II.1.2. SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRÉS, RAMPART HEIR

"THEY CROSSED THE SEINE AND CHARLIE FELT THE

SUDDEN PROVINCIAL QUALITY  OF THE LEFT BANK..." 

-- Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1931

This is the passage where Fitzgerald

leaves the wealthy, Americanized area around the Hotel Ritz

to make Saint-Germain the disorienting setting for his protagonist's defeat.

MENU: 2.1.2. Saint-Germain, rampart heir

The left bank has always been less commercial and more intellectual than the right because far from the main artery, 

it was Church land... 

Crucifixion of the Parlement of Paris, toward 1450 / zoom

King and saint in a field across the river from the Louvre, so at Saint-Germain. 

...and because the city wall cut through it.

In brief

• Outlaws and Protestants live beyond the rampart

• A neighborhood that intellectuality made famous

• Hollywood's take

• Brands attack, tradition holds on

• Art galleries' riches and traps

• Other galleries that do their work well

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Next,

Outlaws and Protestants live beyond the rampart

OUTLAWS AND PROTESTANTS LIVE BEYOND THE RAMPART

BEGGARS, THIEVES AND MARGINALS LIVE OUTSIDE THE WALL, WHERE AUTHORITIES DO NOT VENTURE

In the 16th century, Protestants join them.

--  Pascal Payen-Appenzeller, pastor and  historian of Paris,

gave some of the information here.

   The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, 1854 ed.

Saint-Germain must have resembled this "court of miracles."

        Adapted from a map of Paris in 1615 / zoom

 

• They sang hymns in the fields of Saint-Germain and pastors' first meeting took place in that "Little Geneva," a reference to Calvin's republic.

• Many were craftspeople, and living outside the city let them avoid guilds' regulations (History from fresh perspectives says more).

• Protestantism continued in Saint-Germain despite Louis XIV's prohibition (in 1684), to avoid clashing with the Scandinavians whose embassies were located there.  

# # #

Those Protestants are a reason for Saint-Germain's intellectuality because:

• Personal responsibility for salvation, their core belief, implies meditating on the Bible and so being able to read it, at a time when printing made books available.

• Here a massacre interrupts a figure as he reads — outside a rampart:

            Expulsion of the Protestants of Toulouse by Antoine Rivalz, toward 1725 / zoom

• That emphasis on meditation and literacy fit the rising craftspeople, shopkeepers and lawyers who made up the mass of 16th-century Protestants in France. Sedentary, urban and obliged to keep accounts, they were usually literate.

# # #

They left the superb Library of the history of Protestantism:

(Built in 1877)

The portrait of the first Protestant military chief (Admiral Coligny) leans against books, and a class led by the historian mentioned above.

Photo by a parent of the little boy

The director is showing16th-century documents to German Calvinists, descendants of French Protestants who fled the kingdom when their faith was outlawed. One record is the Bible of Henri IV, who had to abjure his Protestant belief.

#  #  #

Catholics too explain Saint-Germain's intellectuality, since the Church controlled the left bank.

•  Outside the wall and north of Protestant territory was the powerful abbey of Saint-Germain. Only the tower below is left.

Zoom

  Conference room at 4 place de Saint-Germain du Prés; access thanks to Mr. Payen-Appenzeller

• Within the wall was the Sorbonne University, where much of Europe's clergy was trained

Zoom

A 15th-century Sorbonne theology class

# # #

The Sorbonne is still at the heart of the French university system and the country's great schools cluster around it 

• The prestigious Lycée [high school] Saint-Louis, which Jesuits founded in the 16th century to train the sons of the elite, is across the boulevard and the Schools of Law and Medicine are steps away.

• The École Normale Supérieur, the École des Sciences Politiques, the Faculté de Jussieu and the Collège de France are in the neighborhood.

•  The École Polytechnique and École Centrale were there until moved to the suburbs (in 1964 and 2015 respectively).

The bus stop next to the Sorbonne

 is called "Les Écoles" (The Schools).

*    *    *

Next,

A neighborhood that intellectuality made famous

A NEIGHBORHOOD THAT INTELLECTUALITY MADE FAMOUS

THE EDUCATED RESIDENTS ATTRACTED EDITORS AND BOOKSTORES, THEN GALLERIES OF CONTEMPORARY ART AND THEATERS FOR CLASSIC, FOREIGN OR EXPERIMENTAL FILMS

© Galerie Jeanne Bucher

The bookstore became the Jeanne Bucher gallery (in 1923): more here.

 

A dozen small movie-houses have several projection rooms to show a series of different films each day. They make Paris the world movie capital. 

# # #

It was also known for its cafés, where professors, students, writers, artists (...) came to discuss and could stay indefinitely for the price of a cup of coffee.

The practice became even more popular during the Occupation,

because cafés were heated. 

Zoom

From left to right, Jean-Paul Sartre, Boris Vian, a friend and Simone de Beauvoir 

# # #

A brief golden age: The Liberation brought austere Existentialism * and the exuberant jitterbug.

* We are alone and must choose our way, an idea that fit the wartime choice between supporting the Resistance and passivity.

July Rendez-vous by Jacques Becker, 1949

The neighborhood's fame brought an influx of tourists. They hastened the end of a fête, which in any case was incompatible with the coming economic transformation.

#  #  #

That epoch's lasting trace: Paris is Europe's capital of jazz.

• Jazz was thought a music of savages, too gripping to be serious: In English "to jazz" meant to fornicate. By admiring its intellectuality and rigor the prestigious philosophers of Saint-Germain gave it its letters of nobility.

History of France through Comic Strips (Larousse, 1978) (in French)

• Saint-Germain hosts a jazz festival each year. Among its night spots, this "cave" * where the jitterbug has been danced every night since 1946.

* One of the medieval cellars, where music did not disturb neighbors (though the youthful crowds did).

Le Caveau de la Huchette / Claude Abron

• "I always wanted to visit Saint-Germain. I came, and brought my trumpet."

Pamela Spurdon

 

Church lands and rampart 

are the distant reasons

for the neighborhood's distinctiveness. 

*    *    *

Next,

Hollywood's take

HOLLYWOOD'S TAKE

FRED ASTAIRE SEEKS AUDREY HEBBURN IN SAINT-GERMAIN*

*Funny Face by Stanley Donen, 1957

He comes to a "cave" that is shady and sexy...

  

"This must be the place."

• ...and finds Audrey thinking she engaged in an intellectual discussion with two men who in fact are drunk. The scene is in the first half of the movie, which is gone from YouTube, but a critic for the London Times writes:   

"...there is that in the film's attitude towards the 'intellectual' which offends. It is not amiable parody and it is not telling satire; it has its roots in the ill-based instinct to jeer, and its jeers are offensive."

• She performs modern dance 
  to evoke intellectuality, though it was the opposite of the Liberation's ebullient jitterbug that was danced in fact. 

Zoom

•  When the elegant philosopher who fascinates Audrey turns out to be a wolf, she chooses homespun Fred.

Subtext:

Rough-edged, moral America

wins out over sophisticated, decadent France.

Involuntary avowal:

Americans proud of their anti-intellectualism

cheer Fred's triumph

because Saint-Germain's intelligence 

makes them feel inferior.

*     *     *

Next,

Brands attack, tradition holds on 

BRANDS ATTACK, TRADITION HOLDS ON

A BRAND REPLACING A WORLD-KNOWN BOOKSTORE

HIGHLIGHTS THE ASSAULT

A bookstore specialized in the performing arts occupied this site until 2016:

The bookstore specialized in performance arts (Fischbacher) occupied 59 rue de Seine until 2016.

But places away from the main arteries still define the area. Such as...

• Place de Furstenberg, which is the setting for the last scene of a movie about the 19th-century elite :

               -- The Age of Innocence by Martin Scorsese with

          Daniel Day Lewis, Michèle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder, 1997

•  Costume jewelry at the same address for 50 years:

Fabrice

 33 and 54 rue Bonaparte 

• A  café where works from the 1930's line the walls:

La Palette

43 rue de Seine

• A shop for antique dolls, facing the Senate:

La Maison de la Poupée

40 rue de Vaugirard

#  #  #

Editors, printers, bookbinders and rare-book dealers remain:  

A family specialized in books has lived in this house for five generations.*

*On rue Visconti, site of Balzac's publishing house 

"Rare book purchase and expertise"

#  #  #

 "Saint-Germain managed to be both high-class and subversive" 

"The old stomping grounds of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Richard Wright and Gertrude Stein and on and on and on [...] were now those of stars of the media, of the intelligentsia, of creative entrepreneurs, of impassioned socialists with a taste of luxury, who lived in the center of town, just south of the Seine." 

 -- Rendezvous Eighteenth

by Jake Lamarr, an American writer living in Paris, 2001

Real estate in Saint-Germain

 is the most expensive in Paris,

and one comes upon stars of French culture

in shops and cafés.

 That intellectual elite obstructs

multinationals' sweep.

*    *    *

Next,

Art galleries' riches and traps