MAIS ABSOLUMENT!
As an American historian who has lived in Paris for decades, I would like to show you this fascinating city through my eyes. I'm most interested in two aspects: the creativity of outskirts and immigrants, and an ignored past.
THE OUTSKIRTS,
WHERE TODAY'S CREATIVITY BLOOMS
Paris harbors an immense number of artists in all domains, most of whom are foreign-born and live not in the places once associated with them — Saint-Germain, Montmartre, Montparnasse — but in the unsung outskirts, with their (almost) affordable rents. The painter whose drawings dot these pages, Harald Wolff, is an example: He is German and lives in Montreuil, a plebeian suburb east of the city.
Those outskirts are where major cultural initiatives are launched (for examples, please click here and here) and experiments tried (for a performance that made the streets the stage, click here).
It's where immigrant energies flourish. Take La Goutte d'Or, a neighborhood at the city's northern edge where many Africans live or come for a taste of home:
- They have invented the sociable art of "the look," a means to communicate:
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Uncredited photos are mine. |
Seen on rue Doudeauville, "Main Street"
- That attention explains the barbershops and beauty salons, the stores selling the bright prints associated with Africa and the notions shops that accompany them, the young tailors behind their sewing machines whom one glimpses from the street.
- Barbershop posters show innumerable coiffures, which soccer players of the 2014 World Cup adapted to be identified on television. Then youths adopted them world-wide. The evolution of cuts, color, beards and moustaches takes off from this and other Black neighborhoods: the much rarer and less imaginative barbers in other neighborhoods follow.
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Barbershop sign on a La Goutte d'Or side street
"Art must express a philosophy. Otherwise it is just decoration," an art critic told me. By evoking individual uniqueness within a cohesive community, those posters suggest a view of humanity that Westerners might ponder.
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A PAST THAT IS OMITTED WHEN IT SEEMS ODD, OR CONTRADICTS THE USUAL VIEW
Odd: The way in which Louis XVI tried to flee revolutionary Paris (in 1791)
On his way to join the royalist army at the border, he was recognized, stopped and brought back to Paris. The return took not one day but three because crowds came in such number to insult the king who had betrayed them that the coach could advance only step by step. The debacle ended the aura of the 1500-year-old monarchy, and is considered as important as taking the Bastille.
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| Print of the time / zoom* |
The king's return to Paris: Men do not remove their hats
*« Zoom » allows clicking to obtain the full or enlarged images and information on them.
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Louis's travel choices seem — on the face of it — absurd. Had he and his family gone to the border separately in ordinary vehicles as so many émigrés successfully did, they should have reached it safely. Instead they travelled with chambermaids and the children's governess in two coaches, one of them immense. Guards accompanying it wore bright yellow liveries that resembled those of the former lord of the lands through which they passed, now commander of the émigré army whose invasion the frontier population dreaded. An escort of 300 French dragoons and German-speaking mercenaries, all in striking uniforms, was staggered along the last part of the route, beyond the reach of pursuers on tired horses.
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Harald Wolff |
The liveries
Narrators find the group travel and huge coach "reckless," but overlook the other aberrations. One learns of them by scrutinizing details in certain texts or the governess's account. By skipping what they do not understand, historians miss the drama's real meaning and the depth of its repercussions.
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The Evasion of Louis XVI by Viktor Lazarevski, 2013 |
The movie follows historians.
For the importance of anomalies in general, here.
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Contradictions to the accepted view: The 19th-century insurrections.
- Many people think that these iconic figures are storming the Bastille (in 1789) though in fact the Revolution of 1830 inspired the work. It finished what the French Revolution began — let capitalism take wing by crushing the nobles. But that is almost never mentioned. Capitalism isn't either.
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Liberty Guides the People by Eugene Delacroix, 1830-1831 (cut) / zoom*
- The first massive working-class uprising (5000 dead), the "June Days" of 1848, is forgotten. So is the terror with which the privileged viewed the "barbarian" insurrectionists. One result: The advent of the most autocratic regime in Europe then (the Second Empire, 1851-1870).
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Combat at the Saint-Denis Gate, anonymous lithograph, 1848 / zoom
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- Another result: the way in which the still-medieval city was transformed (in 1853-1869). The priority was military, as looking carefully at the changes shows. That's not done.
An example is the vast esplanade (built in 1853) in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral, which makes the giant church seem smaller and less imposing than when medieval houses huddled up to it.
Combat at the rue Soufflot by Horace Vernet, 1848 / zoom
That void let troops assemble should Latin Quarter students revolt again (the painting above shows them backing the workers in 1848). It allowed bombarding the area after the buildings bordering the river had been torn down.
Its military purpose used to be mentioned, but is not now.
- The Paris Commune sketched out a society that was democratic, egalitarian and fraternal (in 1871). Its repression foreshadows 20th-century calamities and its memory still inspires the left...
Proclamation of La Commune, March 26, 1871, anonymous engraving / zoom
But otherwise it is passed over.
The ripples of these insurrections spread through Europe and helped shape our world, but they are downplayed or omitted.
Take the presentation by the Musée Carnavalet (the historical museum): After suggesting that the French Revolution was almost peaceful by relegating popular insurgents to a distant corner, it presents the street fighters of 1830 as modish youths, the upheaval of 1848 by blocks to evoke barricades with which kids can play, and La Commune by mainly irrelevant works in a corridor that links rooms devoted to elites.
Schoolbooks, historical street panels and much recent historical writing have a similar bias.
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In short, what you will find here has little to do with what's usually said. There's space for comments at the end of each page: I would love to know what you think. Political remarks are welcome.
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This « blook » (a book that uses the web as a blog does) draws upon photos, paintings and drawings to make its points briskly. The index, under the menu on the right, gives immediate access to the main ideas. Epilogue suggests their wider relevance.
Its sequel, History from fresh perspectives, shows how an economic approach to the past transforms the meaning of many events, and how it explains the omissions these pages point out.
Links toward what follows
introduce each section.
Click on the first to follow the progression,
or on that of a particular topic.
