April in Paris!! Yes, well I'm hoping it will live up to its reputation but it will have to warm up significantly in order to do so. I have a message from our apartment host checking to see how we're going and how we're coping with the cold. She says she's never known such cold at this time of year. We're just lucky I guess........ :-/
However, today is lovely (read: the sun is shining........) and so as to make the most of what could well be a short-lived burst of fine weather (given recent history!), we pick another of the Lonely Planet Paris Guide neighbourhood walks - this time we take the "Latin Quarter Literary Loop". I've really loved spending time in this part of town, it would definitely be one of my favourite areas for wandering, together with the Marais district on the Right Bank. I keep coming back (to both areas) and there's always more to see.
We stroll down to and across the river as we've done many times now, and start this particular walk at Cardinal Lemoine Metro station as suggested, following the map in the LP guide. There are many well-known literary (and other, some more dubious in their "fame") figures who are said to have resided in the Left Bank area at various times. There aren't really any monuments or locations worthy of a photograph, although the old architecture is interesting and sometimes beautiful, as we've come to expect in this city, and there is generally a plaque at each location detailing who lived or worked there, and when, and a bit of relevant information about the person and the site.
The map starts with the former home of James Joyce, the Irish author of "Ulysses", and leads us past the previous residences and haunts of other literary figures such as Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir, Gertrude Stein, and others. According to the LP guide, many of them came to Paris in the early part of last century because it was cheap, they could freely obtain alcohol and drugs, and there was a culture of sexual experimentation and 'anything goes'......! I've not read anything written by any of them - call me a pleb, but I have no idea whether they were literary giants for good reason or none and I can't really say I have any desire to read them now that I've seen where they lived in Paris!!
However, I have recently read "The Paris Wife" by Paula McLain, which is a fiction based on fact, set at the time that Hemingway was an upcoming young writer (two of his novels - "A Moveable Feast" and "The Sun Also Rises" - were written in Paris at this time). McLain's novel gives voice to Ernest's wife Hadley and her struggle with her role as his wife and a woman during the twenties in Paris.
The quote on the plaque at his former home reads: "Tel était Paris de notre jeunesse au temps où nous étions trés pauvres et trés heureux" or (more or less, forgive my French translation) "Such was the Paris of our youth, a time when we were very poor and very happy". I don't think Ernest was particularly easy to live with and I don't think Hadley was very happy!!! She was the first of four wives for him, and their marriage lasted only 6 years - interesting quote under the circumstances I would have thought!! Hemingway seemed to be a bit of a tortured soul and committed suicide in 1961 at the age of 61.
We locate the studio where Picasso lived and worked at a time when he was completing one of his major works "Guernica" in 1937 (we won't get to view this one at the Louvre or anywhere else in Paris - it resides at a museum in Madrid). The hôtel particulier where Picasso lived also featured in Balzac's novel "Le Chef d'Oeuvre Inconnu" (or "The Unknown Masterpiece") - again, not one currently on my bedside table ;-)
The entire "literary loop" walk covers about 7km and the LP Guide recommends allowing 3 hours, but I'm pretty sure it would take longer than that to follow the entire route and see everything at a leisurely pace, with stops along the way for pleasant interludes and conversation. We stroll and chat and enjoy the sunshine, stopping at another Japanese restaurant for lunch, and we end up only doing about half the walk, but it's very enjoyable to walk the streets of sunny Paris (I haven't been able to say that too often!!!) and get more of a feel for this area with an added twist of interest.
We find one real time-warp, a little passage dating from the 1600s with lovely uneven cobbled paving that testifies to its age, and lots of interesting little shops. We end our tour at the original Shakespeare & Company Bookshop at 12 rue de l'Odeon, where founder-editor Sylvia Beach lent books to Hemingway and edited, retyped and published James Joyce's "Ulysses" in 1922 - another one to add to my list of "must reads"................
Our final stop, while we're over that way, is the lovely Église Saint-Germain des-Pres, the oldest church in Paris.
We've noticed posters around the streets advertising a gospel choir performance and this church is one of the venues - tonight! So as we sit inside the church for a while, enjoying the amazing frescoes and listening to rehearsals for another concert - excerpts from Handel's Messiah - we decide we'll get tickets to the gospel event tonight.
In the end, it's a little disappointing. We were expecting better acoustics and a more polished performance, but it's still energetic, enthusiastic, evangelical and enjoyable. Interestingly, some leave part-way through the concert - too much Gospel for their 25€?? I wonder what they were expecting..........
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