Friday, January 25, 2013
Memories of old Paris
I lived at 100 Rue du Temple in the Marais. Not far away was Les Halles, which had experienced the destruction of the market halls not long before. However, some good things then still existed before the slaughter of the neighbourhood increased in tempo.
One of these was the surviving market cafe, Aux Deux Saules, on the corner of Rue Rambuteau and Rue St Denis. From a hatch were dispensed cornets de frites, conical containers of chips, with or without a variety of saucisses , merguez, Toulouse sausages, Montbeliard sausages etc. The Cafe also served a wonderful onion soup, keeping alive a traditon of Les Halles where a warming bowl of this was very welcome to porters finishing their shifts. All of this is memorable in itself, but what made the cafe stand out were the two tableaux of ceramic tiles ( made at Sarreguemines, the inscription below read) depicting busy scenes from market life, one in the morning and one at market closure, in vibrant colours.
The cafe managed to last until 1985 but is now, I believe, a body piercing studio. What has happened to the tiles I do not know. It would be nice to think they have been preserved, but I hold out few hopes.
One of these was the surviving market cafe, Aux Deux Saules, on the corner of Rue Rambuteau and Rue St Denis. From a hatch were dispensed cornets de frites, conical containers of chips, with or without a variety of saucisses , merguez, Toulouse sausages, Montbeliard sausages etc. The Cafe also served a wonderful onion soup, keeping alive a traditon of Les Halles where a warming bowl of this was very welcome to porters finishing their shifts. All of this is memorable in itself, but what made the cafe stand out were the two tableaux of ceramic tiles ( made at Sarreguemines, the inscription below read) depicting busy scenes from market life, one in the morning and one at market closure, in vibrant colours.
The cafe managed to last until 1985 but is now, I believe, a body piercing studio. What has happened to the tiles I do not know. It would be nice to think they have been preserved, but I hold out few hopes.
Labels: Aux Deux Saules, French onion soup, Les Halles, Marais, Paris
Gamins and gavroches
Gamins and gavroches
I suppose now is a good time as any to write this with the popularity of the film Les Miserables and the appearance in it of Gavroche, the quintessential street urchin and spirit of the people. Victor Hugo was responsible for it transferring from being a fictional character to a term to describe all Parisian gamins. As Hazan reminds us in his book on Paris a gamin already appears in the well known Delacroix painting of Liberty leading the People where he is right behind La Belle, La Revolution, brandishing two pistols ( and wearing a cartridge box that may have been picked up from a dead soldier).
And in Rousseau's reveries of a Solitary Walker is the description, with the background of pre-revolutionary Paris of " a very nice, but lame little boy who, hobbling along on his crutches, goes about graciously asking passersby for alms", one of the lost and abandoned children that roamed Paris.
These children were soon no longer ready to beg. An ex-prefect of police, Canler, in his memoirs, talking about the 1832 insurrection
( the one in which Hugo's character dies) mentions " a boy of twelve or so years old, clad in a coloured jacket of the Auvergne style..thrust to the front rank... Everyone knows this breed of Paris gamin, who always uttered seditious shouts in these gatherings, and almost always fired the first shots". There is the boy of Rey-Dussueil's Saint Merri, where the men on the barricade try to save little Joseph, who is already throwing stones at the National Guard, by asking him to post a letter to get him away. He replies:" Very sorry, but I haven't the time".
Hugo uses Gavroche to introduce argot, Parisian street slang for possibly the first time in French literature. Gavroche sings a song satirising conservative ideas, where the 1789 Revolution and Rousseau and Voltaire are blamed for the decay of society:Joie est mon caractere, c'est la faut a Voltaire, Misere est mon trousseau. C'est la faute a Rousseau." (Joy is my character.It's Voltaire's fault. Misery is my bridal gown. It's Rousseau's fault).
I suppose now is a good time as any to write this with the popularity of the film Les Miserables and the appearance in it of Gavroche, the quintessential street urchin and spirit of the people. Victor Hugo was responsible for it transferring from being a fictional character to a term to describe all Parisian gamins. As Hazan reminds us in his book on Paris a gamin already appears in the well known Delacroix painting of Liberty leading the People where he is right behind La Belle, La Revolution, brandishing two pistols ( and wearing a cartridge box that may have been picked up from a dead soldier).
And in Rousseau's reveries of a Solitary Walker is the description, with the background of pre-revolutionary Paris of " a very nice, but lame little boy who, hobbling along on his crutches, goes about graciously asking passersby for alms", one of the lost and abandoned children that roamed Paris.
These children were soon no longer ready to beg. An ex-prefect of police, Canler, in his memoirs, talking about the 1832 insurrection
( the one in which Hugo's character dies) mentions " a boy of twelve or so years old, clad in a coloured jacket of the Auvergne style..thrust to the front rank... Everyone knows this breed of Paris gamin, who always uttered seditious shouts in these gatherings, and almost always fired the first shots". There is the boy of Rey-Dussueil's Saint Merri, where the men on the barricade try to save little Joseph, who is already throwing stones at the National Guard, by asking him to post a letter to get him away. He replies:" Very sorry, but I haven't the time".
Hugo uses Gavroche to introduce argot, Parisian street slang for possibly the first time in French literature. Gavroche sings a song satirising conservative ideas, where the 1789 Revolution and Rousseau and Voltaire are blamed for the decay of society:Joie est mon caractere, c'est la faut a Voltaire, Misere est mon trousseau. C'est la faute a Rousseau." (Joy is my character.It's Voltaire's fault. Misery is my bridal gown. It's Rousseau's fault).
Labels: gamins, gavroches, Les miserables, Paris, Victor Hugo
Atget and Paris
An excellent collection of his photos here:http://expositions.bnf.fr/atget/
"He was their counterpart as well as their partisan, a scavenger of sorts himself, a shorer of ruins, a recycler of trash who could find all kinds of valuables in the least of the city's leavings." Marina Warner
Labels: Atget, Paris, Surrealists
Victor Hugo and the Problem of Guilt in Les Miserables
Victor Hugo was on the side of reaction during the days of revolution of 1848. He witnessed the barricades, the mass shootings of revolutionaries and the manhunts and remained silent at the time. Yet he moved in a more radical direction during the course of the rest of his life, and you're not meant to do that.
Les Miserables is an expiation for the remorse Hugo felt about the crushing of 1848. Just as Jean Valjean is hunted down over decades by the policeman Javert, so is Hugo haunted for many years by the guilt he experienced when he remembered the blood on the cobbles.
Les Miserables is an expiation for the remorse Hugo felt about the crushing of 1848. Just as Jean Valjean is hunted down over decades by the policeman Javert, so is Hugo haunted for many years by the guilt he experienced when he remembered the blood on the cobbles.
Labels: 1848, Les miserables, Victor Hugo
