Paris Is No Place to Practice Your French
La Musee D'Orsay
Paris is No Place to
Practice Your French
Mme. Lazar
would have been so proud of me as I used the subjective with ease (il faut que
j'aille maintenant), but as Tony says, Paris is no place to practice your
French. Very few people reply in anything but English. I think it's because
while eggs like me speak French and are understood, as I was, they don't
understand the replies in French. So the French, known for their ability to
quickly capitulate, just answer in English. Sometimes, if I couldn't hear
someone because they were behind glass, and I asked them to repeat something, it
would come out in English.
I must sound
very francophobic, but I am not. I chose Paris over Amsterdam, because I really
wanted to walk around Paris and speak French. I found myself repeating the names
of stations. Miromesnil, Jacques Jaures, Glaciere, Mairie d'Issy, Varenne,
Champs de Mars, Trocadero.
"A weekend
away to parlez francais, well fancy
that."
On Sunday I was all over the
place. I went to Maison de Balzac first, in the 16th Arrondissement. It's close
to the Passy metro stop. I visited the home of one of my favorite authors,
Honore de Balzac. He wrote both Cousine Bette and Cousin Pons there. These are
two of my favorite novels. Both Bette and Pons have some very gay elements. Pons
is a single man, a music teacher, who lives with his dear friend of many years,
Schmucke, and their house is filled with knicknacks that turn out to be quite
valuable. They could have called the novel Cousine
Marie.
They had three sets of galleys; I
was fascinated to see today's proofreading marks in use back then. Now I can
walk around my office, or at LGNY, and say things like, "Hey if these
proofreading marks were good enough for
Balzac..."
It was hot as hell, though.
Really hot. I don't know how he wrote a damn thing when it got so hot; but he
was alive before global warming.
I then
went to the Musee d'Orsay. I was there most of the afternoon. It's fantastical;
it's in an old train station. I must've taken three rolls of film inside. I take
a lot of photos of statues; they know how to stay
still.
There was one statue I really
loved. It was Napoleon III's son with his dog, Nero. THe dog looks lovingly up
at his imperial master. The sculptor who did this piece must've really loved
dogs; he captured that loyal gaze so well. The Prince must've loved that dog; I
suspect he insisted the dog be featured with him. I loved the sculpture. I feel
verklempt. Meanwhile, that kid's father was the reason Victor Hugo went into
exile for 18 years, and he was partial inspiriation to Zola's Rougon-Macquart
(20 novels about France under the Second Empire, 1851-1871). But I still like
the statue. that sort of boy-and-his-dog love transcends
time.
There was a temporary exhibit of a
Swedish impressionist named Jansson, featuring many bleak, dark blue landscapes
of and around Stockholm. Later, when he was in a long liaison with a man named
Knut, very bright scenes of all-male bathing pools appeared. His best work. The
exhibit had no problem pointing out that he had a long relationship with Knut
and affairs with some of the models in his male nude paintings. The French are
not "liberal" or "progressive." They are just realists who realize gay people
are part of life, and not some fascinating, exotic exception. Vive la
Republique.
Hide the
children.
I had a lovely overpriced
baguette on the roof terrace of the D'Orsay, overlooking the
Louvre.
Then I headed to the Maison
Hugo.
Posted: Sun - July 11, 1999 at 02:41 AM