It was blindingly sunny today in Paris today, a welcome relief after the days of overcast skies that seem to be characteristic of this time of year. Just for fun, I wore shorts today, which, I confess, was probably a mistake, even though shorts and a short-sleeve running shirt were perfect for my lope around the park.
I had decided to visit the Palais Garnier, which is one of the two famous opera houses of Paris, as well as the Madeleine, which is a colossal church. It was a beautiful day, the distance was a good 90 minutes by foot, so I split the difference and took the RER to Chatelet/Les Halles, which brought me over to the right bank, and then walked west. On my way out, I hit one of the surprise Metro-ticket checkpoints; I showed my ticket to the guard, and moved along, but the girl behind me, who had just thanked me for letting her follow me through the barrier (which I hadn't done intentionally) got busted.
I made my way past the Louvre and the Tuileries, and then saw a rather large and old-fashioned-looking domed building in the distance, which I guessed was the Palace Garnier (it was). The dome is one of the most remarkable features of the opera house, wider than it is tall; constructed under Napoleon III, it was designed in order to resemble the Empress Eugenie's crown. I thought that the Palais was only a couple of blocks away, but as I approached, it turned out that I was wrong; I kept on approaching, and the building kept on growing and growing to fill my field of vision: the Palais Garnier is simply huge! It's a solid 69 meters high, making it the equal in stature of the towers of Notre-Dame de Paris, and truly dominates the whole neighborhood. The golden statues on the facade were blazing brilliantly in the sunlight, and I eventually fond my way indoors.
The Palais Garnier is ostentatiously decorated with lots of gold, and golden chandeliers, and well-furnished with marble busts of famous composers and singers. For all of the show, though, there is really very little information; the free pamphlet is one of the thinnest I've ever seen, and the guided tours are available only with reservation and (high) payment. I stopped to listen, for about ten minutes, to one of the guides, who was leading a tour of thirty or forty seniors. He was describing the history of the building of the opera house, and Degaz's (and playboys') visits to the ballerina's dressing rooms; when he stopped to move on, he noted that there was a young man who had begun to follow the group, reminding everyone that the group was already at its maximum size. I scrammed, and the tourguide lost one interested audience member.
In the Opera House, there is one absolutely overwhelming hallway; the grand foyer, which challenges even the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles in its opulence. I thought back to my time attending the ballet at Versailles, and about the reception hall full of suits and dresses: this is hallway, no doubt, where wealthy opera-goers have been promenading during intermissions, since 1875, in order to see and be seen. For all of the opulence of the wall paintings, the ceiling mosaics, and the chandeliers (the largest one of which weighs eight metric tons), the Opera Garnier succeeds at being flashy without being interesting.
I'd like to thank Nick for suggesting that I visit the Madeleine, a colossal church just a quick jaunt away from the Palais Garnier. Built in the likeness of a Roman temple, the Madeleine dominates the entire neighborhood, and, in addition to welcoming tourists, is also a functioning parish: I'd say that I was in the minority when I visited, most of the people there being engaged in prayer, etc (I was as respectful as possible). The construction of the church was rather haphazard, having been inaugurated by Louis XV, but suspended by the National Assembly in 1791. Napoleon wanted to turn it into a temple dedicated to the glory of his army (i.e. himself), and the architect he appointed demolished virtually everything, but saved the Corinthian columns. During the period of Restoration, Louis XVIII succeeded in turning the building back into a church, but the building in the decoration was only finished in 1842. Unfortunately, it seems as if even in the 21st century, the church is still under construction, and tourists were blocked from strolling around the periphery; moreover, there was a concert scheduled that night (Friday), and technicians had roped off half of the church, in order to set up the musicians' equipment. That being said, the domes and the fresco that adorned the apsidal dome was very well done (photos will soon be available on FB).
I strolled back, to my dorm, stopping at the library and at the student cafeteria, and after some readingm went to bed early that night.
~JD
"Il est indéniable que le XVIIIe siècle a vu, au point de vu réglementaire, une amélioration du sort des prisonniers… l’arrêt du 18 juin 1717 accorde aux prisonniers 1.5 livres de pain de bonne qualité par jour et ordonne qu’on leur fournit de la paille gratuitement" [It is undeniable that the 18th century saw, from the point of view of the law, an amelioration of the fate of prisoners, and the decree of June 18th, 1717, granted the prisoners 1.5 pounds of bread of good quality per day, and ordered that they be furnished with straw, at no cost] (Garnot, Benoit, Crime et Justice aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles, p. 192).
Showing posts with label Napoleon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Napoleon. Show all posts
Friday, December 2, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
A Night at the Museum, a Day at the Basilica
It's been hectic around here! I literally just finished the rough draft of the transcrip of my 25-minute oral expose on critiques of absolute monarchy on Montesquieu's Persian Letters (to be delivered on Wednesday), and still in the middle of my expose on the Ministry of Finance under Louis XIV.
But let's talk tourism: in the past week, I returned to the Louvre, and paid a visit to some French royalty.
Twice a week, the Louvre holds "nocturnes," where the galleries are open at night, until 10:00 p.m. As a "young friend of the Louvre," I'm allowed to bring a guest during these nights, and I invited my friend Sherif, who lives in my dorm. Sherif is a 22-year-old law student from Egypt; he is fluent in French, having been taught in French-language school, and wants to continue his studies in the U.S. He needs to practice his English, and I need to practice my French, so we alternated fairly freely between the two languages, changing whenever it felt right, during our several hours together. We took the RER (the train in Ile-de-France) and Metro north from the dorm, and, after getting a little bit turned around in the 1st arrondissement, found the Louvre.
In retrospect, the two exhibits we visited were well-chosen; the history of the Louvre itself (built by Philipe II, called Philipe-Auguste, contemporary of Richard the Lionheart), and Ancient Egypt. I know a little bit of French history, so I was in the position, for instance, to explain a little bit about Philipe-Auguste, Louis XIV, Napoleon I and III, Louis-Philippe, and the other actors we encountered. Sherif, meanwhile, is Egyptian, and could give me a wonderful description of life in ancient Egypt, of its pharaohs, its scribes, its musicians, and its builders.
In the middle of our stroll through historic models of Paris and the Louvre, Sherif posed me a question that could never be asked in the United States. We had been discussing how Napoleon I seized power, and how, just as in contemporary Egypt, whoever controls the army controls the state (elections officially scheduled for November, right?). Sherif asked me whether it was in the United States, France, or Great Britain that human freedom had been born. I was, well, taken aback. We're so self-critical of ourselves in the U.S. that any claim that America invented human liberty cannot be openly supported by any but the most ultra-patriotic, who are not to be found where I grew up. So I found myself, first of all, explaining how untenable this opinion was, how, because, for instance, the author of the Declaration of Independence was a large plantation owner who sexually abused his slaves and kept his unrecognized illegitimate children as slaves strikes many as hypocritical. Then, with promptings by Sherif, I found myself describing the histories of contemporary France (1789, jacobine republic, Napoleon I, restoration, July Monarchy, Napoleon III, Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune, 3rd Republic, Vichy, 4th and 5th Republics) and Great Britain (Magna Charta, the Civil War and Cromwell, the Glorious Revolution, the neutralization of the House of Lords just around 1900, the slow decline in power of the monarchs), with a nod towards the U.S. Constitution. I didn't say all of this to show off, nor am I now listing everything for the purpose of flaunting my knowledge; what I'm trying to get at is how enormous a question Sherif asked, and how impossible it was for me to begin to explain why I couldn't answer it, because history simply is so complicated. He told me how much he enjoyed our conversation, so I thought that I did the right thing, but what would you have said if you had been in my place? Oh, and this was all in French...
By this time, we were several rooms into the Ancient Egyptian collections, and I told Sherif that it was his turn to speak, and mine to listen (he switched to English). It was my turn to relax, and listen to an enthusiast. He explained to me how obelisks were erected, for instance, with the help of the flood of the Nile, about the introduction of the chariot in Egypt, about scarabs, and about the origin of the "curse of the Pharaohs." Concerning this last matter, because Egypt's kings' tombs were provided with all the necessities of life, they had large stores of food, which, after several millennia, had long rotted. When early archaeologists opened the tombs, they immediately got hit in the face with 3000-year-old toxic effluvia. And despite all of the excavations, Egyptologists believe that they have only uncovered around 20% of ancient Egypt's treasures.
The Louvre guards began to close the doors on us, so we hurried out, and, with a little bit of searching, made it back to the Metro station. That night, it suddenly got cold in Paris, and I was still in my shorts (although I had grabbed my gloves before leaving). The next day, it was in the forties (low of 6 degrees Celsius, for you non-Americans), and I had my hood up and my gloves on in the Bibliotheque Saint-Genevieve.
Luckily, it was sunny for my Sunday excursion to the Basilique Saint-Denis, located north of Paris, as far as you can get from the city while still riding the Metro. It was a beautiful day, and I wanted to take advantage of the weather while it lasted, seeing as the basilica and its crypt get notoriously cold in the wintertime. I foolishly forgot my camera, so no FB photos; you'll have to imagine the basilica with me (or just search Google images for visual aids).
The basilica houses the necropolis of the kings of France; that is, it houses the bones of royal and noble families whom the modern state of France recognizes as French. Valerie, from EDUCO, had told me that Charlemagne was buried there; in fact, he isn't (he's in what's now Germany, in his old capital), but I did see several of my old friends, such as Francois I, who shares a prominent crypt with his queen, Claude de France; the crypt is decorated with Ionic columns, and was built under Henri II, in 1545. I saw Charles Martel and Pepin the Short, Carolingians, before descending into the Bourbon vault. Charles Martel was wearing a crown, holding a scepter, and wearing a royal cloak, just like all of the kings, even though he was never king in his lifetime -- he was Mayor of the Palace, meaning that he controlled everything, while the long-haired Merovingian king was nominal king of the Francs. Down among the Bourbons, one can find the preserved heart of Louis XIV alongside a fragment of Henri IV's body (which fragment is unspecified). As of 2004, Louis XVII's heart has also been on display (they wanted to verify that it was actually his). I could only think that the hearts were far more shriveled and unhealthy-looking than the sheep hearts that I handled in AP bio with Miss Gray, and even grayer and uglier than the crocodile hearts I had to understand in my Verts class at Cornell.
There is also an ossuary; behind two walls are a pair of caskets, with bones of various men and women with royal pretensions scrambled up inside. This, naturally, is not what is show to the public; instead, they are presented with a chronological list of all of the ossuary's residents, categorized by rank. There were enormous gaps in the chronology; for instance, the earliest bones were those of Dagobert (d. 638), Merovingian founder of the basilica; the next bones were those of Charles the Bald, Charlemagne's grandson, and thus a Carolingian, who died in 877. All of this disorder is the cause of the Revolution; during its more radical phase, the Revolutionary government disinterred all of the kings, in order to rid itself of all physical remnants of France's monarchical past. Although I believe in historical preservation ("that belongs in a museum!"), at the same time, I sympathize with the anti-royal cause. Can such a necropolis exist without engendering the illusion of the legitimacy of monarchy? Would I have visited the basilica if it had been filled with commoners rather than kings? Is this kind of history-by-political-leaders dangerous? Are palace intrigues, assassinations, and royal squabbles important to the study of history? But can we understand the past without some kind of a grasp of political leadership?
Ascending again, I found more royal propaganda, a pair of statues of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, commissioned during the Restoration of the monarchy, by Louis XVIII. Although the body in Louis XVI's coffin is a guillotined man, there is good reason to believe that the body is not that of Louis XVI; again, this is not written anywhere, and I know of it only by listening to one of the museum employees. There are a few more royal couples whom you may remember from my adventures in the Loire: Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne (married at the Chateau de Langeais, remember?), and Henri II and Catherine de Medicis. I also saw the tomb of Clovis, the Francish king who converted to Catholicism at the behest of his wife, around the year 500. Dagobert, called the founder of the basilica, received a rather special monument of his own, a fantastically-sculpted marble monolith depicting his soul, in the form of a naked baby wearing a crown and standing on a napkin, being presented before Christ. I really had to hunt to find the remains of Louis IX, a.k.a. Saint-Louis. Because he was canonized as a saint, his body was broken into tiny pieces, and sent to reliquaries around Europe; the basilica has retained the tip of one of his finger-bones, which has been placed in a chapel, rather than among the other royal tombs. Thanks to Professor Long's class on religious violence, I have read a section of the Compte de Joinville's account of Saint-Louis's failure of a seventh crusade in the late 13th century. Saint-Louis contributed greatly to the basilica, ordering a great deal of new tombs. He also initiated the burning of Talmud manuscripts (after a rigged trial between a rabbi and a formerly-Jewish monk, much resembling the Ramban's experience in Barcelona not too long afterwards), but, to his credit, he did found the Sorbonne, where I am studying.
Whew, I need to get to bed! I'm exhausted!
~JD
"Des 840, il est pratiquement impossible de retirer leurs honores aux fonctionnaires et le synode de Coullaines, en 843, officialise la pratique" [Since 840, it was practically impossible for the Carolingians to collect their royal land-revenues from their bureaucrats, and the 843 Synod of Coullaines made the practice the legal norm] (Jean-Philippe Genet, Le monde au Moyen Age, p. 57).
But let's talk tourism: in the past week, I returned to the Louvre, and paid a visit to some French royalty.
Twice a week, the Louvre holds "nocturnes," where the galleries are open at night, until 10:00 p.m. As a "young friend of the Louvre," I'm allowed to bring a guest during these nights, and I invited my friend Sherif, who lives in my dorm. Sherif is a 22-year-old law student from Egypt; he is fluent in French, having been taught in French-language school, and wants to continue his studies in the U.S. He needs to practice his English, and I need to practice my French, so we alternated fairly freely between the two languages, changing whenever it felt right, during our several hours together. We took the RER (the train in Ile-de-France) and Metro north from the dorm, and, after getting a little bit turned around in the 1st arrondissement, found the Louvre.
In retrospect, the two exhibits we visited were well-chosen; the history of the Louvre itself (built by Philipe II, called Philipe-Auguste, contemporary of Richard the Lionheart), and Ancient Egypt. I know a little bit of French history, so I was in the position, for instance, to explain a little bit about Philipe-Auguste, Louis XIV, Napoleon I and III, Louis-Philippe, and the other actors we encountered. Sherif, meanwhile, is Egyptian, and could give me a wonderful description of life in ancient Egypt, of its pharaohs, its scribes, its musicians, and its builders.
In the middle of our stroll through historic models of Paris and the Louvre, Sherif posed me a question that could never be asked in the United States. We had been discussing how Napoleon I seized power, and how, just as in contemporary Egypt, whoever controls the army controls the state (elections officially scheduled for November, right?). Sherif asked me whether it was in the United States, France, or Great Britain that human freedom had been born. I was, well, taken aback. We're so self-critical of ourselves in the U.S. that any claim that America invented human liberty cannot be openly supported by any but the most ultra-patriotic, who are not to be found where I grew up. So I found myself, first of all, explaining how untenable this opinion was, how, because, for instance, the author of the Declaration of Independence was a large plantation owner who sexually abused his slaves and kept his unrecognized illegitimate children as slaves strikes many as hypocritical. Then, with promptings by Sherif, I found myself describing the histories of contemporary France (1789, jacobine republic, Napoleon I, restoration, July Monarchy, Napoleon III, Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune, 3rd Republic, Vichy, 4th and 5th Republics) and Great Britain (Magna Charta, the Civil War and Cromwell, the Glorious Revolution, the neutralization of the House of Lords just around 1900, the slow decline in power of the monarchs), with a nod towards the U.S. Constitution. I didn't say all of this to show off, nor am I now listing everything for the purpose of flaunting my knowledge; what I'm trying to get at is how enormous a question Sherif asked, and how impossible it was for me to begin to explain why I couldn't answer it, because history simply is so complicated. He told me how much he enjoyed our conversation, so I thought that I did the right thing, but what would you have said if you had been in my place? Oh, and this was all in French...
By this time, we were several rooms into the Ancient Egyptian collections, and I told Sherif that it was his turn to speak, and mine to listen (he switched to English). It was my turn to relax, and listen to an enthusiast. He explained to me how obelisks were erected, for instance, with the help of the flood of the Nile, about the introduction of the chariot in Egypt, about scarabs, and about the origin of the "curse of the Pharaohs." Concerning this last matter, because Egypt's kings' tombs were provided with all the necessities of life, they had large stores of food, which, after several millennia, had long rotted. When early archaeologists opened the tombs, they immediately got hit in the face with 3000-year-old toxic effluvia. And despite all of the excavations, Egyptologists believe that they have only uncovered around 20% of ancient Egypt's treasures.
The Louvre guards began to close the doors on us, so we hurried out, and, with a little bit of searching, made it back to the Metro station. That night, it suddenly got cold in Paris, and I was still in my shorts (although I had grabbed my gloves before leaving). The next day, it was in the forties (low of 6 degrees Celsius, for you non-Americans), and I had my hood up and my gloves on in the Bibliotheque Saint-Genevieve.
Luckily, it was sunny for my Sunday excursion to the Basilique Saint-Denis, located north of Paris, as far as you can get from the city while still riding the Metro. It was a beautiful day, and I wanted to take advantage of the weather while it lasted, seeing as the basilica and its crypt get notoriously cold in the wintertime. I foolishly forgot my camera, so no FB photos; you'll have to imagine the basilica with me (or just search Google images for visual aids).
The basilica houses the necropolis of the kings of France; that is, it houses the bones of royal and noble families whom the modern state of France recognizes as French. Valerie, from EDUCO, had told me that Charlemagne was buried there; in fact, he isn't (he's in what's now Germany, in his old capital), but I did see several of my old friends, such as Francois I, who shares a prominent crypt with his queen, Claude de France; the crypt is decorated with Ionic columns, and was built under Henri II, in 1545. I saw Charles Martel and Pepin the Short, Carolingians, before descending into the Bourbon vault. Charles Martel was wearing a crown, holding a scepter, and wearing a royal cloak, just like all of the kings, even though he was never king in his lifetime -- he was Mayor of the Palace, meaning that he controlled everything, while the long-haired Merovingian king was nominal king of the Francs. Down among the Bourbons, one can find the preserved heart of Louis XIV alongside a fragment of Henri IV's body (which fragment is unspecified). As of 2004, Louis XVII's heart has also been on display (they wanted to verify that it was actually his). I could only think that the hearts were far more shriveled and unhealthy-looking than the sheep hearts that I handled in AP bio with Miss Gray, and even grayer and uglier than the crocodile hearts I had to understand in my Verts class at Cornell.
There is also an ossuary; behind two walls are a pair of caskets, with bones of various men and women with royal pretensions scrambled up inside. This, naturally, is not what is show to the public; instead, they are presented with a chronological list of all of the ossuary's residents, categorized by rank. There were enormous gaps in the chronology; for instance, the earliest bones were those of Dagobert (d. 638), Merovingian founder of the basilica; the next bones were those of Charles the Bald, Charlemagne's grandson, and thus a Carolingian, who died in 877. All of this disorder is the cause of the Revolution; during its more radical phase, the Revolutionary government disinterred all of the kings, in order to rid itself of all physical remnants of France's monarchical past. Although I believe in historical preservation ("that belongs in a museum!"), at the same time, I sympathize with the anti-royal cause. Can such a necropolis exist without engendering the illusion of the legitimacy of monarchy? Would I have visited the basilica if it had been filled with commoners rather than kings? Is this kind of history-by-political-leaders dangerous? Are palace intrigues, assassinations, and royal squabbles important to the study of history? But can we understand the past without some kind of a grasp of political leadership?
Ascending again, I found more royal propaganda, a pair of statues of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, commissioned during the Restoration of the monarchy, by Louis XVIII. Although the body in Louis XVI's coffin is a guillotined man, there is good reason to believe that the body is not that of Louis XVI; again, this is not written anywhere, and I know of it only by listening to one of the museum employees. There are a few more royal couples whom you may remember from my adventures in the Loire: Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne (married at the Chateau de Langeais, remember?), and Henri II and Catherine de Medicis. I also saw the tomb of Clovis, the Francish king who converted to Catholicism at the behest of his wife, around the year 500. Dagobert, called the founder of the basilica, received a rather special monument of his own, a fantastically-sculpted marble monolith depicting his soul, in the form of a naked baby wearing a crown and standing on a napkin, being presented before Christ. I really had to hunt to find the remains of Louis IX, a.k.a. Saint-Louis. Because he was canonized as a saint, his body was broken into tiny pieces, and sent to reliquaries around Europe; the basilica has retained the tip of one of his finger-bones, which has been placed in a chapel, rather than among the other royal tombs. Thanks to Professor Long's class on religious violence, I have read a section of the Compte de Joinville's account of Saint-Louis's failure of a seventh crusade in the late 13th century. Saint-Louis contributed greatly to the basilica, ordering a great deal of new tombs. He also initiated the burning of Talmud manuscripts (after a rigged trial between a rabbi and a formerly-Jewish monk, much resembling the Ramban's experience in Barcelona not too long afterwards), but, to his credit, he did found the Sorbonne, where I am studying.
Whew, I need to get to bed! I'm exhausted!
~JD
"Des 840, il est pratiquement impossible de retirer leurs honores aux fonctionnaires et le synode de Coullaines, en 843, officialise la pratique" [Since 840, it was practically impossible for the Carolingians to collect their royal land-revenues from their bureaucrats, and the 843 Synod of Coullaines made the practice the legal norm] (Jean-Philippe Genet, Le monde au Moyen Age, p. 57).
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Musees Parisiens
Since Monday, my first “free” day (as of noon), most of my time, unfortunately, has been needlessly wasted in pointless activities: attending a few mandatory meetings, visiting the campuses of the University of Paris, buying groceries, buying a telephone and other necessities, trying to get my Internet to work, etc. I’ve visited only a few sites, and I’m worried that I’m never going to see everything. So far I’ve been to the Louvre, Notre Dame (exterior), Les Invalides, the Museum of the Art and History of Judaism, and the Pantheon, taken a cruise on the Seine, and seen two plays. This may sound like a lot, but really, it isn’t. This morning, I was preoccupied with trying to buy a cell phone, and trying, unsuccessfully, to get the Internet connection in my room (for which I paid 30 Euros) to work.
The trip to Les Invalides was excellent: I was on a guided tour with about a quarter of the other EDUCO students. For those of you who don’t know, Les Invalides was originally constructed by Louis XIV as a sort of retirement home for elderly, sick, frail, injured, crippled, or otherwise incapacitated soldiers. Its construction was a means of raising the prestige of the military profession, and making enlistment more desirable. It is now a museum of military history, although a few retired soldiers do live there; it also includes the building which was converted, by Louis-Napoleon, into the tomb of Napoleon I, again as a publicity stunt.
Our tour mostly reviewed the epoch from the American Revolution, through the Napoleon period. It was interesting to see how Napoleon I’s silhouette -- expanded during his military career. There were some old Gribeauval cannon and rifles, a mark that was just coming into usage in time to be used by our French allies during our own Revolution. Gribeauval artillery was lighter and easier to transport than older designs, and the rifles were constructed of interchangeable parts, which in that era were a (useful) novelty. These rifles were still, in my opinion, fairly heavy, weighing 4.2 kg, or about nine and a half pounds. Did I mention that we saw Lafayette’s epaulets?
Napoleon’s tomb is very impressive and grand. They sealed the old boy up pretty tightly: the massive, massive tomb that sits at the center of the round building, beneath the dome, is the outermost of no fewer than seven different sarcophagi, each constructed from a different material, in order to preserve the first emperor’s mortal remains from destruction. Since he was sealed up, naturally, nobody’s bothered to check to see how the remains are faring: there’s a bit of a Schrodinger’s-cat aspect to the whole affair. Overhead is a double cupola, the work of none other than Mansard: the dome that you see on the outside is not the one you see from the inside, and hidden from view is a network of wooden beams, thanks to a clever trompe l’oeil. The dome was also very convenient for hiding Allied parachutists in World War II, although the Frenchman who protected the soldiers paid for his bravery with his life.
Le Musee d’art et d’histoire du Judaisme was somewhat of a disappointment. Perhaps I should not have visited it the day after visiting the Louvre, because it’s unfair to compare anything to that magnificent museum. However, I found that, though some parts of the Museum were interesting, I left without either having learned much or enjoyed myself much. The museum was inaugurated by then-President Jacques Chirac on November 30th, 1998, and sets out to describe Jewish rituals as practiced by European Jews, give a general impression of the varieties of various Jewish cultures, and provide a narrative of the Jewish presence in France. Throughout are religious objets d’art, such as chanukiot, arcs, yaddim, hagadot, and Torah scrolls, as well as many pieces of artwork depicting Jewish life and ceremonies engraving figuring prominently as a medium, and marriages, funerals, circumcisions, and Seders often chosen as topics.
Although nothing is exceptional, there are certainly some exhibits not to be missed. There is an excellent series of scaled models of the Polish-Lithuanian pagoda-style of synagogues which were constructed between the 16th and 17th centuries (the originals were nearly all destroyed in the two world wars). Unfortunately, this is the only style on display, and this is the limit of architectural history. There is a Chanukiah from the 14th century, whose form imitates Gothic architecture. There are numerous beautifully-illustrated Hagadot, one from Sarajevo in 14th century, one from Ashkelon in the 15th. The illustrations in these are wonderful, and the depictions of medieval seders reveal how little things have changed, in some respects, over the last few centuries. There are jewels from Morocco, and textiles from Salonika. There are political posters and newspaper clippings concerning the Dreyfus affair. There is a 1919 illustrated version of Chad Gadyah by El Lissitzky, a Soviet Jew, who used the goofy old Aramaic song about the goat as an allegory promoting the Bolshevik Revolution (no kidding). But all in all, if you only have a week to spend in Paris, the MAHJ is not worth spending a precious day. It deserves a B+.
The Pantheon, however, is well worth seeing. Twice daily, there are guided tours, and I planned my day in order to arrive near 11:00 AM, the time of the first tour. I was, at first, the only in attendance, and received a private tour for several minutes, but one by one, others joined me. The Pantheon is a gargantuan classical-revival temple-like structure which towers over all other buildings in its neighborhood. It stands in the place of the former church of Saint Genevieve, patron saint of Paris. It was constructed by Louis XV as a way of making his subjects forget what a lousy king he was, and how badly the nation had suffered from warfare. The architect, Soufflot, designed a truly fantastic form for the building, which was more or less faithfully carried out after his death by his assistant Rondelet. Most amazingly, the building has a triple-cupola, built entirely from stone, without a splinter of wood, which many of Soufflot’s more experienced contemporaries protested against as impossible (they were wrong). The work was completed in 1790, just in time for the building to become a secular temple dedicated to the nation, rather than a church.
The walls of the main floor are painted with nationalistic depictions of grand personages of French history: Clovis, Joan of Arc, Saint Louis, etc., while the walls of the transept depict the life of Saint Genevieve. In the crypt are buried those whom the French government has seen fit to Pantheonize. With one exception, they are all men, and with two exceptions, they are all French. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Marie and Pierre Curie, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, and many others rest in peace beneath the national temple. Unfortunately, a large number of the residents are Napoleon’s lackeys, whom he Pantehonized, I suspect, mostly out of egotism. It’s an enormously complicated process to be Pantheonized, and many well-known Frenchman have been denied this honor for one reason or another. Saint-Exupery, for example, cannot be Pantheonized, because nothing remains of his body; Albert Camus has not been Pantheonized, because his descendants withhold their consent; De Gaulle has not been Pantheonized because his last will and testament expressly spelled out where he wished to be buried. Denis Diderot, sadly, is also buried elsewhere; I plan to visit his grave sometime. Furthermore, Pantheonization is not irreversible: the very first man to receive the honor, Mirabeau, the father of the French Revolution, was also the first evictee, for political reasons. For many, such as Marat, who only remained for a few months before the political winds changed sufficiently to oust him, the Pantheon was more like a hotel than a final resting place
I’d like to take a moment to discuss the Pantheon’s most famous resident, who has a section all to himself, as well as a statue, while most of the Pantheon’s tombs are six-to-a-room, and lack additional ornamentation. Voltaire has a century named after him, and is generally regarded as the king of the Enlightenment, the champion of freedom and liberty (in particular, the liberty of free speech), the defender of tolerance, etc., etc. What many people don’t know was that Voltaire was a monarchist, covertly used his government ties to suppress his detractors, and wrote some of the most anti-Semitic tracts I have ever read. He wasn’t even a very good writer: his Letters on England (in French, Lettres Philosophiques) is, as my friend Brendan has put it, a book written about absolutely nothing. His first work was a long epic poem, the Henriade, which nobody seems to bother to read anymore. He often worked to have his own books condemned, in order to boost their sales (to better understand this phenomenon, I refer all readers to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix).
The real jewel of the Enlightenment, in my opinion, is Denis Diderot, a younger, more intelligent, and more radical thinker than Voltaire. Diderot, editor of the Encyclopedia, which sought to disseminate as much information to as many people as possible, of all classes. Diderot, who defended some of the weakest members of society in his writings. Diderot, who left many of his works unpublished, some of them excellent, and not mere repetitions of the same tired set of statements (cf. Voltaire). Diderot, not only a writer and philosopher, but also a chemist and a mathematician. Diderot, who wrote that all knowledge should be free, and that the only thing worse than one good monarch was a series of three good monarchs in a row. Diderot, whose experimental attitude towards literature is would not be matched for another century, by the modernists (Woolf, Joyce, etc.). Diderot, who would have loved the Internet, had his own blog, and contributed frequently to Wikipedia, yes, he, I believe, deserves more praise than he receives, and certainly more praise than Voltaire deserves. It’s a shame that he isn’t in the Pantheon.
I finally have my Internet up and running! I don’t know why, but it works!
~JD
“Ailleurs, bien loin d’ici! trop tard! jamais peut-etre! / Car j’ignore ou tu fuis, tu ne sais ou je vais, / O toi que j’eusse aimee, o toi qui le savais!” [Elsewhere, very far from here! Too late! Maybe never! For I know not where you fly to, you know not where I go, oh you whom I loved, oh you who knew it] ~Beaudelaire, “XCIII -- A Une Passante.”
Monday, September 12, 2011
A trip to the Louvre
I spent a good six hours at the Louvre yesterday, looking at art and artifacts until I simply couldn’t bear to look at any more. All in all, though, I think that I passed through about 15% of the rooms, and probably didn’t “see” everything those rooms had to offer! Notwithstanding, I had a fantastic time, and saw some truly amazing pieces: however, not one of them was one of the items, such as da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (aka La Joconde) or the Venus de Milo, for which the Louvre is famous. The highest-profile object I saw, in fact, was the collection of crown jewels, which had almost no historical information posted -- the signs mostly just listed the number of precious stones which decorated each ornament (as with so many other institutions, it was Francois I who began the collection of “crown jewels”). So I’ve taken the trouble to name a few of the pieces which I saw which I thought were worth the trouble to find, and to which I can ascribe the highest interest-to-traffic ratio.
1) The first self-portrait: around the year 1450, Jean Foquet made a palm-sized engraving on a gold medallion of his own face. His is the first self-portrait, in all of Occidental art history, of which we know. It is well-executed, too, Fouquet having used extremely fine tools, including a needle, to scratch textured patterns on the black enamel. The birth of the self-portrait is very much associated with the Renaissance, in the spirit of the displacement of older, impersonal forms of representation: Ghiberti’s knoblike little bust appears on his famous golden doors, for instance. It is therefore surprising to find that the first self-portrait is not only found in France, and not in Italy, but appeared before the real burst of Italian influence in French art and architecture, inaugurated by Francois I. All the more reason to argue against a single monumental event, “the Renaissance,” in favor of the transitions and trends which confront the historian in nearly all lands and ages.
2) Helmet and shield of Charles IX: Created circa 1572, these gold armaments are for decoration, not for combat. The detail of the decoration of the shield is extremely fine, an example of the work of the school of Fontainebleau, and depicts the exploits of the Roman general Marius. (For those of you who don’t know, Marius was a sort of proto-Caesar, the general who professionalized the Roman army, and declared himself dictator-for-life, although he actually retired late in his career.) The cloth on the back of the shield is also very rich.
3) Napoleon’s tableware: displayed in one china closet are forty elements of one of Napoleon I’s 60-piece tableware. What is amazing about this set in particular is that the designs on the plates, each of which is unique, are based upon entries in Diderot’s Encyclopedia. There are scenes of people working, in workshops, fields, mills, smithies, and mines; there is a scene of young men swimming; there are humorous scenes depicting a schoolmaster. The set was completed by the Sevres porcelain industry, founded in 1740. Adjacent to the Encyclopedia collection is one of Napoleon I’s tea services, called the “Cabaret Egyptien,” completed 1808-1810. Each unique piece in the service depicts a person, place, or monument from General Bonaparte’s (he wasn’t yet emperor) Egyptian campaigns. There are portraits of sheiks, of beggars, of Beduins, and of a Jerusalem Jew; there are quiet oases and towering pyramids.
4) Cycladic figurines: There are galleries and galleries of fantastic Ancient Greek art, mostly pottery, which, if you have the patience to look carefully at the displays, and to listen attentively to the audio guide, will gradually walk you through the various styles, as they evolved, shifted, and went in and out of fashion, from the 3rd millennium B.C.E. to the 4th century BCE. One room, in six steps, shows the transition in sculpture, and contains a case of the feminine figurines, c. 2700-2300 BCE, and native to the Cyclades, most of which are just a few inches tall, but some of which achieved a height of several feet (the head still exists of one of these). Not only do these represent some of the earliest known art known in the western world, but there is a bit of a historical controversy swirling around these white clay manikins. Most of the figurines are in the shape of a standing naked woman with her arms crossed below her breasts, which has led some to claim that they were the work of a peaceful feminist society that was later displaced by hordes of the violent, misogynistic Hellenes, with the male-dominated mythology we all know and love. Regardless, the figurines have a mysterious and antique beauty, with their curving noses and rigid postures.
5) The scepter of Charles V: Charles had his golden scepter topped with a figurine of Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor (crowned Christmas Day, 800), to symbolically legitimize the Capetian occupancy of the throne, with deliberate links to antiquity. The scepter is extremely well-preserved, having lost only the white enamel that covered the fleur-de-lys budding beneath Charlemagne’s throne.
6) In this series of colorful Renaissance tapestries, each piece depicts hunting in one month. There is a great deal of action, and scenes of the life of the nobility, found throughout. The artists did not hesitate to include the odd scatological element: in July, right in the foreground of the piece, is a dog doing its business.
7) Jewel cabinet of Empress Josephine: elegantly ornamented with classical scenes and a butterfly motif, this large dresser later passed on to Napoleon’s second wife, after he divorced Josephine. The piece is one of the best-preserved in the Imperial style.
8) Objets d’art from Limoges: Among the piles and piles of medieval relics and sacred objects of gold and ivory found in the Louvre are several rooms filled mostly with the products of goldsmiths’ workshops in Limoges, a region in Southwest France. The Limoges artisans had a very recognizable style, using the same colors of light blue and pale green precious stones, very shallow lines, and faces of traced characters in relief.
9) Throne of Napoleon I: The blue-and-gold seat is surprisingly modest, given the kind of pomp to which Napoleon was given in his imperial garb. Moreover, just around the corner, you can see a painting of the throne, in the background of a full-length portrait of Napoleon I. Either the chair has been well-restored, or has been well-preserved, because the colors seem not to have faded at all!
10) Tapestry of Saint Martin: I found my old friend, Saint Martin, in an Icelandic hagiographic tapestry, dating from between the 14th and 16th centuries. I recognized many of the scenes: the cutting of the cloak, the healing of the sick, the raising from the dead of a hanged man, and the transportation on board a ship of Saint Martin’s remains. A very good tapestry, but mostly interesting just for old times’ sake!
Thank you, Bruno, for inviting me to your apartment! I had a wonderful time with you on Sunday evening, and look forward to seeing you and your family again soon. Maybe your daughter won’t be so afraid of me next time…
~JD
“Mille pensers dormaient, chrysalides funebres/ Fremissant doucement dans les lourdes tenebres,/ Qui degagent leur aile et prennent leur essor,/ Tentes d’azure, glaces de rose, lames d’or” [A thousand thoughts slept, funereal chrysalises, softly shaking in the heavy dusk, which lift wing and take flight, tinted with azure, iced with pink, bladed with gold]. ~Beaudelaire, "XLVIII. -- Le Flacon”
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Une Tranche d'Histoire
"Tranche" is word in French in English, although its use in English is more limited: I don't think I heard about "tranches" until all the talk cropped up about mortgage-backed securities. But in French, the word "trancher" simply means "to slice;" when you buy a loaf of bread at a boulangerie, the boulangere will ask you "tranche," or "sliced?"
In case you haven't noticed, my bread consumption has considerably increased since I arrived in France. A common sign to see outside of a boulangerie is "Artisan;" these people are experts, and are proud of it. Moreover, boulangeries often specify their specialty: I have seen briocheries, patisseries, viennoiseries, sandwicheries, etc. I interviewed a boulangere for an oral project at the Institute of Touraine, and she told me that she had gone to a two-year professional school in order to learn how to bake. Throughout French history, the standards for bread and bakeries have been high: during the Revolution, one the most common reason for urban mobs forming was the lack of bread, or, in some cases, simply low-quality bread! As I have mentioned before, the starving mob of women who besieged Louis XVI at Versailles referred to him as a "boulangere." To quote Professor Kaplan for just a moment, "when the king became a grain-merchant, that is to say, a monopolist, he was no longer a baker: that, then, was the beginning of a double desecration," both of the royalty, and of the people's daily bread. As Prof. Kaplan has also pointed out, one assignment of the police during the Revolution early years of the 1st Republic was the regulation of bread quality. One of the grievances of the Paris Commune, in fact, was the overwork of workers in boulangeries; in the list of grievances presented in the Musee de Compagnonage, boulangeres are the only tradesmen mentioned specifically.
According to the Avertins, bread has not always been as high in quality as it is now (cessation of war rationing will have that effect), but the French are very proud of their bread. Moreover, when the French speak of "bread," without further specification, they are referring to baguettes: when we Americans speak of bread, we usually mean what the French call pain de mie, or "bread without much crust" (mie = the part of the bread that isn't the crust). "Baguette," in fact, originally referred to the shape of the bread, which was only invented in the early 19th century, circa 1830. "Baguette" describes a long, thin shape; Harry Potter, for instance, wields a baguette magique.
It was in the course of the 19th century that bread baked by professionals replaced home-baked loaves. There are three different theories of the invention of the baguette. The first is that the bakers in Napoleon's army invented the baguette as a means to make rations more transportable: soldiers could tuck a loaf in their pocket, and march with it. This theory, however, is somewhat untenable: thanks to some costume history (hooray!), scholars have realized that the Napoleonic uniforms were completely unfit for carrying bread: not only would the loaves have been awkward to carry, but they would have been completely spoiled by the end of a day's march. The second theory is that the baguette represents a French take on an Austrian invention: in the 1830s, when Viennese bread first arrived in France (it is still widely available today, although I find viennoises as interesting as Wonder Bread). French boulangeres eliminated the milk, ceased to use brewers' yeast, reduced the weight, and transformed the loaves into a real working-class food, which quickly went stale. I can attest to this last fact: I tried to eat a 36-hour-old baguette the other day, and found that it would serve better as a short-range projectile than as a repast! The third and final theory is that there was a great baking-contest in 1830, in which the baguette won first prize. You can find this and more information on Wikipedia.
I'm beginning to learn just a few of the boulangeries around Tours, and I would certainly recommend some over others. There is one boulangerie in particular, which closes at 7:00, that bakes a final batch just around 6:00. Twice, I have been lucky enough to buy a loaf still hot from the oven: delicious with a bit of Camembert!
The chateaux are going to have to wait until Saturday, when I've booked my ticket. Until then, I'll try to keep myself occupied. I just finished the third book in a series of French history which covers the period from the 1789 Revolution to the Fifth Republic (the current government, FYI). It's November, 1799, and General Bonaparte has just seized power from the Directory. We all know what happens next!
~JD
"A mon retour a Paris, j'ai trouve la division dans toutes les autorites et l'accord etabli sur cette seule verite que la Constitution etait a moitie detruit et ne pourait sauver la liberte. Tous les partis sont venus a moi, m'ont confie leurs desseins, devoile leurs secrets et m'ont demande mon appui: j'ai refuse d'etre l'homme d'un parti" [Upon returning to Paris, I found division among all authority, and agreement established only on the truth that the Constitution was half destroyed, and could no longer preserve liberty. All the parties have come to me, have confieded their designs, unveiled their secrets, and have asked my support: I have refused to be the man of any party] ~General Bonaparte, 19 Brumaire, Year VII.
In case you haven't noticed, my bread consumption has considerably increased since I arrived in France. A common sign to see outside of a boulangerie is "Artisan;" these people are experts, and are proud of it. Moreover, boulangeries often specify their specialty: I have seen briocheries, patisseries, viennoiseries, sandwicheries, etc. I interviewed a boulangere for an oral project at the Institute of Touraine, and she told me that she had gone to a two-year professional school in order to learn how to bake. Throughout French history, the standards for bread and bakeries have been high: during the Revolution, one the most common reason for urban mobs forming was the lack of bread, or, in some cases, simply low-quality bread! As I have mentioned before, the starving mob of women who besieged Louis XVI at Versailles referred to him as a "boulangere." To quote Professor Kaplan for just a moment, "when the king became a grain-merchant, that is to say, a monopolist, he was no longer a baker: that, then, was the beginning of a double desecration," both of the royalty, and of the people's daily bread. As Prof. Kaplan has also pointed out, one assignment of the police during the Revolution early years of the 1st Republic was the regulation of bread quality. One of the grievances of the Paris Commune, in fact, was the overwork of workers in boulangeries; in the list of grievances presented in the Musee de Compagnonage, boulangeres are the only tradesmen mentioned specifically.
According to the Avertins, bread has not always been as high in quality as it is now (cessation of war rationing will have that effect), but the French are very proud of their bread. Moreover, when the French speak of "bread," without further specification, they are referring to baguettes: when we Americans speak of bread, we usually mean what the French call pain de mie, or "bread without much crust" (mie = the part of the bread that isn't the crust). "Baguette," in fact, originally referred to the shape of the bread, which was only invented in the early 19th century, circa 1830. "Baguette" describes a long, thin shape; Harry Potter, for instance, wields a baguette magique.
It was in the course of the 19th century that bread baked by professionals replaced home-baked loaves. There are three different theories of the invention of the baguette. The first is that the bakers in Napoleon's army invented the baguette as a means to make rations more transportable: soldiers could tuck a loaf in their pocket, and march with it. This theory, however, is somewhat untenable: thanks to some costume history (hooray!), scholars have realized that the Napoleonic uniforms were completely unfit for carrying bread: not only would the loaves have been awkward to carry, but they would have been completely spoiled by the end of a day's march. The second theory is that the baguette represents a French take on an Austrian invention: in the 1830s, when Viennese bread first arrived in France (it is still widely available today, although I find viennoises as interesting as Wonder Bread). French boulangeres eliminated the milk, ceased to use brewers' yeast, reduced the weight, and transformed the loaves into a real working-class food, which quickly went stale. I can attest to this last fact: I tried to eat a 36-hour-old baguette the other day, and found that it would serve better as a short-range projectile than as a repast! The third and final theory is that there was a great baking-contest in 1830, in which the baguette won first prize. You can find this and more information on Wikipedia.
I'm beginning to learn just a few of the boulangeries around Tours, and I would certainly recommend some over others. There is one boulangerie in particular, which closes at 7:00, that bakes a final batch just around 6:00. Twice, I have been lucky enough to buy a loaf still hot from the oven: delicious with a bit of Camembert!
The chateaux are going to have to wait until Saturday, when I've booked my ticket. Until then, I'll try to keep myself occupied. I just finished the third book in a series of French history which covers the period from the 1789 Revolution to the Fifth Republic (the current government, FYI). It's November, 1799, and General Bonaparte has just seized power from the Directory. We all know what happens next!
~JD
"A mon retour a Paris, j'ai trouve la division dans toutes les autorites et l'accord etabli sur cette seule verite que la Constitution etait a moitie detruit et ne pourait sauver la liberte. Tous les partis sont venus a moi, m'ont confie leurs desseins, devoile leurs secrets et m'ont demande mon appui: j'ai refuse d'etre l'homme d'un parti" [Upon returning to Paris, I found division among all authority, and agreement established only on the truth that the Constitution was half destroyed, and could no longer preserve liberty. All the parties have come to me, have confieded their designs, unveiled their secrets, and have asked my support: I have refused to be the man of any party] ~General Bonaparte, 19 Brumaire, Year VII.
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