS, AND THE LOST GIACOMO CASANOVA
from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
VERNON LEE
from Genius Loci
ARNOLD BENNETT
from Paris Nights and Other Impressions of Places and People
GEORGE ORWELL
from Down and Out in Paris and London
LA VIE D’ARTISTE OUIDA
from A Dog of Flanders and Other Stories
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
from The Paris Sketchbook of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh
GERTRUDE STEIN
from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
from A Moveable Feast
Permissions Acknowledgements
Introduction
ZACHARY SEAGER
There is a real place called Paris. You can go there, if you like. Perhaps you’ve already been. In any case, the city is so well known that it hardly needs to be described. The Eiffel Tower, the Seine, Notre-Dame and Montmartre: that ought to be enough to form in many minds a mental image of wide Parisian streets stretching symmetrically out to the horizon, studded here and there by quaint boulangeries and elegant boutiques, filled with dashing locals and romantic possibility.
Unless of course Paris, for you, means cigarettes and unpleasant smells, grey skies and traffic jams. Because however real the city might be – however concrete the facts of its storied history and cultural landmarks may prove – there is no single Paris. Paris is multiple. Paris is endless. Paris is a dream, dreamed by many dreamers. Paris is a network of tales, legends, clichés and stereotypes, shot through with lyrics from half-remembered songs and scenes from half-forgotten films, all overlaid one upon the other into a mesh of many myths.
This anthology gathers some of those mythic threads and weaves them together into a guidebook of Parisian dreams.
There is the myth of an older, grander Paris, the labyrinthine medieval city destroyed by Baron Haussmann. Lost to industry and modernity, this dead city is by turns achingly lamented by poets like Charles Baudelaire and Guillaume Apollinaire, and creatively reconstructed by novelists like Gustave Flaubert and Victor Hugo.
Then there is the myth of that modernity itself, destroyer of the old world and forger of the new. It was meticulously reproduced and ruthlessly critiqued by writers like Honoré de Balzac, who witnessed in nineteenth-century Paris the birth pangs of our modernity.
Later, there grew a myth of a beautiful, wondrous capital, sanctuary to artists and expatriates from Edith Wharton to Ernest Hemingway, a place of endless indulgence and joyful creative communion where even the simplest pleasures are embraced for their own sakes, and where art and thought can thrive unimpeded.
And yet, at the same time, there was Paris the savage city, the modern Babylon ravaged by greed and lust and the cruellest indifference to human life, a paradise of crime and a breeding ground for misery, populated by heartsick criminals and jaded policemen as well as down-and-out émigrés like the young George Orwell.
Or an amorous Paris, perhaps? A city of tender lovers strolling quietly by the Seine, a romantic ideal embraced by countless authors and mocked by countless others. A darker erotic dream stalks the streets of Paris, too. As does the myth of a regal city, a Paris of royal courts and refined salons, aristocratic luxury and staggering sophistication, along with its equally powerful pendant, the Paris of bloody revolutions and popular uprisings, where a righteously angry populace stands forever ready to haul down a new Bastille.
The myths go on. Because Paris is multiple. Paris is endless. This anthology leads you to it. The rest is up to you.
LONGING FOR A LOST PARIS
GUSTAVE EIFFEL
(1832–1923)
An icon of industrial design and one of the engineering marvels of its day, the Eiffel Tower has become indissociably linked to the city of Paris. Used in countless films and photographs as a visual byword for the French capital, it is also among the most visited tourist attractions in the world, to say nothing of the countless key chains, t-shirts and scale models it has provoked. But this much-loved monument wasn’t always so admired. Originally conceived for the 1889 Exposition Universelle, it was designed by a brilliant engineer named Gustave Eiffel who, though already well respected, had yet to summit the peak of his career. The tower was only intended to remain in place for a short period, after which point it would have been dismantled and left to an uncertain fate. Even that was too much for some, though. In fact, many of Eiffel’s most illustrious contemporaries were furious with the project. The proof: this bombastic protest letter, which appeared at the beginning of the construction process – two full years before the tower was completed. In bemused fury and with searing rhetoric, a host of famous writers, musicians and artists argued that Eiffel’s tower would permanently disfigure Paris, putting an end to the unbroken centuries of tasteful artistic development in France. Signatories included writers like Guy de Maupassant and Alexandre Dumas fils, along with countless other luminaries of the Parisian art world. The tower so outraged Maupassant that, upon its completion, he is said to have regularly dined in its restaurant. Why? Because it was the only place in Paris from which he couldn’t see the tower itself. Vexed by the protest, Gustave Eiffel responded personally and promptly, offering a vigorous and compelling defence of his audacious project.
Artists’ Protest against the Eiffel Tower
LE TEMPS (14 FEBRUARY, 1887)
We – writers, painters, sculptors, and architects, passionate devotees of Paris’ beauty which, for the moment at least, remains intact – protest with all our force, with all our indignation, in the name of that belittled French taste, of that French art and history which is currently under threat, against the construction, in the very heart of our capital, of this useless, monstrous Eiffel Tower, which public hostility – so often stamped with common sense and the spirit of justice – has already christened the “Tower of Babel”.
Without descending into jingoistic enthusiasm, we have the right to loudly proclaim Paris a city without rival in the world. Over its streets and widened boulevards, along its superb river banks, amidst its magnificent walkways rise the noblest monuments yet conceived by human genius. Author of so many masterpieces, the soul of France gleams through this august efflorescence of stone. Italy, Germany, Flanders – so justly proud of their artistic heritage – possess nothing comparable to our own, and from every corner of the universe Paris draws curiosity and admiration. Should we let all this be profaned? Should the city of Paris continue to associate itself with the outlandish and mercenary fancies of some machine-builder, and thereby ruin and dishonour itself irreparably? For the Eiffel Tower – which even business-minded America itself would not want – will, without doubt, be the dishonour of Paris. All can feel it, all say it, all are profoundly distressed by it; indeed, we are only a feeble echo of this legitimately alarmed universal opinion. When foreigners arrive to visit our Exposition, they shall cry out in astonishment: “What! This is the horror that the French have dredged up to give us an idea of their famous good taste?” And they will be right to laugh at us, because the Paris of sublime gothic, of Jean Goujon, Germain Pilon, Puget, Rudge, Barye, will have become the Paris of monsieur Eiffel.
To better grasp our argument, one must only imagine, for an instant, a giddily ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a colossal black smokestack, crushing with its barbarous mass Notre Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle, the Saint-Jacques Tower, the Louvre, the Invalides’ dome, the Arc de Triomphe – all our monuments humiliated, all our architecture shrunken down and dissolved by this mind-boggling fantasy. And for twenty years we shall see – yawning across a city that still quivers with the genius of so many centuries – spreading like an ink stain the odious shadow of an odious column of bolted sheet metal.
It is up to you, then, dear compatriot – you who so love Paris, you who have so richly embellished it, you who have protected it so often from governmental devastation and the vandalism of industry – it is your great privilege to defend Paris once more. We trust you to plead the cause of Paris, because we know that you, sir, will expend every effort and every eloquence that can be inspired in an artist such as yourself by the love of all that is beautiful, great, and right. And if our cry of alarm is not heard, if our arguments are not heeded – if Paris obstinately persists in dishonouring itself – we, at the very least, will have offered a protest that brings honour to us all.
Have already signed:
E. Meissonier, Ch. Gounod, Charles Garnier, Robert Fleury, Victorien Sardou, Édouard Pailleron, H. Gérôme, L. Bonnat, W. Bouguereau, Jean Gigoux, G. Boulanger, J.-E. Lenepveu, Eug. Guillaume, A. Wolff, Ch. Questel, A. Dumas, François Coppée, Leconte de Lisle, Daumet, Français, Sully-Prudhomme, Élie Delaunay, E. Vaudremer, E. Bertrand, G.-J. Thomas, François, Henriquel, A. Lenoir, G. Jacquet, Goubie, E. Duez, de Saint-Marceaux, G. Courtois, P.-A.-J. Dagnan-Bouveret, J. Wencker, L. Doucet, Guy de Maupassant, Henri Amic, Ch. Grandmougin, François Bournaud, Ch. Baude, Jules Lefebvre, A. Mercié, Cheviron, Albert Jullien, André Legrand, Limbo, etc., etc.
Response to the Artist’s Protest
LE TEMPS (14 FEBRUARY, 1887)
On what grounds do these artists protest the tower’s continued presence in Paris after the Exposition? That it is useless, monstrous! That it is an eyesore! We shall speak of its utility in a moment. Let us focus, for now, on its aesthetic merit, about which the artists are especially competent. I would very much like to know on what they base their arguments. For, note well, monsieur, no one has yet seen my tower, and no one, before its completion, can pronounce on what it shall be. It is for the moment only known through one architect’s drawing which has been printed hundreds of thousands of times. Since when does one judge the artistic value of such a monument on the basis of an architectural sketch?
And what if my tower, once erected, instead of being an eyesore, proved to be something beautiful? Would these artists not regret having so quickly and so rashly rushed to campaign against the conservation of a monument that has yet to be constructed? Let them wait and see it first.
I shall tell you all my thoughts on the subject, and all my hopes. I believe, for my part, that my tower will be beautiful. Do people truly believe that, because we are engineers, we are not preoccupied with the beauty of our constructions, and that while we pursue solidity and durability we do not also seek elegance? Are not the true conditions of strength always in accordance with the hidden rules of harmony? The first principle of architectural aesthetics is that the essential forms of a structure should be perfectly in accordance with and appropriate to its purpose. Now, which condition, above all, did I have to account for with my tower? Its wind resistance. Well, I contend that the curves of the monument’s four iron piers, such as my calculations rendered them, will give a great impression of beauty, for they shall translate for the eye the boldness of my conception.
There is, moreover, an appeal in the colossal, a particular charm to which standard artistic theories hardly apply. Who should claim that it is by their artistic value that the pyramids have so strongly marked mankind’s imagination? After all, are they anything other than artificial mounds? And yet, who remains unmoved in their presence? Who, before them, is not filled with an irresistible admiration? And what is the source of that admiration if not the immensity of the effort and the grandeur of the result? My tower shall be the tallest structure ever built by human hands. Shall it not therefore be grandiose, too, in its way? And why should that which is admirable in Egypt prove unsightly and ridiculous in Paris? I search for a good answer to these questions and, I confess, I do not find one.
The protest letter declares that my tower shall, with its huge barbarous mass, crush Notre Dame, the Sainte-Chappelle, the Saint-Jacques tower, the Louvre, the Invalides’ dome, the Arc de Triomphe, all our monuments in short. How much at once – and by a single tower! Truly, it makes one smile. When one wishes to admire Notre Dame, one goes to see it from the cathedral square. How, then, from the Champ de Mars, shall my construction bother such a visitor who, in front of Notre Dame, will not even see it? This is, in passing, one of the falsest ideas around – that the construction of one edifice overwhelms the buildings around it. See for yourself whether, set among the surrounding houses, the Opera does not appear more overpowered than overpowering. Go to the roundabout at l’Étoile: because the Arc de Triomphe is large, do the nearby houses seem smaller for it? On the contrary, the houses appear as tall as they truly are, that is, around 15 metres high, and it takes a real effort of thought to persuade oneself that the Arc de Triomphe is, in fact, 45 metres tall.
Thus, as to the artistic effect of the tower, no one can judge it in advance, not even I, for the dimensions of the foundations astonish even myself, now that they are beginning to rise out of the ground. As to the damage the tower will supposedly do to the other monuments of Paris: mere words.
There remains the question of its utility. Here, seeing as we must leave behind the world of art, permit me to oppose the artists’ opinion with that of the public. I do not believe it vain to declare that a project has never been more popular; every day brings me new proof that there isn’t a single Parisian, however humble their origin, that does not know the tower and who is not interested by it. Even abroad, when I happen to travel, I’m astonished by the sensation it has caused.
As for the learned among us, the only true judges of the utility question, I can affirm that they are unanimous. Not only does the tower promise fascinating observations for astronomy, chemistry, meteorology, and physics; not only will it allow us, in wartime, to keep Paris constantly linked to the rest of France; it shall also be a dazzling proof of the progress made this century in the art of engineering. It is only in our age, in these last few years, that we have been able to calculate with enough certainty and work iron with enough precision to dream of such a colossal undertaking. Is it then nothing for the glory of Paris that this condensation of contemporary science should be erected within its walls?
VICTOR HUGO
(1802–1885)
Poet of genius and revolutionary playwright; bestselling novelist and penetrating social critic; gifted artist who produced more than 4,000 drawings; political exile and, later, senator with staunch republican ideals, a deep disgust for capital punishment and an impassioned belief in the future of a united Europe: Victor Hugo was all this and more. Honoured in his native France as something more than a literary legend, almost a national hero, his work is read and admired by millions around the world. He had many detractors during his long career, both from political and literary foes who attacked his penchant for sentimental pieties and his unshakeable belief in the fundamental goodness of humanity. But even his fiercest critics were sometimes dumbfounded by Hugo’s undeniable literary powers and his extraordinary cultural influence. His passionate defence of Gothic art and architecture in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), for instance, ignited a feverish taste in his contemporaries for all things medieval, and kick-started a successful campaign to restore and maintain the cathedral. Hugo himself knew that this project was the work of many centuries and the responsibility of each passing generation. In this extract, drawn from that beloved novel, he offers a comprehensive description of Paris’s great cathedral as it would have appeared in the distant past.
