Apprenti à bonheur

“Le bonheur n’est pas une chose aisé. Il est très difficile de le trouver en nous, et impossible de le trouver ailleurs.” (Happiness is not an easy thing. It is very difficult to find it within ourselves, and impossible to find it elsewhere.)--Nicholas Chamfort, though I’ve seen it attributed to Buddha. Possibly having nothing to do with right now at all; I’ve had the quote on the wall over my desk at home for years, though.

Another cool, breezy day with clouds coming and going, mostly sunny—and in sheltered sunny spots, like the pool at the end of the Tuileries, a little warmer to seduce people into removing coats (though it should be a hint, that the Damman ice cream stand is gone), and then the minute they pass out of that shelter, the wind quickly reminds them that that was fleeting, artificial shelter.

Walked to the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville (and crossing the river never lets one forget the wind), caught the #1 to Concorde, and walked around to the Orangerie. When it becomes possible to tear one’s eyes away from the glass, the views, the light, the actual museum viewing can begin. The first thing I wandered into was the current special exhibition, of some photographer I’d never heard of. How remiss. I’ll always know the name Heinrich Kühn now. I forgot any other reason I’d gone to the museum in the first place.

The photographs are almost all from between 1895 and 1914. They could be Impressionist paintings. There are many that look for all the world like watercolors. And yet, with all that incredible technique, it’s more often the actual subjects, the angles, the composition that are arresting. Breathtaking. There’s a simple, bucolic scene with a pool in the foreground, called “près de Dachau,” from when that was still just a place. Though it’s hard, I think my favorite was “Ruisseau dans le Blé,” (Rill in the Wheat, just a little rivulet running through a wheat field; my Rill would never answer to it; he really doesn’t speak much French). Which I can’t find online under that name, though “Summer Day” is similar. And one beautiful one called “Crépuscule” (twilight), for its own beauty even more than its reminder of the World War I trench in A Very Long Engagement. And these are just the landscapes. The portraits made me stand and stare; you wish your family photos had ever looked so wonderful.

And then there’s all the rest of that stuff—you know, the Cézannes, Renoirs, Matisses. That fantastic “Jeune Apprenti” by Modigliani. Blah, blah, blah : ) Those ROOMS where you’re surrounded by Monet waterlilies—water (and light) studies.

Yesterday I took the Métro out to the flea market at Vanves. It was cold, windy, and overcast. Everyone there had a runny nose. More than ever, I’m kicking myself for not snatching up a couple of old-time café au lait bowls the week before at the off-brand flea market (though one of the main reasons I’d hesitated—getting them back home intact—still stands). As I recall, those were €3 and €5; I didn’t see one under €15 yesterday. Other than that there wasn’t that much that was overpoweringly interesting nor a bargain, particularly when I could see my breath and it was looking like rain.

Coming back, since I was already on the train that goes there (at the far opposite end of its run), I decided to go on to St. Denis. It’s a pretty long underground ride, about half an hour. Perhaps it’s poetic justice of some kind, that the place where kings and queens, three dynasties’ worth, were buried for 1,200 years is now surrounded by a community where I’m guessing French is not a first language for the majority of the population. Where there's a protest encampment of homeless families in tents in one area. There’s a big modern square between the Hôtel de Ville there (on the front of which is a big banner opposing the raising of the retirement age) and the basilica; the Métro exit puts one in the middle of a modern, though already scruffy, outdoor shopping mall, and then between that and the square—this being Sunday—there was a sprawling street market, though not of the antiquing type.

The first major Gothic building, something of a prototype, St. Denis (originally a pilgrimage destination because that martyr had been buried there about 250 A.D.) was heavily restored in the 19^th century. It had to be, having been so heavily vandalized and semi-demolished during the Revolution (I mentioned the kings and queens were buried there, right? It was the very symbol of lack of separation of church and state). From the outside it’s rather forbidding and dark, but then, inside, it actually is beautiful, in that severe Gothic way. And there is still an absolute, salvaged and restored necropolis—in the basilica itself, as well as down in the crypt. Where Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI are buried, among others, their bodies having been moved there from the Madeleine cemetery in Paris—though there’s a bizarre (imho) 1830 marble monument of them upstairs, too, kneeling before the altar of a chapel.

If you’re at all a French history buff, with no monarchist leanings whatsoever it’s still quite amazing to walk along and find Charles Martel, Clovis, Dagobert, Charlemagne’s parents, Henry II (and Catherine de Médici), Henry IV, Francis I—in no particular order, and on and on, and other members of the royalty and nobility besides—all under one roof. Some of the monuments are grandiose, some simple, some eerie. There’s a sprinkling of tombs that are only tentatively identified—one only as “unknown princess”—echoing that carved female figure on Henry and Catherine’s huge tomb marker, holding a mirror: that traditional symbol of vanity . . .