ZOLA's THE DRINKING DEN BEGINS WITH THE PROTAGONIST, GERVAISE, SEEKING HER MAN IN THE THRONG PASSING THROUGH THE TOLL GATE:
"When she raised her eyes above that interminable grey wall that surrounded the town like a band of desert...
She saw flowing, between the two squat pavilions of the toll gate, an uninterrupted stream of men, cattle, wagons, that descended from the heights of Montmartre and la Chapelle. There was the stamping of herds [...] an endless march of workers going to their jobs, their tools on their backs, their loaf under their arms; the crowd was engulfed in Paris [...]."
-- Novel set in the 1850's, published in 1877.
Translation and underlining mine
The poverty that came with industrialization brought dives, brothels...
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L'Absinthe by Degas, 1875, zoom |
Rue des Moulins by Toulouse-Lautrec, 1894 / zoom
And violence. Gervaise lives near the wall,"behind which, at night, she sometimes heard the murdered scream."
# # #
The bar where she destroys herself through drink gave the name "L'Assommoir"* to a square a few steps north of the Barbès métro, just outside the former toll gate.
*"Assommer:" to knock out
L'Assommoir by André Capellani, 1909 / YouTube
"Standing in front of l'Assommoir, Gervaise was pensive.
If she had two cents, she would go in and drink a drop. It might make her less hungry. Ah! She'd drunk a drop or two! But it had been so pleasant. And, from afar, she contemplated the drunkenness machine, feeling that her disaster came from there, and dreaming of ending it all with brandy, when she had the means."
She dies of delirium tremens.
# # #
The modern site does not fit that novel
about poverty and desperation,
just as today's pickpockets and petty drug dealers
pale next to the murderers
whose victims' screams begin the story.
* * *
Next,
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