Janet Hulstrand's Blog, page 14

The grapes are in, the harvest was good…

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Pinot noir grapes, Champagne

The grapes are in, and despite a very hot, dry summer, in the end it was a good harvest. Not fantastic, like last year, but good. Good enough. Pretty good! Thank goodness!

The lingering scent of grape juice in the air has lessened, the clanking and clanging late into the night coming from the pressoir, the enjambeurs heading up into the hills before dawn and coming back down around sunset, all of that has stopped. The pressoir is closed up, the field near our house where the vendengeurs and their families were camping is empty again. The pickers have moved on to other vineyards, some of them going as far away as California.

I had the opportunity to join my neighbors who were feeding 24 hungry pickers a bountiful lunch one day during the harvest. It brought back fond memories of when I did the vendange right here in Essoyes as a young woman and was discovering France for the first time.

Now the fall routine is well underway: the kids are back in school, and for adults the preparations for fall and winter have begun.

And finally, this week we have had some badly-needed rain. Pshew!

More to come soon. For now, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, here’s wishing you a bonne continuation…

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divid es her time between the U.S. and France.  She is the author of  Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You,  and is currently working on her next book, a literary memoir entitled “ A Long Way from Iowa.” 

 

La Rentrée, Essoyes

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A wonderful new use of the Chateau Herriot d’Essoyes: the Academie Musicale de l’Aube en Champagne opened its doors this week.

What a busy week it has been in Essoyes! As if from Sleepytown to Busytown, France–overnight!

First of all, last week there was the inauguration of the Academie Musicale de l’Aube en Champagne (AMAC), an exciting new presence here in our village. This new school will be using the space previously occupied by the village’s elementary school, in our chateau. Even though la rentrée (which is “the return,” meaning the return home to work and school in early September) had not yet arrived, a nice crowd had gathered for the opening ceremony, which included welcoming remarks by Mayor Alain Cintrat and Pierre-Emmanuel Fischer, director of the school. There were also (of course!) a few songs performed by the school’s instructors. And (as always, here in Champagne), afterward tasty hors d’oeuvres and champagne were served. The school is now accepting students of any age who wish to learn a wide variety of musical styles and genres: so anyone interested should contact them. The spirit of the school is very welcoming and relaxed, so no one should hesitate to contact the directors and ask any questions you may have. I will be interviewing them soon as well, so stay tuned for that.

I have always thought that there is something quite nice about starting one’s education in such a beautiful building, and generations of villagers who started their schooling there have felt the same. (There is quite an interesting history of this building, material for another post, when I’ve had a chance to do the research.) Yet I can also understand the many reasons that teachers in 2019 would want to be able to teach their students in a more modern building. And so, despite the inevitable (and understandable) grumbling about the downside of “progress,” on Monday the children of Essoyes (and a few of the surrounding villages) returned to elementary school in a brand-new building. I don’t have a picture of that to post but I’ve seen pictures of it: and I can tell you there were many smiling faces. I also learned from AMAC’s Facebook page that the directors of the new music school performed for the students in their new elementary school building this week. What a beautiful way to bridge the transition between the old and the new!

On Tuesday the empty field just outside of town was suddenly filled with caravans as workers for the vendange (the grape harvest) began to arrive. We were having American guests join us for lunch that day and they asked if there was “some kind of festival” or something happening in town. “No, it is that the vendange is about to begin,” I explained.  When I had gone into town earlier that day to pick up food for our lunch from our wonderful traiteur, the parking lot in the center of town was almost completely full (from having been nearly empty a few days earlier); negotiating the narrow main street of the town was more challenging than usual with a heavier flow of traffic in two directions; and as I headed down the road toward our home on my return I saw women heading into town carrying large empty baskets which (I assume) they would be carrying back to their camping site full of bread.

And it’s not just the vendange, though that would make plenty of activity in and of itself. There are trucks carrying huge containers of water to the campsites of the vendengeurs; trucks carrying emptying baskets up into the vineyards, and coming back down with baskets full of grapes; truckloads of wood coming into (or passing through) town with their loads of wood; and the pièce de resistance of all this sudden flurry of activity at least during my little foray was that as I approached our driveway I had to make room for a huge truck loaded high with stacks of hay to go trundling by.

In between all of these new beginnings, and the seasonal return of agricultural activities, time was taken to remember important events of the past. In Chaource, not far from here, and now mainly known for its wonderful cheese, 79 years ago, on the same day Paris was occupied by the Germans, the town was brutally bombed. The town chose to commemorate instead the anniversary of the liberation of the town more than four years later, giving full credit to the American involvement in that liberation. And in Bar sur Aube, friends who have recently moved there from the U.S. were personally invited by the mayor to attend a special commemoration of the liberation of the town 75 years ago, led by General Patton. I’ve written about this before, but it bears saying again: it is not true that the French have forgotten, or never appreciated, our help in liberating them from their Nazi occupiers. It is just not true.

So that is just a small sampling of what has been happening in Essoyes this week. Stay tuned for more, coming soon…

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divid es her time between the U.S. and France.  She is the author of  Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You,  and is currently working on her next book, a literary memoir entitled “ A Long Way from Iowa.” 

Book Review: The Existential Englishman: Paris Among the Artists

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“The turquoise lamps flicker and dim, or perhaps my eyes are playing tricks on me after a day’s tenacious reading in the Bibliothèque Mazarine. I love this place so much that even if I weren’t deep into research on seventeenth-century life in Paris I would come here simply to watch all the faces bent intently over manuscripts and listen to the concentrated hum of so many minds communing with the past….For a handful of euros, my reader’s card allows me to come and go as I please to the Mazarine throughout the year. As a young man finding his way Marcel Proust worked here fitfully as a librarian, and next door, under the golden-ribbed dome of this exalted institution, France’s academicians, its  Immortels , meet to discuss and defend the purity of the French language. Every time I cross the Pont des Arts and contemplate the extraordinary harmony and grace of Louis Le Vau’s building—in my eyes, the architectural focus of the whole Left Bank—I am transposed to another realm…” 

This is how The Existential Englishman: Paris Among the Artists begins: and the love of reading, of writing, of libraries; of history, and of the echoes of history in our present surroundings; of architecture, especially Parisian architecture; and of the love of and respect for learning and language that is so very French—the passion for all of these things that radiates from this passage—is a perfect hint of things to come.

I had almost decided not to not even open the book because a quote the publisher had chosen to feature on the front cover of the advanced reading copy I was given seemed to suggest that what it had to offer was “waspish gossip.”

Generally speaking, I do not like gossip, and I like waspish gossip even less. So I was not eager to read this book.

But because Penelope Fletcher of the wonderful Red Wheelbarrow bookstore in Paris had urged me to take a look at it, I decided I had to do so. And the minute I began reading I was so stunned by the quality of the prose, and so taken with the sensibility of the writer, that all of my doubts were swept away, and I read on with that growing sense of wonder and appreciation one can only have when reading really good writing.

How to summarize this nearly 400-page memoir by Michael Peppiatt: writer, art historian and curator, sometime publisher of Art International, and definitive biographer of the British painter Francis Bacon?

It seems to me that The Existential Englishman is first and foremost a love letter to Paris, and it is an extraordinarily rich, complex, substantive, and thoughtful love letter to the city indeed. The book is organized both chronologically and geographically, by address and arrondissement, and by the years during which the author lived in each of the addresses. Peppiatt’s favorite part of Paris is the Marais, and he lived there for the longest periods of time: therefore a disproportionate amount of attention is devoted to that part of the city. But every neighborhood that the author lived in, and many that he passed through on his walks, or during the course of researching his assignments, or on bus rides, comes vividly alive in his descriptions: not only the way they were when he was seeing them, and through his very attentive eyes, but often the way it was in years past, going back in some cases to antiquity. For just one example, I particularly love his description of the Arènes de Lutèce:

What I have come to love about the Arènes is their mixture of transience and permanence. On the one hand they reach back to the origins of Lutetia, as Paris was called in Gallo-Roman times, but having become a cemetery in between times they were filled in and covered over when Philippe-Auguste built his new city walls at the end of the twelfth century; they then disappeared from the face of the earth until they were rediscovered and, with vigorous petitioning from no less a public figure than Victor Hugo, restored…It is a miracle that this place has come down to us more or less intact: on hot afternoons you can almost hear the ancient crowds roar, and smell their sweat.

So yes, it is a love letter to Paris, and a wonderful way to learn about its history also: but running a close second, at least for this reader, it is also a detailed, intimate, very honest (sometimes painfully honest) memoir. It is the story of a young man of modest means who came to Paris from London—somewhat reluctantly at first—to take a job he didn’t really want, and who made his way into his career by following his own individual path with an admirable amount of courage, tenacity, fierce independence, dogged determination, and above all integrity. In this regard, I believe the book could also be called, quite accurately, Portrait of the Artist as a Self-Made Man.

He developed his journalistic specialty of writing about art, and earned his eventual reputation as an eminent art historian and curator not because that was his plan, but because a passionate interest in the visual arts, combined with some serendipitous events in his early adulthood, placed him on that path.

What he really wanted to be was a novelist: and though he never achieved that dream, and though the frustration of that dream tormented him for a good, long while, he achieved something that I believe is far more important: he became who he was meant to be,which is an extraordinarily gifted and skilled writer of nonfiction.

And so, while he is a wonderful storyteller, and he provides fascinating anecdotes and details about his many close encounters with the rich and famous, mostly, but not only, in the art world, what interested me most about the book was his account of his own artistic desires, frustrations, and ultimately successes.

The passage in which he describes his eventual awareness of what his real calling as a writer was is, among other things, a tribute to the power, beauty, and value of nonfiction literature, which is often (and quite wrongly) viewed somehow as a lesser form.

I think if I made it so difficult for myself to write freely it was mostly because I had not yet found the subject that would engage me fully. Biography, autobiography, memoirs are the genres that require more maturity perhaps than any other: how, for instance, can you approach the subject of old age—or the allure of youth, seen in retrospect—if you have not experienced it? I had to wait a very long, frustrating time before I felt entitled to write as I wanted….

There is little to be found in favour of ageing, which is like a debilitating disease spreading inexorably through one’s system, but it does allow for a certain clarity of hindsight: you cannot call it wisdom—to my mind it’s closer to resignation; yet in the very distance that has been covered by a long life a pattern, the pattern in the carpet, emerges. I had to live before I could write, I had to live my life almost entirely before I had the subject that I wanted to write about, that I could write about with the most insight and accuracy.

While he does not explicity say so, The Existential Englishman seems to me to cover exactly that literary territory: that is, it is perhaps the subject that Michael Peppiatt is able to write about with “the most insight and accuracy.” And it is a literary tour de force indeed.

The book’s subtitle is “Paris Among the Artists,” and in it Peppiatt has shared his memories, his sharp observations, his deep insights into not only the art world to which he was exposed through his work as a freelance writer based in Paris during the years 1966-1994: but much more as well. Therefore, throughout this book we learn not only about the rich and famous people he encountered, sometimes closely, sometimes fleetingly, or at a remove—from Marlene Dietrich and Sophia Loren to Samuel Beckett and Graham Greene, to Peter Bogdonavich and Andy Warhol—along with the visual artists he profiled and came to be friends with. We also see, through his penetrating and usually affectionate eye the concierges, the bartenders, the café owners and proprietors of the fromageries, the boucheries, the boulangeries, and other people that play an important role in the author’s daily life.

Quite honestly, I don’t know how he did it: either he has incredible recall, or he kept very good journals. Or perhaps he had access to letters he had written through the years and he was able to reread them to help put himself firmly back in time. Or perhaps it is a combination of all three that allowed him to describe those early years in Paris in such rich detail.

All such wondering aside, it is interesting that he has chosen to write the book mostly in the present tense: this gives the reader the benefit of a sense of immediacy, as if this memoir were in fact a selection of his published journals, though journals imbued with an exceptional layer of maturity (indeed!), and the kind of perspective that no one can have when they are in the middle of living their life instead of looking back at it.

According to the author’s website, there are other memoirs to come, and I certainly hope there are, because having read this one, rich as it is, there are large parts of his story that remain untold, and I would love to read more of it. For now, The Existential Englishman offers readers the rich human story of someone who was privileged to have an inside view of a fascinating world; and the wit, intelligence, and sensitivity to tell it in a way that no one else could have done.

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divid es her time between the U.S. and France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and is currently working on her next book, a literary memoir entitled “ A Long Way from Iowa.” 

Bonjour, Arras!

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Baroque townhouses on the Place des Héros, Arras, Hauts de France. Photo by Janet Hulstrand.

I often tell people that one of the best things about France is the incredibly rich array of choices there is in terms of places to go, and things to see and do in this relatively small country. The diversity of landscapes, types of architecture, cuisines, local languages and dialects, and local and regional history, not to mention climate and geography, is quite simply amazing.

I think it is difficult for Americans to understand how such a wealth of diversity can be contained within the confines of a geographical area that is more or less the size of the state of Texas. Of course, Texas is a very big state: and just as it takes a long time to drive across Texas, it takes a long time to drive across France. Americans, and I suppose probably people from other places with huge geographical distances contained within their national borders, often underestimate how big France actually is, and are sometimes chagrined to discover that their plans for covering certain distances that they have laid out in advance by looking at a map do not work out very well in actuality.

But it is not only the length of time it would take to drive straight from Point A to Point B within France that is the problem, at least not in my mind. In my mind another significant challenge is how to do this without succumbing to the temptation to stop a million times along the way, to discover all there is to discover, and learn all there is to learn. Or to suffer the other, and to my mind very distasteful, alternative of ignoring so much of what there is to explore, and just barreling through.

Well, the situation is simply impossible, that is all. Unless you are lucky enough to live in France, in which case you have the rest of your life to explore all that richness.

Earlier this week I took advantage, in a tiny way, of that opportunity, when I drove about 350 kilometers from my home in the département of l’Aube in southern Champagne to Arras, in the Pas de Calais département, in the region known as Hauts de France;  and I was once again taken with the delicious impression of being in another country altogether, though wonderfully and clearly still in France.

Of course, the part of France I drove to this week has not always been a part of France: that is part of the fascinating history of the place. The France we know today, sometimes referred to as “the Hexagon,” is a fairly recent historical development, and it’s not that easy to pin down the exact date when it was established. (For one thing, the boundaries have not been constant, which is true of other countries as well of course, including the United States. And it can be very instructive to learn about the history of those shifting boundaries. Very instructive! Calls all kinds of assumptions we tend to live with into question…)

In any case, Arras is a very old city: Wikipedia informed me that it was established by the Gauls during the Iron Age; that it was once part of Flanders; that at another time it was part of the Spanish Netherlands; that the French captured it from Spain in 1640; and that it has been part of France ever since.

Skipping over several centuries, during the First World War Arras was near the front for most of the war, and it consequently suffered extensive damage: in fact, about 80 percent of the town was destroyed. Much of it was restored after the war: for example the beautiful Baroque townhouses that border the Grand Place and the Place des Héros in the center of the city, and the extraordinary Hotel de Ville with its famous belfry, which was reconstructed à l’identique (that is, exactly as it was). I remember how strong was the feeling among many New Yorkers after 9/11 that the same thing should be done with the World Trade Center after it was destroyed.

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The beautiful Hotel de Ville (City Hall) in Arras is one of 44 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in France.

I had chosen Arras as my destination this week for a perhaps rather unusual reason. I was trying to figure out how far I would need to drive my son in order to be able to put him on a train direct to Lille rather than obliging him to travel first north and west to Paris, and then back east again. (It is not easy to travel “as the crow flies” by train in France, and I often attempt to outsmart the powers that be at the French National Railway, in order to avoid having to go through Paris when it makes no sense to have to go through Paris.)  I was particularly inspired to do so this time, since work on the tracks was making the trip between Troyes and Paris much longer than usual. And since I hadn’t been able to spend much time with my son in a long while, I relished the idea of us having a few hours on the road together.

That is why I decided to go to Arras. I was fully aware that by the time we arrived there we would be pretty damn close to Lille: but I reasoned that as Arras is a much smaller city it would be much easier to negotiate traffic and find my way into and back out again than it would be in Lille; and as I am not fond of negotiating traffic and finding my way in cities I don’t know at all, I thought this was a great plan. I would have time to visit with my son along the way; we would have a nice lunch together in Arras; I would put him on the train to Lille; and then I would spend a pleasant evening and morning in Arras before driving back home. I looked at the pictures of Arras, and started to read about its history. It looked beautiful and sounded very interesting. And so the plan was laid.

Most of this plan went really well: we did have a nice, relaxing few hours in the car together that gave us the chance to catch up a bit; we had a very nice lunch in Arras after we had parked the car and I had checked into my hotel; I did put my son on the train to Lille; and I did enjoy a pleasant evening in Arras in the beautiful Place des Héros before returning to Champagne the next morning.

The only part of the plan that did not go quite as planned was the “easier to negotiate traffic in a smaller city” part of it. Of course I have no basis for comparison, since we did not go to Lille. But rarely have I encountered a more frustrating entry into a new city by automobile. And as we made our way through the frustration of finding my hotel and getting the car safely parked I was reminded of that fable in which someone tries to outsmart death through some kind of elaborate set of ruses, only to be met in the end of the story (of course!) by death. Some fates just cannot be avoided.

Fortunately, I was not alone for this part of the trip: my son was still with me to share the experience of being directed in fruitless circles around and around the city center by Google which, it eventually became obvious, was not taking into consideration the fact that we were arriving in town at the exact same time that a number of large amusement park rides, funhouses and so on, were also arriving for a fête foraine, and were setting up shop on the Grand Place. (“This is the craziest city I have ever been in,” my son declared at one point, and he added that if he were a city planner for a city that was “obviously built long before the automobile” he would create a place outside the city where all cars could be parked, and then mass transit would be provided for people to get into the city center “which OBVIOUSLY is not meant for driving cars in.”) He also wondered whether transforming the Grand Place into a carnival site for a weekend was really worth all the trouble.

Of course there are never any answers to these kinds of questions.

I think the most harrowing moment was finding ourselves in a very narrow alley into which Google had directed us with its execrable and mostly wrong guesses at the pronunciation of French street names, and from which we emerged onto a sidewalk.

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In my experience, Americans tend to react to these kinds of situations with a sort of barely contained panic (we just are not used to being asked to drive cars through such confined spaces); while the French are more likely to have a bemused, philosophical attitude.

We managed to tamp down our national tendencies to the point where we were certainly not hysterical. But we were also far from amused, or bemused. As we emerged from the incredibly narrow alley, car unscathed but clearly having been (and still being) somewhere we were not supposed to be at all, sure enough, the locals enjoying their steak frites at the sidewalk cafe right next to the alley, to the extent they noticed us at all, could be said to display reactions that seemed to be more or less philosophical/bemused.

Fortunately, sympathetic and helpful drivers of other cars who were having their own problems negotiating the situation cooperated by making room for us to be able to get the car off of the sidewalk and back onto the street without damage to our car, anyone else’s, or any further incident.

However, we were still no closer to my hotel than we had been before the last several turns around the city center (Google more than once also directing us to go the wrong way on narrow one-way streets). At this point my son proclaimed Google useless in this instance, and turned off the directions. And somehow, eventually, we found the hotel.

After that it was simply a matter of finding the parking garage recommended by the hotel, which we accomplished without great difficulty (phew!) For some hard to understand reason the entrance to the underground parking ramp had a concrete surface that was textured very much like an old-fashioned washboard. Perhaps the purpose was to slow drivers down as they entered it. Just in case it did not, there was a helpful (and completely unnecessary) sign that urged us (a bit late, in fact) to drive slowly. “No. Really?!” I muttered as I negotiated a hairpin turn going down to the second level that we did manage to clear: but I would not have wanted to try to do it with a car that was any bigger than our compact model.

Anyway. We parked the car: and because I have parked in underground parking garages before in France, I knew not to worry about the horrible squealing noise the tires make every time you turn the wheel, due (I guess?!) to the surface used in these places. Live and learn!

We both heaved a huge sigh of relief as we got out of the car. Hooray! And we then proceeded to have a lovely lunch in the very cafe next to the place where, not half an hour earlier we had feared we might have to be lifted out of the alley we were attempting to drive through by crane, as bemused, philosophical Frenchmen looked on.

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Mission accomplished, it was time for lunch. Don’t you always feel better after having lunch in France?

After lunch it was time to walk Sam to the train station and send him on his way. I headed back to my hotel, rested up a bit, and then went to pass a lovely few hours in the Place des Héros, where I sipped on a pichet of Bordeaux as I read my book and eavesdropped on several English couples sitting near me (“How long can you hold onto World War II?” one of the men said at one point, an intriguing question, but one that will forever remain unanswered, since I could hear neither the remark that had prompted it, nor what followed.)

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My neighbors’ wine glasses reflected the Baroque townhouses beautifully, wouldn’t you agree? Photo by Janet Hulstrand.

A guitarist set up at one end of the place was playing and singing a nice selection of folkish tunes; and as the sun slipped lower in the sky there were beautiful effects to be seen in the changing colors of the buildings surrounding the square.

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Eventually I became a bit hungry, though not very hungry after our copious late lunch. I ordered a classic galette (topped with oeuf, jambon, fromage) which served perfectly for my evening meal; and then, as the air began to cool, I made my way slowly and contentedly back to the hotel, strolling through ancient streets.

It had been, all in all, another wonderful day in France.

The next morning, getting out of the parking garage–and even out of Arras–proved to be blessedly smooth and simple.

So, hah! Maybe you can escape fate some of the time? Doesn’t hurt to try!

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divid es her time between the U.S. and France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and is currently working on her next book, a literary memoir entitled “ A Long Way from Iowa.” 

 

 

Au revoir encore, Paris…

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Au revoir, Paris. Photo by Janet Hulstrand

My heart breaks a little bit each time I have to leave Paris.

This doesn’t happen when I’m there for just a few days, or even a week. When I’m there for just a few days, or even a week, I know that my stay is going to be short, and I don’t have the chance to really sink into the lovely feeling of being in Paris.

But when I’m there for a month or so, as I was lucky to be once again last month, that is an entirely different matter.

That is being able to sink into the lovely feeling of actually living in Paris, though for a short time, and it hurts to have to say goodbye once that feeling has been established.

I have been lucky to stay in quite a few different neighborhoods in Paris over the years. The very first night I spent in Paris, back in 1978, I stayed at a cheap hotel on rue Monsieur le Prince in the Latin Quarter. I do believe (though I am not sure of this), that the same hotel is still there now, and that I walked by it recently. It is looking even more down-at-the-heels than it was when I stayed there, but it is still a hotel.

Which is one of the nice things about Paris, it does change but change does not usually happen very quickly…

Because I was staying near the Pantheon this time, I spent lots of time in the beautiful Luxembourg Gardens once again this summer, and was delighted to be able to swing by the wonderful Red Wheelbarrow Bookstore on a regular basis, to buy books and to say hello to Penelope Fletcher, bookseller extraordinaire and much beloved among English-speaking writers (and readers) in Paris.

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Penelope Fletcher, bookseller extraordinaire, in front of the Red Wheelbarrow bookstore, 9 rue de Medicis, Paris. (Right across the street from the Luxembourg Gardens.)

Penelope suggested several new books for me to read, giving me enough new reading to carry me through the next few months. The first review I wrote this summer, a book she recommended, is a wonderful novel by a very talented rising star in the literary world, Aysegül Savas, Walking on the Ceiling. 

Penelope has also become a good friend of this writer: because she is doing what all writers hope booksellers will do: she is selling my book

A Place to Be Alone, with Others

I wrote this piece as a contributor to a new initiative seeking to Save the Paris Café. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you will “like” and follow Save the Paris Cafe also. It’s a good thing to do…

SAVE THE PARIS CAFÉ

by Janet Hulstrand

When people ask me what they should be sure to do while they’re in Paris, I always say the same thing: “Just be sure you leave some time to simply wander—walk, sit in a park or café, and take some time to just watch the world go by.”

I say this even if the person asking me is only going to be in Paris for a day or two. It seems to me to be even more important if you only have a little bit of time in Paris to have this very Parisian, and most wonderful experience—that is, to take the time to do “nothing” and just enjoy the beauty and the inherent interest of the world surrounding you.

The French have a word for this kind of thing: flâner is the verb, and it is variously translated. Most often it is translated as “to stroll,”…

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Edith’s Cafe Spotlight: Les Deux Magots

Save the Paris Cafe is a wonderful new initiative launched by the energetic, imaginative, healthy-community-minded Lisa Anselmo. And this is the first essay in a series that will be presented on this website by the inimitable, knowledgeable, and witty Edith de Belleville. Take a look everyone, and join in this effort–we’re all needed to help keep Paris’s wonderful cafe culture alive and well!

SAVE THE PARIS CAFÉ

Parisian storyteller, historian, and licensed tour guide Edith de Belleville shares the history behind her favorite places around Paris to sip a coffee or glass of wine and watch Paris go by. We’re launching the series with the venerable Les Deux Magots in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
[La v ersion française ci-dessous.]

There are cafés in Paris where you can’t just do whatever you want. There are rules. Les Deux Magots is one of these. But do not be put off by this. As soon as you pass through the majestic revolving door of this mythical café, you’ll understand what I mean. You are now in the hallowed halls of the Parisian Intelligensia.

On the wall are black and white photographs of the famous artists and writers who came before, and sat in the same comfortable banquettes where you are now sitting: Ernest Hemingway with Janet Flanner; the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire; the…

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Summer in Essoyes: Vernissage a la Maison Renoir

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Well it’s true, il faisait chaud. It was a bit hot, but that didn’t stop the mayor of Essoyes and the team at Du Cote des Renoir from hosting a lovely event at the Maison Renoir last night.

The occasion was the official opening of a very special exhibition that is being held there this summer. And there were some very special guests there to celebrate the event, most notably Emmanuel Renoir, a great-grandson of the painter, and Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel, a great-grandson of the famous dealer of fine art, and early champion of the Impressionists (of whom Claude Monet said, ” Without Durand, we would have starved, all of us…We owe him everything.”)

The exhibition is entitled “Evocation de l’exposition Renoir de 1934 par Paul Rosenberg” (“An Evocation of the 1934 Paul Rosenberg Renoir Exhibition”). The exhibition in 1934, which featured works from Rosenberg’s personal collection as well as paintings loaned by Jean and Claude Renoir, presented works of Renoir from the years 1909-1919 in M. Rosenberg’s Parisian gallery at 21 rue de la Boétie.

The current exhibition in the Maison Renoir in Essoyes includes one original Renoir painting, a 1910 portrait of Paul Durand-Ruel. In addition there are several original photographs of the 1934 Paris exhibition loaned by the Paul Rosenberg Archives in New York, and some very good reproductions of several of the other works that were in the 1934 exhibition, pleasingly displayed. Also on view now, as a permanent part of the Maison Renoir collection, there is a 1918 bronze sculpture (“La Danseuse au voile”), a gift of the Galerie Michael of Beverly Hills and of Emmanuel Renoir.

After welcoming remarks by Mayor Alain Cintrat, M. Philippe Pichery (président de Conseil departmental de l’Aube), Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel, Emmanuel Renoir, and Francoise Tellier (responsible de la communication du côté des Renoir), the guests were invited to enjoy the exhibition.

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Emmanuel Renoir standing on the porch of the family home, now restored and open to the public, thanks Mayor Alain Cintrat and other dignitaries.

After that, of course there was champagne! (There always is, in Champagne!) And there were hor-d’oeuvres that were as exquisitely beautiful as they were delicious.

The exhibition continues through October 30. But you’ll probably want to come to Essoyes on July 7 to see Essoyes a la Belle Epoque, won’t you?

Sure, you will…

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divid es her time between the U.S. and France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and is currently working on her next book, a literary memoir entitled “ A Long Way from Iowa.” 

 

 

 

Springtime in Essoyes (2019)

 

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Essoyes in spring. Photo by Janet Hulstrand

Spring has arrived! Wildflowers are springing up everywhere, and the fields of rapeseed are in bloom. (The French word for this grain, which is used to make canola oil, is colza. I much prefer this word, and I propose that we adopt it into English.)

Last week a cold snap forced vignerons in Champagne as well as in other parts of northern France to take extraordinary measures to protect their grapes in this delicate period of their development. We all hope the weather will stay mild now so that the grapes can thrive…

Last week I had the pleasure of returning to the Maison Renoir, the family home that was a beloved place of relaxation and retreat for the Renoir family for many years, and which was restored and opened to the public in 2017.

The home has been lovingly restored and “staged” in such a way as to give the impression that the family has simply stepped outside for a leisurely stroll around the town in the early 1900s.

With the opening of the home to the public two years ago, the village has also been able, for the first time, to offer visitors to Essoyes the pleasure of seeing original Renoir works of art. Each summer since 2017, collections from museums in France have loaned works, and they have been on display to visitors in the room that was previously the family’s dining room, and is now able to display artwork in museum conditions.

This year it looks as though several works of art may make the long journey from the United States to be shown here during the summer months. We don’t know yet which works will be on loan, or exactly when they will arrive. So you’ll have to just stay tuned for more about that.

In the meantime visitors to Essoyes can enjoy a lovely collection of etchings, mostly by Renoir; but there is also a portrait by Conrad Slade, an etching of Renoir by Pierre Bonnard, and a note written by Renoir to the mayor of Troyes that is in itself a work of art.

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Letter to the Mayor of Troyes (1907). Photo by Janet Hulstrand.

An exciting calendar of special events is being planned to take place in and around Essoyes this year, in recognition of the centenary of the death of Pierre-Auguste Renoir. In particular, anyone who can be here July 6-7 will have the great pleasure of experiencing Essoyes à la Belle Epoque. I was lucky to be here when the village presented an elaborate village-wide “reenactment” for the first time, in 2017. Here’s my report of that wonderful event.

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Fields of colza in bloom…springtime in Essoyes! Photo by Janet Hulstrand.

I’d like to close with a note of relief and deep gratitude that despite the terrible destruction that occurred in the fire at Notre Dame de Paris earlier this week–which touched (and broke!) the hearts of people around the world–thanks to the incredibly brave and brilliant work of 500 firefighters in Paris, the main structure has survived, and the process of planning for the repair of the cathedral is already underway.

Dare I say an Hallelujah for that?

To me it seems apt, especially during Holy Week…

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divid es her time between the U.S. and France. She  teaches “Paris: A Literary Adventure” for the City University of New York, and her next writing workshop will be held in Paris this summer. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You . She is currently working on her next book, a literary memoir entitled “ A Long Way from Iowa.” 

 

 

The Fire at Notre Dame

A beautiful, heartfelt response to the terrible fire at Notre Dame de Paris last night by someone who knows it well..

Out My Window

I had just arrived at the American Library when I was told there was a fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I envisioned a small fire–not to worry about. I didn’t respond with much drama. We were walking on the sidewalk of rue General Camou in search of our two speakers for the evening. She stopped me and said ‘Look’. She had her iPhone in her hand and after a bit of a wait–it turned out everyone in Paris was on Wifi at that moment–showed me a photo of the fire at the back of the Cathedrale. NOT a small fire. As I often do at moments like that, I freeze a bit. I could tell by her face that she was very upset. I had yet to get there.

I was volunteering at an author event at the Library. I often get the job of greeting people as…

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