Hello,
In general, I prefer to speak to you of novels, but today I decided to make an exception. Because I just did a fabulous walk in Paris through time, following a guide both exciting and committed scholar Eric Hazan. His book, The Invention of Paris will delight not only fans of this city but also lovers of literature and history. It is 481 pages of buzzing life I reluctantly closed, and I could not not make you share my enthusiasm. So I know that most of you prefer to read novels, but I invite you to make a little way with Eric Hazan, if you agree. You have good shoes?
Like all cities built inside an enclosure, Paris was built in concentric circles from the wall of Philippe Auguste (in 1200) to the fortifications erected in 1843, that were destroyed after the war of 14-18. His final frontier - hardly the most aesthetic! - Is embodied by the beltway. Meanwhile the appearance of the town had changed many times, the wall of Charles V at the wall of the farmers general (1780), including at the As suburbs and adjoining villages, to face a composite of the city today.
Over time, neighborhoods are dead between the right and the left bank of the Seine, others are born, others have experienced declines and apotheosis, and c is this ride through the centuries we invite Eric Hazan, making himself the defender of old Paris: Paris threatened, almost disappeared, where every neighborhood had a strong identity born of its history and its people. Not
qu'Hazan is an opponent of modernity, not at all. But would not you want to walk the old Balzac areas, if possible? Or get lost in the Paris of Victor Hugo, Baudelaire and André Breton? The great writers, thinkers of our illustrious history tumultuous loafers were primarily romantic Paris. Breathe the wind in this city in perpetual metamorphosis, haunt your turn haunts de Nerval, the ones where the villains in Les Miserables robbing the good people and cut their throats, those where the narrator Research would pick her first feelings love, and finally those that Zola browsed a notebook in hand in search of material for his novels: the Paris Stock Exchange, one of fortifications, the "zone" where street vendors and taverns flourished, The Paris chic Faubourg Saint-Honore and rue du Faubourg-Saint-Germain, Paris Courtille the poor or the old Les Halles district, this "belly of Paris" overflowing with food piled near which trimmed the ragged in the old downtown. And take pleasure in rereading, the appointment of a page, a few lines of Mysteries of Paris of Nadja or Splendours and Miseries of Courtesans on the night of the city:
"These narrow streets, dark and muddy, which carried industries outside of their careless, take the night a mysterious face and full of contrasts. Coming from the bright spots in the Rue Saint-Honore, the Rue Neuve des Petits-Champs and the Rue de Richelieu, where the crowd is unrelenting, where glitter the masterpieces of Industry, Fashion and art, every man to whom Paris at night is unknown would be seized with a terror sad falling into the maze of small streets that encircle the light reflected to the sky ... In passing during the day, we can not imagine that all these streets are at night and are crossed by strange creatures that are no world of half-naked forms furnishing and white walls, the shadow is animated. He slipped between the wall and the toilet from walking and talking. Some doors ajar start laughing out loud ... the tunes come out of the blocks ... this whole things is staggering. "
For survey the historic Paris is relearning the dark night, that we no longer know because lighting increasingly violent have relegated more and more away from our cities, scaring the stars in the streets safe. In the Middle Ages, only three lanterns lit up the Paris night: a candle in the heart of the terrifying cemetery of the Innocents (which haunts François Villon), a lantern in the tower of Nesle and the Conciergerie. Can you imagine that? A black city, three small flames nothing to protect themselves from moving shadows, often malicious, was talking about Balzac? In the nineteenth century, the outskirts of Luxembourg still dirt roads surrounded by trees where the unwary are lost before you make bad meetings, and behind the walls of the Montparnasse cemetery, are murdered every night.
But first, what do you know Paris? Do you know that at the heart of the Marais, Francis gave the first fights of lions in the park of his hotel Saint-Pol? In the Trail, already vested in the textile trade in the eighteenth century, was the highest Court of Miracles of Paris, so dangerous that when it tried to build a street which crossed from side to side, in 1630, masons were killed before able to lead the project? That famous gibbet of Montfaucon, where Francois Villon was hanged after his mother was on the current location of the Buttes-Chaumont? That all the innovations of the nineteenth century, as the first terraces of cafes and gas lighting, were tested on the boulevards of Paris?
Eric Hazan hate façadisation, this modern invention which, he says, "is to keep (more or less) the facade of a building and empty like a chicken to install office floors. façadisé A building is the original building What a stuffed animal in its living form. " But it was especially after Baron Haussmann ... the minister of Louis Napoleon redrew the face of the capital not only for modernization, but to eradicate rebel heart, the Paris barricades he hated with all his heart. He hugged this part of the Boulevard du Temple was called the "Boulevard of Crime", and where the populace had to distract Looking at the fairground attractions and enjoy the mime Debureau from the bottom of the "paradise". This neighborhood was destroyed but there is no thank you in imagination through literature and film by Marcel Carne, Children of Paradise .
Haussmann was best shave with jubilation on the streets of anger, those of Saint-Merri, Area de la Bastille and Place de la Republic. He wiped the Earth Transnonain little street where we fought in 1832 during the riots that are the backdrop of Les Miserables. The narrow street where soldiers Transnonain party of the Order broke into buildings and killed whole families, on the orders of General Bugeaud, because a shot had been fired from a window and that these gentlemen, when it came to punishment, had few qualms ...
Urbanization always doing political will, the streets of Paris were extended to allow the regiments to scroll more conveniently ... This is called a "strategic beautification" and the first victims were the streets of the rebellion. As the Latin Quarter, never the last when it came to challenge those in power, he left a warning in memory of the most eloquent :
"Who, among those who now traverse the Place Saint-Michel, the figures of the fountain, surrounded by beer cans and Coca Cola, they still have something to say? Who would be able to historically decipher this allegory for tourists, to recognize that the archangel with a sword pointed at the back of Satan looked to represent the triumph of good over evil people from June 48? But in the era of insurgencies, the threshold of the rebellious district, this statue was a way devoid of ambiguity. Everyone knew that St. Michael the Second Empire symbolized crushing the demon of revolution and the Rue Saint-Jacques and the Latin Quarter could recognize their image in the infernal beast thrown to the ground. " (Dolf Oehler : 1848, The spleen against forgetting )
To those who would say that aesthetics is the price, I will respond with Eric Hazan, Haussmann buildings without denying their elegance, beauty is also nestled in this jumble of old buildings, houses in the coexistence of popular and venerable hotels individuals in these "passages of Paris' now forgotten where we strolled in good company and remade the world. Haussmann could not go after every project and I'm happy, because he had to break the street from the Louvre which would have destroyed in its wake both monuments of Paris I love the most ... Victor Hugo but I let you speak better than me:
"The vandalism was his idea to him. He wants to do everything through Paris a great, great street. A street in a league! What beautiful devastation along the way ! Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois will spend the admirable tower of St. Jacques de la Boucherie will spend perhaps. But who cares! A street in a league! a straight line ... drawn from the Louvre to the barrier from the Throne! "
But, concludes Hazan, "Haussmann, who was Protestant, refused the project, fearing that the destruction of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois was interpreted as a revenge of St. Bartholomew, whose signal was given, it is said, by the bells of this church. "
It always blows of symbols that we fight, we buried some parts of the past to ensure that the future of Earth ... Symbol symbol cons, cons flag flag. Thus, the revolution of 1848 was a clash of symbols: the tricolor flag, icon of the Revolution but also of the empire, the repression of barricades of 1830, against the red flag waved as the rebellious workers descended from the suburbs of St. Antoine and St. Marceau, Ménilmontant, Montmartre and Popincourt district, the Butte-aux-Cailles where the blood of the Commune is now cured but which remains a greenhouse still echo the heart the walker who can hear.
Eric Hazan passionately loves the hills of the city, these popular suburbs where so often blew the wind salutary revolt of a people who were confiscating all its revolutions. He devotes part of his book, called "red Paris", where Gavroche from 1830-1832 went to die among the students and workers in the Rue de la Chanvrerie to June 1848, where barricades were drowned in blood by those who had made themselves the champions of the Republic.
In June 48, were shot in Luxembourg prisoners who had surrendered and had to close the garden for two weeks to allow time for the rain to wash the pools of blood. The Second Republic did not survive long in these episodes where she claims was savagely massacred all this "junk popular" at whose side she had fought on the barricades of 1830. And Victor Hugo would save his or her breath or pen, Perhaps to atone for (as suggested by the author) his complicity with the forces of repression during the days of June, to defend those that Miserables crushed every convulsion of society:
"There is in Paris, in the suburbs of Paris that the wind of revolt raised once so easily, there are streets, houses, sewers, where families, whole families live pell-mell, men, women, girls, children, n 'whose beds, having no blankets, I almost said that clothes stinking piles of rags in fermentation, Ramm in the mud at the corners, species Manure cities, where human beings live every burrow to escape the cold of winter ... "
hills and suburbs of Paris were populated by immigrants from successive layers escape poverty and persecution, such that these Poles were among the leaders of the Commune, finding a heroic death and poignant. Later, their descendants swelled the ranks of the Army of Shadows while "uptown", the Grands Boulevards, Champs-Elysees - where they had preferred a pact with the Prussians against the Communards of Paris drew the contours of the Collaboration. Although Obviously there were also resistant in the neighborhood of the Star and all is not settled, but the geography of the commitment is no less interesting. And it is certain that these immigrants - some already saw as outbreaks to limit or eliminate - never hesitate to shed their blood for some sense of dignity, freedom and human brotherhood. Now that it is fashionable to recover the great figures of popular rebellion, I think look a little on that story does not hurt. Because history belongs to everyone and it would be a pity to abandon the ideologues ...
" Paris on foot " concludes the tour of Eric Hazan, although in reality it never ends and calls other convolutions in the footsteps of all those illustrious walkers. Beginning with Balzac, including Théophile Gautier wrote:
"As he loved and knew that in this modern Paris that time lovers of local color and picturesque appreciated so little beauty! He traveled in all directions, from night and day ... He knew all about his beloved city, it was for him a huge monster, a hybrid, great, a polyp with a hundred thousand arm he listened and watched live, and which formed in his eyes as an immense individuality. Everyone could meet him, especially in the morning, when he ran to cover printing and copying tests look .[...] Nobody had ever tried to take a big unknown this vulgar man who was carried away by his dream like a whirlwind. "
Or Victor Hugo, Baudelaire which, other compulsive wanderer, was surprised he could reconcile the demands of his hard work and his taste for walking, when he himself felt chained to his stroll like a drunk from his bottle. Baudelaire, threadbare and tormented figure who sought in his long marches through the city this unexpected also hoped for André Breton, pacing years later the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle. Baudelaire, who was preparing his poems while walking and defines perfectly the attraction of all those curious minds, psychics, artists, for the beating heart of the City:
"For the perfect flâneur, for the keen observer, c is an immense pleasure to elect domicile in the number, the swaying, the movement in the fugitive and the infinite. Being away from home, yet feel at home everywhere; see the world, be the center of the world and stay hidden from the world, these are some of the lesser pleasures of these independent-minded, passionate, impartial, that language can only clumsily define ... The lover of universal life enters into the crowd like an immense reservoir of electricity. We can also compare him to a mirror as vast as this crowd in a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, which at every movement, represents life and the multiple moving through all life events. "
It is time we part, closing the book, to leave all these figures become confused in the fog: Eugene de Rastignac, the Duchess of Guermantes Montparnasse and the rogue General Lamarque, Tocqueville, and Louise Michel Delescluze, Huysmans and Robert Desnos, whose shadow still haunts wandering surely, the hour of darkness, the former Saint-Merri he loved.
soon!
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