Travelers' Tales Paris (9 page)

T
RAVELERS NOD KNOWLEDGEABLY WHEN
P
ARIS IS DESCRIBED AS
beautiful, but even knowledgeable travelers would be hard-pressed if they were asked what it is that makes Paris beautiful. The closest they come is to talk about the way in which the lines and color of its buildings and open spaces have a harmonious flow and unity or to describe the way in which the natural light of Paris under an open sky flatters its surface and emphasizes those harmonies. But to find how Paris achieves that effect is a further challenge comparable to reading a score at a concert—as we begin to understand the components of those harmonies, they become more precious and more meaningful.

I've had an unusual opportunity to get beneath the surface of Paris and to understand how it has achieved its mysterious effect. Thanks to my wife's profession and my own curiosity, I have a routine which I have followed for several years which has enabled me to uncover some of the beauty secrets of the city.

My wife is a professional photographer which is reason enough for me as her personal “photo assistant” to look at the city of Paris more closely. Thus, the development of our routine—Sandra's work begins in the morning and lasts through the day and early
evening. My services as porter, traffic-diverter, and location spotter are appreciated, but mostly after dusk when tripod and complex equipment—and my company—become more essential. Otherwise, from morning to mid-afternoon, my assistance is dispensable. I am therefore free to wander the
arrondissement du mois
with the intelligent and diligent companion to whom I dedicate these pages.

There are twenty
arrondissements
in Paris and each is the subject of a twenty-volume encyclopedia called
Vie et Histoire
—one for each. They are handsome, beautifully illustrated volumes dealing, as they each proclaim, with “
Histoire, Anecdotes, Célébrités, Curiosités, Promenades, Monuments, Musées, Jardins
.”

For good measure, they contain
Dictionnaires des rues
and, being French,
Vie pratique
. They are written (in French) with that precise scholarship and ironic sense of French history which reflects the serious but affectionate view which the French take of their history, their milieu and what they consider to be their somewhat eccentric but profound national character.

For each visit, I pick one of the
arrondissement
volumes. Even in the more obscure sections I have picked, I have never been disappointed. The avenue-by-avenue, sometimes building-by-building
promenades
which the demanding scholars have laid out in these volumes are long and physically tiring. But visiting the Place St-Georges in the IXe, la rue Mouffe in the Ve, the Bibliotheque d'Arsenal in the IVe or the Church of St. Vincent de Paul in the Xe—to take four happy surprises—are all the revival one needs. And there is always the sidewalk café restorative where no one cares how little you order or how long you stay.

The volumes usually begin with “
Découvertes archéologiques
” (a Parisian obsession tending to prove the continuity of the French persona); they then move to the medieval bishops and religious orders who built the churches, convents, and monasteries which fixed the original sectors, lanes, and lines of Paris (obliterated now, as the text mourns, by some depredation of the modern city). The authors gamely try to make the
arrondissement
's Middle Ages as distinctive and fascinating as possible. Then we accelerate to those
bloody outbreaks of the Parisian spirit—the feudal rivalries and broken heads of the holy orders in the VIe, Le Tumulte de Saint-Medard in 1557 as the Reformation advanced, St. Bartholomew as it declined, the Revolution, the Commune, the effects of wars and sieges on the city. All of this turbulent history is described in these volumes with scholarly neutrality. The events themselves come alive on the carefully planned
promenades
as one walks by and into the ancient buildings of Paris, explores its streets and alleys, or reads the historical markers which might be hidden from the casual passer-by.

As all of this architecture, carefully planned open space, statuary and buildings with their decorative alcoves gradually seep in to the now-weary walker, he begins to sense the underlying harmony of the city. Even the more prosaic, more modern buildings—anything after Napoleon III is modern—are built with a feeling for their place in the whole. It is not accidental. The French live and regulate their public lives by establishing what they consider to be exclusively French standards—the various Academies in their dictatorial prescriptions over the centuries have long been a source of amusement, especially in their often blind and stubborn adherence to tradition. But that tradition tends to achieve a harmony of thought and esthetic—and architecture—which the French, at any rate, consider a necessary form of discipline against their occasionally anarchic tendencies. The flow of the city expresses that discipline and that harmony.

But on to the
promenades
, each of which begins with the call, “
A pied
....” They are carefully planned, but need a word of warning. The abiding Parisian concern about usable space and Gallic precision dictates that there is no skipping of street numbers for buildings—32 is followed by 34 which is followed by 36
ad ultimatum
with many a
bis and
1/2 thrown in for good measure. Of course there are
pairs
and
impairs
sides of the street which seem consistent within an avenue, but not always uniformly north and south or east and west.

And don't expect the
pairs
to bear any relationship in number to the
impairs
—number 35 is seldom opposite 34 on the other side
of the street, a disheartening fact at the end of a long tour
à pied
when the traveller standing at 56 is directed to an architectural curiosity at 59 which turns out to be several hundred yards away. The street names themselves can be quite confusing: there is “rue Condorcet” and “Cité Condorcet,” “rue Chaptal,” and “Cité Chaptal,” to say nothing of large numbers of “Impasses” and “passages” which divert the earnest seeker into blind or confusing alleys.

To take you through a
promenade
as described in an
arrondissement
volume, I would choose the 9th which offers beauty, variety, and richness of tradition. It lies behind the Opera, which it encompasses (illustrated in the volume by a beautiful cross-section of the building), and includes the Gare St-Lazare, the incomparable churches of the Trinité and Notre-Dame de Lorettes, stretching to the Place Pigalle and the Boulevard Montmartre. I “covered” it in four days and, as I open the volume again, I feel that I barely touched its luminous quality.

The
promenades
are themselves mercifully subdivided for practical exploration. In the case of the IXe, there are six such walks. One of them is called “la rue Blanche to the Place St-Georges” which I would like here to revisit because I think that this sub-
promenade
helps disclose the secret of the city's beauty most dramatically.

We begin at the Church of Ste-Trinité where la rue Blanche originates. The Church was built during the Second Empire on a spectacular intersection which is now being beautified into an even lovelier garden square. Ste-Trinité reflects what one might call the French dilemma or, more generously, the French charm—it is so carried away by its own aesthetic that it may have forgotten its original religious function. It combines the qualities of a grand Salon, a stately Chambre and a concert hall within the space and context of a church which is itself half-Gothic and half-Renaissance. I hesitate to call the event serendipitous, but I attended a funeral there on my
promenade
which gave the church the opportunity to manifest one of its few continuing functions in modern French society.

The rue Blanche leads into the quarter traditionally favored by French artists in all fields—mostly, the successful ones who were able to build houses for themselves which are at once unique, occasionally eccentric and yet, through some unseen discipline, harmonious. Music, drama and painting are all represented in schools of drama and music, places of birth and death (including the mysterious death of Victor Hugo), personal museums and former theatres. One of my favorites is the Musée Gustave Moreau (where I am the centerpiece of one of my wife's exhibition photographs) which houses 850 of his paintings and, they say, 7,000 of his drawings. And there is another jewel of a private museum waiting nearby where the descendants of the Brothers Scheffer have preserved their
ateliers
set in a pretty, hidden courtyard in two delightful buildings, one of
which is described by the scholars as “
une petite merveille de bon goût et du plus absolu dernier cri
!”

Around the corner is the former Grand Guignol, the precursor of palatial movie houses and gory cinema around the world (
précurseur de l'hémoglobine cinématographique
). Although it reopened as a legitimate theatre in 1962 after 66 years of terrifying movies, it is closed today. Rue Pigalle is, as the guide says, a kind of axis for smaller side-streets with the homes of proud names in French culture: Vuillard, Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Degas, Delaroche, and toward the rue de Martyrs and rue Taitbout, Chopin at number 5 and George Sand at number 9 (
naturellement
), with Alexandre Dumas and Delacroix on the nearby rue de Lorette. Interspersed with these stylish locales are theatres, art schools, and small parks. However, if one ventures to the end of rue Pigalle, 20th-century pornography and its clientele dominate the boulevard between Place Pigalle and Place de Clichy with a concentration that is formidable.

But a clue to the secret of Paris lies at the end of this
sub-promenade
. Following the text, one makes a turn and suddenly looks up to one of the prettiest sites in Paris—Place St-Georges with its central statue of the designer Gavarni.

Place St-Georges was once a fountain in a square provided by the ladies of the quarter with water for the horses of this artistic neighborhood. Then came the Métro near the turn of the century with a stop at St-Georges, destroying the fountain. But instead of dooming the square, the incursion (now discreetly hidden) became a challenge which was answered by a typically Parisian response. The lovely statue-monument of Gavarni took the place of the fountain and became the center of a tranquil, tree-lined square surrounded by classic architecture. This includes the superb former residence of Adolphe Thiers, a museum or two, and the home of “la Paiva,” a grand performing
artiste
.

When I think of the harmony of Paris as the critical element of its beauty, I think of Place St-Georges. The large ochre residence of Thiers, with its triangular Greek cornice, ceiling balustrade, and deep classic windows, is on one side of the square opposite the
half-gothic, half-renaissance residence of la Paiva. The charming bust of Gavarni studying his plans in the center of the square unifies the whole; the buildings and statue echo each other's light stone sculpture and quietly ornate decor.

Perhaps the square was carefully planned that way or perhaps it was simply that instinctive sense of the harmony of space and structure which pervades the city and guided the reconstruction of the square. I recall it as I saw it one day in bright sunshine at the end of my walk with my thumb marking my place in the
Vie et Histoire
volume. The Place St-Georges, its trees and the buildings around it were open to the sky, the sounds of the city were muted, Mr. Gavarni studied his designs atop his decorated column—and I thought to myself, “Paris is beautiful.”