There Is Never Any End To Paris

.......with apologies to Ernest Hemmingway. I've just realised that it is two years since I posted 'I Love Paris Anytime', and four months since I posted a blog at all [but that's another story]. While I love the Paris of the Belle Epoque, and that of Hemmingway and his literary cohort, I am, as ever, always drawn back to the Marais. The Deux Magots, the Closerie des Lilas and the Cafe Flore of St Germain-des-Pres are full of tourists with loud voices, many of them wishing simply to relive a little bit of Paris's romantic past. There is nothing wrong with that, especially since Woody Allen did such a great job on 'Midnight in Paris', but there are better and cheaper watering holes in the 4th and 11th Arrondisements.

No matter how hard I try, I still find it difficult to forgive Jean-Paul Sartre for his ambivalence during the early years of the Occupation, not least because he was desperate to have his plays performed. Whoah! I hear you say. What else could he do?  I know it's a difficult one but it wasn't true of Andre Malreux, Albert Camus, Lisa Triolet, Jean Bruller [Vercors], Jean Cassou, Louis Aragon and many others. He finally justified his position, writing 'La Republique du Silence' in 1944. Camus defended him by saying that Sartre was a writer who resisted, not a resister who wrote, but methinks it was too little, too late.

The Left Bank is not that far from the Marais but during those dark years, it was a different world. Whilst Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were warming their hands on the pot bellied stoves of their favourite cafes and drinking ersatz coffees, their fellow citizens a short walk across the river were in fear for their lives. Jews had flocked to the Marais since the pogroms of the 19th century, taking up residence in the narrow streets of rue des Rosiers, rue Ferdinand-Duval and rue des Ecouffes. The Pletzl, as this vibrant, noisy and cramped part of the Marais was called, was decimated on 16th July 1942 when everything changed forever in the round-ups. Only a fraction of those deported returned, leaving appartments and shops there for the taking.

These days the Marais is once again a trendy part of town but the vestiges of its Jewish history remain in many of the food shops, many with a menora in the window or a star of David on the shop sign. There are patisseries, boulangeries, chocolatiers, butchers, cafes and restaurants mixed in with newer, trendy boutiques and the whole area, even on a cold, February Wednesday evening, is abuzz with local residents and adventurous tourists alike. I like to think that Paris has not forgotten this area's history.

The area is only a short walk from the serene and stately Place des Vosges, built by Henri IV in 1605, one of the most beautiful squares in Paris. Far too cold to sit and soak up the atmosphere, I couldn't resist the temptation to pop into the warmth and opulence of Victor Hugo's sumptuous appartment tucked into a corner here. It's about as far from the Paris of the barricades as it's possible to imagine but it's always uplifting to visit the residence of a successful writer, poet, musician or artist. It gives us lesser mortals hope. An unexpected bonus is that entrance is free.

Another free museum not far from here and well worth a look is the Musee Carnavalet, which houses an enormous collection dating from the Renaissance to the present day. It was opened to the public in 1880 and contains 2,600 paintings, 20,000 drawings, 300,000 engravings, 150,000 photographs, 2,000 sculptures, 800 pieces of furniture, as well as thousands of ceramics, street signs, coins and other artefacts from five hundred years of Parisian history. It was bulging so much at the seams that the Municipalite of Paris purchased the neighbouring Hotel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau, to which it is now linked by a corridor of 20th century paintings. It is an enormous, elegant warren of a place where you never seem to know where you are. I constantly found myself gazing in awe at the unexpected, not least the complete reconstruction of the room in which Marcel Proust lay on his bed and wrote 'A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu', a stunning Mucha designed Art Nouveau boutique and everything you ever wanted to know about the demise of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Marat, Danton, Robespierre and St Juste. For anyone with kids studying the French Revolution, I cannot recommend it highly enough - the sheer physicality of the exhibits makes the hairs on the back of one's neck tingle. If you like French antiques, this is better than any book or catalogue.

Close to the metro, the mighty Jesuit church of Saint Paul-Saint Louis, whose first mass was celebrated on 9th May 1641 by the most powerful Jesuit of them all, Cardinal Richelieu, is testament to the great power of the mighty educational order that educated both my brothers. Inevitably, their power waned with that of their benefactors and in 1762, the order was suppressed by the Parlement. On 2nd September 1792, five priests were hacked to death in the September massacres and on one pillar, there is a faded inscription from the 1871 Commune, Republique francaise ou la mort. Victor Hugo's daughter, Leopoldine, was secretly married here on 18th February 1843 and Victor Hugo donated the two lovely marble clam shell holy water fonts in commemoration. Also to be seen is Dalacroix's stunning painting, probably from 1824, of 'Christ in Agony on the Mount of Olives'. Sadly, it was the only Delacroix I got to see this trip because, the following day, the young 'jobs-worth' in charge of the Musee Delacroix [in St Germain-des-Pres] wouldn't let me in at half past four! Merde! Merde! Merde!

My hotel was close to Pere Lachaise cemetery, named after another famous Jesuit, Pere Francois de la Chaise, confessor to Louis XIV. After my trip to the Musee Carnavalet, I wanted to see the 'Mur des Federes', the Communard's Wall. There, 147 defenders of the working class district of Belleville were put up against the wall and shot on the last day of the Semaine Sanglante, the bitter end of a week's bloodshed that ended the 1871 Commune. I walked the length of the perimeter wall in freezing temperatures to find this monument, simply a stele with the date in front of a much repaired wall and not a bullet hole in sight. 

En route, though, I discovered the magnificent sculptured monuments to the victims of the various concentration camps and the graves of most of the significant communists of recent French history. It's amazing what you find when you are not looking, I always think. And, of course, I had to go and see what they'd done to Oscar and Jacob Epstein's sculptured tombstone since they banned the lipstick kisses. I was dreading the over-reaction that we've seen so often with other works of art [my pet hate is the glass case around Michaelangelo's Pieta in St Peter's Basilica in Rome, where you can no longer walk around it]. I have to say that it's not too bad - just enough to protect the lower part of the mellow stone [and the missing bits of the angel's vital parts] but not completely covering the whole monument. 

By now, I really did feel the urge to head for somewhere warm so a quick scoot on the Metro to the Left Bank, to the cafe les editeurs, my ideal cafe, full of comfortable seats, real tea and books galore.

There is nothing more stimulating than reading a good book or newspaper, writing a diary, a letter or five hundred words of a possible story with a good cup of coffee or hot chocolate on the table and the buzz of other like minded people around. Why do I have to come to Paris to do this, I wonder? Ah, well, any excuse. There is never any end to Paris............