Notre pain de ce jour

Warning: a long essay on bread ahead

Breakfast, according to the French.

I have recently discovered Meudon’s sixth artisan boulanger.  Hidden away though it may be in the rue des Marais, and small though be its size, the baguettes I bought there were better than any bread sold anywhere in Britain.  By their piping heat, I judged that they had still been in the oven when I left the house, where, on my return, I subjected them immediately to an appropriately rigorous examination which largely took the form of lunch.  With jubilation I found the quality of this new boulanger’s handiwork entirely consistent with that of the other five’s: the radiance with warm earthy gold, the dying glowings of the oven, the perfection of the patterns sculpted by the craftsman’s hand, the structural poise of the whole, the pale underbelly below, the copper-crowned ridge above, and the crust, delicate enough to crumble exquisitely under pressure, but robust enough to protect the rich mellifluous dough (la mie) within!  And the smell (the smell, dear reader!), the scent of the French field!  The scope of the written word is transcended, almost even in French.  And this is only a baguette – I have not even mentioned the other loaves, nor the croissant, nor indeed the pâtisseries, stacked on high shelves and glittering along luminous counters.

Another gratuitous croissant photo.

Kneading my bread in my bakehouse...

If you feel, as you read this, that I have become a ‘bread snob’ (well-picked words used to describe me recently!), or alternatively very hungry all of a sudden, you do either with good reason.  The purple prose above is only slightly hyperbolic (see the view from Reims here), and bread-wise I shall be at a loss on my return to G.B.  On the other hand, it must be realised that such an attitude towards bread is entirely natural by French standards.  The Englishman becomes like a child in a sweet-shop (in a bakery), but the Frenchman expects nothing less than what I have just described.  He expects several panary establishments in a single town; he expects to find them (in Paris at least) with the official website (whose existence I have discovered far too late); he expects it even to be subsidised by the state.  One of the boulangeries has recently had its entrance refurbished jointly by the town council and by the FISAC, (the Fonds d’intervention pour les services, l’artisanat et les commerces), that is, a body which offers grants to maintain the institution of the artisan.  Now of course, he must pay for this in his taxes, but the situation reflects an element of government which is peculiarly French.

Never enough gratuitous croissant photos!.

And also a gratuitous photo of a pépito

'The front of this shop has been modernised thanks to the financial support of Meudon's Town Council and the FISAC, the Service, Artisan and Business Fund.'

 St Honorius, not perhaps at his saintliest

 Those of us in Britain who eat impatiently and without thought, who deliberately pare the meal down to its essential function, who discard anything lacking immediate material reward, and who seldom eat as families, have much to learn from the French, in this and in other things, who (far from being snobbish) express their appreciation of their daily bread by making of it an art, and by merging it with culture (The poet Francis Ponge disagrees, or does he?).  The paper bags which cradle the commonplace manna prove this: they draw the client’s attention to the baker’s adherence to tradition and to craftsmanship: ‘je pétris mon pain dans mon fournil’ (‘kneading my bread in the bakehouse’), assure him that  ‘le pain, c’est la santé!’ (Bread is health!), or regale him with the tale of St Honoré’s announcement, as a boy, of his vocation to the priesthood, of the scoffing of his nurse and of her assertion that her dough-spatula would be just as likely to burst into leaf – which of course it duly did.  Sometimes they instruct him simply, ‘À déguster sans modération!’ to enjoy without moderation, an entirely superfluous suggestion.  It is all beauty, thriving miraculously even in this age, and springing not from snobbery, but from the recognition that, once given our daily bread, we are to treat it with respect.

'Did you know?  St Honorius (Honoré) is the patron saint of bakers.  When the unruly young fellow announced to his nurse that he wanted to become a priest, she was in the middle of baking her bread.  The good woman scoffed.  "You'll be a bishop when my spatula grows leaves!"  Before her astonished eyes, the spatula began to bud with greenery.'

La pub

I regret to disappoint those who have arrived expecting an inebriated tribute to the British public house.  In 'King's-Arms'-bereft France, the word pub is short for la publicité: also falsely friendly, for it means 'advertising'.

French advertisements are in the main much the same as advertisements everywhere: irritating (but for their being in French), garish and depressingly materialistic.  Nevertheless, I have observed several campaigns or quirks which, if not peculiar to France, would look rather out of place in Britain:

1.

Hervé Marseille, Senator-Mayor of Meudon and the Municipal Council wish you a Happy New Year, 2013.

First come messages from Monsieur Hervé Marseille, Mayor of Meudon (not of Marseille, alas, although he is incidentally also Senateur for the Hauts-de-Seine).  He and the town council wish the good people of Meudon a Happy New Year.  The poster above has appeared on bus-stops and small bill-boards all over the town, and on the municipal web-site.  Equivalents appeared in Paris as well.  Even if an electoral concern doubtless has something to do with the warmth of these wishes, it remains a nice gesture. 

2.

(from www.saintaugustin.net).  'Giving - receiving:  (I) give to the Church!  Church funds: everybody is involved!'

The second are advertising campaigns undertaken by the Catholic Church to request financial support (for priests' allowances, for the support of retired priests and for material maintenance), something unthinkable in England.  Not even the C. of E. does this, in fact. (If I feel brave enough, I might write a further post about the Church in France, because the religious landscape of France is very interesting, especially compared to Britain's).    'Denier de l'Eglise' does not mean a 'denial' (one hopes!) but comes from the Latin denarius - in short, another word for money.  And who wouldn't donate, if it makes you as serene as the lady in the photo...!

Many French advertisements and posters also use the first person as an imperative: 'Je donne pour l'Eglise', or 'Je monte - je valide', to remind bus passengers to stamp their tickets.  An interesting usage which does not exist in English.

3.  Finally, we see very few adverts in Britain containing funny words from other languages, but here is a new French advert for package-holidays:

Mais qu'est-ce que c'est alors, le « fun »?

 which makes rather ironic promise number 1 below:

100% French-speaking?

This huge bill-board at Montparnasse also astonished me:

I will also write another blog-post about Anglicisms like this, and about the slow tremendous seep of the English language and of Anglophone culture into France, which is invisible from Britain.

There - I think that more or less covers French advertisements.  No doubt a post about the English pub will follow one day...

La veille de l'hiver.

It is the eve of winter (it was when I began to prepare this post), the air is no longer empty but heavy with chill, and everything is hueless but the trees :

rue Monge

Musée Carnavalet, rue de Sévigné

More impressive than the colours of the sky are the colours of heaven.  "Les couleurs du ciel" is an exhibition, presented by the marvellous Musée Carnavalet, (Madame de Sévigné's old house) of paintings made for Parisian churches in the seventeenth century.  In the first half of the century, the expansion of Paris, the arrival in its outskirts of numerous religious orders, the piety of Louis XIII and particularly the influence of the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation yielded a great movement for the expansion or renewal of existing churches and for new ecclesiastical construction.  The new churches needed new ornaments and paintings, of course, and artists newly returned from Italy began a great revival in French religious art.  Although much of the construction and decoration had completed before too long into Louis XIV's reign (1643-1715), he did not neglect the construction of two enormous new Parisian churches (Val-de-Grâce and les Invalides), the designs of whose enormous dome frescoes were also included in the exhibition.  There was also at this time a tradition of commissioning a new altar-piece every May for Notre-Dame de Paris; these were called mays and began the careers of many young artists.  My favourite painting there was L'adoration des mages (The Adoration of the Magi) by Claude Vignon, who incidentally had thirty-four children by his two wives.  From afar, the painting glitters, and at a close inspection (there was no glass and only a small barrier - much gratitude for the trust placed in the visitors) it is possible to see how brave Vignon was, applying slabs of paint to the canvas.  Reproductions of the picture do not seem to be on the Internet, sadly, but the work itself is a marvel to behold.

Concert d'orgue à l'église de Meudon

That evening an organ concert was held in the church of Saint Martin in Meudon.  The parish's organist collaborated with her counterpart from Meudon's Polish twin town to show off the instrument, which is  soon to undergo further renovation by the council.  The organists performed a grand tour of the centuries, with a particular emphasis on the music of Marcel Dupré, who lived and died in Meudon.  I particularly enjoyed this little meditation on the plainsong melody of Te lucis ante terminum .  A wonderful French sound - as French as the eagerness to commemorate local personages.  Now that is the way to spend a winter evening!

 

The Tour Montparnasse slices mist

Jour de l'Armistice

I break my fortnight-long silence (for which I apologise) because of today's date and its commemoration in Meudon.  The Armistice which ended the First World War has been remembered first with a Mass in Meudon's parish church of Saint-Martin (St Martin of Tours, whose feast-day is also on the eleventh of November), and then with a parade from the hôtel de ville to the cemetery to the south of town.

The congregation outside Saint-Martin

Having set off from the town hall down the hill and on the left, the parade turns into the rue de la République.

The parade approaches the cemetery.

The parade enters the cemetery.

All of this was done with calm and unaffected dignity.  A similar impression was given by the Tricolore flags fixed to the cab of every bus:

The Tricolore (just above the driver's cab).

The sobering thought has not escaped me that those of my age a century ago were sent to France not to enrich their lives, studying the luminous subtlety of man's art and being, but to have their lives ruined or ended in the calamity of industrialised warfare: requiescant in pace; qu'ils reposent en paix.

Exposition Véritable Océan (2nd instalment)

Rue de la République

Rue de la République

Gare de Meudon.

Rue Terre Neuve seen from the Grande Terrasse.

Parc de l'Observatoire.

Rue de Paris.

Rue de Paris.

Exposition Véritable Océan (1st instalment)

As promised in my post about Meudon, here are some more pictures of the town.  Each can be clicked to be viewed more clearly in a slide-show.

ave. Jacqueminot, with the Tour Montparnasse in the far distance.

rue de Paris.

Observatoire de Meudon.

Always consoling to have a ferroequinological view from one's window, even if it can only be admired from a perilous position.

Some blocks of flats below the Observatoire.

Rue de la Croix du Val

Rue de la République (brings back fond memories of the Blantyre flag)

Paris from the Observatory at Meudon - J. E. Renoux (1921)

Ditto (2012)

Meudon: municipalité magnifique!

Eastwards across the Val-Fleury.

I am grateful, particularly given the casse-tête of finding accommodation in Paris, that I have settled in an area as pleasant as Meudon.  In fact, had I not had to cast my net into the département of Hauts-de-Seine and halfway to Versailles, I would probably not otherwise have encountered the town.  I am renting a bedroom in the Val-Fleury, built in the steep valley running northwards to the Seine's first right-hand swerve after Paris. Piled upon the western side is much of the main town - detached houses, modest blocks of flats, much greenery, a street of well-patronised shops and the proud mairie.  The lower (northern) part of town descends to the river at Bas-Meudon or Meudon-sur-Seine, and the western end of the hill has the apt name of Bellevue.  To the south and higher still there is an enormous forêt domaniale (state-owned forest - yes, five kilometres from the great metropolis!), which accounts for the 100 square metres of green space per resident, and beyond which is Meudon-la-Forêt, a new town constructed in the 1960s.

Topographical map of central Ile-de-France.

The altitude of parts of Meudon is remarkable, particularly in comparison to the land which surrounds it and with respect to its proximity to Paris.  Much of the town is about a hundred metres above sea level (point culminant 175m) and this height conspires with the sharp descent towards the Seine to give an almost vertiginous prospect of the city.  From the grande terrasse of the Observatoire, which occupies the site of an old château destroyed in the Franco-Prussian war, the panorama is particularly breathtaking.  Foreign students who have lately been a little indulgent in their consumption of croissants may find the ascent breathtaking in a different way.

A view north and east from the Grande Terrasse - Val-Fleury is in the foreground, and beyond the head of the valley the great swathe of Paris: the Seine, Tour Eiffel, the Tour Montparnasse, les Invalides and the Sacré-Coeur.  Click to enlarge!

le Viaduc de Meudon.

The viaduct which strides across the mouth of the valley was constructed between 1838 and 1840 to carry the railway between Paris Montparnasse and Versailles.  The construction of railways had not hitherto been permitted and this was the first railway in France, authorised when hundreds of miles of track had already been laid in Great Britain.  Geographically, the railway has already reached an altitude of eighty-five metres and the viaduct is thirty-six metres high and 143m long.  Trains pass along this line to Chartres, Le Mans, Rennes and Brest, and the station has a service every fifteen minutes which can convey your correspondent to Paris Montparnasse (at the foot of the tall grey Tour Montparnasse in the distance, in the photograph to the right) in ten minutes.  

A view north over Bas-Meudon towards Paris.

There are certain disadvantages to living in the Parisian suburbs, such as the time and expense of the daily journey to Paris III, but the advantages are more important to me.  For instance, Meudon provides, as many suburbs do, a poumon vert and a refuge from Paris's perpetual energy, and, far from the tread of tourists and the spectacles maintained partly for them, I can observe a different and more ordinary France, along with its people and their wonderful culture - and certainly without the sound of English!  In fact, Meudon is so different from Paris that I wonder if I will actually gain the experience of two years abroad in the space of one - one year rummaging through glorious literature in the 5e arrondissement, and one year puffing up twisting hills with glorious baguettes or partaking of glorious steak in the Brasserie de la Mairie.  

rue de Paris.

And a final gem of information (you will be relieved to hear!) - which links the widow of Molière and Johnny Depp: I have found out to my astonishment that both have lived here!  Indeed Monsieur Depp might still dwell within a mile's radius of where I type this.  I will look out for red bandanas.


More pictures will follow.