On Sunday, I hiked up to the Petit Palais, which is in the 1st arrondissement. The weather is gradually cooling (and growing wetter), and I have made the permanent switch to long pants, but the walk was still worth the fresh air. There have been posters up in Paris for some time, advertising a temporary exhibit of the Comedie-Francaise on exposition at the Petit Palais, and the depicting a painting of Moliere in the costume of Julius Caesar; this looked worth visiting.
It was. The Petit Palais has managed to put together a semi-chronological, semi-thematic exhibit in five "Acts," which tells the story of France's national theater company, which originated as the troupe of Moliere. In 1658, his troop "font irruption sur la scene parisien" [erupted onto the Parisian scene], as the exhibit put it, and people are still talking about it. I had no idea, before I arrived in Paris, just how much of a legend Moliere is here, rather comparable to Shakespeare back home. For instance, since I arrived in Paris, I have seen advertisements for seven different productions of his plays (even attending one), and 9 of the top 10 most-performed productions at the Comedie-Francaise are his works (with Corneille's El Cid as a distant #7). There is a great deal we don't know about his life, but what we do know marks him as exceptional: several of his plays (notably Tartuffe and l'Ecole des Femmes) were controversial and scandalous after their performance. Moliere was the absolute ruler of his troupe throughout his career, writing, directing, and starring in its productions, and his death threw its existence into serious jeopardy (for this reason, it fused with several other acting companies in Ile-de-France, until, in 1680, it became the Comedie-Francaise).
Moliere continued to create controversy after his death, because he was buried in hallowed ground, even though he had not renounced his acting profession (he actually died the night after playing the leading role in one of his plays, ironically, titled Le Malade Imaginaire, or The Hypochondriac). The Comedie-Francaise continued to use his armchair as a stage prop until the late 19th century, and his watch and (what might be his) cap are also on display at the Petit Palais. There are a great deal of portraits and other paintings of Moliere (most of them posthumous). My favorite was "Molière et les caractères de ses comédies," by Edmond Geffroy, a painting which included more than fifty of Moliere's characters, and the playwright thoughtfully looking on at their antics.
There is, of course, more to the exhibit than the life and legacy of Moliere. There are paintings and models of the the theater itself; a room full of busts of the great playwrights, several rooms of paintings of the troupe's greatest actors, in costume, and various stageprops, etc. There was even a full-size marble statue of one actor, Talma, commissioned after his death in 1826, because the company considered the loss such a blow from the whole company.
I had wanted to visit the Grand Palais after the Petit Palais, more because of convenience than out of any real desire to see anything particular on display there; however, there was a two-and-a-half hour line, and I decided that I had better things to do (like study for Monday's Contemporary Arab World test). On my walk back to the dorm, however, I happened to pass by the entrance to the Conciergerie, a monument hadn't yet visited. I decided that I had enough time, and that checking out this Conciergerie, whatever it was, was worth the effort.
As it turns out, it was worth the effort (and the free student-rate admission). The Conciergerie is a 700-year-old building constructed by Philippe le Bel to house the Parlement of Paris, although its site as the seat of power and authority is much older, dating back to Lutetia in the time of Julian the Apostate; in the first decade of the 6th century, Clovis began building his royal palace there, after he moved his capital to Paris (he died in 511, before he got very far). Since then, the building has been used as the king's lit de justice, where the king himself legislated, and his royal edicts were registered. Since then, it has been used as a barracks and, famously during the Revolution, a prison. There, you can visit the rooms where Maximilien Robespierre and Marie-Antoinette passed their last days, respectively, as well as learn about the conditions of 18th-century prison life. I arrived five minutes before the start of the 4:15 p.m. daily tour, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in visiting the Conciergerie. Our guide was Spanish, but spoke French flawlessly, and knew her history forwards and backwards, something I've come to expect from French tour guides.
The Gothic architecture of the older sections looked so ancient, an effect that was probably enhanced by the very low level of lighting. To me, this seems very ironic; as I continue to learn, Gothic architecture, when it was new, was truly the architecture of shining light and brilliant color; it is only with age, wear, and the elements that Gothic stones have darkened, and their once-beautiful stained-glass windows grown black with spoilage. The windows of Philippe le Bel's Conciergerie were quite large, and kept the interior very well-lighted; now, the windows have been blocked with stone. The building got it's name under Charles V (rival claimant of Edward III of England for the throne of France), who as Dauphin, saw his ministers murdered before his eyes by Etienne Marcel, leader of an armed protest against royal royal. Worried by the possibility of another urban uprising, Charles V kept his distance from Paris, and installed a Concierge, or caretaker, who was in charge of Paris. Hence the name Conciergerie, to describe the building occupied by the Concierge. Charles V went on to do a fairly decent job getting the English out of France, avoiding open battle and simply launching siege after siege on the fortresses they had seized, eventually leaving them with only a few cities along the northern coast (Calais, Cherbourg, and Brest), certain regions of Guyenne (which the Brits could claim partially thanks to Henry II's marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine two centuries before), as well as certain chateaux.
On Monday, I took a test in my Contemporary Arab World TD, and on Tuesday, I took a test in my Medieval History TD, then delivered an expose on feudalism to the professor of the CM. I really felt like visiting a museum on Tuesday afternoon, and the Louvre was closed, so I took a short walk over to the Sainte-Chapelle, which is, in fact, right next to the Conciergerie, as well as to the Paris courthouse (Palais de Justice, literally, Palace of Justice). The Sainte-Chapelle was constructed by Saint-Louis in the early 13th century, in order to house his relics, most notably (what was purportedly) the Crown of Thorns. After passing the heavy security check, and getting my (free!) ticket, I entered the Lower Chapel, in the midst of restored, and was quite impressed by the restored colors. I noticed that there was a staircase, and I investigated.
The staircase led to the Upper Chapel, which, when I entered, literally made my breath catch in my throat. I have never seen as beautiful stained-glass windows as those of the Sainte-Chapelle, which are absolutely bursting with color, thanks to the restorers' hard work. Each one of the main 14 windows depicts one or two books of the Bible, with the rose on the facade depicting the Apocalypse, and the window on the far end of the nave depicting the Passion. I peered at dozens upon dozens of panes, and had a great deal of difficulty making out what was what. People were seated in folding chairs along the walls; the room is chilly, but if one is dressed warmly enough (as I was), spending a half-hour or an hour just sitting with a friend or family member and looking at the stained glass together would be time well spent.
Before I sign off, I'll take a moment to mention my visit to the Lutetia Arenas, one of the relatively few remnants of Paris's Roman heritage (the Cluny Museum's frigidarium is another). We visited them two weeks ago; they aren't the Roman Colosseum, but they're legit, dating from the 1st century C.E. It's now a public park, more or less, and the clearing in the center is large enough for people to play pétanque, a French version of lawn-bowling, but too small for even little-league baseball. There are concerts held there occasionally, and you can still see the enclosures where animals (lions?) were kept. Nick and I had a debate over whether it would have been possible to escape; the walls are too high to leap up upon from the base of the arena, but it looks to me, anyway, to have scrabbled up the sides, if you were athletic (and desperate) enough. I'm not certain, though. In any case, the arenas are now being put to the good use of giving Parisian children a place to play.
~JD
"Les parlementaires sont donc plus indulgents que les juges de premiere instance. Mais leur attitude ne se modifie pas au cours du siecle: ils ne deviennent pas plus indulgents, a la difference de leurs collegues des juridictions sublaternes" [The members of the court of appeals were thus more indulgent then the trial judges. But their attitudes did not change in the course of the 18th century: they did not become more lenient, unlike their colleagues of subaltern jurisdictions] (Benoit Garnot, Crime et Justice aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles, p. 16).
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
L'Apprenti Parfumeur
Thanks to the workshops organized by EDUCO, I've been able to cook French food, taste French wine and cheese, bake French pastries, and, last Friday, mix French perfume. The apartment was way, way over in the middle of the 16th arrondissement (on the left bank, but still a distance away), and I had to ride the Metro in order to arrive on time. There were about eight of us students, total.
The parfumeuse first explained to us some of the different "families" of perfumes, each of which is composed of different "notes" (individual scents, like "lily" or "oak moss") just like a musical composition. Some of these families had clear names ("floral" and "fruity"), whereas other names seemed entirely arbitrary ("cypress" and "oriental"). The parfumeuse passed around examples of various recipes for us to smell, in order to get an idea of ; for example, the "Floral Oriental" was 1/3 passion flower, 1/3 vanilla flower, and 1/3 vetiver (most were more complex). The "Eau Fraiche" made my eyes water, and reminded me of cheap perfume; "Fruited Cyprus" was milder and pleasanter, and "Oriental" smelled strongly of vanilla. "Woody" notes were relatively mild, but apparently take longer to dissipate; by contrast, "Fern" notes are quite strong.
Each pair of us (I was sitting next to Brook) had 40-50 small flask in front of us, each one of which was only about an inch high, and contained one olfactory "note." We also had three empty flasks, in which to practice mixing, and thereby arrive at a desirably formula. I had somebody in mind who deserves a special gift from France (actually, that probably describes every woman who reads this blog), and had already decided, for quite some time, that I was going to mix her some unique perfume.
I knew that I needed to stay away from "Eau Fraiche," which was too strong, and also to steer clear from anything overly sweet. I also wanted to avoid simply choosing a list of the scents of my favorite fruits, seeing as I assume that most people don't want to smell like a mixture of figs and pears. I took task this quite seriously, and Mr. David Friedman took an excellent photo of me staring very intently at a tiny bottle of scent, which you can view on Facebook.
My first flask was a mix of roses, jasmine, carnations, exotic fruits, peaches, passion flowers, ginger, and vanilla flowers (I had decided against oak moss, no matter how good it smelled to me). This first experiment smelled overwhelmingly sweet, and exactly the opposite of what I had been trying for. Meanwhile, Brook was having success making scents that reminded me strongly of my Mother's flower garden (was it the lavender? I don't know). I was also impressed with Madeline's and Sharon's concoctions (meanwhile, David, who was just trying to mix something for his mother, was going overboard with the mandarin orange scent). So I cut down seriously on the exotic fruits and the jasmine, which were overwhelming the other scents, added a bit of ginger in order to temper the sweetness. The result was fresh and floral, without being too sweet. I made two more different attempts, in which I tried adding coconut and suppressing certain scents, but I ended up using the second recipe in the end, making only the slight modification of replacing jasmine with coconut. In the end, however, my nose felt so over-stimulated that I had difficulty differentiating between the different fragrances: too much of a good thing! In case anyone's interested, here is the final recipe:
Rose: 10%
Carnation: 15%
Exotic Fruit: 15%
Peach: 10%
Passion Flower: 10%
Ginger: 10%
Vanilla Flower: 25%
Coconut: 5%
The girls, to whom I had explained the gifts recipient, all thought that the scent would go over well as a gift, and that she would enjoy and appreciate it. Well, I hope that she will.
Oh, and today is a rainy, disgusting Monday, in which I'm not taking a run, even though I just took my Contemporary Arab World exam (2 hours). Next up will be this weekend's visit to the Petit Palais and the Conciergerie.
~JD
"A landmark in the progress towards the general heritability of fiefs, at least in Italy in Germany, was the ordinance issued by the German emperor Conrad II in 1037 which granted security of tenure, protected by the judgment of their peers, to those who held benefices on royal or church land, together with the right to pass on their land to their sons and certain other male relatives" (Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted, p. 49).
The parfumeuse first explained to us some of the different "families" of perfumes, each of which is composed of different "notes" (individual scents, like "lily" or "oak moss") just like a musical composition. Some of these families had clear names ("floral" and "fruity"), whereas other names seemed entirely arbitrary ("cypress" and "oriental"). The parfumeuse passed around examples of various recipes for us to smell, in order to get an idea of ; for example, the "Floral Oriental" was 1/3 passion flower, 1/3 vanilla flower, and 1/3 vetiver (most were more complex). The "Eau Fraiche" made my eyes water, and reminded me of cheap perfume; "Fruited Cyprus" was milder and pleasanter, and "Oriental" smelled strongly of vanilla. "Woody" notes were relatively mild, but apparently take longer to dissipate; by contrast, "Fern" notes are quite strong.
Each pair of us (I was sitting next to Brook) had 40-50 small flask in front of us, each one of which was only about an inch high, and contained one olfactory "note." We also had three empty flasks, in which to practice mixing, and thereby arrive at a desirably formula. I had somebody in mind who deserves a special gift from France (actually, that probably describes every woman who reads this blog), and had already decided, for quite some time, that I was going to mix her some unique perfume.
I knew that I needed to stay away from "Eau Fraiche," which was too strong, and also to steer clear from anything overly sweet. I also wanted to avoid simply choosing a list of the scents of my favorite fruits, seeing as I assume that most people don't want to smell like a mixture of figs and pears. I took task this quite seriously, and Mr. David Friedman took an excellent photo of me staring very intently at a tiny bottle of scent, which you can view on Facebook.
My first flask was a mix of roses, jasmine, carnations, exotic fruits, peaches, passion flowers, ginger, and vanilla flowers (I had decided against oak moss, no matter how good it smelled to me). This first experiment smelled overwhelmingly sweet, and exactly the opposite of what I had been trying for. Meanwhile, Brook was having success making scents that reminded me strongly of my Mother's flower garden (was it the lavender? I don't know). I was also impressed with Madeline's and Sharon's concoctions (meanwhile, David, who was just trying to mix something for his mother, was going overboard with the mandarin orange scent). So I cut down seriously on the exotic fruits and the jasmine, which were overwhelming the other scents, added a bit of ginger in order to temper the sweetness. The result was fresh and floral, without being too sweet. I made two more different attempts, in which I tried adding coconut and suppressing certain scents, but I ended up using the second recipe in the end, making only the slight modification of replacing jasmine with coconut. In the end, however, my nose felt so over-stimulated that I had difficulty differentiating between the different fragrances: too much of a good thing! In case anyone's interested, here is the final recipe:
Rose: 10%
Carnation: 15%
Exotic Fruit: 15%
Peach: 10%
Passion Flower: 10%
Ginger: 10%
Vanilla Flower: 25%
Coconut: 5%
The girls, to whom I had explained the gifts recipient, all thought that the scent would go over well as a gift, and that she would enjoy and appreciate it. Well, I hope that she will.
Oh, and today is a rainy, disgusting Monday, in which I'm not taking a run, even though I just took my Contemporary Arab World exam (2 hours). Next up will be this weekend's visit to the Petit Palais and the Conciergerie.
~JD
"A landmark in the progress towards the general heritability of fiefs, at least in Italy in Germany, was the ordinance issued by the German emperor Conrad II in 1037 which granted security of tenure, protected by the judgment of their peers, to those who held benefices on royal or church land, together with the right to pass on their land to their sons and certain other male relatives" (Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted, p. 49).
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Sociologue Amateur
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! On this national holiday, I thought it would be fitting to write (or at least begin to write) a post on national identity.
Seventy years ago, in his essay on English patriotism, George Orwell, wrote that "national characteristics are not easy to pin down, and when pinned down they often turn out to be trivialities or seem to have no connexion with one another." This is a simple fact that all who try either make any but the most superficial observations, or to draw any but the most trite inferences, on sociology and anthropology, should acknowledge, be they tourists or academics. I offer it as a disclaimer as well as a general precaution to the following comments. I will recount a few anecdotes and impressions, and try to make some sense out of them.
On Monday, I had the misfortune to trip when taking my run through the quad of the Cité Universitaire; I tumbled and fell on my right side, grazing my right shoulder, my right elbow, my right knee, and both hands. I fell only about 20-30 meters away from a group of three people walking their dogs. I stood up, brushed myself off, and continued on my run, but, perhaps significantly, perhaps not, not one of them had stopped in order to ask me if I had hurt myself. This struck me as unusual; in Ithaca, when I take a tumble, those nearby who witness my fall usually express concern, by asking me if I am OK, etc. This applies even to drivers; once, a driver who saw me in his rear-view mirror even backed up to ask me if I was alright. I am not certain that the three dog-walkers saw me; but I am also not certain that they did not.
The dynamics in the park may not differ, in some respects, from those in the classroom. I gave exposé #3 on Medieval Travel; the same day, as I mentioned in my post about that exposé, that one of my classmates, Roman, had the same subject, and that after the Cours Magistral that day, I told him that I had been impressed with his presentation. I began speaking with him and with two of his friends, and after several minutes, I introduced myself, feeling that it was an opportune moment. None of them offered their names in return; I had to ask them: it wasn't exactly pulling teeth, but most of the time, when I give my name, I receive my interlocutors' in return. Likewise, trading cell phone numbers is very common back in the U.S., even among ephemeral acquaintances (how many numbers do I have of people I met a few times freshman year, and have rarely, or never, seen again?) -- not so, here.
This brings me to one of the most important aspects of life here: the near-impossibility of making French friends. I say "near" because I, and several others, have each managed to meet 1-5 French students with whom we have achieved at least some rapport. I would like to add here that I am very grateful to all of my French friends who have been kind and considerate enough to offer me their friendship. That being said, I estimate that maybe half of the other EDUCO students to whom I have spoken simply have no French friends. Zero. This is, naturally, partially due to the language barrier, and also due to the fact that the French students in our classes are well into their University careers, and thus already have constructed a nucleus of friends (my classes are all categorized as "License-3," meaning that students are in their third years, unless they are MASTER students). But where this ties together with the incident in the park, is in the social distance at which strangers are held. I am fully confident that, if I had called for help, the three people out walking their dogs would have stopped to help me without hesitation. However, I did not call for help; and they therefore had no reason to divert any attention toward me. I attribute this to a heightened sense of professionalism; that is, a greater distance between public life and private life. Both the park and the classroom are "public" spaces, where interactions involve a certain level of formality.
Formality is understandable in a park, almost the epitome of a "public" space, but in the U.S., classrooms are absolutely private nexuses. Think about the last time you were in class: unless you're my Dad, who actually is a professor, you're referred to consistently by your first name, and likewise address the other students and the TA by each one's first name (Prof. Pucci's class is kind of an exception to this, but his class is extraordinary, in more ways than one, but, Matt, I have always referred to you by your first name): only the Professor is referred to by his or her last name. In France, by contrast, the instructors all call me Monsieur Davis (pronounced day-VEES), and address me as vous, which makes me feel just a little bit stranger than if they referred to me as the less formal tu. The other students use tu, outside of class; I would mention their in-class interactions, but there are almost none to speak of: I don't think I've ever spoken to any of my peers while class is in session, except in a whisper, to ask them what was just said, etc. (I really miss discussion sections, in case it isn't evident.) This brings me to a curious observation Guillaume has made: American students (and JD in particular) will raise their hands to answer questions, even if they are only 40-50% certain that the know the answer; French students, even abroad at international schools, will not answer questions.
In an unusual, opposite reversal (which just goes to show that all binary us-and-them conceptual bifurcations are artificial), in the U.S., one's grades and evaluations are strictly between the individual student and the instructor. Although I had been told, before I left, that French professors have no qualms about telling students, to their faces and in front of the class, that their work is not good, it still surprised me the first time I witnessed it (and it still does). Everyone is criticized for some aspect of his or her presentation, even if the instructor praises the piece as a whole; and this is as true for exposés as it is for papers.
There is more professionalism in the classroom, and I think it is explained by a fundamentally different approach to university-level academics. In the U.S., being a student is one's life; here, it is more like one's job. At home, one never stops being a student, and one's entire schedule of classes, studying, sports, clubs, and even part-time jobs, is wholly within the framework of student life. When and where one studies is one's business: some people do it in the morning, some in the evening, some at the library, some at home. Here, studying is done at the library, during regular work hours (the Bibliotheque de la Sorbonne is open from 10:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m.). Uris Library is open 24 hours, and some students bring blankets and pillows. Studying never stops, and all-nighters are known among even the most responsible. In France, nuits blanches (literally "white nights," the term used for all-nighters) are generally just not done. There is a time to study, and a time not to study; the decision is less nice back home. I may be overgeneralizing by taking Ivy-League standards as the norm, but La Sorbonne is a very prestigious school here, and has, from what I can tell, relatively high academic standards.
One more note on academic standards, before I move on. In the U.S., educators, from high school teachers to college professors, consistently repeat, almost tautologically, that they don't care what students argue, as long as they support their arguments. Here, the refrain is on the structure and methodology: as long as all seven components of an introduction are in place, that introduction is of passing quality, even if the quality of the writing and the level of research are shoddy (not to say, these aspects are unimportant; I have seen a professor call out a student for treating a masculine noun as feminine in his in-class essay).
Academic standards are not the only standards encountered in student life. Veronique, one of the members of the (awesome) EDUCO team, has berated me before about the lack of attention I pay to my body, because I consistently sleep under eight hours a night (completely true) and don't consume a balanced diet (debatable). As she puts it, "les etudiants francais respectent leurs corps" [French students respect their bodies]. From what I have gathered from conversations with my other French friends, French students do tend to sleep more than their American counterparts, who, let's face it, barely sleep, ever. However, as far as I can tell, American students (or, at least, Cornell students), 1) Smoke less, and 2) Exercise more. By my standards, smoking and a lack of exercise are both key characteristics of an unhealthy lifestyle, in a way that sleep deprivation and poor diet are not. I wonder what doctors think of the matter...
There are a few other cultural observations, related, somewhat indirectly, to what I have been saying.
Drinking coffee (or eating croissants) while walking seems to be less common, as is speaking on the cellphone while walking. If you want to drink coffee, you sit down in a cafe to do it; when you eat lunch, you sit down on a park bench to do it.
In France, it's impolite to post others' photographs on Facebook.
The French have achieved a level of secularism in society that they have a word for it, laïcité, which they readily admit cannot be easily translated into other languages. For instance, in my Contemporary Arab World class, the professor, describing the politico-religious climate of the late Ottoman Empire, said it was "seculier, mais pas laïc" [secular, but not laïc]. If your 16th (and early 17th) century were mostly filled with gruesome religious wars and massacres, you, too, would want to prevent people from making public display of their religion (note: the ban on religious paraphernalia, better known in the U.S. as the ban on headscarves, is unenforced). However, I don't know if Ithaca is just already such a secular place, or whether the rising French xenophobia against North Africans and Romany, but there do seem to be some open displays of religion.
To name just one example, I was once handed a pamphlet containing 2 books from the New Testament, the Gospel of John and Paul's Letter to the Romans. It is on the desk in front of me now; it is conspicuously covered, on the cover, with French patriotic symbols: the blue, white, and red; the familiar hexagonal shape of France (plus Corsica) which we all know from the Mercator projection; a Parisian skyline; the Eiffel Tower; on the cover, the title alone is the only indication that this is a religious text. By contrast, there is nothing particularly "French" about the contents of the book (which could just as easily have been printed in any other Francophone country). My analysis? Just as in the U.S., with the influx of non-Christian immigrants (or, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, non-Protestant immigrants), somebody has made a connection between Christianity and patriotism: both represent traditional values placed in jeopardy by the newcomers. I have spoken with Bruno about the immigration issue, and he thinks that there is a strong parallel between North Africans in France and Latin Americans in the United States, with the very, very important exception that Latin Americans are typically Christian, whereas North Africans are not typically Catholic.
One last comment, just to remind you to keep a measure of Orwellian skepticism about trying to discover national "essences": public urination is rather common, and people do not consistently clean up after their dogs. The Mayor's Office has even posted sign up around Paris, alerting polluters, and those who urinate in particular, that they will be fined!
I would like to thank Valérie, Guillaume, Bruno, Joe, Sharon, David, Nick, Madeline, Jamie, Aday, Sarah, and everyone else with whom I have discussed Franco-American cultural differences: you all had a hand in this post also: mad props to Madeline for cutting my hair, and for Jamie for lending us her bathroom to do it!
~JD
"In 1475, Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, gave the herald who had just defied him in the name of Duke Rene of Lorraine a cup of gild silver filled with 500 pieces of gold and the robe of gold cloth which he, Charles, had worn at the ceremony of defiance" (Pierre Chaplais, English Diplomatic Practice in the Middle Ages, p. 243-244).
Seventy years ago, in his essay on English patriotism, George Orwell, wrote that "national characteristics are not easy to pin down, and when pinned down they often turn out to be trivialities or seem to have no connexion with one another." This is a simple fact that all who try either make any but the most superficial observations, or to draw any but the most trite inferences, on sociology and anthropology, should acknowledge, be they tourists or academics. I offer it as a disclaimer as well as a general precaution to the following comments. I will recount a few anecdotes and impressions, and try to make some sense out of them.
On Monday, I had the misfortune to trip when taking my run through the quad of the Cité Universitaire; I tumbled and fell on my right side, grazing my right shoulder, my right elbow, my right knee, and both hands. I fell only about 20-30 meters away from a group of three people walking their dogs. I stood up, brushed myself off, and continued on my run, but, perhaps significantly, perhaps not, not one of them had stopped in order to ask me if I had hurt myself. This struck me as unusual; in Ithaca, when I take a tumble, those nearby who witness my fall usually express concern, by asking me if I am OK, etc. This applies even to drivers; once, a driver who saw me in his rear-view mirror even backed up to ask me if I was alright. I am not certain that the three dog-walkers saw me; but I am also not certain that they did not.
The dynamics in the park may not differ, in some respects, from those in the classroom. I gave exposé #3 on Medieval Travel; the same day, as I mentioned in my post about that exposé, that one of my classmates, Roman, had the same subject, and that after the Cours Magistral that day, I told him that I had been impressed with his presentation. I began speaking with him and with two of his friends, and after several minutes, I introduced myself, feeling that it was an opportune moment. None of them offered their names in return; I had to ask them: it wasn't exactly pulling teeth, but most of the time, when I give my name, I receive my interlocutors' in return. Likewise, trading cell phone numbers is very common back in the U.S., even among ephemeral acquaintances (how many numbers do I have of people I met a few times freshman year, and have rarely, or never, seen again?) -- not so, here.
This brings me to one of the most important aspects of life here: the near-impossibility of making French friends. I say "near" because I, and several others, have each managed to meet 1-5 French students with whom we have achieved at least some rapport. I would like to add here that I am very grateful to all of my French friends who have been kind and considerate enough to offer me their friendship. That being said, I estimate that maybe half of the other EDUCO students to whom I have spoken simply have no French friends. Zero. This is, naturally, partially due to the language barrier, and also due to the fact that the French students in our classes are well into their University careers, and thus already have constructed a nucleus of friends (my classes are all categorized as "License-3," meaning that students are in their third years, unless they are MASTER students). But where this ties together with the incident in the park, is in the social distance at which strangers are held. I am fully confident that, if I had called for help, the three people out walking their dogs would have stopped to help me without hesitation. However, I did not call for help; and they therefore had no reason to divert any attention toward me. I attribute this to a heightened sense of professionalism; that is, a greater distance between public life and private life. Both the park and the classroom are "public" spaces, where interactions involve a certain level of formality.
Formality is understandable in a park, almost the epitome of a "public" space, but in the U.S., classrooms are absolutely private nexuses. Think about the last time you were in class: unless you're my Dad, who actually is a professor, you're referred to consistently by your first name, and likewise address the other students and the TA by each one's first name (Prof. Pucci's class is kind of an exception to this, but his class is extraordinary, in more ways than one, but, Matt, I have always referred to you by your first name): only the Professor is referred to by his or her last name. In France, by contrast, the instructors all call me Monsieur Davis (pronounced day-VEES), and address me as vous, which makes me feel just a little bit stranger than if they referred to me as the less formal tu. The other students use tu, outside of class; I would mention their in-class interactions, but there are almost none to speak of: I don't think I've ever spoken to any of my peers while class is in session, except in a whisper, to ask them what was just said, etc. (I really miss discussion sections, in case it isn't evident.) This brings me to a curious observation Guillaume has made: American students (and JD in particular) will raise their hands to answer questions, even if they are only 40-50% certain that the know the answer; French students, even abroad at international schools, will not answer questions.
In an unusual, opposite reversal (which just goes to show that all binary us-and-them conceptual bifurcations are artificial), in the U.S., one's grades and evaluations are strictly between the individual student and the instructor. Although I had been told, before I left, that French professors have no qualms about telling students, to their faces and in front of the class, that their work is not good, it still surprised me the first time I witnessed it (and it still does). Everyone is criticized for some aspect of his or her presentation, even if the instructor praises the piece as a whole; and this is as true for exposés as it is for papers.
There is more professionalism in the classroom, and I think it is explained by a fundamentally different approach to university-level academics. In the U.S., being a student is one's life; here, it is more like one's job. At home, one never stops being a student, and one's entire schedule of classes, studying, sports, clubs, and even part-time jobs, is wholly within the framework of student life. When and where one studies is one's business: some people do it in the morning, some in the evening, some at the library, some at home. Here, studying is done at the library, during regular work hours (the Bibliotheque de la Sorbonne is open from 10:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m.). Uris Library is open 24 hours, and some students bring blankets and pillows. Studying never stops, and all-nighters are known among even the most responsible. In France, nuits blanches (literally "white nights," the term used for all-nighters) are generally just not done. There is a time to study, and a time not to study; the decision is less nice back home. I may be overgeneralizing by taking Ivy-League standards as the norm, but La Sorbonne is a very prestigious school here, and has, from what I can tell, relatively high academic standards.
One more note on academic standards, before I move on. In the U.S., educators, from high school teachers to college professors, consistently repeat, almost tautologically, that they don't care what students argue, as long as they support their arguments. Here, the refrain is on the structure and methodology: as long as all seven components of an introduction are in place, that introduction is of passing quality, even if the quality of the writing and the level of research are shoddy (not to say, these aspects are unimportant; I have seen a professor call out a student for treating a masculine noun as feminine in his in-class essay).
Academic standards are not the only standards encountered in student life. Veronique, one of the members of the (awesome) EDUCO team, has berated me before about the lack of attention I pay to my body, because I consistently sleep under eight hours a night (completely true) and don't consume a balanced diet (debatable). As she puts it, "les etudiants francais respectent leurs corps" [French students respect their bodies]. From what I have gathered from conversations with my other French friends, French students do tend to sleep more than their American counterparts, who, let's face it, barely sleep, ever. However, as far as I can tell, American students (or, at least, Cornell students), 1) Smoke less, and 2) Exercise more. By my standards, smoking and a lack of exercise are both key characteristics of an unhealthy lifestyle, in a way that sleep deprivation and poor diet are not. I wonder what doctors think of the matter...
There are a few other cultural observations, related, somewhat indirectly, to what I have been saying.
Drinking coffee (or eating croissants) while walking seems to be less common, as is speaking on the cellphone while walking. If you want to drink coffee, you sit down in a cafe to do it; when you eat lunch, you sit down on a park bench to do it.
In France, it's impolite to post others' photographs on Facebook.
The French have achieved a level of secularism in society that they have a word for it, laïcité, which they readily admit cannot be easily translated into other languages. For instance, in my Contemporary Arab World class, the professor, describing the politico-religious climate of the late Ottoman Empire, said it was "seculier, mais pas laïc" [secular, but not laïc]. If your 16th (and early 17th) century were mostly filled with gruesome religious wars and massacres, you, too, would want to prevent people from making public display of their religion (note: the ban on religious paraphernalia, better known in the U.S. as the ban on headscarves, is unenforced). However, I don't know if Ithaca is just already such a secular place, or whether the rising French xenophobia against North Africans and Romany, but there do seem to be some open displays of religion.
To name just one example, I was once handed a pamphlet containing 2 books from the New Testament, the Gospel of John and Paul's Letter to the Romans. It is on the desk in front of me now; it is conspicuously covered, on the cover, with French patriotic symbols: the blue, white, and red; the familiar hexagonal shape of France (plus Corsica) which we all know from the Mercator projection; a Parisian skyline; the Eiffel Tower; on the cover, the title alone is the only indication that this is a religious text. By contrast, there is nothing particularly "French" about the contents of the book (which could just as easily have been printed in any other Francophone country). My analysis? Just as in the U.S., with the influx of non-Christian immigrants (or, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, non-Protestant immigrants), somebody has made a connection between Christianity and patriotism: both represent traditional values placed in jeopardy by the newcomers. I have spoken with Bruno about the immigration issue, and he thinks that there is a strong parallel between North Africans in France and Latin Americans in the United States, with the very, very important exception that Latin Americans are typically Christian, whereas North Africans are not typically Catholic.
One last comment, just to remind you to keep a measure of Orwellian skepticism about trying to discover national "essences": public urination is rather common, and people do not consistently clean up after their dogs. The Mayor's Office has even posted sign up around Paris, alerting polluters, and those who urinate in particular, that they will be fined!
I would like to thank Valérie, Guillaume, Bruno, Joe, Sharon, David, Nick, Madeline, Jamie, Aday, Sarah, and everyone else with whom I have discussed Franco-American cultural differences: you all had a hand in this post also: mad props to Madeline for cutting my hair, and for Jamie for lending us her bathroom to do it!
~JD
"In 1475, Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, gave the herald who had just defied him in the name of Duke Rene of Lorraine a cup of gild silver filled with 500 pieces of gold and the robe of gold cloth which he, Charles, had worn at the ceremony of defiance" (Pierre Chaplais, English Diplomatic Practice in the Middle Ages, p. 243-244).
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Ecouen & Chantilly
Feeling relieved: I finished writing my 8-page paper on the Young Turk Revolution early this afternoon, and on Friday, I took a 2-hour test, an in-class essay, in which we were expected to analyze "La Cour du Lion," a poem by La Fontaine which criticized the court of Louis XIV. That being done, I could enjoy a double-chateau weekend with my fellow EDUCO students.
I got up, if not early, than earlier than I would have liked, in order to trudge my way off to the Place Saint-Sulpice where we met our bus. I sat with Joe on the way out to Ecouen, which is under an hour's ride north of Paris.
Ecouen now houses the nation's museum of the Renaissance. Built in the first half of the 16th century, during the Francois I / Henri II phase of French architecture, the chateau was owned by Anne de Montmercy, constable of France, the second-richest man in France, after the king. Yes, "Anne" is a woman's name in French, too, but he was named after his aunt, Anne de Bretagne, the wife of Louis XII, whom you may remember from my post on Langeais, where Anne and Louis hooked up on Christmas half a millennium ago. In any case, this Montmercy character owned 120 castles across France, and this was just one of them, decorated in fantastic Renaissance style, and even more embellished with some of France's finest Renaissance art objects and artifacts. We had two guides, who led us through both castles; our guide was mediocre, but the other one, apparently, was nothing short of horrendous.
I was quite impressed with Anne's home-decorating style. There were ornamented cornices, frescoes depicting scenes from the Old Testament on every chimney, Corinthian columns, open scallop-shells around every corner, and carved fleurs-de-lys, crescents, rainbows, and other insignia throughout. Anne's personal symbol is an A and an M joined together by a sword, and his animal of choice is an eagle lacking feet and a beak (don't ask me why). Flanking one courtyard enterance were copies of two of Michelangelo's famous pieces, now known as the Rebel Slave and the Dying Slave, of which the originals are now a the Louvre. In fact, this is where the originals stood, from the time of Anne (who acquired them from Michelangelo, who had originally sculpted them for a papal tomb) until the time of the French Revolution. Even the floors were once richly, richly painted, with military and vegetable motifs, the yellows, blues, and greens standing out most prominently in the reconstruction in the center of one room.
But Ecouen is also a museum, and it contains, if you ask me, a greater wealth of art than the Cluny does (or maybe I just prefer the Renaissance to the Middle Ages? Beats me). Perhaps what most dazzled me was the collection of gilded-silver drinking vessels, purely for display purposes, which were never used. The masterpiece of the chateau was among these, a 16th-century German-manufactured cup in the shape of Daphne being transformed into a tree -- personally, I found it rather ugly and ostentatious. Really, however, the chateau housed art in every media known to Renaissance Europe. There was a large display of 16th-century Majolica-style plates, richly-painted ceramics in a style developed in Spain, and brought back from Italy by French artists. A few of these were even modest enough that I wouldn't mind having them in my house. One of the most famous pieces in Ecouen is the series of ten 16th-century Flemish tapestries depicting the story of David and Bethsabée. I tried very hard to get a good picture of this, but the lights were too dim (for the preservation of the tapestries, no doubt), so, unlike the other pieces I'm describing, you won't find pictures on FB. Something I found rather curious about the composition, however, was the far-left side of the first tapestry in the series, which was a separate "panel" if you will (what is a tapestry but a Renaissance comic book with insulation functions?), showing a man sitting and reading from a book -- reading the story of D & B, in other words, which the artist went on to vividly illustrate. Why choose to begin a composition this way? In any case, the tapestries were finely-made.
All of the chateau's masterpieces, it seems, were made in Germany. In addition to the cup, there was an impossible-to-photograph goldsmith's bench, owned by Auguste I, Elector of Saxony, which had very, very fine carvings down the length. Even more magnificent and ostentatious was the so-called "Ship of Charles Quint," made in Augsbourg around 1580, a clock in the shape of a great galley. Little figures of human beings were stationed around the deck of the clock-ship, including an enthroned Charles Quint in the center, many of whom nod their heads or otherwise move about when the clock is in motion, which it wasn't at the time we visited.
However, I found that by far the most interesting collection was the one which I found by myself, after or guided tour was over (done at what felt to me like a running-pace), in our thirty minutes of free time. Hidden away at the end of a wing is the Iznik collection of Ottoman ceramics, many of them created under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. Beautiful floral swirls on white backgrounds characterize the 16th-century manufactures of the town of Iznik, for which the collection is named. The collection used to belong to the Cluny Museum, but was sold, and thereby dispersed, near the end of the 19th century. Only the diligence of the museum's curators managed to reunite the fabulous collection, over the course of the second half of the 20th century, of around 450 pieces now on display.
We packed back onto the bus: our next stop was Chantilly, known for its cream, its lace, its horses, and, yes, its castle, which was also owned by Anne de Montmercy and his descendants, including the Conde family and the Ducs d'Aumale. Chantilly is really a gem, from the outside, nearly as beautiful, in my opinion, as Chenonceau. The current edifice is mostly a 19th-century reconstruction of a 16th-century chateau nearly entirely destroyed in the French Revolution. The building is now the Condé Museuem (Musée de Condé), which, according to our guide, is the second most-visited art museum in France, after the Louvre (I have difficulty believing that it is more visited than the d'Orsay). First, of course, we had to have lunch at the chateau's kitchens. I'm not going to whine about it for too long, but I had some difficulty securing a vegetarian option; however, the conversation was good (and mostly in French), there was bottomless wine served, and the food itself wasn't bad.
After ungluing ourselves from our seats with difficulty, we took a tour of the castle-turned-museum, and then the gardens. When you enter, one of the first things that you see is an allegoric fountain statue of Louis XIV laying low (terrassant) the Fronde, the great rebellion (really a series of rebellions) the kingdom faced 1648-1653, during Louis's minority. It was the Grand Condé, once proprietor of this chateau, who led the most significant resistance to royal authority (he was unhappy that he and his military buddies hadn't received enough promotions and honors during the Thirty Years' War); there was a significant political reason, in other words, for this fountain's strategic placement!
The Chantilly Chapel, which I believe is part of the original castle (I could be wrong) is pretty amazing. It has a high-vaulted ceiling, with Anne de Montmercy's distinctive AM-Sword emblem. He also depicted himself and the rest of his family in stained glass. At the far end of the chapel is an unpretentious black urn, which contains the hearts of all of the Princes de Condé -- I don't know if it also contains alcohol, or what, but they're still there.
There is a nice collection of 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century paintings in the Condé Museum. Many of them have Oriental themes, partially because the Duc d'Aumale went on campaign in Egypt with General Bonaparte, and, like the future Emperor, came back with an orientalist fascination. There are some famous portraits of the Cardinals de Richelieu and de Mazarin, a painting of Madame holding a portrait of Monsieur, many horse-themed tableaux (Chantilly is the French capital of horses), a great painting of an aging Moliere, and various depictions of the Grand Condé. There is a room of paintings depicting Louis XIV's campaigns, one of which I recognized from the cover of my copy of Voltaire's Siecle de Louis XIV. There are also a few pieces of historical interest relating to the Grand Condé, including the chest he used when he was on campaign, the pink diamond he kept about his person, and the cabinet used to hold his mineral collection. The grounds of Chantilly were by no means the gardens of Versailles, but they were certainly very pleasant to stroll through, in the early evening. They were liberally strewn with larger-than-life marble statues of personae from the Grand Siecle, including Moliere, and, of course, Condé. It's only fair to mention here that our guide was far, far more knowledgeable about Chantilly than he was about Ecouen, and not only had more to say, but could also answer questions in a straightforward manner.
I also made it to the Louvre this weekend, just for about an hour, but it might have been the best hour I have spent there yet. I visited the Italian statuary collection, and saw the originals of the Rebel Slave and the Dying Slave, whose copies ornamented the courtyard of Ecouen. Really, the whole room, and the adjoining rooms, are full of good things -- the statures that once flanked the entrance to the Borgia's palace, a marble bust of a young woman with an elaborate lace collar (yes, Mom!), Cupid reanimating Psyche with a kiss, an enormous statue of Jupiter, etc. Many of these, amidst the other statues, were really 2nd-century Greek and Roman statues restored in the 16th and 17th centuries (taken from the collections of Mazarin, Richelieu, and others). It was extremely interesting to see how the people of the Renaissance and the Grand Siecle re-imagined the missing pieces of these statues. For instance, there is a truly incredible black marble statue from antiquity, representing an elderly fisherman; but its 17th-century owners thought that the subject was Seneca the Younger in his death throes (Seneca was commanded by Nero, I think, to commit suicide)! Likewise, the waist downward of a statue of a seated pharaoh with his hands on his knees was dredged up, dating from the 2nd millennium B.C.E., I think. The upper half was completed, and looks somewhat like other seated statues -- except it infinitely less detached from reality, and has so much more the semblance of a human being in time and space.
~JD
Sa Majesté Lionne un jour voulut connaître [One day his majesty the Lion wanted to know]
De quelles nations le Ciel l'avait fait maître. [Of which nations Heaven had made him the master]
Il manda donc par députés [He summoned his delegates]
Ses vassaux de toute nature, [His vassals of every kind]
Envoyant de tous les côtés [Sending from all sides]
Une circulaire écriture, [A circulatory letter]
Avec son sceau. L'écrit portait [With his seal. The writ explained]
Qu'un mois durant le Roi tiendrait [That for one month the King would hold]
Cour plénière, dont l'ouverture [An outside Court, of which the opening]
Devait être un fort grand festin, [Would be a very great feast]
Suivi des tours de Fagotin. [Followed by the tricks of Fagotin].
Par ce trait de magnificence [By this stroke of magnificence]
Le Prince à ses sujets étalait sa puissance. [The Prince spread forth his power to his subjects]
En son Louvre il les invita. [He invited them into his Louvre]
Quel Louvre ! Un vrai charnier, dont l'odeur se porta [What a Louvre! A real charnel house, whose odor wafted]
D'abord au nez des gens. L'Ours boucha sa narine : [Immediately to the noses of the people. The Bear plugged up his nostril]
Il se fût bien passé de faire cette mine, [He had just made this face] (?)
Sa grimace déplut. Le Monarque irrité [His grimace displeased. The irritated Monarch]
L'envoya chez Pluton faire le dégoûté. [Sent him to Pluto, to turn up his nose]
Le Singe approuva fort cette sévérité, [The monkey strongly approved of this severity]
Et flatteur excessif il loua la colère [And, excessive flatterer, he praised the rage]
Et la griffe du Prince, et l'antre, et cette odeur : [And the claw of the Prince, and the den, and this smell]
Il n'était ambre, il n'était fleur, [There no amber, there was no flower]
Qui ne fût ail au prix. Sa sotte flatterie [That wasn't garlic to it (?). His foolish flattery]
Eut un mauvais succès, et fut encore punie. [Had poor success, and he, too, was punished]
Ce Monseigneur du Lion-là [This milord the Lion]
Fut parent de Caligula. [Was kinsman of Caligula]
Le Renard étant proche : Or çà, lui dit le Sire, [The fox was close; and then, the King said to him]
Que sens-tu ? Dis-le-moi : parle sans déguiser. [What do you smell? Tell it to me, speak without concealment]
L'autre aussitôt de s'excuser, [The other immediately excused himself]
Alléguant un grand rhume : il ne pouvait que dire [Alleging a terrible cold: He could only say]
Sans odorat ; bref, il s'en tire. [Without sense of smell. In short, he withdrew]
Ceci vous sert d'enseignement : [This serves as a lesson]
Ne soyez à la cour, si vous voulez y plaire, [Be, at the court, if you wish to please there]
Ni fade adulateur, ni parleur trop sincère, [Neither a drab adulator, nor too sincere a speaker]
Et tâchez quelquefois de répondre en Normand" [And try sometimes to respond in Norman].
(Jean de la Fontaine, Fables, livre VII, fable 6).
I got up, if not early, than earlier than I would have liked, in order to trudge my way off to the Place Saint-Sulpice where we met our bus. I sat with Joe on the way out to Ecouen, which is under an hour's ride north of Paris.
Ecouen now houses the nation's museum of the Renaissance. Built in the first half of the 16th century, during the Francois I / Henri II phase of French architecture, the chateau was owned by Anne de Montmercy, constable of France, the second-richest man in France, after the king. Yes, "Anne" is a woman's name in French, too, but he was named after his aunt, Anne de Bretagne, the wife of Louis XII, whom you may remember from my post on Langeais, where Anne and Louis hooked up on Christmas half a millennium ago. In any case, this Montmercy character owned 120 castles across France, and this was just one of them, decorated in fantastic Renaissance style, and even more embellished with some of France's finest Renaissance art objects and artifacts. We had two guides, who led us through both castles; our guide was mediocre, but the other one, apparently, was nothing short of horrendous.
I was quite impressed with Anne's home-decorating style. There were ornamented cornices, frescoes depicting scenes from the Old Testament on every chimney, Corinthian columns, open scallop-shells around every corner, and carved fleurs-de-lys, crescents, rainbows, and other insignia throughout. Anne's personal symbol is an A and an M joined together by a sword, and his animal of choice is an eagle lacking feet and a beak (don't ask me why). Flanking one courtyard enterance were copies of two of Michelangelo's famous pieces, now known as the Rebel Slave and the Dying Slave, of which the originals are now a the Louvre. In fact, this is where the originals stood, from the time of Anne (who acquired them from Michelangelo, who had originally sculpted them for a papal tomb) until the time of the French Revolution. Even the floors were once richly, richly painted, with military and vegetable motifs, the yellows, blues, and greens standing out most prominently in the reconstruction in the center of one room.
But Ecouen is also a museum, and it contains, if you ask me, a greater wealth of art than the Cluny does (or maybe I just prefer the Renaissance to the Middle Ages? Beats me). Perhaps what most dazzled me was the collection of gilded-silver drinking vessels, purely for display purposes, which were never used. The masterpiece of the chateau was among these, a 16th-century German-manufactured cup in the shape of Daphne being transformed into a tree -- personally, I found it rather ugly and ostentatious. Really, however, the chateau housed art in every media known to Renaissance Europe. There was a large display of 16th-century Majolica-style plates, richly-painted ceramics in a style developed in Spain, and brought back from Italy by French artists. A few of these were even modest enough that I wouldn't mind having them in my house. One of the most famous pieces in Ecouen is the series of ten 16th-century Flemish tapestries depicting the story of David and Bethsabée. I tried very hard to get a good picture of this, but the lights were too dim (for the preservation of the tapestries, no doubt), so, unlike the other pieces I'm describing, you won't find pictures on FB. Something I found rather curious about the composition, however, was the far-left side of the first tapestry in the series, which was a separate "panel" if you will (what is a tapestry but a Renaissance comic book with insulation functions?), showing a man sitting and reading from a book -- reading the story of D & B, in other words, which the artist went on to vividly illustrate. Why choose to begin a composition this way? In any case, the tapestries were finely-made.
All of the chateau's masterpieces, it seems, were made in Germany. In addition to the cup, there was an impossible-to-photograph goldsmith's bench, owned by Auguste I, Elector of Saxony, which had very, very fine carvings down the length. Even more magnificent and ostentatious was the so-called "Ship of Charles Quint," made in Augsbourg around 1580, a clock in the shape of a great galley. Little figures of human beings were stationed around the deck of the clock-ship, including an enthroned Charles Quint in the center, many of whom nod their heads or otherwise move about when the clock is in motion, which it wasn't at the time we visited.
However, I found that by far the most interesting collection was the one which I found by myself, after or guided tour was over (done at what felt to me like a running-pace), in our thirty minutes of free time. Hidden away at the end of a wing is the Iznik collection of Ottoman ceramics, many of them created under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. Beautiful floral swirls on white backgrounds characterize the 16th-century manufactures of the town of Iznik, for which the collection is named. The collection used to belong to the Cluny Museum, but was sold, and thereby dispersed, near the end of the 19th century. Only the diligence of the museum's curators managed to reunite the fabulous collection, over the course of the second half of the 20th century, of around 450 pieces now on display.
We packed back onto the bus: our next stop was Chantilly, known for its cream, its lace, its horses, and, yes, its castle, which was also owned by Anne de Montmercy and his descendants, including the Conde family and the Ducs d'Aumale. Chantilly is really a gem, from the outside, nearly as beautiful, in my opinion, as Chenonceau. The current edifice is mostly a 19th-century reconstruction of a 16th-century chateau nearly entirely destroyed in the French Revolution. The building is now the Condé Museuem (Musée de Condé), which, according to our guide, is the second most-visited art museum in France, after the Louvre (I have difficulty believing that it is more visited than the d'Orsay). First, of course, we had to have lunch at the chateau's kitchens. I'm not going to whine about it for too long, but I had some difficulty securing a vegetarian option; however, the conversation was good (and mostly in French), there was bottomless wine served, and the food itself wasn't bad.
After ungluing ourselves from our seats with difficulty, we took a tour of the castle-turned-museum, and then the gardens. When you enter, one of the first things that you see is an allegoric fountain statue of Louis XIV laying low (terrassant) the Fronde, the great rebellion (really a series of rebellions) the kingdom faced 1648-1653, during Louis's minority. It was the Grand Condé, once proprietor of this chateau, who led the most significant resistance to royal authority (he was unhappy that he and his military buddies hadn't received enough promotions and honors during the Thirty Years' War); there was a significant political reason, in other words, for this fountain's strategic placement!
The Chantilly Chapel, which I believe is part of the original castle (I could be wrong) is pretty amazing. It has a high-vaulted ceiling, with Anne de Montmercy's distinctive AM-Sword emblem. He also depicted himself and the rest of his family in stained glass. At the far end of the chapel is an unpretentious black urn, which contains the hearts of all of the Princes de Condé -- I don't know if it also contains alcohol, or what, but they're still there.
There is a nice collection of 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century paintings in the Condé Museum. Many of them have Oriental themes, partially because the Duc d'Aumale went on campaign in Egypt with General Bonaparte, and, like the future Emperor, came back with an orientalist fascination. There are some famous portraits of the Cardinals de Richelieu and de Mazarin, a painting of Madame holding a portrait of Monsieur, many horse-themed tableaux (Chantilly is the French capital of horses), a great painting of an aging Moliere, and various depictions of the Grand Condé. There is a room of paintings depicting Louis XIV's campaigns, one of which I recognized from the cover of my copy of Voltaire's Siecle de Louis XIV. There are also a few pieces of historical interest relating to the Grand Condé, including the chest he used when he was on campaign, the pink diamond he kept about his person, and the cabinet used to hold his mineral collection. The grounds of Chantilly were by no means the gardens of Versailles, but they were certainly very pleasant to stroll through, in the early evening. They were liberally strewn with larger-than-life marble statues of personae from the Grand Siecle, including Moliere, and, of course, Condé. It's only fair to mention here that our guide was far, far more knowledgeable about Chantilly than he was about Ecouen, and not only had more to say, but could also answer questions in a straightforward manner.
I also made it to the Louvre this weekend, just for about an hour, but it might have been the best hour I have spent there yet. I visited the Italian statuary collection, and saw the originals of the Rebel Slave and the Dying Slave, whose copies ornamented the courtyard of Ecouen. Really, the whole room, and the adjoining rooms, are full of good things -- the statures that once flanked the entrance to the Borgia's palace, a marble bust of a young woman with an elaborate lace collar (yes, Mom!), Cupid reanimating Psyche with a kiss, an enormous statue of Jupiter, etc. Many of these, amidst the other statues, were really 2nd-century Greek and Roman statues restored in the 16th and 17th centuries (taken from the collections of Mazarin, Richelieu, and others). It was extremely interesting to see how the people of the Renaissance and the Grand Siecle re-imagined the missing pieces of these statues. For instance, there is a truly incredible black marble statue from antiquity, representing an elderly fisherman; but its 17th-century owners thought that the subject was Seneca the Younger in his death throes (Seneca was commanded by Nero, I think, to commit suicide)! Likewise, the waist downward of a statue of a seated pharaoh with his hands on his knees was dredged up, dating from the 2nd millennium B.C.E., I think. The upper half was completed, and looks somewhat like other seated statues -- except it infinitely less detached from reality, and has so much more the semblance of a human being in time and space.
~JD
Sa Majesté Lionne un jour voulut connaître [One day his majesty the Lion wanted to know]
De quelles nations le Ciel l'avait fait maître. [Of which nations Heaven had made him the master]
Il manda donc par députés [He summoned his delegates]
Ses vassaux de toute nature, [His vassals of every kind]
Envoyant de tous les côtés [Sending from all sides]
Une circulaire écriture, [A circulatory letter]
Avec son sceau. L'écrit portait [With his seal. The writ explained]
Qu'un mois durant le Roi tiendrait [That for one month the King would hold]
Cour plénière, dont l'ouverture [An outside Court, of which the opening]
Devait être un fort grand festin, [Would be a very great feast]
Suivi des tours de Fagotin. [Followed by the tricks of Fagotin].
Par ce trait de magnificence [By this stroke of magnificence]
Le Prince à ses sujets étalait sa puissance. [The Prince spread forth his power to his subjects]
En son Louvre il les invita. [He invited them into his Louvre]
Quel Louvre ! Un vrai charnier, dont l'odeur se porta [What a Louvre! A real charnel house, whose odor wafted]
D'abord au nez des gens. L'Ours boucha sa narine : [Immediately to the noses of the people. The Bear plugged up his nostril]
Il se fût bien passé de faire cette mine, [He had just made this face] (?)
Sa grimace déplut. Le Monarque irrité [His grimace displeased. The irritated Monarch]
L'envoya chez Pluton faire le dégoûté. [Sent him to Pluto, to turn up his nose]
Le Singe approuva fort cette sévérité, [The monkey strongly approved of this severity]
Et flatteur excessif il loua la colère [And, excessive flatterer, he praised the rage]
Et la griffe du Prince, et l'antre, et cette odeur : [And the claw of the Prince, and the den, and this smell]
Il n'était ambre, il n'était fleur, [There no amber, there was no flower]
Qui ne fût ail au prix. Sa sotte flatterie [That wasn't garlic to it (?). His foolish flattery]
Eut un mauvais succès, et fut encore punie. [Had poor success, and he, too, was punished]
Ce Monseigneur du Lion-là [This milord the Lion]
Fut parent de Caligula. [Was kinsman of Caligula]
Le Renard étant proche : Or çà, lui dit le Sire, [The fox was close; and then, the King said to him]
Que sens-tu ? Dis-le-moi : parle sans déguiser. [What do you smell? Tell it to me, speak without concealment]
L'autre aussitôt de s'excuser, [The other immediately excused himself]
Alléguant un grand rhume : il ne pouvait que dire [Alleging a terrible cold: He could only say]
Sans odorat ; bref, il s'en tire. [Without sense of smell. In short, he withdrew]
Ceci vous sert d'enseignement : [This serves as a lesson]
Ne soyez à la cour, si vous voulez y plaire, [Be, at the court, if you wish to please there]
Ni fade adulateur, ni parleur trop sincère, [Neither a drab adulator, nor too sincere a speaker]
Et tâchez quelquefois de répondre en Normand" [And try sometimes to respond in Norman].
(Jean de la Fontaine, Fables, livre VII, fable 6).
Friday, November 18, 2011
Running in Circles
Paris is a town almost entirely lacking in topography: yes, the Pantheon is at a higher elevation than its surroundings (as if it's cyclopean size weren't enough to make it easily distinguishable on the skyline), but there is no Gun Hill, there is no Libe Slope, there is no Mount Pleasant, no Freese, no Sandbank, no Kline, no Renwick, no Remington, and no Oakcrest. For those of you who aren't familiar with Ithaca toponymy, it will suffice to say that in my hometown, it is almost impossible to take a run without either ascending or descending, whereas in France, almost the only hills are the artificial ones in the parks, built by Napoleon III.
If you know me, you know that I like to take nice, long runs, at a moderate pace, with a good clip when ascending. I like to take runs that get me far from where I begin; one of the things I have discovered about "getting away," mentally, when taking a run, is that the process is easier when it is coupled with a physical escape. Nothing makes me realize how far I am from my schoolwork at Cornell than finding myself sweaty and panting at Quarry Road.
Which is why, even though I probably have the best running conditions of anyone living in Paris, I still find them disappointing. I have access to not only one, but to two parks, which are literally right across the street from each other. The first is the giant lawn of the Cité universitaire internationale, where I live. I need to scurry across a narrow line of traffic to get there (because my dorm is a block removed from the main lawn), but, by my watch, this hop, skip, and jump only takes about 30-40 seconds. The Cité U, by the way, contains nationality-based housing; there is a Tunisian House, a Greek House, a Netherlands House, an American House etc.; my house, the Lucien Paye House, is deliberately international, even though most of the residents avoid spending time with anyone not of their own nationality. It's a highly asocial setting, in which most doors are not just closed, but locked, and in which it is virtually impossible to make friends; one must have friends when one enters.
But I digress. Right across the busy Boulevard Jourdan, a two-lane road with a Tramway running down the center, is the beautiful Parc Montsouris, which is as close a substitute to Central Park as I will ever find in Paris. It's a natural space, with statues (including one of my countryman, Thomas Paine), a cafe, little theater (closed), and an ample pond. A group of black swans live in the pond: their plumage is quite remarkable, and there is an amazing contrast with their vibrantly-yellow-orange beaks, which are the color of industrially-produced cheddar cheese.
What I end up doing, usually, is running for about 30 minutes around the Cité U turf, and then crossing Boulevard Jourdan in order to make it to the Parc Montsouris, where I run for another 30 minutes or so, before heading back. Running seems to be common enough, although I will say that it's not as common among students my own age as it is among people my brothers' ages, i.e. young but still independent. I'm only running about 4-5 times a week in Paris, which, I think, might be contributing to my stress. Still, I am being extremely careful with my body: the last thing I need is an injury in a town where I walk 1-2.5 hours per day. According to Google Maps, the Sorbonne is just under 5k from the Cité U. Still, I know I'm going to be lazy and out of shape when I get back, and that a certain older brother of mine will have a very good chance of beating me at a certain race, nearly exactly one year from now.
~JD
"In 1710, the police decided not to publish an arrêt meant to dissuade people from pillaging grain convoys in order not 'to renew the sad ideas of dearth,' that is, in order not to incite them to pillage grain convoys!" (Stephen Kaplan, Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV, p. 79).
If you know me, you know that I like to take nice, long runs, at a moderate pace, with a good clip when ascending. I like to take runs that get me far from where I begin; one of the things I have discovered about "getting away," mentally, when taking a run, is that the process is easier when it is coupled with a physical escape. Nothing makes me realize how far I am from my schoolwork at Cornell than finding myself sweaty and panting at Quarry Road.
Which is why, even though I probably have the best running conditions of anyone living in Paris, I still find them disappointing. I have access to not only one, but to two parks, which are literally right across the street from each other. The first is the giant lawn of the Cité universitaire internationale, where I live. I need to scurry across a narrow line of traffic to get there (because my dorm is a block removed from the main lawn), but, by my watch, this hop, skip, and jump only takes about 30-40 seconds. The Cité U, by the way, contains nationality-based housing; there is a Tunisian House, a Greek House, a Netherlands House, an American House etc.; my house, the Lucien Paye House, is deliberately international, even though most of the residents avoid spending time with anyone not of their own nationality. It's a highly asocial setting, in which most doors are not just closed, but locked, and in which it is virtually impossible to make friends; one must have friends when one enters.
But I digress. Right across the busy Boulevard Jourdan, a two-lane road with a Tramway running down the center, is the beautiful Parc Montsouris, which is as close a substitute to Central Park as I will ever find in Paris. It's a natural space, with statues (including one of my countryman, Thomas Paine), a cafe, little theater (closed), and an ample pond. A group of black swans live in the pond: their plumage is quite remarkable, and there is an amazing contrast with their vibrantly-yellow-orange beaks, which are the color of industrially-produced cheddar cheese.
What I end up doing, usually, is running for about 30 minutes around the Cité U turf, and then crossing Boulevard Jourdan in order to make it to the Parc Montsouris, where I run for another 30 minutes or so, before heading back. Running seems to be common enough, although I will say that it's not as common among students my own age as it is among people my brothers' ages, i.e. young but still independent. I'm only running about 4-5 times a week in Paris, which, I think, might be contributing to my stress. Still, I am being extremely careful with my body: the last thing I need is an injury in a town where I walk 1-2.5 hours per day. According to Google Maps, the Sorbonne is just under 5k from the Cité U. Still, I know I'm going to be lazy and out of shape when I get back, and that a certain older brother of mine will have a very good chance of beating me at a certain race, nearly exactly one year from now.
~JD
"In 1710, the police decided not to publish an arrêt meant to dissuade people from pillaging grain convoys in order not 'to renew the sad ideas of dearth,' that is, in order not to incite them to pillage grain convoys!" (Stephen Kaplan, Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV, p. 79).
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Exposé #3
I delivered my last of three exposés this morning. Up at 6:50 for my 8:00 class, I had already rehearsed twice, and gave the transcript a third run-through while eating my yogurt and stale baguette at my desk. I didn't want to wake up my neighbors, so I recited silently, the walls in the dorm being a bit too thin for genuine privacy. I was partway through a fourth scan when I saw that I needed to head out.
The reading, I should mention, is on the topic of travel in the medieval ages. My principal source of info was Jean Verdon's Voyager Au Moyen Age (which has been translated into English, in case it interests anyone). I had to scrutinize and draw what I could out of two thirteenth-century primary sources, one of them a prospective route to travel on pilgrimage from Stades (a monastery about 75km north of Bremen) to Rome, the other one a retrospective account of the costs incurred by the voyage of a convoy of mercenary Genovese sailors from Languedoc to Paris. Interesting, right? Well, I ended up learning a fair bit along the way. I analyzed Albert of Stades's proposed detour to visit the fingerbone of Saint John the Baptist in light of medieval sightseeing (I can't call it "tourism," which didn't exist, in the common sense of the word), and the salaries payed out to the sailors in light of typical traveling costs, the value of French money, etc (fun fact: Philippe IV of France had two nicknames: "The Fair" and "The Counterfeiter," the latter because he minted coins with a lower real weight than theoretical value).
I had prepared fairly well, but because there were more students in the class than texts to analyze, I didn't actually get to present my exposé to my peers. Rather, I sat in class as one of my classmates, Roman, gave his super-detailed, carefully-researched presentation on exactly the same topic: there was virtually nothing I had to say which he didn't say (what's more, he can speak fluent French), and even though he spoke incredibly quickly, and exceeded the 20-minute time limit by over 3 minutes, he didn't have enough time to finish. Class ended 30 minutes late (quite normal, actually), and it was only after class that I delivered my exposé to the TA (or whatever the title is here).
My exposé had its weak points and strong points. Among my errors were lack of a full explanation for the multiple routes to and from Rome (all roads lead there, so there are multiple possibilities, right?) in Albert of Stades's narrative, and a lack of analysis on the more expensive costs of river travel than overland travel of the Genevese sailors. Furthermore, many of the contextual elements in my introduction were not strictly on topic, such as the fall the last crusader fortress, at Acre, in 1291, and the ongoing Guelph-Ghibelline quarrel, and could have spent that 1 minute allowance of time on more important elements of historical context. On the other hand, I did a better job at synthesizing and compressing the various elements than Roman (according to the TA, any way), I had a good analysis of the fundamental difference between the two sources (prospective practical travel info in contrast to retrospective accounting), and efficiently treated both money and lodging.
I don't normally share my grades with others, but I'm making an exception here, because I think it's important for all you folks back home to have some kind of a handle on the French grading system. In France, grades are fractions with a denominator of 20. According to Mme. Bowman, back at IHS, nobody ever receives a 20/20, because only God is perfect. Well, on this assignment, I got a 13/20, which I wager is probably about equivalent to a B or B-. It is not the equivalent, I think of 65%, which I think lands in the bel0w-the-belt region of a D. In other words, nothing to write home about (which, come to think of it, is exactly what I'm doing), but far from a failing grade.
So, I hurried off to my Cours Magistral at the Sorbonne, listened to a cool lecture on ties of love and friendship among friendship, and met three of my classmates, Roman (who had given the great exposé), Daniel (who gave the other exposé today, on a naval battle between Venice and Genoa), and Nathaniel. It was a rest day for me, today, having kept up fairly well on my runs.
Now, I just need to write that 8-page paper on the Young Turk Revolution, keep up on weekly textual commentaries on Louis XIV primary sources, and keep on reading. Really, that's less than what it sounds like...
~JD
"The fact that in ordinary times the bulk of the population had to spend about 50% of its inccome on the bread ration and in critical times virtually all of it is one striking measure of this dependence [on cereal crops]" (Steven L. Kaplan, Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Lous XV, p. XVI).
The reading, I should mention, is on the topic of travel in the medieval ages. My principal source of info was Jean Verdon's Voyager Au Moyen Age (which has been translated into English, in case it interests anyone). I had to scrutinize and draw what I could out of two thirteenth-century primary sources, one of them a prospective route to travel on pilgrimage from Stades (a monastery about 75km north of Bremen) to Rome, the other one a retrospective account of the costs incurred by the voyage of a convoy of mercenary Genovese sailors from Languedoc to Paris. Interesting, right? Well, I ended up learning a fair bit along the way. I analyzed Albert of Stades's proposed detour to visit the fingerbone of Saint John the Baptist in light of medieval sightseeing (I can't call it "tourism," which didn't exist, in the common sense of the word), and the salaries payed out to the sailors in light of typical traveling costs, the value of French money, etc (fun fact: Philippe IV of France had two nicknames: "The Fair" and "The Counterfeiter," the latter because he minted coins with a lower real weight than theoretical value).
I had prepared fairly well, but because there were more students in the class than texts to analyze, I didn't actually get to present my exposé to my peers. Rather, I sat in class as one of my classmates, Roman, gave his super-detailed, carefully-researched presentation on exactly the same topic: there was virtually nothing I had to say which he didn't say (what's more, he can speak fluent French), and even though he spoke incredibly quickly, and exceeded the 20-minute time limit by over 3 minutes, he didn't have enough time to finish. Class ended 30 minutes late (quite normal, actually), and it was only after class that I delivered my exposé to the TA (or whatever the title is here).
My exposé had its weak points and strong points. Among my errors were lack of a full explanation for the multiple routes to and from Rome (all roads lead there, so there are multiple possibilities, right?) in Albert of Stades's narrative, and a lack of analysis on the more expensive costs of river travel than overland travel of the Genevese sailors. Furthermore, many of the contextual elements in my introduction were not strictly on topic, such as the fall the last crusader fortress, at Acre, in 1291, and the ongoing Guelph-Ghibelline quarrel, and could have spent that 1 minute allowance of time on more important elements of historical context. On the other hand, I did a better job at synthesizing and compressing the various elements than Roman (according to the TA, any way), I had a good analysis of the fundamental difference between the two sources (prospective practical travel info in contrast to retrospective accounting), and efficiently treated both money and lodging.
I don't normally share my grades with others, but I'm making an exception here, because I think it's important for all you folks back home to have some kind of a handle on the French grading system. In France, grades are fractions with a denominator of 20. According to Mme. Bowman, back at IHS, nobody ever receives a 20/20, because only God is perfect. Well, on this assignment, I got a 13/20, which I wager is probably about equivalent to a B or B-. It is not the equivalent, I think of 65%, which I think lands in the bel0w-the-belt region of a D. In other words, nothing to write home about (which, come to think of it, is exactly what I'm doing), but far from a failing grade.
So, I hurried off to my Cours Magistral at the Sorbonne, listened to a cool lecture on ties of love and friendship among friendship, and met three of my classmates, Roman (who had given the great exposé), Daniel (who gave the other exposé today, on a naval battle between Venice and Genoa), and Nathaniel. It was a rest day for me, today, having kept up fairly well on my runs.
Now, I just need to write that 8-page paper on the Young Turk Revolution, keep up on weekly textual commentaries on Louis XIV primary sources, and keep on reading. Really, that's less than what it sounds like...
~JD
"The fact that in ordinary times the bulk of the population had to spend about 50% of its inccome on the bread ration and in critical times virtually all of it is one striking measure of this dependence [on cereal crops]" (Steven L. Kaplan, Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Lous XV, p. XVI).
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Montmartre
Montmartre, from its northern perch, looks down on the rest of Paris, and is easily recognizable for its fantastic basilica, Sacre Coeur. When I visited Paris in High School, Montmartre was my favorite region of the city: despite being crammed with tourists, I found it beautiful, and mysteriously peaceful, in spite of the crowds. Last Monday, another overcast misty day, Prof. Longino led an EDUCO tour to the historic neighborhood.
A tour through Montmartre is necessarily a tour of the artists, actors, and entertainers who lived there; although I've never taken one, I imagine that a tour of Greenwich Village wouldn't be much different. This is where the starving artists lived, because rent was cheap and light was plentiful -- no indoor heating, and little indoor plumbing, but large south-facing windows. Here, for example, one can visit Pablo Picasso's Parisian house, where he painted the famous Les Demoiselles D'Avignon, the first cubist painting, which anyone who has taken a certain modern literature class with Prof. Schwarz should remember fairly well. You can also visit a certain inn, le Lapin Agile, where many of these artists spent their evenings. The name of the inn derives its name from the shop sign depicting a rabbit, painted in 1893 by an artist named Gill: le lapin à Gill ("Gill's Rabbit") quickly morphed into le lapin agile ("The Agile Rabbit"), which I'm certainly was hilariously funny for the regular clientele, who all knew Gill.
Montmartre abounds with this kind of story. There were so many actresses, dancers, and painters who had all left some kind of a legacy or a memory, sometimes with monuments, sometimes without a trace, that only a Parisian could tell you the full story. Montmartre has that kind of liminal atmosphere to it, to the Parisians: it is located on high ground (always a good starter), and was originally a town independent from Paris, dominated by the strong-willed abbesses of its convent. It is the perfect site for French mystery novels. It is also the site for some of the most expensive wine around; we passed the first urban vineyard I have ever seen: every year, the wine is sold at a special auction at the mairie ("mayory," city hall), and the bottles are stamped with collectible labels -- collectible, that is, for the ultra-rich! These same vineyards, located on the south-facing slope, once provided revenues for the convent of nuns.
The only remains of this convent is the Eglise de Saint-Pierre, just ancient enough to contain a few Romanesque elements amidst the Gothic. For those of you interested in such history, it's also where Saint Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier decided to form the Jesuit order.
In addition to the church, there is, of course the wonderful Basilica of Sacre-Coeur, built during the 3rd Republic, as a place for prayer, with an emphasis on love (for God). It is really a beautiful monument; the family that welcomed us for the atelier de cuisine referred to it as "the Mosque," because of its domed towers (in fact, the real Mosque of Paris is fairly well-hidden, not far south from the Pantheon). Flanking the entrance are a pair of monumental bronze equestrian statues, depicting Charlemagne and Joan of Arc.
Sadly, the mist was too thick for a good view of the rest of the city, but Montmartre was worth visiting for its own views, and not just those it provides of the rest of Paris. Furthermore, the weather prompted Prof. Longino to invite us out to cocoa, which I wasn't about to turn down.
~JD
"Moine lui-meme des l'age de sept ans, partageant entierement avec une profonde satisfaction les benefices religieux, culturels et sociaux qui lui offre le monastere, et dont est privee la majeur partie des hommes, Bede ne sait pas et ne peut pas voir que ce sont precisement ces caracteristiques des fondations monastiques qui encouragent ces mecanismes pervers dont il stigmatise les resultats" [A monk himself since the age of seven, sharing fully and with a deep satisfaction the religious, cultural, and social benefits which the monastery offered him, Bede did not know and could not see that it was precisely these characteristics of the foundations of monasticism which encouraged the perverse mechanisms whose results he stigmatized] (Giovanni Miccoli, "Les Moines," in L'homme medieval, 58).
A tour through Montmartre is necessarily a tour of the artists, actors, and entertainers who lived there; although I've never taken one, I imagine that a tour of Greenwich Village wouldn't be much different. This is where the starving artists lived, because rent was cheap and light was plentiful -- no indoor heating, and little indoor plumbing, but large south-facing windows. Here, for example, one can visit Pablo Picasso's Parisian house, where he painted the famous Les Demoiselles D'Avignon, the first cubist painting, which anyone who has taken a certain modern literature class with Prof. Schwarz should remember fairly well. You can also visit a certain inn, le Lapin Agile, where many of these artists spent their evenings. The name of the inn derives its name from the shop sign depicting a rabbit, painted in 1893 by an artist named Gill: le lapin à Gill ("Gill's Rabbit") quickly morphed into le lapin agile ("The Agile Rabbit"), which I'm certainly was hilariously funny for the regular clientele, who all knew Gill.
Montmartre abounds with this kind of story. There were so many actresses, dancers, and painters who had all left some kind of a legacy or a memory, sometimes with monuments, sometimes without a trace, that only a Parisian could tell you the full story. Montmartre has that kind of liminal atmosphere to it, to the Parisians: it is located on high ground (always a good starter), and was originally a town independent from Paris, dominated by the strong-willed abbesses of its convent. It is the perfect site for French mystery novels. It is also the site for some of the most expensive wine around; we passed the first urban vineyard I have ever seen: every year, the wine is sold at a special auction at the mairie ("mayory," city hall), and the bottles are stamped with collectible labels -- collectible, that is, for the ultra-rich! These same vineyards, located on the south-facing slope, once provided revenues for the convent of nuns.
The only remains of this convent is the Eglise de Saint-Pierre, just ancient enough to contain a few Romanesque elements amidst the Gothic. For those of you interested in such history, it's also where Saint Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier decided to form the Jesuit order.
In addition to the church, there is, of course the wonderful Basilica of Sacre-Coeur, built during the 3rd Republic, as a place for prayer, with an emphasis on love (for God). It is really a beautiful monument; the family that welcomed us for the atelier de cuisine referred to it as "the Mosque," because of its domed towers (in fact, the real Mosque of Paris is fairly well-hidden, not far south from the Pantheon). Flanking the entrance are a pair of monumental bronze equestrian statues, depicting Charlemagne and Joan of Arc.
Sadly, the mist was too thick for a good view of the rest of the city, but Montmartre was worth visiting for its own views, and not just those it provides of the rest of Paris. Furthermore, the weather prompted Prof. Longino to invite us out to cocoa, which I wasn't about to turn down.
~JD
"Moine lui-meme des l'age de sept ans, partageant entierement avec une profonde satisfaction les benefices religieux, culturels et sociaux qui lui offre le monastere, et dont est privee la majeur partie des hommes, Bede ne sait pas et ne peut pas voir que ce sont precisement ces caracteristiques des fondations monastiques qui encouragent ces mecanismes pervers dont il stigmatise les resultats" [A monk himself since the age of seven, sharing fully and with a deep satisfaction the religious, cultural, and social benefits which the monastery offered him, Bede did not know and could not see that it was precisely these characteristics of the foundations of monasticism which encouraged the perverse mechanisms whose results he stigmatized] (Giovanni Miccoli, "Les Moines," in L'homme medieval, 58).
Friday, November 11, 2011
Cluny Museum
The Cluny Museum is dedicated to the history and art of medieval Europe. The Cluny has collected some magnificent and sumptuous art objects originating from all over the western world: crowns, crosses, tryptics, stained-glass windows, seals, columns, etc. "Medieval" is a fairly fluid period -- there are some Gallo-Roman pieces from before the common era, and there are even some drinking vessels from the 17th century. I visited on the advice of my friend Guillaume, who told me that it was thanks to his visit to the Cluny that he began to appreciate and enjoy medieval history (note: the 1-euro audioguide isn't worth it).
I was amazed by the condition in which some of the pieces have been preserved: one of the first items is a room full of the stained-glass windows, commissioned by Henry the Liberal, count of Champagne (yes, that's his name), dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, from Troyes France. Something as fragile as a pane of glass has survived for over 800 years on this violent planet! The oldest pane depicted Saint Nicholas, but a slightly newer pane pictured Saint Martin giving his cloak to the beggar, a recurring motif in my voyages.
The Cluny Museum, formerly a hotel, is attached to the ruins of a Roman Bath, the frigidarium, which contained the cold baths. It was cold out, and the poorly-insulated ruins were appropriately frigid. The frigidarium is now the home of the pilier des nautes, a 1st-century pillar from Lutecia (Roman Paris), which might be the oldest Gallo-Roman artifact with a legible inscription (there's a nice photo of a reconstruction online). Depicting Jupiter, Vulcan, and some other deities, it was a gift to the emperor Tiberius (r. 14-37 C.E.).
Many of the artifacts were elegant and well-made, but far fewer were truly interesting. Occasionally, though, I found real pieces of history -- an ivory plaque depicting Christ blessing the marriage of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II to the Byzantine princess Theophano (c. 982), the cheery-looking Apostle, depicted as a Greek philosopher, which once decorated the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (c. 1240s); the very graceful angelic sculptures of Poissy commissioned by Phillip the Fair for his grandfather Saint Louis; the 7th-century votive crowns from Visigoth Spain; the large iron canister once used to measure the dîme (tithe) in France; the reliquary owned by Saint-Louis, in which he kept the relics from three other saints; the Jewish wedding ring from Italy; the tapestry depicting a grape-harvest; the manual of medieval combat techniques; etc. I recognized, from my first visit to the Louvre, the elaborate and unique style of the enameled work in gold from Limousin and Limoges, which was kind of cool.
No, I did not neglect the museum's most famous piece, wall hanging known as La Dame à la Licorne, or the "Lady with the Unicorn." The work comprises six 15th-century Lyonnais tapestries, each one with the same woman, in a garden full of animals and other symbols, among which is always a unicorn. The first five tapestries depict the five senses; the woman is variously depicted with a bowl of fruit, with a harp, with rich perfumes, etc., and for touch, she is stroking the neck of the unicorn. The tapestries, first of all, really are quite beautiful, rich with color, and uniting the medieval themes of the garden of love, the bestiary, and allegory; the backgrounds bear the "thousand flower" motif, popular in the later middle ages. One of the great mysteries of the ensemble, however, is the sixth tapestry; a young girl is presenting the woman with the necklace which she is seen wearing in the other five tapestries, and on a tent behind them is embroidered the device A mon seul desir, meaning "to my one desire." Is this supposed to represent some sort of sixth sense? If so, what? In the high middle ages, the notion of love as the sixth sense was quite popular, but in the Renaissance, intellect was regarded as a sort of sixth sense. Have an idea? Send it in to the Cluny Museum!
~JD
"Le maintien a tout prix de l'axe economique des foires de Champagne aux ports d'Aiguesmortes peut etre considere juque sous le regne de Philippe VI comme le fondment meme de ce qu'on peut des lor appeler la politique economique officielle" [The maintenance at all cost of the economic axis between the faires of Champagne and the ports of Aiguesmortes can be considered to be the very foundation of what one might call the official economic policy, up until the reign of Philip VI] (Robert-Henri Bautier).
I was amazed by the condition in which some of the pieces have been preserved: one of the first items is a room full of the stained-glass windows, commissioned by Henry the Liberal, count of Champagne (yes, that's his name), dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, from Troyes France. Something as fragile as a pane of glass has survived for over 800 years on this violent planet! The oldest pane depicted Saint Nicholas, but a slightly newer pane pictured Saint Martin giving his cloak to the beggar, a recurring motif in my voyages.
The Cluny Museum, formerly a hotel, is attached to the ruins of a Roman Bath, the frigidarium, which contained the cold baths. It was cold out, and the poorly-insulated ruins were appropriately frigid. The frigidarium is now the home of the pilier des nautes, a 1st-century pillar from Lutecia (Roman Paris), which might be the oldest Gallo-Roman artifact with a legible inscription (there's a nice photo of a reconstruction online). Depicting Jupiter, Vulcan, and some other deities, it was a gift to the emperor Tiberius (r. 14-37 C.E.).
Many of the artifacts were elegant and well-made, but far fewer were truly interesting. Occasionally, though, I found real pieces of history -- an ivory plaque depicting Christ blessing the marriage of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II to the Byzantine princess Theophano (c. 982), the cheery-looking Apostle, depicted as a Greek philosopher, which once decorated the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (c. 1240s); the very graceful angelic sculptures of Poissy commissioned by Phillip the Fair for his grandfather Saint Louis; the 7th-century votive crowns from Visigoth Spain; the large iron canister once used to measure the dîme (tithe) in France; the reliquary owned by Saint-Louis, in which he kept the relics from three other saints; the Jewish wedding ring from Italy; the tapestry depicting a grape-harvest; the manual of medieval combat techniques; etc. I recognized, from my first visit to the Louvre, the elaborate and unique style of the enameled work in gold from Limousin and Limoges, which was kind of cool.
No, I did not neglect the museum's most famous piece, wall hanging known as La Dame à la Licorne, or the "Lady with the Unicorn." The work comprises six 15th-century Lyonnais tapestries, each one with the same woman, in a garden full of animals and other symbols, among which is always a unicorn. The first five tapestries depict the five senses; the woman is variously depicted with a bowl of fruit, with a harp, with rich perfumes, etc., and for touch, she is stroking the neck of the unicorn. The tapestries, first of all, really are quite beautiful, rich with color, and uniting the medieval themes of the garden of love, the bestiary, and allegory; the backgrounds bear the "thousand flower" motif, popular in the later middle ages. One of the great mysteries of the ensemble, however, is the sixth tapestry; a young girl is presenting the woman with the necklace which she is seen wearing in the other five tapestries, and on a tent behind them is embroidered the device A mon seul desir, meaning "to my one desire." Is this supposed to represent some sort of sixth sense? If so, what? In the high middle ages, the notion of love as the sixth sense was quite popular, but in the Renaissance, intellect was regarded as a sort of sixth sense. Have an idea? Send it in to the Cluny Museum!
~JD
"Le maintien a tout prix de l'axe economique des foires de Champagne aux ports d'Aiguesmortes peut etre considere juque sous le regne de Philippe VI comme le fondment meme de ce qu'on peut des lor appeler la politique economique officielle" [The maintenance at all cost of the economic axis between the faires of Champagne and the ports of Aiguesmortes can be considered to be the very foundation of what one might call the official economic policy, up until the reign of Philip VI] (Robert-Henri Bautier).
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Ballet? Really?
As it so happens, yes. EDUCO bought everyone tickets to see a ballet at Versailles, quite fittingly, Marie-Antoinette. Around 6:00, at the Place Saint-Michel station, I boarded the train headed southwest for Versailles. It was dark out by this time, and I read Le Roi-Machine on the long ride; when I arrived at the terminal, I quickly found my way to the palace, and found a modest train of mostly elderly people headed in the same direction. The palace was shining with light (see FB for a photo), and, more importantly, warmer than outdoors.
Under my hoodie (which I checked, along with my backpack), I was wearing my nicest short-sleeve white button-down, the pair of shorts without the hole (just like the day before), and sneakers. I'm a student, and can get away with this kind of dress, but the real clientele were, of course, wearing much finer clothes. I had about a half-hour of waiting in the corridor, where rich people were eating and drinking overpriced food and alcohol. I took the advantage to rediscover the gallery of statues, which everyone else was ignoring. Eventually, I found a nook not far from Charles the Reckless, the 15th-century Duke of Burgundy, and continued my reading. Eventually, we were ushered into the theater.
I had lousy seating; there's no other way to describe it. Fourth floor balcony, on the edge, in the back row. In the gap between a pillar and a family of Japanese (?) tourists, I could see about 60-70% of the stage.
This was my first ballet, and I didn't really know what to expect. I was surprised at the dancers' skill and agility, and I know that my Mom would have enjoyed the costumes. In the first half of the show, Marie-Antoinette first appears at Vienna, and then is married to a certain Louis. Everyone at the French court was wearing masks -- a way of showing deceitfulness and spite, maybe? M-A was deeply hated as a foreigner by the rest of the court, even if good old Ben Franklin thought she was beautiful and elegant (no, there was no BF cameo, much to my disappointment). Louis cheated on her, she got upset, decided to leave him, wrote a letter, but then he hugged her and the intermission began. I spotted one other person from EDUCO, but I was pretty much alone: students had the option of attending one of 3 different performances, and mine was the least popular. So, I found a bench and pulled out my book, which was rather good.
After the intermission, the Revolution began. No, I mean it: definitely the best music was the Revolutionary theme, fast, frantic, and violent. In the midst of crowd of black-jacketed men, one dancer, wearing a brilliantly scarlet coat, led the rest, bearing his bare chest. Not Mirabeau, not Lafayette; Robespierre perhaps? A sort of undifferentiated Spirit of the Revolution? You tell me. In any case, he was pretty cool, as was the carrying offstage of scantily-clad noblemen by the men in black jackets. M-A languished in prison, met someone else, but, in the end, got carried, reluctant and struggling, into the red spotlight, where the executioner, in black leather (same dancer as the red-coated guy) tilted her head back. The performance ended with a thud.
So, the Revolution guy gets made props, as do the man and woman who represented the passage of time. I left with mixed feelings: definitely a night well spent, but I think I could have thought of better ways to spend it. I walked back into my dorm around midnight. Thank goodness I had no classes the next day!
~JD
"La depense la plus frequent est consacree au vin, car les fetes sont nombreuses... tout est pretexte pour boire" [The expense the most frequent - among students in medieval Europe - was dedicated to wine, for parties were numerous. Everything was a pretext for drinking] (Jean Verdon, Voyager au Moyen Age, p. 193).
Under my hoodie (which I checked, along with my backpack), I was wearing my nicest short-sleeve white button-down, the pair of shorts without the hole (just like the day before), and sneakers. I'm a student, and can get away with this kind of dress, but the real clientele were, of course, wearing much finer clothes. I had about a half-hour of waiting in the corridor, where rich people were eating and drinking overpriced food and alcohol. I took the advantage to rediscover the gallery of statues, which everyone else was ignoring. Eventually, I found a nook not far from Charles the Reckless, the 15th-century Duke of Burgundy, and continued my reading. Eventually, we were ushered into the theater.
I had lousy seating; there's no other way to describe it. Fourth floor balcony, on the edge, in the back row. In the gap between a pillar and a family of Japanese (?) tourists, I could see about 60-70% of the stage.
This was my first ballet, and I didn't really know what to expect. I was surprised at the dancers' skill and agility, and I know that my Mom would have enjoyed the costumes. In the first half of the show, Marie-Antoinette first appears at Vienna, and then is married to a certain Louis. Everyone at the French court was wearing masks -- a way of showing deceitfulness and spite, maybe? M-A was deeply hated as a foreigner by the rest of the court, even if good old Ben Franklin thought she was beautiful and elegant (no, there was no BF cameo, much to my disappointment). Louis cheated on her, she got upset, decided to leave him, wrote a letter, but then he hugged her and the intermission began. I spotted one other person from EDUCO, but I was pretty much alone: students had the option of attending one of 3 different performances, and mine was the least popular. So, I found a bench and pulled out my book, which was rather good.
After the intermission, the Revolution began. No, I mean it: definitely the best music was the Revolutionary theme, fast, frantic, and violent. In the midst of crowd of black-jacketed men, one dancer, wearing a brilliantly scarlet coat, led the rest, bearing his bare chest. Not Mirabeau, not Lafayette; Robespierre perhaps? A sort of undifferentiated Spirit of the Revolution? You tell me. In any case, he was pretty cool, as was the carrying offstage of scantily-clad noblemen by the men in black jackets. M-A languished in prison, met someone else, but, in the end, got carried, reluctant and struggling, into the red spotlight, where the executioner, in black leather (same dancer as the red-coated guy) tilted her head back. The performance ended with a thud.
So, the Revolution guy gets made props, as do the man and woman who represented the passage of time. I left with mixed feelings: definitely a night well spent, but I think I could have thought of better ways to spend it. I walked back into my dorm around midnight. Thank goodness I had no classes the next day!
~JD
"La depense la plus frequent est consacree au vin, car les fetes sont nombreuses... tout est pretexte pour boire" [The expense the most frequent - among students in medieval Europe - was dedicated to wine, for parties were numerous. Everything was a pretext for drinking] (Jean Verdon, Voyager au Moyen Age, p. 193).
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