Chateaux II: Return to the Loire!

Back to the Loire Valley, but this time, with EDUCO! The rendez-vous was at 7:45 in the 6th arrondissement, so I got up around 6:00, and trotted off to catch the bus. I slept through most of the bus ride out; at noon, we arrived in the village of Amboise, home of both the royal chateau of the same name, and Clos Luce (Da Vinci's house, if you remember that entry). We had until 1:30 to stroll through the town and eat lunch. I had made a sandwich the night before, which I ate as a checked out the ramparts of Amboise, even managing to take a picture of its funny-shaped exterior, from below. Still during lunch hour, I took a stroll to Clos Luce's Da Vinci Park, taking the opportunity to examine several of the gadgets, and listen to several parts of the Leonardo-guided tour, that I hadn't before. Particularly interesting was an explanation of his study of the "human machinery," and of his recognition of the similarities between a cow's stomach and our own, and a frog's nervous system, and our own; at one time, he had ten cadavers, which he had dissected.

I met back with the rest of the EDUCO students (and had a bit of a discussion with our guide about Gothic Flamboyant architecture), and we all visited Clos Luce as a group. I hadn't noticed it the first time around, but there is a secret underground passageway leading from the chateau of Amboise to Clos Luce (it's closed to visitors), which Francois I used to furtively visit da Vinci. I also hadn't noticed that Marguerite de Navarre had her own bedroom at Clos Luce, for her visits to her brother's hired genius.

Most people don't know about Marguerite de Navarre (aka Marguerite d'Angouleme), and I think that it's only fair that I introduce this exceptional woman. Queen of Navarre, and older sister of Francois I of France, Marguerite was a highly-social, highly-astute woman, best remembered today for her great work of literature, the Heptameron (modeled on Boccaccio's Decameron), a collection of seventy "framed" stories. However, she was a true Renaissance woman, and seemed to be everywhere, meeting everyone there is to meet in the Renaissance (her friendship and fascination with da Vinci is a perfect example of this). Apparently a quick thinker, she wrote while traveling in her carriage. A purveyor of tolerance, she offered shelter to the much-persecuted Protestants. Her statue now stands in the Jardin Luxembourg, and you can see my photo of it on Facebook.

After trotting around the Parc da Vinci, where I played the tour guide for a few of my friends, we hopped back on the bus, and traveled to one of my favorite chateaux -- Chenonceau, the queens' chateau with the two magnificent gardens. Again, I noticed a few things I hadn't before, such as the massive mother-of-pearl cabinet offered as a wedding present to Henri II and Catherine de Medicis by the Republic of Venice, and the Flemish tapestry illustrating this happy event. Our guide seemed to recognize my general interest for all of the history surrounding us, and happily chatted with my friend Ade and me about the furniture, paintings, architecture, and tapestries. As I've mentioned before, there is absolutely nothing like visiting a chateau with a historian, nothing like it at all.

Next stop was wine-tasting at Pere Auguste, a family-owned winery that produces Touraine wine. The business is fairly small, and it was one of the owners who gave us a tour of the presses and fermenting tanks. I nearly had a moment of confusion, due to the identical pronunciation of the words for "rooster" (coq) and "grapeskin" (coque). There were fruitflies in the winery, which was a bit unnerving, but the wine was quite good. There were four qualities -- white, red, rose, and sparkling -- and I'll admit that I preferred the Rose, but wasn't too wild about the red. The wine cost 15 Euros for three bottles, which is a very good deal in France, and the winery made quite a good revenue that day from the American tourists!

Back on the road, we arrived at the countryside hotel where we were to spend the night. We had rented out an entire building, where we were three-to-a-room. There were only five male students who had come on the trip, however, so Nick and I jumped to grab a double together (there are a few more boys who didn't show up, but yes, EDUCO is almost all girls, and every current staff member is female). After about 10-15 minutes just to put our things away, and find out in which room the cute girls were staying, we headed over to the dinner room, where we had a far, far better meal than I think anyone had expected. The sole vegetarian got an omelet and courgettes to go with his fusilli, but it was a good omelet. After dinner, our guide led us in some French drinking songs, "Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde," and "Buvons un coup, buvons en deux."

Soon after dinner, the party started. I hadn't realized it, but many of my classmates had purchased wine in order to consume it that night, together. I couldn't contribute much, but my friends were more than happy to share. We had a pretty good time, sitting together in the middle of a field, and playing various games designed to divulge our sexual lives. I managed to teach Dead Monkey to the rest, which went over surprisingly well. I had a very good time, and didn't get trashed.

Next morning, up at seven. Not fun, after a night like that! Still, Nick and I stumbled over to the breakfast room, beating the rest of the bleary-eyed crowd. Before long, we hopped back on the bus, headed for Blois.

I'd like to retract every negative statement I made about the royal chateau of Blois in my last entry on the town (published about six weeks ago). Although I maintain that the town feels like a tourist trap, and that the Maison de la Magie just across the way is a cheesy swindle, the only fault I have with Blois is that photography is forbidden, and my only quarrel with our tour of the chateau is that it was too quick. The chateau is absolutely fantastic, architecturally, because there are four distinct historical building periods discernible to the naked eye, even to me. Standing in the central courtyard, one look at the red-brick 15th-century Italian-style Gothic flamboyant wing constructed under Louis XII, turn ninety degrees to see the amazing 16th-century Renaissance wing ordered by Francois I, and turn another ninety degrees to see the unfinished 17th-century Classical wing ordered by Gaston, duc d'Orleans. When Gaston was in the midst of construction, his brother, Louis XIII, had a son; suddenly, Gaston was no longer heir to the throne of France. His allowance being cut off in such an abrupt fashion, he lacked the funds to complete his architectural plans, let alone demolish the older sections of the castle, as he had planned. For this reason, the conglomeration exists as it does today. Blois has been fabulously and meticulously restored with paintings, tapestries, and furniture, almost as well as Langeais. The castle is the site of a famous murder, that of Henri II's brother, who during the wars of religion was supported by the ultra-catholic faction; with the support of the first estate and a large section of the third, he was likely to become king. Henri disposed of him, summoning him to his (Henri's) presence, where he (the duc) would be without his customary bodyguard. Months later, in a fabulous boomerang effect, Henri II was himself assassinated. This event was followed by the War of the Three Henris (I'm not kidding about this), leaving, finally, Henri IV, founder of the Bourbon dynasty, and author of the Edict of Nantes, as king, in the last decade of the 16th century. Naturally, Henri IV was assassinated only a few years afterward... You can also see the secret cabinets, concealed in the wall, where Catherine de Medicis hid important documents of state, etc. (no, not poison).

Next up was another castle I had not visited, the Chateau de Beauregard. To be honest, it's nothing more than a hunting lodge, owned by Henri II's secretary of state. The building itself is not terribly interesting, historically, nor particularly beautiful; the grounds are abundant, but none too interesting. The floor and walls of the upstairs gallery, however, are the real treasure trove of the chateau. The floor is finely decorated with delft porcelain tiles, depicting a 16th-century army on the march, each row of tiles depicting a soldier bearing different arms. The walls, meanwhile, are covered with dozens of portraits, depicting the principal actors in French politics, reign-by-reign, from the time of the Hundred Years' War until the time of Louis XIV, the sun king. Our guide gave us a rapid explanation, explaining who was who. Many of the historical personages were not even French; Francois I was situated beside Suleiman the Magnificent, and Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire.

Following the tour was one of the most sumptuous and gourmet meals I believe I have ever had, and certainly the nicest I have had in the last few year. We sat in the Orangerie, and enjoyed plate after plate of fine French food -- couscous, tomato, quiche, salad, wine, cheese, good bread, decent red wine, strawberries in wine, etc. There was good company too (I sat with some very cool people, including all four of the other male students on the trip), and though several unforeseen events did occur, they served more as conversational topics than as anything capable of ruining a meal. The first was the fat spider I spotted floating in my wine, after I had taken no more than a couple of sips. The second was the fact that, unlike at the hotel where we stayed the night, the Orangerie had not prepared a vegetarian meal in advance for me, so they just threw together an omelet (surprise, surprise), but at least they didn't complain. When David found a lock of hair in his salad, we assumed that it was meant for me, who had had the temerity to mention the spider.

The waitress had kindly brought our whole table a new jug of wine after the arachnid incident, and so I drank a little bit more than I should have; I still felt a buzz when we arrived at Chambord, the great pleasure-house of Francois I. The chateau is so vast that in my two visits, I still haven't seen everything, but I did notice a few points of interested that I had missed on my first round. The first was the office, complete with furniture, where Louis XIV had dictated the repeal of the Edict of Nantes (he signed it at Fountainbleu). I had also missed the beds of Louis and of the king of Poland, and one of the three titanic ceramic stoves installed by the Marechal of Saxe (all three men were proprietors, at one time or another). I also visited the rooms dedicated to the Compte de Chambord, so-called Henri V, reading about the man on whose shoulders so much royalist hope rested, the "miracle child" born after the assassination of his father.

We sadly had very little time to visit the chateaux, but the trip was amazing. I dozed for part of the bus ride back to Paris, and also played Contact with the other students. Now I'm back, class has begun at La Sorbonne, and I'm (finally) making some French friends. Hope all is well with you.

~JD

"Enfin le regime egalitaire -- qui serait l'acte de tolerance --les deux confessions placees sur le meme pied, le culte de l'une et l'autre librement exerce partout cote a cote, la participation a la vie publique assuree a tous -- cette solution n'est pas plus realisable, les esprits et les moeurs s'y opposant; et c'est l'explication majeure des difficultes rencontrees par Henri IV pour retablir la paix a l'interiuer de son royaume"[By the end, the establishment of an egalitarian regime -- in other words, an act of tolerance, the two sects placed on equal footing, both cults freely exercised everywhere, side-by-side, participation in public life guaranteed for all -- this solution was no longer possible, with feelings and mores in such opposition; and this is the major explanation of the difficulties encountered by Henri IV in bringing peace to the interior of his kingdom] (Robert Mandou, Introduction a la France moderne, 173-174).

L'Avare

It has been another eventful weekend here in France! EDUCO decided to take us on another excursion to visit -- where? -- the chateaux of the Loire! The night before we left, we visited the Comedie Francaise. Yes the Comedie Francaise, founded in 1680, perhaps the most famous theater in France (at least, the only one I knew of before I arrived!), and very far from the hole-in-the-wall theaters I have been visiting, both in decor and in atmosphere. I mean it -- classical-revival architecture, completed in 1799, just six months before Napoleon's coup; red carpets; paintings and sculptures adorning the walls; guides everywhere; several balconies (I sat in the second), plus several box seats. In other words, everything that one could expect from a posh theater.
We were there to see Moliere's L'Avare, first produced in 1688. The title, in English, means something along the lines of "the miser," or "the avaricious man." The eponymous character, Harpagon, is a stingy, sixty-some Venetian who has decided to marry off both of his two children to spouses much their elders, in order to increase his own fortune; meanwhile. Both his son and his daughter, however, already have lovers, and to make matter's worse, Harpagon is determined to be married, himself, to his son's! The MacGuffin is the strongbox of 10,000 ecus which Harpagon has hidden in his garden -- and which becomes crucially important in the last act. I had already read the script, although not all of my classmates had; although Moliere's vocabulary is not very advanced, his syntax is very, very complicated, and I would have been absolutely lost, had I not read the script, especially because the actors delivered their lines very, very rapidly, and, in many cases, frenetically.
The play was performed in period costume, by a full troupe of professional actors, in the Comedie Francaise. And yet, though I enjoyed the performance, it in many ways disappointed me, and fell very short of my expectations. In fact, I found many of the jokes and farces much funnier on paper than in live performance! Many of the actors interpreted certain lines and situations differently than I had (just as in Shakespeare, there's a great deal of interpretive freedom), and actually treated some scenes, which I had laughed long and hard about in the reading, very soberly. For instance, in one scene, Harpagon's servant, Maitre Jacques, tells him all of the jokes and caricatures of their master that the crew of servants make behind Harpagon's back. These include the printing of special almanacs with double the number of fasting days, and the midnight filching of his own horses' hay. I found the list very funny when I read it, but the actors displayed it in a very grave manner, and not a laugh was heard anywhere in the theater. The only actor who made his role more comedic than I had imagined was the actor who played La Fleche (Harpagon's son's valet), who clowned fantastically, especially in his reading of the predatory lending contract, and while being strip-searched by Harpagon.
I found two aspects in particular made the production's quality fall short of the script's. First, the violence was far, far harsher in the production: when Harpagon struck his servants with his cane, he is not giving the comically light cuffs that I imagined, and when Valere intimidates Maitre Jacques, it is with a whip. Secondly, the actors who played Harpagon's children consistently delivered their lines in a hysteric fashion. Hysteria, too, isn't funny, if it is charged with sadness and desperation, as this hysteria was. I had imagined both characters far lighter and calmer, when I read the script.
Not to complain though -- but still, I realize that the Comedie Francaise is not all that it is cracked up to be.
Well, in the next post, expect a return to the chateaux, French drinking songs, a late-night drinking party in a field, and a large luncheon in the next post!
~JD
"Le guetteur du donjon medieval est maintenant remplace par un payson perche sur le clocher et surveillant les chemins, pret a sonner le tocsin" [The watchman of the medieval keep is now replaced by a peasant perched on the steeple and surveying the paths, ready to sound the tocsin] (Robert Mandrou, Introduction a la France moderne, p. 131).

La Kiosque Jeune

There's a really wonderful service here in Paris, sponsored by the Mayor. Known as the Kiosque Jeune, the service seeks to encourage young people (age 26 and under) to attend cultural events, otherwise above and beyond their budgets, by giving away free tickets. The only catch is that you need to show up in person to receive your tickets, and that there are only a limited number. Strangely, there is even less bureaucracy involved in the process than I would have expected in the States. It is thanks to the Kiosque Jeune that I have been able to attend four plays in Paris, entirely free of charge.

Why am I attending these plays? According to David McCullough's excellent biography, when John Adams arrived in Paris, an acquaintance (no, not Franklin) told him that the best ways to learn French were to either attend the Comedie Francaise, or obtain a mistress. I am a little too young for the latter (although the other night, on my way back to the dormitory, through the red-light district, a man did try to rent me a prostitute), but I think that listening to people speak in colloquial French for one to two hours is probably a good way to accustom my ears to the language. In a similar anecdote, one of my classmate's French host-siblings learned English by watching the Simpsons. It's the same idea, but updated for the 21st century.
In any case, I've been to four plays so far, all of them comedies, but all of them comedies of very different varieties, in entirely different theaters filled (or not) with very different clientele.

Mission Florimont: The first play I attended, and also the best. In the style of Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail, the plot revolved around the misadventures of Florimont, knight of Francois I, sent on a mission to Constantinople. Pursued by the Spanish agents of Charles V (the Holy Roman Emperor), and accompanied by a maiden he rescues (somehow) from bandits, Florimont runs for his life through a gamut of visual gags, double-entendres, and anachronistic farces. There is a cast of only five actors, three of which handle the majority of the roles, which itself becomes a point of humor, such as when one actor "surrounds" the two protagonists by playing an entire squadron of Ottoman guards by himself ("they are too numerous!" Florimont cries out), or when another wears one costume on the right half of his body, and another on the left, and changes between the roles of prosecuting attorney and witness by turning 180 degrees. The play was really hilarious from start to finish, and was nominated in 2010 for the Moliere prize for best comedy. I could understand just about everything, although I couldn't understand the conversation in the Vatican. The theater, the Splendid Saint Martin, was medium-large in size, and fairly full, though not packed.

Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermee: Um, this one was a classic, written in the mid-19th century by the well-known Alfred de Musset, of whom I had until now been entirely ignorant. There are only two characters, a man and his mistress (a marquise) whose husband is dead (this version also had a third actor, who played a mostly-mute accordion-playing doll which sat in the corner of the room). The story is about the petty squabbles of the two; near the end of the play, the man has an epiphany, in which he becomes madly, madly in love with the woman. The style was burlesque, apparently, but the level of French used was too "high" for me. Just to begin with, the title, which means "A door must be opened or closed," is in the subjunctive, which should have tipped me off. The actors wore black leather masks on the upper halves of their faces, pasty-white makeup on the lower halves, and Dickens-era dress, so that not a single speck of human flesh was visible: I think the idea was to show that the characters were lifeless, soulless beings, more like animals than anything else. In any case, I couldn't understand most of what was said in a coherent manner, though the actors were trying very, very hard to put on a good show. The theater was tiny, and the half in which the spectators sat was very empty - no more than a dozen people attended.

Tu m'as sauve la vie: This play reminded me a bit of Pygmalion (My Fair Lady) in its style and sense of humor, although the storyline was far less inspired. The main character, a widower, is an aging Baron who lives with his servants, and is constantly hassled by the Comptesse who lives above him and wants to marry him. When crossing the street, he slips and falls, and his life is apparently saved by the tramp who had, that morning, been asking at his front door for a job, and refused all offers of money. Hence the name of the play, which means "you've saved my life." The characters spoke very quickly (especially the Baron) and wittily, although the funniest line of the play was spoken clearly enough for anyone who knew any French to understand. I had difficulty following the rapid dialogue, and thus following the complicated interactions between all of the characters. The theater was the largest I have been to, maybe the size of the State Theater in Ithaca, and furnished with a balcony: nearly every seat was filled. At the first appearances of the two main actors, the audience applauded: I had the idea that I was watching the play that every person who wanted to be cultured was attending.

Le cercle de joyeux desesperes: The play I have seen most recently, and about which I have the most mixed feelings. Three characters, in their twenties or thirties, are in a collective state of cheerful despair, and want to commit suicide for various reasons (and they all try different means throughout the play). Some of the lines, in conjunction with the visual gags, were totally, totally ridiculous, and I learned a fair amount of words that I shouldn't repeat in front of my professors anytime soon. Most of the humor was the result of the entirely different personalities of the two women -- Lili: cheerful, ditsy, painfully optimistic at times, immature, and lacking all inhibition; Mona: morose, sarcastic, and slightly hysterical from grief. This is not the play to bring your parents to, on account of some of the racy humor -- Pierre, for instance, is obligated (at gunpoint) to remove his pants, in order to prove to Mona that he is not actually her husband, by showing that he does not have a bean-shaped mark around his... you get the picture. I might have understood this play better than any of the others, and I definitely had the best seating yet, only a few rows back from the front of the medium-size, well-filled theater (for the previous play, I sat way, way in the back).

And the best part is yet to come. Tomorrow night, I will attend Moliere's l'Avare!

Love to you all.

~JD

"l'oeil qui regne aujourd'hui se trouve au troisieme rang, apres l'ouie et le toucher, et loin apres ceux-ci. L'oeil qui organise, classe et ordonne n'est pas l'organe de predilection d'un temps qui prefere ecouter" [The eye which reigns supreme today finds itself in third place, after hearing and touch, and far after. The eye which organizes, classifies, and orders is not the organ of choice of a time which prefers to listen] Robert Mandrou, Introduction a la France moderne 1500-1640, p. 76.

Chez Monet

In the past three days, I have visited four museums pertaining to Claude Monet, the impressionist painter, and one of the greatest French artists of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. I have long enjoyed the blues, greens, and purples I associate with Monet’s painting, the hues found swirling among and around the water-lilies, the Japanese bridge, the setting sun, the haystacks, etc.

The first trip was a visit with the other EDUCO students to Giverny, a small village in Normandy, where Monet lived for half of his life, and most of his career. His house has become a museum. The curators have restored the rooms where he and his family lived (complete with the art that they hung on their walls), his studio (with reproductions on easels), and, best of all, his gardens. I remember reading once that an 18^th-century visitor to Shakespeare’s house was disappointed because there was absolutely nothing to indicate how the great poet had concocted his rhymes. Chez Monet, one can approximate the artistic influence of the natural surroundings: subtracting the tourists, it becomes easy to imagine the great painter immersing himself in the beauty of the light, the color of the flowers, the reflections of the water, etc. I even managed to take a few pictures; it’s not difficult to find a beautiful sight, and capture it on film (see Facebook).

The next day, I braved some of the worst (and worst-behaved) crowds of tourists I have seen since I arrived in France, and visited the Musee d’Orsay; in addition to seeing some really wonderful seascapes by Monet, I saw works by many of the other big names in impressionism: Renoir Degas, Manet, Cezanne, Gauguin, etc. Although the paintings, unfortunately, were not in alphabetical order, looking at the ensemble, it became easier to notice differences between the artists. Renoir is excellent at painting bearded men in hats; Pissarro painted landscapes and portraits; Degas painted mostly painted human subjects (and one beautifully mournful painting of a café); Manet had some portraits, and several still-lives; Cezanne painted still-lives and portraits. When I was younger and visited the d’Orsay, I remember not really liking Manet; now, I enjoy his Sur la Plage, and its Cezanne whom I fail to appreciate, even after having seen his famous Pommes et oranges. Visiting the d’Orsay also led me to discover the lesser-known members of the Impressionist school -- Morisot, Caillebotte, Sisley, Barnard, Ranson, Roussel, Toulouse-Lautrec, Vuillard, and so many more French names.

The curators at the d’Orsay subdivided the post-impressionism (don’t let the name fool you: the style is contemporaneous with impressionism) into several sub-categories: nabi, neo-impressionsim, the Pont-Avon school (Gauguin), and Van Gogh, the latter deserving his own category. The Nabis, whose name is actually cognate with Hebrew Navi, meaning prophet (as in Eliyahu Ha-Navi, the song we sing during the Seder each year), considered themselves prophets of a new style of artwork, protégés of Gauguin. According to the critics, their work is full of subjectivism, symbolism, and dream; they were highly influenced by Japanese prints, and were divided into two groups, based on their subjects of choice: the esotiricists and the intimists. I found that there was one Nabi, Bonnard, whose work I enjoyed nearly as much as I enjoyed Monet’s: his lone yellow boat on the purple skein of the Seine, his women toiling by lamplight, his depictions of gardens and croquet parties, and his graceful nude, not only are very touching, but are infinitely better in their originals than in the hyperlinks I have posted for you. Neo-Impressionism, meanwhile, is marked by an amazing style officially called pointillisme, but which I privately refer to as pixelism. Instead of the sort of blending and bleeding of colors at which Monet was so adroit, the neo-impressionists achieved the effects of light with tiny dots of color. At times, I had the feeling that pointillisme had more potential as a style, but that the artists that implemented it simply weren’t as talented as Monet and friends. Neo-impressionism, nevertheless, produced excellent paintings of fields of flowers, boats in the harbor, Notre-Dame, and a man with a beard. Van Gogh, meanwhile, was off in his own world, experimenting with color. I saw the famous self-portrait, and the famous La Sieste, as well as a painting I had never heard of before, Fritillaires couronne imperial dans un vase de cuivre.

Also on display at the d’Orsay was a room of pictorialist art, pictorialism being the first artistic “movement” in photography. To paraphrase the sign in the museum, the intention of the movement was to create an “aesthetic ambiguity,” to some extent nullifying the reproductive perfection of the camera. Pictures were blurry, and photographers used all sorts of development techniques to insure unusual effects. What I found most interesting was the choice of subjects. It apparently was quite popular to get one’s friends to dress up in Greco-Roman robes, and pose romantically in the forest: I saw Pan, Iris, Orpheus, a libation bearer, and Adam and Eve (nude). In other words, the very subjects that painters had been taking throughout the 17^th, 18^th, and part of the 19^th centuries in France (pictorialism, however, was based in America).

The next day, I visited two more museums, both of them quite small: the Orangerie and the Musee Rodin. The Orangerie contains one of Monet’s great oeuvres: an eight-part panorama of the water-lilies of Giverny, saturated with blue, green, and purple. The work was completed during World War I, and Monet dedicated the masterpiece to France on November 12^th, 1918, the day after the signing of the armistice (Monet and Clemenceau were apparently fast friends). By the time the paintings were finally presented to the public, however, nobody cared about impressionism, and the paintings were badly damaged during the renovation of the Orangerie, and by shrapnel in World War II. Nobody really cared about the paintings until the 1970s, and it as only in the first decade of the 21^st century that the paintings were restored (Ben Yavitt witnessed this event). Downstairs, the Orangerie shelters the Paul Guillaume collection; Guillaume was the principal art-dealer for the great impressionists (he actually organized his first art expo in the garage where he worked), and he managed to accumulate a great deal of art for himself, now on display in the museum. There are a few excellent Renoirs beside some Cezannes in one room (alongside a painting of a red boat by Monet), where it finally occurred to me that the latter never seemed to ever put enough color into his pieces. Rousseau’s paintings all looked smug to me; Modigliani’s painted portraits of subjects who all looked as if they had just been sucking lemons; there were some chalk-like Matisses, as well as a few paintings by Picasso, some good, some not so good. There was one artist, Chaim Soutine, who seemed obsessed with deplumed birds and dead mammals, and who shared a room with a painter named Utrillo, whose sublime dreariness reminded me of Ithaca. Just take a look at the painting I shot, now posted on Facebook, to see what I mean. The Orangerie was really quite excellent, and is, moreover, short enough to visit in just a few hours.

After quitting the Orangerie, I trotted over to the Rodin Museum, not far from les Invalides. I thought that I had left Monet behind me, but I found one of his seascapes, and several of his letters, among the statues of the eminent sculptor. Not only were the two French artists born in the same year, but they were close friends, and in the summer of 1889, an exclusive Monet-Rodin exposition opened in Paris. You can still read Monet’s letter to Rodin, explaining how absolutely wonderful he considered the latter’s statue of Balzac (of which I saw many, many versions).

But to speak about Rodin for a moment, the man seemed to sculpt nothing but hands and nudes. I saw no fewer than seven distinct sculptures of hands, not counting roughcasts, and versions in different materials. Almost all of the hands, though, were very interesting, whether they were forming a Gothic arch, creating the first human being, emerging from the tomb, or concealing an unknown object. And alongside the obviously nude sculptures that Rodin produced, are the clothed nudes, whose powerful, twisting forms, with their tortuous curves, rippling surfaces, and exaggerated ridges and crevices, are fully visible.

Two of the few subjects to be portrayed standing straight are Balzac and (one version of) Victor Hugo. There are quite amusing stories surrounding both subjects: two years before the great author’s death, Rodin asked Victor Hugo to pose for him; Hugo refused, but agreed to leave his window open for a short time. Rodin hurriedly sketched the basic form of Hugo’s head on a few scraps of cigarette paper cradled in his palm, and later used these sketches to produce the work commissioned by the state soon after Hugo’s funeral. There were two final copies: a sitting nude and a standing clothed. As for Balzac, Rodin had never met him, but when the Zola-led committee commissioned a sculpture, Rodin meticulously researched his subject, gathering information in Tours, as well as using a pre-existing portrait as a guide. The final product, more artistically symbolic than realistic, became the subject of a heated controversy, partially because Emile Zola had recently become a Dreyfusard. The committee refused to even recognize Balzac’s likeness in the statue, claiming that it resembled him not at all.

Well, that’s it for Monet and friends. Today, I took my first course, at Paris VII. I’m amazed at how exhausting it is to concentrate on a lecture delivered in a foreign language!

~JD

“La gloire du doleil sur la mer violette,/ La gloire des cites dans le soleil couchant,/ Allumaient dans nos coeurs une ardeur inquiete/ De plonger dans un ciel au reflet allechant” [The glory of the sun on the purple sea, the glory of the cities in the setting sun, sparking in our hearts a moving desire to dive into the sky of the alluring reflection] ~Beaudelaire, “CXXVI -- Le Voyage”

Musees Parisiens

Since Monday, my first “free” day (as of noon), most of my time, unfortunately, has been needlessly wasted in pointless activities: attending a few mandatory meetings, visiting the campuses of the University of Paris, buying groceries, buying a telephone and other necessities, trying to get my Internet to work, etc. I’ve visited only a few sites, and I’m worried that I’m never going to see everything. So far I’ve been to the Louvre, Notre Dame (exterior), Les Invalides, the Museum of the Art and History of Judaism, and the Pantheon, taken a cruise on the Seine, and seen two plays. This may sound like a lot, but really, it isn’t. This morning, I was preoccupied with trying to buy a cell phone, and trying, unsuccessfully, to get the Internet connection in my room (for which I paid 30 Euros) to work.

The trip to Les Invalides was excellent: I was on a guided tour with about a quarter of the other EDUCO students. For those of you who don’t know, Les Invalides was originally constructed by Louis XIV as a sort of retirement home for elderly, sick, frail, injured, crippled, or otherwise incapacitated soldiers. Its construction was a means of raising the prestige of the military profession, and making enlistment more desirable. It is now a museum of military history, although a few retired soldiers do live there; it also includes the building which was converted, by Louis-Napoleon, into the tomb of Napoleon I, again as a publicity stunt.

Our tour mostly reviewed the epoch from the American Revolution, through the Napoleon period. It was interesting to see how Napoleon I’s silhouette -- expanded during his military career. There were some old Gribeauval cannon and rifles, a mark that was just coming into usage in time to be used by our French allies during our own Revolution. Gribeauval artillery was lighter and easier to transport than older designs, and the rifles were constructed of interchangeable parts, which in that era were a (useful) novelty. These rifles were still, in my opinion, fairly heavy, weighing 4.2 kg, or about nine and a half pounds. Did I mention that we saw Lafayette’s epaulets?

Napoleon’s tomb is very impressive and grand. They sealed the old boy up pretty tightly: the massive, massive tomb that sits at the center of the round building, beneath the dome, is the outermost of no fewer than seven different sarcophagi, each constructed from a different material, in order to preserve the first emperor’s mortal remains from destruction. Since he was sealed up, naturally, nobody’s bothered to check to see how the remains are faring: there’s a bit of a Schrodinger’s-cat aspect to the whole affair. Overhead is a double cupola, the work of none other than Mansard: the dome that you see on the outside is not the one you see from the inside, and hidden from view is a network of wooden beams, thanks to a clever trompe l’oeil. The dome was also very convenient for hiding Allied parachutists in World War II, although the Frenchman who protected the soldiers paid for his bravery with his life.

Le Musee d’art et d’histoire du Judaisme was somewhat of a disappointment. Perhaps I should not have visited it the day after visiting the Louvre, because it’s unfair to compare anything to that magnificent museum. However, I found that, though some parts of the Museum were interesting, I left without either having learned much or enjoyed myself much. The museum was inaugurated by then-President Jacques Chirac on November 30^th, 1998, and sets out to describe Jewish rituals as practiced by European Jews, give a general impression of the varieties of various Jewish cultures, and provide a narrative of the Jewish presence in France. Throughout are religious objets d’art, such as chanukiot, arcs, yaddim, hagadot, and Torah scrolls, as well as many pieces of artwork depicting Jewish life and ceremonies engraving figuring prominently as a medium, and marriages, funerals, circumcisions, and Seders often chosen as topics.

Although nothing is exceptional, there are certainly some exhibits not to be missed. There is an excellent series of scaled models of the Polish-Lithuanian pagoda-style of synagogues which were constructed between the 16^th and 17^th centuries (the originals were nearly all destroyed in the two world wars). Unfortunately, this is the only style on display, and this is the limit of architectural history. There is a Chanukiah from the 14^th century, whose form imitates Gothic architecture. There are numerous beautifully-illustrated Hagadot, one from Sarajevo in 14^th century, one from Ashkelon in the 15^th. The illustrations in these are wonderful, and the depictions of medieval seders reveal how little things have changed, in some respects, over the last few centuries. There are jewels from Morocco, and textiles from Salonika. There are political posters and newspaper clippings concerning the Dreyfus affair. There is a 1919 illustrated version of Chad Gadyah by El Lissitzky, a Soviet Jew, who used the goofy old Aramaic song about the goat as an allegory promoting the Bolshevik Revolution (no kidding). But all in all, if you only have a week to spend in Paris, the MAHJ is not worth spending a precious day. It deserves a B+.

The Pantheon, however, is well worth seeing. Twice daily, there are guided tours, and I planned my day in order to arrive near 11:00 AM, the time of the first tour. I was, at first, the only in attendance, and received a private tour for several minutes, but one by one, others joined me. The Pantheon is a gargantuan classical-revival temple-like structure which towers over all other buildings in its neighborhood. It stands in the place of the former church of Saint Genevieve, patron saint of Paris. It was constructed by Louis XV as a way of making his subjects forget what a lousy king he was, and how badly the nation had suffered from warfare. The architect, Soufflot, designed a truly fantastic form for the building, which was more or less faithfully carried out after his death by his assistant Rondelet. Most amazingly, the building has a triple-cupola, built entirely from stone, without a splinter of wood, which many of Soufflot’s more experienced contemporaries protested against as impossible (they were wrong). The work was completed in 1790, just in time for the building to become a secular temple dedicated to the nation, rather than a church.

The walls of the main floor are painted with nationalistic depictions of grand personages of French history: Clovis, Joan of Arc, Saint Louis, etc., while the walls of the transept depict the life of Saint Genevieve. In the crypt are buried those whom the French government has seen fit to Pantheonize. With one exception, they are all men, and with two exceptions, they are all French. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Marie and Pierre Curie, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, and many others rest in peace beneath the national temple. Unfortunately, a large number of the residents are Napoleon’s lackeys, whom he Pantehonized, I suspect, mostly out of egotism. It’s an enormously complicated process to be Pantheonized, and many well-known Frenchman have been denied this honor for one reason or another. Saint-Exupery, for example, cannot be Pantheonized, because nothing remains of his body; Albert Camus has not been Pantheonized, because his descendants withhold their consent; De Gaulle has not been Pantheonized because his last will and testament expressly spelled out where he wished to be buried. Denis Diderot, sadly, is also buried elsewhere; I plan to visit his grave sometime. Furthermore, Pantheonization is not irreversible: the very first man to receive the honor, Mirabeau, the father of the French Revolution, was also the first evictee, for political reasons. For many, such as Marat, who only remained for a few months before the political winds changed sufficiently to oust him, the Pantheon was more like a hotel than a final resting place

I’d like to take a moment to discuss the Pantheon’s most famous resident, who has a section all to himself, as well as a statue, while most of the Pantheon’s tombs are six-to-a-room, and lack additional ornamentation. Voltaire has a century named after him, and is generally regarded as the king of the Enlightenment, the champion of freedom and liberty (in particular, the liberty of free speech), the defender of tolerance, etc., etc. What many people don’t know was that Voltaire was a monarchist, covertly used his government ties to suppress his detractors, and wrote some of the most anti-Semitic tracts I have ever read. He wasn’t even a very good writer: his Letters on England (in French, Lettres Philosophiques) is, as my friend Brendan has put it, a book written about absolutely nothing. His first work was a long epic poem, the Henriade, which nobody seems to bother to read anymore. He often worked to have his own books condemned, in order to boost their sales (to better understand this phenomenon, I refer all readers to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix).

The real jewel of the Enlightenment, in my opinion, is Denis Diderot, a younger, more intelligent, and more radical thinker than Voltaire. Diderot, editor of the Encyclopedia, which sought to disseminate as much information to as many people as possible, of all classes. Diderot, who defended some of the weakest members of society in his writings. Diderot, who left many of his works unpublished, some of them excellent, and not mere repetitions of the same tired set of statements (cf. Voltaire). Diderot, not only a writer and philosopher, but also a chemist and a mathematician. Diderot, who wrote that all knowledge should be free, and that the only thing worse than one good monarch was a series of three good monarchs in a row. Diderot, whose experimental attitude towards literature is would not be matched for another century, by the modernists (Woolf, Joyce, etc.). Diderot, who would have loved the Internet, had his own blog, and contributed frequently to Wikipedia, yes, he, I believe, deserves more praise than he receives, and certainly more praise than Voltaire deserves. It’s a shame that he isn’t in the Pantheon.

I finally have my Internet up and running! I don’t know why, but it works!

~JD

“Ailleurs, bien loin d’ici! trop tard! jamais peut-etre! / Car j’ignore ou tu fuis, tu ne sais ou je vais, / O toi que j’eusse aimee, o toi qui le savais!” [Elsewhere, very far from here! Too late! Maybe never! For I know not where you fly to, you know not where I go, oh you whom I loved, oh you who knew it] ~Beaudelaire, “XCIII -- A Une Passante.”

A trip to the Louvre

I spent a good six hours at the Louvre yesterday, looking at art and artifacts until I simply couldn’t bear to look at any more. All in all, though, I think that I passed through about 15% of the rooms, and probably didn’t “see” everything those rooms had to offer! Notwithstanding, I had a fantastic time, and saw some truly amazing pieces: however, not one of them was one of the items, such as da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (aka La Joconde) or the Venus de Milo, for which the Louvre is famous. The highest-profile object I saw, in fact, was the collection of crown jewels, which had almost no historical information posted -- the signs mostly just listed the number of precious stones which decorated each ornament (as with so many other institutions, it was Francois I who began the collection of “crown jewels”). So I’ve taken the trouble to name a few of the pieces which I saw which I thought were worth the trouble to find, and to which I can ascribe the highest interest-to-traffic ratio.

1) The first self-portrait: around the year 1450, Jean Foquet made a palm-sized engraving on a gold medallion of his own face. His is the first self-portrait, in all of Occidental art history, of which we know. It is well-executed, too, Fouquet having used extremely fine tools, including a needle, to scratch textured patterns on the black enamel. The birth of the self-portrait is very much associated with the Renaissance, in the spirit of the displacement of older, impersonal forms of representation: Ghiberti’s knoblike little bust appears on his famous golden doors, for instance. It is therefore surprising to find that the first self-portrait is not only found in France, and not in Italy, but appeared before the real burst of Italian influence in French art and architecture, inaugurated by Francois I. All the more reason to argue against a single monumental event, “the Renaissance,” in favor of the transitions and trends which confront the historian in nearly all lands and ages.

2) Helmet and shield of Charles IX: Created circa 1572, these gold armaments are for decoration, not for combat. The detail of the decoration of the shield is extremely fine, an example of the work of the school of Fontainebleau, and depicts the exploits of the Roman general Marius. (For those of you who don’t know, Marius was a sort of proto-Caesar, the general who professionalized the Roman army, and declared himself dictator-for-life, although he actually retired late in his career.) The cloth on the back of the shield is also very rich.

3) Napoleon’s tableware: displayed in one china closet are forty elements of one of Napoleon I’s 60-piece tableware. What is amazing about this set in particular is that the designs on the plates, each of which is unique, are based upon entries in Diderot’s Encyclopedia. There are scenes of people working, in workshops, fields, mills, smithies, and mines; there is a scene of young men swimming; there are humorous scenes depicting a schoolmaster. The set was completed by the Sevres porcelain industry, founded in 1740. Adjacent to the Encyclopedia collection is one of Napoleon I’s tea services, called the “Cabaret Egyptien,” completed 1808-1810. Each unique piece in the service depicts a person, place, or monument from General Bonaparte’s (he wasn’t yet emperor) Egyptian campaigns. There are portraits of sheiks, of beggars, of Beduins, and of a Jerusalem Jew; there are quiet oases and towering pyramids.

4) Cycladic figurines: There are galleries and galleries of fantastic Ancient Greek art, mostly pottery, which, if you have the patience to look carefully at the displays, and to listen attentively to the audio guide, will gradually walk you through the various styles, as they evolved, shifted, and went in and out of fashion, from the 3^rd millennium B.C.E. to the 4^th century BCE. One room, in six steps, shows the transition in sculpture, and contains a case of the feminine figurines, c. 2700-2300 BCE, and native to the Cyclades, most of which are just a few inches tall, but some of which achieved a height of several feet (the head still exists of one of these). Not only do these represent some of the earliest known art known in the western world, but there is a bit of a historical controversy swirling around these white clay manikins. Most of the figurines are in the shape of a standing naked woman with her arms crossed below her breasts, which has led some to claim that they were the work of a peaceful feminist society that was later displaced by hordes of the violent, misogynistic Hellenes, with the male-dominated mythology we all know and love. Regardless, the figurines have a mysterious and antique beauty, with their curving noses and rigid postures.

5) The scepter of Charles V: Charles had his golden scepter topped with a figurine of Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor (crowned Christmas Day, 800), to symbolically legitimize the Capetian occupancy of the throne, with deliberate links to antiquity. The scepter is extremely well-preserved, having lost only the white enamel that covered the fleur-de-lys budding beneath Charlemagne’s throne.

6) In this series of colorful Renaissance tapestries, each piece depicts hunting in one month. There is a great deal of action, and scenes of the life of the nobility, found throughout. The artists did not hesitate to include the odd scatological element: in July, right in the foreground of the piece, is a dog doing its business.

7) Jewel cabinet of Empress Josephine: elegantly ornamented with classical scenes and a butterfly motif, this large dresser later passed on to Napoleon’s second wife, after he divorced Josephine. The piece is one of the best-preserved in the Imperial style.

8) Objets d’art from Limoges: Among the piles and piles of medieval relics and sacred objects of gold and ivory found in the Louvre are several rooms filled mostly with the products of goldsmiths’ workshops in Limoges, a region in Southwest France. The Limoges artisans had a very recognizable style, using the same colors of light blue and pale green precious stones, very shallow lines, and faces of traced characters in relief.

9) Throne of Napoleon I: The blue-and-gold seat is surprisingly modest, given the kind of pomp to which Napoleon was given in his imperial garb. Moreover, just around the corner, you can see a painting of the throne, in the background of a full-length portrait of Napoleon I. Either the chair has been well-restored, or has been well-preserved, because the colors seem not to have faded at all!

10) Tapestry of Saint Martin: I found my old friend, Saint Martin, in an Icelandic hagiographic tapestry, dating from between the 14^th and 16^th centuries. I recognized many of the scenes: the cutting of the cloak, the healing of the sick, the raising from the dead of a hanged man, and the transportation on board a ship of Saint Martin’s remains. A very good tapestry, but mostly interesting just for old times’ sake!

Thank you, Bruno, for inviting me to your apartment! I had a wonderful time with you on Sunday evening, and look forward to seeing you and your family again soon. Maybe your daughter won’t be so afraid of me next time…

~JD

“Mille pensers dormaient, chrysalides funebres/ Fremissant doucement dans les lourdes tenebres,/ Qui degagent leur aile et prennent leur essor,/ Tentes d’azure, glaces de rose, lames d’or” [A thousand thoughts slept, funereal chrysalises, softly shaking in the heavy dusk, which lift wing and take flight, tinted with azure, iced with pink, bladed with gold]. ~Beaudelaire, "XLVIII. -- Le Flacon”