Paris des Écrivains : de l’Académie française au Panthéon 🕯️📜 | Trésors du Patrimoine

De l’Académie française aux galeries du Panthéon, Paris s’écrit en lettres vives.

Amoureux de la France et du patrimoine, ses trésors n’auront plus de secrets pour vous 👉https://bit.ly/4dnI1h1

Corneille et Molière lèvent le rideau au Palais-Royal, Hugo fait de Notre-Dame un personnage, Dumas inscrit ses héros dans le plan des rues, Balzac dresse l’inventaire de la ville moderne, Zola dévoile l’ère haussmannienne, Proust bâtit sa cathédrale intime, Céline capte les passages populaires, Boris Vian fait vibrer Saint-Germain entre jazz et romans.

📜 Académie française : la langue comme colonne vertébrale de la nation.
🎭 Molière : des jeux de paume aux tréteaux, naissance d’un théâtre parisien.
🏛️ Victor Hugo : Notre-Dame, plaidoyer pour le monument et destin national.
🗡️ Alexandre Dumas : du Pont-Neuf au Marais, Paris en scène d’aventures.
🏦 Balzac : Marais, Latin, Champs-Élysées — la Comédie humaine cartographie la ville.
🚇 Émile Zola : gares, boulevards et grands magasins — la métamorphose d’Haussmann.
🌿 Marcel Proust : Champs-Élysées et boulevards — la mémoire en géographie sensible.
🕯️ Céline : passages et faubourgs — la petite musique du peuple.
🎺 Boris Vian : caves de Saint-Germain — nuits de jazz et pages libres.

Une traversée littéraire et sensible : rues, salons, marchés et mémoires composent le grand livre de Paris.

PARIS AU PLURIEL – PARIS AU PLURIEL PARIS COMME UN LIVRE OUVERT
© Tout droits réservés – AMP
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Known as the city of love, Paris is perhaps above all the city of writers. Indeed, no other city in the world has been
home to so many illustrious authors, whether French or foreign. It is by telling their story
that we will cross Paris, or rather, Paris time. From the world’s largest open-air library
on the banks of the Seine, to the famous Pantheon,
where some of them rest. What better representative of the importance
of letters in the life of the nation and its capital than this building. The birth of French literature
precedes that of the French Academy. But since a page is needed to
have a margin, it is with the immortals that we will begin our
literary tour of the city. The French Academy, founded in 1634 and
made official a year later by Richelieu,
is a French institution whose aim is to defend, perfect and
standardize the French language. One of the Academy’s first missions
was to arbitrate the quarrel between Scudéry and Corneille over cider. Corneille is accused of plagiarism and of
not having strictly respected the rules of classical theatre. The Academy ruled on the dispute
by rejecting the accusation of plagiarism, but ruled in favor of Scudéry regarding
the rules of classical theater. A few weeks later, Richelieu
ordered an end to hostilities against the West and Corneille. It was therefore the very young academy
which came to the aid of Pierre Corneille. More Norman than Parisian,
he landed in Paris, more precisely, rue de Cléry, at the age of 56. The one who wrote: Paris seems to me
a country of novels, did not fail to evoke Paris
in his plays. Corneille does not paint Paris in his
tragedies, but in his early comedies. He portrays his contemporaries
in the Paris of his time. Dorente, the hero of the comedy
The Liar, is delighted to find himself in
fashionable places, whether it be the Tuileries Gardens,
the land of the beautiful world and gallantry, the Île Saint-Louis, an enchanted island,
or the Palais-Royal, then called the Palais Cardinal,
and the entire Universe can see nothing equal to the superb exterior
of the Palais Cardinal. Corneille concludes his declaration of love
to the city and its inhabitants by lending his words to Gérontes, the young man’s father. Paris sees
its metamorphoses every day. A whole city with built pomp
seems to have miraculously emerged from an old ditch, and from these superb roofs we presume
that all these inhabitants are gods or kings. It is a stone’s throw from the Palais-Royal
, under the arcades of the Comédie-Française, that we
find the bust of Pierre Corneille. And right next to his,
that of another famous playwright, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin,
known as Molière. It is 1643. Molière then brings together actors
under the name of illustrious theater. He is just 20 years old and has just
left his family. He joined
the Béjarts and set off. To do this, the troupe sets its sights
on the metalworkers’ tennis court , at the bottom of Rue Mazarine. This room was at the corner with the rue
de Seine, near the Tour de Nesle, in the moats of the
Philippe August enclosure. However, the troupe had to move quickly. In fact, due to either lack
of space or debts, she sought a more lively area in December 1644. For this reason, she joined the
Croix-Noire tennis court, rue des Bar, in the Port Saint-Paul district. For this move, the troupe takes
with it the woods and the lodges. It only takes 18 days
to redesign the new room. Due to his debts, Molière
was imprisoned for a time in the Châtelet. To get out of this situation, he had to enlist
the help of a certain Léonard Aubry. Indeed, despite its proximity to
the fine hotels, the Croix-Noire tennis court was
no better business than that of the metalworkers for Molière. Also, the troupe had to leave the premises
some time after Jean-Baptiste Poquelin’s release from prison. For a time she went to
the Croix-Blanche tennis court, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, rue de Bussy. She finally left Paris completely
in 1946, to go and play in provincial towns. Molière’s Parisian homes
and all the theaters where he performed have now disappeared. We must therefore be wary of appearances. For example, the inscription found on
Rue du Pont-Neuf with his bust indicating that this is the place of his
birth is an error. He was born in January
1622, a stone’s throw from there, at the intersection of rue
Saint-Honoré and rue Sauval. And another one And if we
indicate it elsewhere. You see, two
different inscriptions in two different places. Which one is right?
You have to know that. Likewise, his tomb
of Father Lachez is empty. These remains were
initially transferred to the cemetery of Saint-Joseph, his parish. He died on Rue de Richelieu. And at the end of the 18th century,
these remains were probably transferred to the catacombs. You have to go to the corner of rue
Molière and rue Richelieu to admire the Molière fountain. Designed by the architect Visconti
and built in 1844, it represents the author seated atop
a stone plinth framing two female figures:
Light Comedy and Serious Comedy. Who better than Victor Hugo offers us this
great gap, both temporal and stylistic? We are transported to the 19th century,
that of the Romantics, of which the author was one of the leading figures. Although most of his Parisian homes
have disappeared, the small attic at 30 Rue du Dragon,
where he saw him write his first poems, remains. Likewise his apartment on the Place des Vosges, which he occupied from 1832 to 1848. The poet’s residence on the Place des Vosges was said
to have been inhabited by Marion Delorme in the 17th century. He who wrote, precisely,
a play called Marion Delorme. It was in this beautiful place that Victor Hugo
wrote a large part of his work, a large part of his theatre,
The beginning of Les Misérables. And it was also there that he would receive,
often with great pomp, the greatest writers of his time,
such as Théophile Gautier, Théodort de Banville and Alexandre Dumas. Among Victor Hugo’s novels,
two are particularly linked to the city, Notre-Dame de Paris
and Les Misérables. Victor Hugo,
poet, but also a great novelist, two of his
greatest novels take place in the city of Paris, Notre-Dame
de Paris and Les Misérables. In these two novels, Victor Hugo
disappears into the status of a character. The most explicit fight led
by the author in the novel is a plea for the preservation
of architectural heritage, which was endangered at the time of the novel by
outright destruction or by restorations that disfigure the
original architecture of the monuments. And his novel certainly contributed
to the restoration of this monument. This was achieved in the second
half of the 19th century with Viollet-le-Duc. To do this, Victor Hugo does not consider himself
bound to respect historical truth at all costs. He does not hesitate to modify the details
of the facts and to tighten the plot to better bring out the character
of the historical figures. And as he himself would say: I prefer to
believe in the novel than in history, because I prefer
moral truth to historical truth. And in Les Misérables,
Victor Hugo will clarify: He does not need to say that he loves Paris. Paris is the birthplace of his spirit. In 1848, he was appointed mayor of the 8th
arrondissement of Paris, then deputy of the Second Republic. During the coup d’état of December 2, 1851,
fomented by the future Napoleon III, Victor Hugo joined the resistance. Threatened with death, he leaves Paris. He leaves Paris and goes to Brussels. Then it was Jersey, then Guernsey,
where he built his house, Haute-Ville-à-Hauss. On his return, the Parisians
gave him a triumphant welcome. In 1878,
the novelist moved into 5 Avenue d’Élo, which was renamed during his lifetime,
please, Avenue Victor Hugo. He died there on May 22, 1885. Despite his will,
in which Victor Hugo had asked to be taken in the
poor man’s hearse, the poet was given a state funeral. His body will be laid to rest
under the Arc de Triomphe. The Parisians will pay him a final
tribute, and then accompany him to his final
resting place under the Pantheon. There were nearly two
million Parisians there that day. It was in this building, dedicated
to the glory of the great men of the nation, that he was joined in 2002,
on the occasion of the bicentenary of his birth, by the ashes of his
companion in exile, the novelist Alexandre Dumas. Just like Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas,
another great figure of French Romanticism, left his mark on his century and his city. Dumas’s works are not
only historical, but also geographical. The author puts Paris in the spotlight. Thus, in The Three Musketeers,
the characters roam the Saint-Sulpice district. The adventures of Joseph Balsamo
take us to rue Saint-Claude and the queen’s necklace to rue Vieille du Temple. After a trip to Russia and an engagement
in Naples with Garibaldi, he returned to finish his life on Boulevard
Malsherbe, with his son, to whom we owe The Lady of the Camellias. It is also said that his son
discovered and said, every evening as he passed
by the bust of his father, made by Gustave Dauré, on
the Place du Général-Catreaux, as he entered his house: Good evening, Dad. Where the city had made a habit
of paying homage to its writers with street names,
it is also the names of characters from the playwright’s work that are being
honored, whether with rue Monte-Cristo or rue d’Artagnan. In 1844,
Balzac wrote to Madame Ansca: Four men will have had an immense life: Napoleon,
Cuvier, Oconelle, and I want to be the fourth. The first lived the life of Europe,
he inoculated himself with weapons. The second married the globe,
the third is to embody a people. I would have carried an
entire society in my head. With this collection of novels and short stories,
Balzac aims to be a witness to his century, of which he draws up an inventory
for future generations. It focuses on realities of
daily life that were ignored by classical authors. Thanks to the precision and richness
of its observations, the Human Comedy has today the value
of socio-historical testimony, and allows us to follow the rise of the
French bourgeoisie from 1815 to 1848. Rue Vieille du Temple,
like Rue des Archives, is one of the streets most frequented
by the characters of the Human Comedy. For what ? Well, because Balzac,
when he came to Paris, lived in this Marais district, between 1813 and 1824. His father also had a Parisian pied-à-terre
located on rue Portefoin, a stone’s throw from Laure de Berny’s pied-à-terre. And Laure de Berny was to be
Balzac’s first great love. This is his dear Diletta. It is she who will advise him,
who will truly make him the great writer. Without Laure de Berny, there would
undoubtedly not have been the great Balzac. Laure de Berny,
daughter of friends of her parents and stepdaughter of the Chevalier de Jarjaille,
who attempted to free Marie-Antoinette,
imprisoned at the Conciergerie. Which brings us to the Latin Quarter. It was in this neighborhood that Honoré
would finally free himself from family guardianship. There he will encounter his first
loves and his first bankruptcies. Finding
Balzac’s Parisian homes is a feat, as he has covered his tracks so much. Covered in debt and spending without counting,
he put his creditors in debt for a long time by renting two properties at the same time
or by assuming a false identity. Thus, it was under the name of his brother-in-law that he
settled at 1 rue Cassini. When Balzac settled in rue à Siny,
very close to the Paris Observatory, it is said that he placed
a small statuette of Napoleon on his desk. And regularly
he addresses him: What Napoleon accomplished with the sword, I will accomplish.
Made by the pen. Accumulating precious furniture and
expensive carpets, he increased his debt and fled his creditors by hiding
at number 13 rue des Batailles, under an assumed name. The road has since been cleared
by Yena Avenue. This catches up with him, and now he is
at number 54 Avenue des Champs-Élysées,
staying in the house of his friend, Countess Guy Baudonie-Visconti. His genius allows him to play
cat and mouse with creditors and sometimes the law, and to
devote himself to the development of his work. So, Balzac, to achieve his gigantic production with the Human Comedy, will subject himself to an
extraordinary, exceptional work. He will be forced to
work almost 20 hours a day. Balzac was able, for a week,
ten days, also pressed by his creditors, to finish his work. He will mention it in his
letters to Madame Ansca. To maintain this
infernal, almost inhuman rhythm. Balzac will need the coffee, but he
will consume the cold coffee that he crushes. If taken on an empty stomach,
this coffee inflames the stomach walls, harms it, and upsets it. From then on, everything is moving. Ideas are shaken like the battalions
of the Grande Armée on the battlefield. And the battle takes place. The memories come thick and fast. Signs deployed. The light cavalry of the comparisons
develops with a magnificent gallop. The artillery of logic rushes in
with its train and its gargoyles. The witticisms
arrive in skirmisher. The figures stand up. The paper becomes covered in ink. Balzac, who was in excellent health
from the start, died at the age of 51. Yes, Balzac worked himself to death. For Stéphane Zweig,
Balzac’s literary production is absolutely without equal. We can talk about 16 to 18
handwritten pages per day. Incredible figure. I returned to the life of a literary convict. I get up at midnight and go to
bed at 6 p.m. Can these 18 hours of work barely
suffice for my occupations? Or again, When I’m not writing my
manuscripts, I’m thinking about my plans. And when I’m not thinking about my plans and
writing manuscripts, I have proofs to correct. This is my life. Then, Balzac moved into Ruré Noir, an
apartment in which he would write some of his greatest novels. It was in Passy, ​​in his apartment,
that Balzac would construct the entire architecture of the human comedy. When he signed his contract with Furn,
he would unify his entire work. We can cite some of the novels he wrote
in Passy: A Dark Affair, Splendor and Misery of Courtesans,
Ursules Mirouette. These last two great novels,
Cousin Bette and Cousin Ponce, are also written for the most part, Appathy. His last address will be 14 Rues
Fortunées, since renamed Rues Balzac. Balzac, at the end of his life, had one
fixed idea: to marry Madame Ansca. Love was one of his
great sources of inspiration. And he wants Mrs. Ansca to marry him. To do this, he bought an outbuilding
of the Baujon folly, located very close to the Champs-Élysées,
in a new district at the time. He buys it partly with
the Countess’s money. He decorated his house with numerous paintings
that he bought from various second-hand dealers. And we will find this collection
in his last great novel. It is part of
cousin Ponce’s collection. This work of fitting out his new
home, this palace that he wants for his dear Madame Ansca,
will take up a lot of his time, to the detriment of his work as a writer. But it must be said that at this time,
Balzac no longer had the strength to write. He really worked himself to death. It was in this house that he
entered into agony on Sunday morning, August 18, and died at 11:30 p.m. Victor Hugo, who was his last visitor,
gave a moving and precise account of these last moments. André Moreau would say:
They were the two greatest men of the time and they both knew it. At Balzac’s funeral
on August 21, Victor Hugo was present at the father’s chair.
But it’s not just him. There are also the typographic workers,
those who tore their hair out when Balzac’s manuscripts came back to them. When Balzac corrects a manuscript,
instead of a word, it is a huge paragraph that comes back. It was in front of Alexandre Dumas, in particular,
that Victor Hugo delivered his Funeral Oration that day, one of the most beautiful
texts that evokes the genius of Balzac. All these books form only one book. A living, luminous, profound book,
where we see our entire contemporary civilization coming and going, walking and moving,
with something frightened and terrible mixed with reality
. A marvelous book that the poet called
Comedy and that he could have called History. Without his knowledge, whether he wants it or not,
whether he consents or not, the author of this immense
and strange work, and of the strong race of revolutionary writers. Art. It is in the company of Émile Zola,
master of naturalism, that we will close this chapter on
the golden age of French literature. Although he did not know Balzac as a man,
Jacques Zola was to be a fervent admirer of his work. We can say that his great epic
of the Rougon-Macquart, 20 novels, is largely inspired by the human comedy. In this epic, Zola tells
the story of a family, through the different generations,
under the Second Empire. The Rougon-Macquart novels, 12 of whose 20 novels are
set in Paris, also constitute a chronicle
of the city, highlighting aspects of a radical metamorphosis that took
place over a period of twenty years. Let’s take for example La Curée,
the second part of Les Rougon-Macquart. Zola will also describe all
the real estate speculation that existed around
Haussmann’s major works, and this speculation which will leave a large number
of people behind. Zola Zola will denounce this in his novel. A notch there, a notch further,
notches everywhere. Paris chopped up with sabers, its
veins slit. Zola will also recount in his epic
the beginnings of the industrial revolution, notably with the advent
of the railway. In La bête humaine,
Zola recounts the epic story of the first line created between Paris and Le Havre. What is the human beast? Well, that’s the locomotive. This locomotive, therefore,
which is transformed, in a way, into a living animal. In Au bonheur des dames,
Zola also talks about the advent of department stores, which were
completely new at the time. We are thinking in particular of the three districts. Then later, it will be
Galeries Lafayette or even Le Printemps. Let us now discuss The Belly of Paris,
one of the great novels in the Rougon-Macquart series. Zola, in the novel,
will leave us some paintings worthy of the Impressionists. He will also discuss the new
architecture that Baltard will use. These are the famous pavilions, Baltard. The only remaining pavilion can be seen
in Nogent-sur-Marne today. Zola writes: A whole vegetation, a
whole flowering, a monstrous blossoming of metal,
whose stems which rose like rockets, whose branches which twisted and
knotted themselves, covered a world with the lightness
of foliage the age of a centuries-old forest. But even more than his novels,
it is the author’s opinion that will mark the history of the city. Although Zola was born in Paris in 1840,
he soon left the city because his father, a civil engineer,
was tasked with supplying drinking water to the city of Aix-en-Provence. In Aix en Provence, Zola
will have a lifelong friendship with Paul, a friend of his. Present in many of his writings,
his whole life will nevertheless be nothing more than a series of missed encounters with the capital. At the time of the Commune,
Zola was shocked by the decision to ban a number of newspapers. This is an attack
on freedom of expression. And Zola will then side with
the Versailles people. He is a supporter of order. Fearing being taken hostage by the
commune, he decided to leave the capital. With Zola exiled, the government will take charge
of suppressing the revolt for him. The defederated wall is
there today to bear witness to this. He
returned to Paris to defend Officer Dreyfus
by writing his famous letter: J’accuse to the President of the Republic. At the end of 1894, the Dreyfus affair broke out
, an affair that would divide France in two. French Army Captain
Alfred Dreyfus, a polytechnician and Jew of Alsatian origin,
accused of having delivered secret documents to the Germans , was sentenced
to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Zola was shocked when one day, invited
to Alphonse Daudet’s salon, he heard his son, Léon, making
very violent xenophobic and anti-Semitic remarks. Zola, who had an
Italian father, felt targeted. And from that moment on,
he will side with the Dreyfusards. Georges Clemenceau,
editorialist for L’Aurore, found the article to have a
concise and striking title: “I accuse.” Zola, having explicitly named
the protagonists of the affair, exposes himself to legal proceedings. In fact,
the reaction was not long in coming. Zola is accused of defamation. Following the advice of his lawyer,
he went into exile in London for almost a year. Back in France,
Émile Zola and his wife Alexandrine were poisoned during the night
by the slow residual combustion of a covered fire, produced
by the fireplace in their room. The impact of
Émile Zola’s death was immense. The press echoes the emotion
that is gripping the entire population. At the funeral, Anatole France,
who had insisted on evoking all the facets of the writer,
including his fights for justice, declared: He was a moment
of human conscience. A delegation of miners of two dwarves
accompanies the procession, chanting Germinal, Germinal. Zola’s ashes were transferred
to the Pantheon on June 4, 1908. At the end of the ceremony,
an anti-Dreffusard journalist, Louis Grégory,
opened fire with a revolver on Alfred Dreyfus, who was fortunately
only slightly wounded in the arm. So the author was right. The truth is on the march. Nothing will stop him now. Not even terrorist action. It is with the author of In Search of
Lost Time that we begin this new chapter
in the history of Paris and its entry into the modern world. Marcel Proust was born and died in the west of Paris. In the meantime, he followed his parents to 8,
Rue Roy, 9, boulevard Malserbe and 45,
Rue de Courcelles, where the author began his translations of Rusquine. In the early autumn of 1905, his mother died. Proust was then 34 years old. He can no longer live in the apartment on Rue de Courcelles,
where his mother also lived. For a while, he was found
in a hotel in Versailles. And then he moved to Boulevard Haussmann,
into a building that belonged to his great-uncle, Weill. For a long time, I went
to bed early. Like the narrator of the quest,
Proust flees from his room the scene of a reclusive existence, entirely
devoted to the duty of writing. Withdrawn in the middle of all her things,
protected from the outside by a cocoon of habit. Fifteen years of writing that would make
Marcel Proust a true literary myth. Of the research, Proust will say
that he wrote, created a sort of cathedral, not
with stones, but with words. Two streets in the capital bear his name. An avenue located at the bottom of Passy,
which reminds the walker that the author was born in the district,
sheltered from the troubles of the commune, and an alley which,
in the garden of the Champs-Élysées, links the Place de la Concorde to the Avenue
de Marigny, and leads us to the heart of his novel cycle. The Champs-Élysées garden
is at the heart of the research. It was here that the young Proust
experienced his first romantic feelings with a young girl from the Russian nobility. We will find this same garden
on the Champs-Élysées when the narrator meets Baron Charles
at the end of the search. It was from his room,
which he rarely left after dark to dine at the Ritz, that the author
began his journey through Paris. From the 1910s onwards, Proust became
increasingly focused on his work. He receives less and less. Sometimes it even happens to Cocteau and
Paul Morand to be refused by Céleste, who serves as his watchdog. Only Rinaldohan, his great
childhood love, can come at any time. Bothered by the noise, he had
cork panels installed on the wall. The author receives very few people
and only one person at a time. He devotes himself entirely to his
work in his small retreat. Only the furniture from his room was saved
and it was reconstructed at the Carnavalet Museum. Proust slept on a modest
iron bed from which he hardly ever slept. Forced to leave Boulevard Haussmann,
Proust moved for several months to the third floor of 8 bis rue
Laurent Pichat, in an apartment he rented from the actress Réjane. Proust is in for a very nice surprise. At the end of this year, 1919,
he was taken on to compete with the second volume of the research,
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. During his lifetime, Proust
therefore felt recognized. It was like a culmination for him. He who shut himself away, as I
told you, who saw very few people. There, finally, he sees the light. His work is recognized. Then the writer moved to 44,
rue Hamelin, a place he would hate and describe
as a vile slum, where my pallet barely fit. After the Goncourt Prize, Proust had
only two and a half years, almost three years of life left. Proust, like Balzac,
worked himself to death. He died in his apartment at the age of 51,
on November 18. A photograph taken by Man Ray,
the day after the writer’s death, at the request of Jean Cocteau,
shows a bearded Marcel Proust in profile, surrounded by white linen on his
deathbed, on November 20. The funeral took place the following day,
in the church of Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot, with the military honors due
to a knight of the Legion of Honor. The audience is large. Barès, said to Mauriac on the square
in front of the church: Finally, it was our young man. No need to look for a statue,
a commemorative plaque, a street name. There aren’t any. Céline, one of the greatest writers
of the 20th century, reeks of sulphur. And for good reason, these anti-Semitic pamphlets
have irremediably discredited him. It is therefore in his work and his life
that we must delve to find traces of the Paris that the author of Journey
to the End of the Night and Death on Credit, into which he transposed his childhood. It started like this. I had never said anything, nothing. It was Arthur Ganat who got me talking. Arthur, a student,
a medical student too, a comrade. So we meet at Place Clichy. The extract that has just been read is the very beginning of Journey to the End of the Night, and therefore the beginning of
Louis Ferdinand Céline’s work. Well, not quite, because today
the thesis he wrote in 1924, a thesis on Semmelweis,
is considered the true beginning of his literary work. Céline is considered one of the
great, great prose writers of the 20th century. He, in a way,
revolutionized the novel a little. Celine, in an interview, said that
the classical century had killed French. He wanted to bring back into fashion
spoken language, emotion, and little music, as he would say. We had accommodation above everything. Upstairs, three rooms
connected by a corkscrew. Upstairs, our last room,
the one that overlooked the glass. In the air, that is. It was closed with bars
because of thieves and cats. This was my room. So, it was in the passage de Choiseul,
which he renamed: passage des Bérézina, that Céline lived between the ages of 5 and 13. His mother had a
lingerie and second-hand shop there. Above was the living quarters. He recalls his memories, focusing
on the most trivial details. The dogs were urinating everywhere. Even though we were taking sulfur,
it was still a kind of sewer, the Berezina Passage. Pissing brings people in. Anyone who wanted to pee on us,
even adults, especially when it was raining in the street.
We came in for that. It would have been wrong to complain. Often, the smugglers became customers,
with or without dogs. Or again. It must be admitted that the passage
is unbelievable as a mess. It’s designed to make us die
slowly, but surely. Between the urine of the little cleps,
the droppings, the glavios, the leaking gas. It’s more disgusting than the inside of a prison. Under the stained glass window, below, the sun comes in
so ugly that it is eclipsed with a candle. Everyone started to gasp. The passage became aware
of its ignoble asphyxiation. Céline will share her childhood memories of
the two universal exhibitions that the city of Paris hosted. Grandma, she was very wary
of the exhibition that was announced. The other one, the one from 82,
had served no purpose other than to upset small businesses, to make
idiots spend their money wrongly. In times of noise, commotion
and bluff, nothing remained. Just two or three vacant lots
and plasterwork so disgusting that 20 years later,
no one wanted to remove it. Steam spurted out,
leaping from all sides. There were prodigious cauldrons,
as high as three houses, exploding connecting rods that charged
towards us from the depths of hell. That was a waste. Céline spent her childhood during the
Belle Époque, before the war of 1418. A time of profound change
that would leave behind ordinary people who were unable to
adapt to technological progress. Hence the title of his second novel,
Death on Credit. It’s as if to live
is to buy death on credit. The Liberation of France marked
the hour of dishonor for the author. He fled France and reached Denmark,
where he eventually served a prison sentence for his collaboration
with the Nazi enemy. Back in France,
Céline changed her status. He is the plague victim. However, he signed
with one of the major publishers of the time, Gaston Gallimard, a fantastic contract, worth
5 million francs. His literary aura is still there. Volume 1 of Féhéri, for once again,
not having received the expected success, Céline wants to accompany the release of volume
2, Normance, with maximum publicity and erase the harm caused by all these
years of exile in Germany and Denmark. The first years after her return
to France were difficult for Céline, despite this contract which allowed her to live.
And widely. Yet his books sell poorly. It was not until the German Trilogy,
E 57, that sales started to pick up again. Louis Ferdinand des Touches died on
July 1, 1961, in Meudon, in his home. On the day of his funeral,
there were few people. Nevertheless, we can see Roger Nîmes,
Lucien Rebatet, Claude Gallimard, his wife too, Lucette, of course, was there. Boris Vian is a
legendary figure in post-war Paris. His image as a jazz trumpeter,
host of the Nuits de Saint-Germain and singer who was both zany
and committed, helped to popularize his literary work,
particularly among teenagers who, seduced by the froth of the days,
discovered it in the 1960s. Born in the Paris region in 1920,
Boris Vian is a writer, but he has several strings to his bow. He’s not just a writer. He is also a musician, a
jazz trumpeter, a painter, and a film dialogue writer. Boris Vian is truly a
fiery talent in many areas. Under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan,
Boris Vian published several novels in the American detective style,
including Jiret Craché sur vos tombes, which was a huge success. A sort of revenge for him, because his
books signed with his own name had not sold at all
and will not sell during his lifetime. So much so that he could say
that Sullivan brought Boris Vian to life. The place that remains most charged
with emotional memories is number 6 bis of the Véron estate, this curious dead end
grafted onto the Boulevard de Clichy, in which he lived for the
last six years of his short life. He moved there in 1953
with his second wife, the dancer Ursula Kubler,
with whom he had previously lived in a tiny maid’s room. This apartment, located on the third floor, is
now entirely preserved and maintained by the family and its
representative Nicole Berthaud, who watches over the memory of the writer. Boris Vian soon has as a neighbor an author he
knows and admires, Jacques Prévert. It shares a large terrace
that extends above the Moulin Rouge. It is used for meetings of the Collège
de Pataphysique, an association founded in 1948,
whose members include Raymond Queneau, Michel Léris and Eugène Ionesco. It took the name of Terrace
of the Three Satraps. The term Satrap applies
to an honorary distinction of this atypical institution. In this case, the Three Satraps
were Boris Vian, Jacques Prévert, and his dog, named Hergé. It was on this terrace that Ursula
and Boris, Ursula Kubler of Swiss origin, a great dancer and actress, celebrated
their marriage which took place on February 8, 1954. Vian had five years left to live. During this period, his
last works appeared, which, unfortunately for him, were
not to be successful. We can cite the second version
of autumn in Beijing or ahead of the zizik. If you want to know the other places
in Paris that Boris Vian left his mark on, you should visit
the jazz clubs and cabarets of Saint-Germain-des-Prêts
and the Sorbonne district. The first of these,
the Lorientés cellar, opened in May 1946, at 5 Rue des Carmes. In 1959, his novel,
I’ll Spit on Your Graves, was adapted for the cinema,
although in disagreement with the producer, he attended a private screening
on June 23, 1959, at the Marbeuf cinema, near the Champs-Élysées. That evening, Boris Vian collapsed, the
victim of a heart attack. As we know, he had
heart problems since childhood. He died at the age of 39. This is where our
literary stroll through Paris ends. I hope this one will inspire you
to look up from your book the next time you’re
walking the streets of the capital. Because if the city comes to life
in some of the most beautiful pages of French literature,
it can also bring certain authors back to life , at the turn of a
street or a plaque.