SNIPPETS OF PARIS: Montmartre
I set my eyes and ears and lips on you long before I set foot on your cobble stoned streets, long before I drifted in and out of my senses with the warm breath of coffee, long before your wine numbed my lips, long before I fell in love with your poets, long before I sat exhausted and thirsty in bistros waiting for the last charcoal stroke to be done, waiting breathlessly for Paris to absorb my image somewhere somehow.
If Paris be a woman, then Montmartre shall be its bosom—high and proud, sensual, all her passions buried in its depths. On her streets walked ingenious minds, starving peasants came looking for a loaf of bread and found fame instead.
From the heights of the mount you can see for miles and miles, the city within your grasp. Above you the azure sky and the Cathédral du Sacré Coeur, by its side the famed maze of streets and cafés, desperate artists, arresting aroma of culture and crêpes, the irresistible promise of a time warp. And thus began my foray into the highest and most famed part of the city I fall in love with increasingly every time.
In slumber, in quiet solitude I began my journey. Walking into the Cathédral du Sacré Cœur, the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, walking into a confused mix of superficial awe and spirituality, one gets drawn to an imposing architecture and the nuances that made it so.
A pristine white façade dulled by time, flanked by massive steps occupied by vendors of every conceivable kind. Inside, the volatile balance of people is unnerving at best, but I slowly settled into a curious mould, poking at columns and gazing at intricately carved bases. A copper plate inscription revealed that construction had begun in 1875, which accounted for the eclectic mix of Gothic, Byzantine, Baroque, and Renaissance elements. Beautifully proportioned four-centred Tudor arches, random stained glass windows, triforium galleries adorning the central altar space, a semi-circular ambulatory and very classic Renaissance domes. The most striking feature however was the lavish altar, gilded furniture on the podium, and images of Christ painted on the underside of the central dome.
In the midst of academia, a voice suddenly broke into my thoughts, deep at first, building into a high teňor with increasing momentum. It was then I stood, enthralled, a pall of calm settling over me. I stood there, focussing my attention back onto the gilded images, remembering every bit of Michelangelo imagery I had seen, and relating it to the scene in front of me. To use the cliché again, it seemed like my entire life flashed past my eyes, only I was far too enamoured to absorb it all.
If that was not enough, I had yet another maze to slowly unravel—the fabled streets of Montmartre.
I found myself inching my way through the rising cobble stoned streets flanked by stores selling Parisian memorabilia—t-shirts and mugs proclaiming one’s love for the city of love and lights, paperweights, key chains, miniature models of the Eiffel Tower, packaged oil paintings, hideous posters, and bric-a-brac that would make the French cringe—I could not help but get the feeling of being sold a suavely marketed, completely packaged dose of culture that lacked the drama of discovery. As I sat in a bistro eating crêpes soaked in hot wine, watching chattering American and Japanese tourists walking past, I wondered if perhaps this was, in a crude way, the essence of the intellectual Utopia that was intended to be Montmartre in the 1920s—cultural immigrants from all over the world congregating to assimilate, create and fraternise. I suppose it matters little that actual artists can seldom afford to live there now, and the only kind of art being created is rapid portraits of gullible tourists who have a few Euros to spare. Around the exorbitantly expensive restaurant in the middle of the main square however there were a few robust old men with reddened cheeks and berets, palettes in hand attempting to keep alive the tradition of the village through their recreation of impressionist landscapes and oil renderings of the city. Somewhere on the periphery of the village I passed a tiny terraced plot with neatly manicured grape vines. It was apparently the only vineyard to be located within the limits of a city. From the few hundred square metres is produced the most expensive wine in France—auctioned off to the rich and the famous at thousands of Euros a bottle all in the name of charity. Somewhere between my crêpes and wine, a man with an unruly shock of brown hair, a precariously positioned beret, and an engaging smile won me over. He spoke in rapid French and I just nodded pretending to understand. It did bode well for me that whilst I stared at his smile for a full ten minutes, he had frozen my smile on canvas. I truly was smitten. For once, I was not embarrassed by my very tourist-like behaviour.
As I wafted out of the actual sights, sounds and smells of my surroundings, I was overcome by a heady haze of cultural legacy that the village on the hill stood for. I walked, and walked, never once taking my mind off the aura that surrounds the setting. It sent shivers down my spine just to imagine that Henri Matisse must have walked down the same cobble-stoned alleyway that I was treading on then, years and years ago. I wondered if Hemingway had famously washed down his oysters with cold Chardonnay in one of the numerous bistros that dotted the sidewalk. I wanted to know if the run-down entrance door an artist was deeply engrossed with was the same door that greeted Picasso when he first came to Paris.
Bohéme, fervently, almost sinfully alive, Montmartre is the dream of every artist, dreams that found physical expression and more.
I realised slowly that the Paris of George Orwell was different from the Paris of Ernest Hemingway which was different from the Paris of Victor Hugo. And they are all radically different from my Paris.
I found my canvas becoming deeper and wider, and far more profound than I had ever imagined. The cliché of Paris was what scared me before I became part of her again. Annoying clichés still come to mind, but now I know this part of her is forever mine; I am her jealous lover, and my experience of her is desire coupled with pure expression. And that, they say, is sheer poetry.
Beauty, to make love to you I will return.
If Paris be a woman, then Montmartre shall be its bosom—high and proud, sensual, all her passions buried in its depths. On her streets walked ingenious minds, starving peasants came looking for a loaf of bread and found fame instead.
From the heights of the mount you can see for miles and miles, the city within your grasp. Above you the azure sky and the Cathédral du Sacré Coeur, by its side the famed maze of streets and cafés, desperate artists, arresting aroma of culture and crêpes, the irresistible promise of a time warp. And thus began my foray into the highest and most famed part of the city I fall in love with increasingly every time.
In slumber, in quiet solitude I began my journey. Walking into the Cathédral du Sacré Cœur, the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, walking into a confused mix of superficial awe and spirituality, one gets drawn to an imposing architecture and the nuances that made it so.
A pristine white façade dulled by time, flanked by massive steps occupied by vendors of every conceivable kind. Inside, the volatile balance of people is unnerving at best, but I slowly settled into a curious mould, poking at columns and gazing at intricately carved bases. A copper plate inscription revealed that construction had begun in 1875, which accounted for the eclectic mix of Gothic, Byzantine, Baroque, and Renaissance elements. Beautifully proportioned four-centred Tudor arches, random stained glass windows, triforium galleries adorning the central altar space, a semi-circular ambulatory and very classic Renaissance domes. The most striking feature however was the lavish altar, gilded furniture on the podium, and images of Christ painted on the underside of the central dome.
In the midst of academia, a voice suddenly broke into my thoughts, deep at first, building into a high teňor with increasing momentum. It was then I stood, enthralled, a pall of calm settling over me. I stood there, focussing my attention back onto the gilded images, remembering every bit of Michelangelo imagery I had seen, and relating it to the scene in front of me. To use the cliché again, it seemed like my entire life flashed past my eyes, only I was far too enamoured to absorb it all.
If that was not enough, I had yet another maze to slowly unravel—the fabled streets of Montmartre.
I found myself inching my way through the rising cobble stoned streets flanked by stores selling Parisian memorabilia—t-shirts and mugs proclaiming one’s love for the city of love and lights, paperweights, key chains, miniature models of the Eiffel Tower, packaged oil paintings, hideous posters, and bric-a-brac that would make the French cringe—I could not help but get the feeling of being sold a suavely marketed, completely packaged dose of culture that lacked the drama of discovery. As I sat in a bistro eating crêpes soaked in hot wine, watching chattering American and Japanese tourists walking past, I wondered if perhaps this was, in a crude way, the essence of the intellectual Utopia that was intended to be Montmartre in the 1920s—cultural immigrants from all over the world congregating to assimilate, create and fraternise. I suppose it matters little that actual artists can seldom afford to live there now, and the only kind of art being created is rapid portraits of gullible tourists who have a few Euros to spare. Around the exorbitantly expensive restaurant in the middle of the main square however there were a few robust old men with reddened cheeks and berets, palettes in hand attempting to keep alive the tradition of the village through their recreation of impressionist landscapes and oil renderings of the city. Somewhere on the periphery of the village I passed a tiny terraced plot with neatly manicured grape vines. It was apparently the only vineyard to be located within the limits of a city. From the few hundred square metres is produced the most expensive wine in France—auctioned off to the rich and the famous at thousands of Euros a bottle all in the name of charity. Somewhere between my crêpes and wine, a man with an unruly shock of brown hair, a precariously positioned beret, and an engaging smile won me over. He spoke in rapid French and I just nodded pretending to understand. It did bode well for me that whilst I stared at his smile for a full ten minutes, he had frozen my smile on canvas. I truly was smitten. For once, I was not embarrassed by my very tourist-like behaviour.
As I wafted out of the actual sights, sounds and smells of my surroundings, I was overcome by a heady haze of cultural legacy that the village on the hill stood for. I walked, and walked, never once taking my mind off the aura that surrounds the setting. It sent shivers down my spine just to imagine that Henri Matisse must have walked down the same cobble-stoned alleyway that I was treading on then, years and years ago. I wondered if Hemingway had famously washed down his oysters with cold Chardonnay in one of the numerous bistros that dotted the sidewalk. I wanted to know if the run-down entrance door an artist was deeply engrossed with was the same door that greeted Picasso when he first came to Paris.
Bohéme, fervently, almost sinfully alive, Montmartre is the dream of every artist, dreams that found physical expression and more.
I realised slowly that the Paris of George Orwell was different from the Paris of Ernest Hemingway which was different from the Paris of Victor Hugo. And they are all radically different from my Paris.
I found my canvas becoming deeper and wider, and far more profound than I had ever imagined. The cliché of Paris was what scared me before I became part of her again. Annoying clichés still come to mind, but now I know this part of her is forever mine; I am her jealous lover, and my experience of her is desire coupled with pure expression. And that, they say, is sheer poetry.
Beauty, to make love to you I will return.
posted by Farzana Kader at 7:10 PM
1 Comments:
Hi, I'm a long time reader, first time responder. Whenever I leave the City, a line from a book of Francoise Sagan runs through my mind : "Au revoir Paris, bonjour tristesse.". But I like ure (your) last line even more!
Regards,
Ineedair.
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