When Paris Went Dark

Parisians seemed to be going thought the motions of life without living at all.

Ronald Rosbottom’s When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, is a rich, detailed, account of the German Occupation of Paris during World War II.

Rosbottom drew upon an extensive collection of materials-- diaries, memoirs, essays, newspaper articles, histories, letters, films, archives interviews, photographs, maps, etc.—all of which helped him to understand Paris during the Occupation.

Much of this is well known. However, like so many other readers, my appetite for reading about World War II seems inexhaustible. Some say it was the greatest event in human history, a saga about the collision between good and evil and the remarkable courage so many displayed.

During those days in Paris, food was scarce, heat was rare, gas for automobiles was unavailable, long lines were pervasive, air raid drills were common and the presence of the Germans created a quiet, almost eerie city that was dangerous and often frightening to those who remained.

“The silence caught you by the throat, made sadness press into your thoughts."

In time, it became extremely dangerous for Jews, many of whom left the city if they could, others tried to find a place to hide, but thousands were rounded up, virtually imprisoned for days and then shipped to concentration camps where most did not survive.

In spite of the risks, the French Resistance was a constant threat to the Germans. Rosbottom writes that the German troops “were more and more demoralized as they watched safe Paris become a site for both discriminate and indiscriminate attacks against the Occupier.”

Rosbottom marvels at the fact that Paris managed to survive the War almost unscathed. Hitler had ordered its destruction when the advancing allied armies forced the Germans to leave. How this was avoided is another remarkable tale. In contrast, most of the other large cities in Europe were virtually destroyed by the destructive power of seemingly constant allied bombing.

That is what was seen. But Rosbottom notes, “What the world did not see was the economic, social, and psychological damage wrought by the Occupation, which would take years to repair.”

Eventually this would be clearly seen as the surviving Jews, political prisoners, captured soldiers and others who had hidden in the country began returning to Paris. Rosbottom says, they were unrecognizable as the trauma they had endured lasted so very long.

He concludes, “There are, in the life of a nation, moments that wound its memory as well as the idea that one has of one’s country. This was one of those moments for France and from all accounts still is, more than 70 years after the Occupation ended."

Henri Cole's Paris Diary

I’ve been reading Henri Cole’s “Street of the Iron Po(e)t” installments on the New Yorker Website. To date there have been five and I imagine they will form the basis of his Paris Diary, whenever he completes it.

When I began reading them, I had no idea who Henri Cole was. I’ve subsequently learned he is a poet, one time executive director of the American Society of Poets who has held many teaching positions, published several collections of poetry, and received a good many awards and honors.

In his first installment he explains that his little apartment is Paris is located on the Street of the Iron Pot (rue Pot de Fer) which he renamed the Street of the Iron Poet—the title of his daily experiences in the city.

The matters he treats range from ordinary chores of going out and about, the parks he visits and the literary luminaries he spends time with.

“I had to clean [his apartment] for many days before I felt comfortable, but now it is home.” “Today I received a flu shot.” “Today I visited the cenotaph to Baudelaire.”

He visits the bookstores of his Latin Quarter neighborhood, the bars and the cinemas that he says have the feel of a village. His words read like prose poems and he intersperses them with photographs he took along the way. He writes about his parents, his mother a first generation French woman whose parents emigrated from Armenia. She met his father in Marseille, who was an American soldier. He includes a photo of the family of three.

He recalls a poem, “Quai d’Orleans” by Elizabeth Bishop, that is set on the Seine, quotes the poem, and includes a photograph, (or is it a painting?) of the bridge. Another day he encounters fifteen horses marching down the avenue.

“I heard the horses’ hooves striking the pavement long before they were visible, and when they stopped at an intersection, those of us on the sidewalk, and in cars and on motorcycles, couldn’t help but pause and admire them, smiling as the wind played with their brushed tails.”

One night he has dinner with a friend who is the biographer of Picasso and Giacometti. The next day he meets with his translator. He visits the Jardin des Plantes and I recall an afternoon I spent there not long ago.

“Walking along the Seine today, I found a monument to Thomas Jefferson, who first sailed to Paris in 1784, to negotiate with European powers. Later, taking a carriage drawn by horses, he traveled south, to Aix-en-Provence, as a private citizen without servants, because he believed that when one travelled alone one reflected more.”

What a pleasure it is to read Cole’s account of his activities from one day to the next. He writes beautifully and gives me a chance to recall those times I too have lived in the same neighborhood of Paris, walked down those same streets, and strolled about the same parks.

I wait for the next installment. Perhaps you’d also like to read those he has published so far? Visit this page for first five.

The Parks of Paris

In the Guardian last weekend William Boyd wrote about the parks in London and the inspiration they have been for novelists. In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Peter Walsh goes for a walk in Regent’s Park after visiting Clarissa Dalloway who had earlier that day been there herself on the way to collect the flowers for the party she gave that night. In Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, several key events take place in Clapham Common, a park not far from where he had lived one year.

Boyd has a strange definition of parks. Namely, there must be tall trees that must give the impression of random planting. An avenue here and there is OK and the ground must be undulating in a significant way and you mustn’t be able to see all the sides of the park at once. And finally you must have a gated entrance. All these “musts.” Consider what this means for Paris: on this definition Les Tuileries isn’t a park, nor is the Parc Monceau or the Luxembourg Gardens for that matter. Isn’t this absurd?

In reading Boyd’s account of the parks in London and the many others he would like to visit, I was reminded what the parks of Paris came to mean to me one summer several years ago. After being there awhile, I thought the romance of Paris had begun to fade. Maybe it had all been an illusion in the first place, one fostered by all those storytellers who have written so beautifully of love in Paris and the beauty of the place

But as I walked about the city that summer, I wondered what had happened. It was crowded. And noisy. In some places dirty. Even a bit shabby. With one exception--the parks. The parks of Paris brought me back to the romance of the city. And they were everywhere, on almost every block and corner.

They never looked lovelier. Many with well-tended flower-beds in full bloom. Lawns that had been freshly mowed. Trees that had been carefully trimmed. Each park appeared perfectly manicured and yet I never saw a gardener at work. I kept wondering who were these people who took such good care of the parks? How were they paid? Where did the funds come from to maintain these jewels? It surely cost a fortune to do that.

So in its parks, I saw a different Paris. Or more exactly, the old Paris. Children playing. Lovers picnicking. Others just out for a stroll. Or a little nap. Then there are the benches and chairs found in every Parisian park. Not just one or two. But many, spread out along the open paths. There are no chains bolting them to the ground in Paris.

And more often than not they were occupied by individuals who were quietly reading, oblivious to the passing scene. Young and old. Each one reading something. It was wonderful. The flowers, the children and people reading.

In City of Books Don Bell writes, “Perhaps no city in the world rivals Paris for its voluptuous literary pleasures.....In warm months parks become outdoor libraries. Walk through delightful Parc Monceau on a fair day, for instance, and on virtually every bench you will likely see some happy-looking citizen, book in hand, mind faraway in an enchanted otherworld.”

I have a feeling Parisians don’t spend much time in their apartments on the hot, sultry days of summer. In most cases, their apartments are probably not very inviting then anyway. Little or no sun. No chirping birds. No children sailing their little boats on the lake. How much nicer to take a book and head for their neighborhood park. Coming off my background in social research, I thought how interesting it would be to interview some Parisians—to ask them what the park meant to them? How often they visited their park? Did they have a favorite?

I wanted capture of the psychological meaning for Parisians of being in the small neighborhood parks, as well as the larger, better known ones. I wanted to know if the parks represent a Third Place in the sense that Ray Oldenburg uses the term in The Great Good Place.

I was reminded of all this by Boyd’s literary tour of these urban oases that he describes as “a refuge for lovers, loners, children and outcasts—parks provide the settings for some of our most innocent and illicit encounters. No wonder they are such an inspiration for novelists.”

A few years ago the New York Times ran a lengthy article on the numerous, no less beautiful hidden gardens of Paris, places I had never heard of or seen that are spread throughout the city. Perhaps one day I will be able to return to Paris to continue my encounters with those who go there to read or admire the lovely flowers.

Cafe Days

I am reading Rachel Cusk’s latest book, The Last Supper, about the three-month sojourn she and her family spent in Italy a while ago. It is one of those books that I do not want to end. She visits a café outside Rome. It is crowded and the people are engaged in lively conversation. I stop to recall the memorable café times in my life.

During lunch one day at the Bar Pasticceria Curatone in Florence, I observed a riotous display of friendship and camaraderie. A middle-aged man, sitting by my table on the terrace, was engaged in an animated conversation with the Bar's owner. Soon some old friends happened by and when they saw him, each one, in turn, seemed to explode with shouts of joy and delight, followed by spirited conversation. In time, others passed by who also recognized one or more of the assembled group. Jump for joy, long embraces, happy smiles, long tales of Where have you been? What have you been up to? How wonderful you look. Oh, let me show you the pictures of my baby. As if that wasn't enough, soon after that, I sat astonished as I observed a similar scene unfold at another table.

And then not so long ago I went to a café in Paris for afternoon tea. I went upstairs to have a drink. The café, near the Sorbonne, was filled with students and their professors conversing intensely about the latest intellectual crisis. The memory of that scene lingers.

I imagine a café, a literary café, where I can go at the end of each day. There are writers and readers. We talk about our work, the books we’ve read, the issues we are struggling with. We leave with a “See you tomorrow.” It is a Third Place, the concept discussed in Ray Oldenburg’s The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Day. He discusses the German beer gardens, the English pubs, French cafes and the American tavern.

The Third Place comes after the place you live and the place where you work. Oldenberg says it is a neutral ground, where the main activity is discussion. It is accessible and welcoming. There are “regulars” there, unassuming in appearance, offering the freedom to be yourself. It is a home away from home and being there is restorative.

He says that urban life increasingly fails to provide is a convenient and open-ended setting for socializing—where individuals can go without aim or arrangement and be greeted by people who know them and know how to enjoy a little time off. Oldenberg attributes much of the alienation, boredom, and stress of American life to the absence of such a Third Place to repair to when we wish. He says:

“The French, of course, have solved the problem of place. The Frenchman’s daily life sits firmly on a tripod consisting of home, place of work and another setting, where friends are engaged during the midday and evening apertif hours, if not earlier and later.”

I am sure there are such places in this country but I have never found one. I will keep looking, that is for sure.

I remember a blazing hot Sunday in a remote Tuscan village of Italy. No one is on the street. All of the stores are closed. The shutters of the surrounding apartment buildings are shut tight. I park my car in the single open square, get out, and am enveloped by the heat. It is startling. It is wonderful. I look for a place where I can get a drink. The local bar, which in Italy is also a place to get an expresso, a Panini, and cold drink is the only place that is open. The TV is on and a few old men are staring at it mutely. On the screen is a soccer game somewhere in Italy and the crowd is roaring. Otherwise, it is utterly silent in the café and on the street. And it is hot. It is perfect.