Un joyeux Noël...

...to all who have the misfortune to read this blog!  Here is a nice mixture of the best of Britain and the best of France:  the French carol Noël nouvelet, sung by the inestimable King's Singers, in the Round Church at Cambridge.

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

Pélérinage balzacien: rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève

Another of the touristic perambulations which I undertook in October might better be described as a literary pilgrimage.  The rue Tournefort is deep in the 5e arrondissement, running southwards from the Panthéon, and Honoré de Balzac, the great nineteenth-century novelist whom I might have mentioned once or twice, knew it well enough to set Le Père Goriot there. 

 
Madame Vauquer, née de Conflans, est une vieille femme qui, depuis quarante ans, tient à Paris une pension bourgeoise établie rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, entre le quartier latin et le faubourg Saint-Marcel.

My effort at a translation: Madame Vauquer, née  de Conflans, is an old woman who for forty years has kept a boarding house in the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, between the Latin Quarter and the inner suburb of  Saint-Marcel.
  

Much has changed, mercifully:

           ...les maisons y sont mornes, les murailles y sentent la prison....  Nul quartier de             Paris n’est plus horrible, ni, disons-le, plus inconnu.'

    ...the houses there are grim; the walls suggest a prison... No part of Paris is more horrible nor, it      might be said, more unknown.

Much has not, though:

A brusque and rude slope

Elle est située dans le bas de la rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, à l’endroit où le terrain s’abaisse vers la rue de l’Arbalète par une pente si brusque et si rude que les chevaux la montent ou la descendent rarement.

 [The boarding-house] is to be found at the bottom of the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, where the land drops down towards the rue de l’Arbalète so abruptly and roughly that horses rarely go up or down it.

What is also striking about his description of the area are the 'tons jaunes' and sombre colours: he described the street as a 'cadre de bronze', a picture-frame of bronze well-suited to the picture he was about to paint.  Much of what inspired this description must have disappeared with the smartening-up of the street, but there is still a papery yellowness about it.  Certainly the relative quietude remains.

It is generally accepted that the house to the left is the Maison Vauquer, also described in meticulous detail by Balzac.  Here he played out the first episode of his great drama: here Rastignac planned his conquest of Parisian society, here Goriot, because of his compulsive generosity, had to move progressively further upstairs as he gradually tightened his belt; here Vautrin met his come-uppance!  It is fascinating to  find the settings of books or places frequented by authors and by people I admire.

  
'La façade de la pension donne sur un jardinet, en sorte que la maison tombe à angle droit sur la rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, où vous la voyez coupée dans sa profondeur.

   The front of the house overlooks a little garden, and it is at a right angle to the rue Neuve-Sainte-  Geneviève,  which cuts it in section from top to bottom.

In an imminent post I will follow the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève to its namesake, the tomb of St. Geneviève at the church of St-Etienne-du-Mont.

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.

La gastronomie - encore une fois.

Mais qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?

Caption competition!

 The B.B.C. reported, as a trade delegation was sent to Paris this week, that British food exports to France have doubled since the year 2000.  To investigate this matter, a scheme of the utmost audacity was executed. The B.B.C. loitered outside the Louvre with Scotch eggs, cheese and pickle sandwiches and Bakewell tarts, offered them to a random sample of citizens of the République Française and filmed their responses.

I have two questions:

a "Trianon".  I think Alain Gié ought to be canonised!

1)  Were the interviewees merely being polite?  After all, as I have mentioned once or twice, the French are accustomed to, and indeed expect, dishes which it is beyond the English even to describe, let alone forge.  The image to the right shows an example:  click for a double portion. 

The result of a gathering of English people

2)   Actually, what am I saying?  I am rather partial to a Bakewell tart!  Why could they not have conducted this experiment a week ago?   I was at this very spot with a good friend, who was visiting.  We were soaked in accordance with the ubi Anglorum ibi pluvia rule, but it was no hardship that a cheese and pickle sandwich, prepared by the B.B.C. no less, could not have eased substantially.  Students are always hungry!

The good friend (Edward), who has hopefully dried off by now, is spending his year abroad as a language assistant in Reims (N.E. of Paris).  He blogs prolifically and much less ponderously here.  It is remarkable how different our year abroad arrangements are to each other, though neither will have been less profoundly formative than the other  for it.

Quelquefois, Cambridge me manque...

One of the many things which make me miss Cambridge sometimes:

The glorious Collegium Regale Te Deum and Jubilate (or the Morning Canticles) by Herbert Howells - he of the Hymnus Paradisi from whose Proms performance I am still reeling - will be sung at Matins in their namesake King's College Chapel at 10.30 a.m. this Sunday, the 21st.  They will sound just as magnificent as the above.  I will be sorry not to be there, but perhaps I have enough blessings!  If you do not have time for the whole video, make some at least for the almighty finale of the Te Deum (O LORD, IN THEE HAVE I TRUSTED: LET ME NEVER BE CONFOUNDED ! ! ! ! !) - from 7 minutes and 20 seconds onwards, and make sure to fasten everything around you securely to the ground.

As if this were not treat enough for the congregation, the Organ Postlude will be Crown Imperial by William Walton.

Bonjour / bonsoir

I am surely not the only Anglophone to have agonised over this gravely important question: when does evening begin in France? In our eagerness to dispense with formalities in ordinary conversation, we English speakers have allowed 'Good evening' or the constabulary 'Evenin' all' to decline in favour of the temporally neutral 'Hello', 'Can I help?' or 'Yo wassup?'.

The French remain refined in this matter, as is to be expected. The first choice to be made upon greeting somebody is to distinguish between day bonjour and evening bonsoir (I acknowledge the exception of the informal salut). I, the hapless anglais, have watched the advent of eventide with trepidation. What if, I ask myself, in this grey area between four and seven, I have to converse with someone? What if I am obliged to begin the exchange? What if, after the exertion of making this decision, all my French vocabulary evaporates again?

It's that time of day / evening again...

I have set off with bonjour at five and received bonsoir in reply. My consequently supremely confident bonsoir at six has been met with a bemused bonjour. I wondered whether evening was determined by the illumination of the Tour Eiffel. A bonsoir in broad daylight put paid to that theory. What difficult waters grey areas are.

Then, as I sought my daily bread one day / evening, the answer was revealed. The boulangère - whose vocation is so noble that she must be right - greeted me with bonjour, and then the gentleman after me with bonsoir. This, I understood at once, thunderstruck, was the moment of truth. The time! What was the time‽ (not easy to check when laden with bread). Dear reader, I can disclose the French nation's second most closely guarded secret, after the supernatural secret ingredient of the baguette: the official time at which bonsoir replaces bonjour is fifty-seven minutes and twenty-three seconds past five o'clock. I shall go forth with a greater spring in my step.

C'est parti!

First floor, centre Censier (Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Lectures and seminars have just set off at full steam, in full-speed French, and full of knowledge, at the Sorbonne Nouvelle.  In my folly, I had believed that my capabilities in French were already being healthily stretched, but, as it turns out, this was only a prelude.  Seminars last for at least ninety minutes and sometimes for as long as three hours, and the lecturers make no linguistic concession to foreign students.  I feel like a 2CV at Le Mans as I try to block out the booming lecturer next door (in English, of all languages!), to figure out what that was that came after 'Il faut absolument...' or 'Vous êtes obligés de...',  and to conceal the steam hissing from my ears!   In comparison to one-hour lectures generally delivered in English - and here come two words which are, with good reason, not usually juxtaposed - Cambridge seems almost easy.  (The word 'almost' is important).  The apparent confusion of some of the French students is some consolation, although turning to ask me if I understood does not improve matters!

It must be added, even in the midst of the madness, that this is how it ought to be.  Among the very important things which this year abroad is designed to teach me (by fire, it seems), and which I must learn now if I am ever to do so, is the true and authentic use of French.  If this be at ninety miles an hour (perhaps I mean 144,8 kilomètres par heure), I must say 'So be it' through gritted teeth!

At any rate, if henceforward there is a slight decline in my posting frequency (wherefore on the Internet there shall be much gladness and rejoicing) it will be either because I am in a lecture, or because I am recovering from it.

Promenade parisienne: ubi Anglorum, ibi pluvia!

Musée d'Orsay.

In the fortnight before the beginning of lectures, even as I basked in the prospect of a whole year to sift through the city at leisure, I decided to become a tourist, complete with map, camera and gape.  And who can blame me, or anybody else, in this city of wonders?

My most obviously touristic ramble took me from the Musée d'Orsay on the rive gauche, across the river for the first time to the Louvre and the rue de Rivoli; thence east to Châtelet and back over the Seine via the Ile-de-la-Cité, on a remarkable day of alternate buoyant sunlight and drenching showers.

rue de Solférino

A barge forges upstream.

A view downstream of the Seine: the Grand Palais in the distance.

My ambitious plan to execute a rapid visit to the Musée d'Orsay, a former railway station whose exhibitions follow the Louvre's chronologically, fell to pieces when I beheld with dismay the early-afternoon queue.  I very much want to go, but it will necessitate an early arrival.  So I spent some time on the Pont de Solférino, whose steel parapets, like others in Paris, have been turned a gold colour by thousands of padlocks inscribed with lovers' names.  Of course there were a few opportunistic padlock-sellers there!  The keys are also accumulating on the river-bed, but no doubt there are still a few weeks before they block the river entirely and Paris is flooded.   The Seine is a much plied water-way, not only by bâteaux-mouches and pleasure-craft but also by hard-working barges carrying freight.  Further upstream they navigate the islands and the narrow bridges with remarkable agility.  It is good to see use being made of the Seine in this way.

A  bâteau-mouche - Plenty of water around!

rue de Rivoli

A 'batobus'

The apparition in the south-west of clouds  bulging with the colour of slate sent me scurrying over the river to the Louvre, where thousands of motorists seemed in a terrible pickle.  (Did I really use a word like 'discretion' to describe Parisian drivers?).  I saw again the marvellous view westwards, slicing through the city down the Champs-Elysées, to the Arc-de-Triomphe and beyond to the Grande-Arche at La Défense.  Just as I arrived at the rue de Rivoli, the rain swept in with gusto (and gusts).  I hurried on past the mixture of gaudy gift-kiosks and hopelessly expensive stores to Châtelet, at which point the sun, that great astronomical wind-up-merchant, re-appeared as if nothing had happened. Thence I wound my way past the Hôtel de Ville and onto the Ile de la Cité, where stands the glorious cathedral of Notre-Dame: Our Lady of Paris.  

Pardon?  Mais qu'est-ce c'est que ça?

During this walk, I think I heard French spoken on no more than five occasions.  Everybody else seemed to be speaking English: British, Americans, and even French people themselves.  Perhaps the rain had brought it out? How strange it is that the very heart of the city which is the heart of the petite couronne, which is the heart of the Ile de France région, which is in turn the heart of France, is awash with a foreign language.  I could make this Year Abroad very easy if I wanted to!

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.