Guess who showed up in Paris on Wednesday night? On Wednesday night, I had dinner with my wonderful parents at the Cite U cafeteria (first time I had been there, because they don't accept my meal tickets), following a typical mix-up. We spent a good evening together, catching up. My Dad was out of town when I left on July 30th, so it's been nearly five months since I've seen him (as you all know, I don't have a mic, so I haven't been able to Skype anyone, either). I showed them my room, gave them a few things I thought might be useful in Paris (a couple of maps, a waiter's corkscrew, a copy of Moliere's L'Ecole des Femmes, the usual), and sent them on their way back to the Metro. I hadn't realized it until now, but after spending three and a half months in Paris, I've grown accustomed to a city walking-pace, although I still can't walk as quickly as the Parisians. In Lettres Persanes, Montesquieu wrote that a stranger could spend several months in Paris, and never see anybody walk: everybody ran or flew. Not much has changed in this respect in the past 300 years, except for the introduction of the Metro, the RER, and Velib.
After I somehow managed to fall out of bed in time to make it to my last 8:00 a.m. class at the Sorbonne (Contemporary Arab World CM), I walked over to EDUCO to give Valerie all the homework and tests I have completed the whole semester, and to write up a commentaire sur texte for my Louis XIV class, I headed over to the 2:00 pm rendez-vous at the Musee Carnavalet with my parents. I had given them my Paris par Arrondissement, so although I (proudly) made it to the Place des Vosges, I didn't know where, from there, to travel in order to arrive at the Musee. I eventually had to ask directions, and scurried off, spying them in the giftshop. We checked our bags, and after some agonizing over the maps, found the period rooms that Mom wanted to visit (guess which Louis). Eventually, we split up, the two going off to investigate the section on Medieval Paris, while I moved forward through time, historically. I found the Mme. de Sevigne room, where the house's famous Louisquatorzien proprietor, author of a posthumously-published famous series of letters to her beloved daughter. There were portraits of Mme. de Sevigne and of the (rather beautiful) famous daughter, as well as Mme. de Sevigne's writing desk, and several of the original manuscripts of the letters. Because I know that all of you are terribly interested in the contents of these letters, I've decided to translate an example, simply dated "Monday."
"Since you absolutely want me to return your little box to you, here it is. I pray you to open it and to receive, as tenderly as I give, a small present that I have long meant for you to have; I have with pleasure had the diamond re-cut, pleased by the thought that you will keep it all your life. I ask, my dear good girl, to never see it in the hands of others, but in yours alone! May it be a souvenir of me, and of the great tenderness which I have for you, and by how many things I would like you to be able to witness it on all occasions; whatever you can believe of the above, you will not believe enough.
For my daughter."
The Musee Carnavalet has collected quite a few curiosities over the years, having been built up largely from private donations. For instance, it has the entire Art Nouveau interior of Monsieur Georges Fouquet's jewelry shop, as it was decorated in 1900. In 1899, Fouquet had worked with a famous poster-artist to advertise his shop, to great success; he went on to commission a complete redesign of his shop from the same artist. Despite being considered dangerously fashionable at the beginning, by 1901, it had completely gone out of style, and so Fouquet decided to donate all the decorations to a museum.
In spite of the heterogeneity of its collections, the Musee Carnavalet has done an excellent job cataloging many of the well-known places and views I have come to recognized since I arrived in Paris. I saw a 1949 painting of the bouquinistes on one bank of the Seine. Except for the clothing of the men in the painting, it seems as if little, if anything, has changed in the past 60 years, regarding that particular institution! For those of you who have never been to Paris, the bouqinistes are dealers of used books, posters, and knickknacks, who keep their wares in large green wooden boxes located along the quais on the Seine. Bouquin is a French slang term for "book," of which we really don't have an equivalent in English. There was also a neo-impressionist-style painting of the Parc Montsouris (where I used to take my runs, back when I actually used to run in this town), from the 1860s. Other paintings depicted famous Parisian residents, from Moliere to Cocteau; someone even had the idea of reconstructing the room of Marcel Proust, complete with bed, walking stick, bureau, bedside table, etc. There was a whole slew of paintings on the topic of World War I and the Paris Peace Conference: paintings of zeppelin raids, of the great French generals Foch and Joffre, and the escort of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. A wonderful surprise was finding 19th-century paintings of the Sorbonne! The old school building, constructed by the Cardinal de Richelieu and still containing his body in the chapel, looks identical, and the Place de la Sorbonne looks nearly identical, the only difference being the addition of several (dirty and unnecessary, in my opinion) fountains.
Mom eventually found me looking at this painting, and told me that Dad was feeling ready to go. After some unnecessary silliness that was all my fault, caused by my loss of my hat and gloves (I had left them in the boutique, which I had entered when I saw Mom and Dad inside), the two of them left. The museum was still open for another hour, and I hadn't yet seen the section on the French Revolution, which had been highly recommended to me, I decided to stay as long as possible. I was very glad that I did -- the Musee Carnavalet has done an excellent job in giving a very straightforward, very understandable, very lucid, and somewhat traditional description of the French Revolution through art and artifacts. Semi-chronological and semi-thematic, the various rooms take the viewer through such events as the taking of the Bastille, the Tennis Court Oath, the creation of the national assembly, the invasion of Versailles, the storming of the Tuileries, the fate of the royal family, the division between the Montagnards and the Girondins, the reaction of Thermidor, etc. There were busts and paintings of many of the principal actors, many of whose roles I learned somewhat better. To a foreigner, who is not necessarily familiar with every action and faction of the French Revolution, the room gives a good narrative, with informative artifacts. Back in Tours, I had been reading the "New History of Contemporary France," an excellent series, but which nonetheless assumed a certain level of knowledge. It was really a revisionist history, and therefore assumes the existence of a solid base of falsehoods needing revision; although Mrs. P-B gave me as good a classroom grounding as I ever could have asked for, to understand something, I really need to read about it myself.
I made it back to my dorm, via the student cafeteria, and got ready for my last day of classes in Paris.
~JD
"Depuis la charte de la Compagnie des Cent-Associes en 1627, pour etre reconnu sujet francais avec les memes droits, privileges et honneurs, il suffit a l'autochtone d'accepter le bapteme" [Since the 1627 charter of the Company of the Hundred Associates, to to recognized as a French subject with the same rights, privileges, and honors, it sufficed for the Native American to accept baptism] (Jacques Mathieu, La Nouvelle-France: Les Francais en Amerique du Nord XVIe-XVIIIe siecle, p. 182).
No comments:
Post a Comment