A FRENCH COMPENDIUM

The following morning, I left the apartment in search of breakfast and promptly bumped into the lesbian couple from Canada, making their way to the catacombs. I may have thought this semi-macabre at that hour, had I not myself been on the way to a cemetery. We talked as old friends, although awkwardly as we were not. They had, in fact, been delivered to the correct address after all.

 

On an omelette and coffee, I experimented with the metro and following the usual palaver regarding machines and tickets, was soon on the train and heading for Gambetta. I had read recently that it is best to disembark at Gambetta - one stop past Père Lachaise - as the 439,300m² cemetery slopes downhill from there, which makes for ultimately an easier stroll. 

 

That advice was perfect and earned my gratitude, given the heat of another blistering summers day in Paris. Cool was the correct metaphoric word however, in cult terminology, this place was way cool! The planet’s most visited cemetery carries with it a unique tag; ‘the greatest collection of dead human talent in the world’.

 

Yet the gothic chapels which adorn the afterlife’s alleyways of Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, are as much for the living as the dead. The sepulchral beauty in the sarcophagus, along weathered cobblestone paths, beneath chestnut trees, give it more of an outdoor museum feel than that of a municipal graveyard. 

 

Very surreal in fact. It is both tranquil and eerie at the same moment, but the perfect place to escape the madness of Paris. One gets lost instantly in the funerary art and becomes drawn into the very fabric and epoch of historical Parisienne society, as if momentarily at one with the immortal. 

 

For foreign visitors such as myself, this is as close as one will ever get to these shapeshifter’s in a physical sense and so many of them to pay respect to in the same vicinity. I was told by a local; “there is no right or wrong way to do Père Lachaise, so just follow along and get lost like most do.” 

 

The only permissible sounds, beside the footsteps and quiet chatter of others close at hand, was that of the wind rustling in the trees, the crows and the distant sound of traffic and horn. The cry of ravens in such circumstance, which echoed throughout the cemetery, provided an atmosphere that had one believing they had fallen into a gothic Edgar Allan Poe tale.

 

Paris is a city examined through its art, culture, architecture, and history. At Père Lachaise, the bones of the bourgeois, the bohemian and the pop culture icon lie side by side, their work long done but their influence or following still very much alive. They rest, while outside the gates the famous city groans on, continuing its own opulent journey.

 

And the cats!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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There’s no doubt that I was there to stand at Jim’s grave and complete my two-citied mission, that was the primary drawcard for me. But Pere Lachaise was also the final resting place of so many others whose output when in this world, I had the utmost respect for; poets, comedians, novelists, playwrights, musicians, dancers, soldiers, aristocrats, anatomists, anthropologists, politicians, Generals, Presidents, diplomats, revolutionaries, painters, activists, chemists, alchemists, architects, philosophers and the common Parisienne. 

 

Some I sought proved elusive, most notably the first I was seeking out; Californian born-turned-Russian communist dancer, Isadora Duncan. The pioneer of freedom of expression dance, Isadora sought to restore dance to a high art form, perceiving the rigid traditions of ballet to be more akin to movement purely for the purpose of common entertainment.

 

The final resting place of others I greatly admired, but regrettably did not have time to vigil at, belonged to; Frances Poulenc, Max Ernst, Georges Bizet, Colette, Maria Callas, Honore de Balzac and Modigliani. These must be favoured some other day, as another stroll through this cemetery is simply a must for myself at some stage in years to come.

 

Those not found were, to a degree, counter-balanced by a handful of interesting graves, shrines, tombstones or edifices, of folk whom I did not know and went away to research and learn more about. Certainly one of the most interesting in this category was artist, writer, diplomat, author, and archaeologist, Jean-Dominique Vivant de Non (1747-1825).

 

Born into provincial gentry, ‘Vivant Denon’ (name adjusted to lose nobility connection during the French Revolution), was a loyal servant of Napoleon and - on his behalf - vastly looted many European countries (Italy particularly) and brought their paintings, drawings, statuary and objects d’art to Paris, many of which are still there in various museums.

 

As the ‘Minister of Arts’ under Napoleon, Denon was appointed as the initial developer and then first director of the Louvre and is commemorated in the ‘Denon Wing’ of the modern museum. with much of the art work he looted in the early 1800’s still on display there.

 

The founder of spiritualism, Allan Kardec (1804-1869) was another grave of interest. A professor of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Physiology, Comparative anatomy and French in Paris, Kardec was also the author of five books known as the Spiritist Codification and a devout advocate of the seance, a popular entertainment during his time in this world. 

 

While unable to locate Isadora Duncan, I did find the grave of a little known American actress and ballerina, Harriet Toby (1929-1952). After one film appearance in 1950, she met her end when the Air France ‘Languedoc’ in which she was a passenger, crashed on take-off from Nice. All 38 on board were killed, including French actresses Michèle Verly and Lise ‘Alice' Topart, the latter also interred at Père Lachaise.

 

Arman (1928-2005), one of the founding nine of the ’Nouveau Réalisme’ (New Realism) movement in 1960, is another with an interesting resting place, possibly because it is a fairly modern tomb in such an old, historical cemetery. As a group of young artists, the ‘New Realists’ challenged existing concepts regarding art and the roll of the modern, 20th-century artist, by reasserting ‘humanistic ideals’ in the face of industrial expansion and a burgeoning consumer society.

 

Naturally, American pop artist Andy Warhol was a kindred sprit and owned several of Arman’s pieces. In turn, Arman can be seen in Andy Warhol's film ‘Dinner at Daley's' (a documentation of a dinner performance by artist Daniel Spoerri), reading what appears to be a newspaper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Success however lay in actually locating the final resting spots of those I had some prior knowledge of and first up was Edith Piaf (1915-1963), the French cabaret singer, songwriter and actress, who became one of the countries greatest international stars and is still widely regarded in music circles as the ‘national diva’.

 

Ironically, she is buried a kilometre or so from where she was born, on a pavement in the 20th arrondissement, where she was abandoned by her mother. Her father took her back to Normandy in Northern France and placed her in the care of his mother, a ‘madam’ who ran a brothel. 

 

By 17, she had a daughter of her own, but like her mother, with no parenting or domestic skills, gave up her child and returned to singing the city sidewalks. It was on a street corner in the famous Pigalle area of Paris that she was ‘discovered’ by night club owner, Louis Leplée, who gave her the nickname that she would carry for life, ‘La Môme Piaf’ (‘The Little Sparrow’).

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Edith Piaf’s gravesite is one of the most frequented in the cemetery, but no more than the next port of call as it were. Certainly one of the more interesting (as in the actual tomb) belongs to Dublin born author, poet and playwright, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900).

 

In College years I had become intrigued by both the life and works of Oscar Wilde. I adored his collective written repertoire but also the way he ‘set out to irritate Victorian society with his dress and talking points’. I guess as a rebellious teen, his shoving the finger at society was impressionable. My first born son’s name was lifted from his only novel, the controversial ‘Picture of Dorian Gray’.

 

Moving to London and immediately ushered into fashionable culture and the correct social circles, Wilde was soon renowned for his quick, biting wit and flamboyant dress. He became one of the best-known personalities and conversationalists of his day.

 

Elements of his own decadent life style filtered through to his writing’s and reviewers were often critical of his work, cited as overtly opulent, with homosexual leanings. Unsurprisingly then, he entered the Victorian underground of rent boys and gay prostitution.

 

He was eventually convicted of sodomy and imprisoned for two years, where - usually lavished with all manner of creature comforts - the ‘hard labour, hard fare and a hard bed’ way of life was totally foreign to him. He lost weight and his health declined rapidly.

 

He spent his last days in the dingy ‘Hôtel d’Alsace’. His moods fluctuated as he drifted in and out of depression and he spent much of his time wandering the Boulevards alone, spending what little money he had on alcohol. Oscar Wilde died of cerebral meningitis, destitute in Paris at the age of 46.

 

Wilde was initially buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux, outside of Paris, but in 1909 his remains were disinterred and transferred to Pere Lachaise, by former lover and his literary executor, Robert Ross. 

 

Ross had a tomb, the ‘modernist angel’, designed by the American born pioneer of modern sculpture, Jacob Epstein. In 2011, the tomb was cleaned of the many lipstick marks left there by admirers, and a glass barrier was installed to prevent further marks or damage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The who’s who literary trail continued and not all that far from Oscar as the crow flies, not a great metaphoric reference when talking cemeteries I concur, lies one of the greatest of authors of any generation; Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust. 

 

Here…ladies and gentlemen…is a true Parisienne and as such, as quintessentially French as his written contributions were, woven into the rich tapestry of his cities literary history. Marcel Proust is best known for his monumental novel ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’ (In Search of Lost Time).

 

Born into the then rustic 16th arrondissement, two months after the formal end of the Franco-Prussian War, Marcel (a rather sickly child) attended Lycée Condorcet, a school with included amongst it’s other other notable alumni; Jean Cocteau, Tristan Bernard, Frances Poulenc, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Verlaine.

 

He excelled in literature and rubbed shoulders with the upper bourgeois, providing the young author with copious material for what would eventually become his masterpiece. The decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the middle classes that occurred in France during this time, are also mirrored in his great work, with epic and radical changes happening in society as they knew it.

 

With aspirations to write, he fashioned for himself a reputation as a ‘social climber’ the worst kept secret with family and close friends throughout his adult life, was his relationships with men (often mentioned by biographers), although he never ‘came from the closet’ as the common term is understood and openly admitted to his homosexuality.

 

In 1909, aged 38, he began work on his seven volume, 3,200 paged masterpiece. He spent the last three years of his life largely confined to his bedroom, where he slept during the day and worked at night, attempting to complete his novel. Unfortunately, he was unable to finish revised drafts and proofs of final volumes, before his death from pneumonia and a pulmonary abscess in 1922.

 

Sentier de Molière, just off Avenue de L’est is where I found another old literary favourite of mine. Born in Paris in 1622, Jean-Baptiste Coquelin, better known as Molière, was one of the great masters of comedy in Western Literature. Like many in this cemetery, one who had taken his specialty craft and removed associated stiffness with freshness of vision. 

 

The playwright and actor abandoned his affluent social class and education at 21, to pursue a career on the stage. His name change was possibly to save his father (who held a royal appointment) the sheer embarrassment of having a son who was an actor, for although no longer vilified by the state under Louis XIV, actors were still not allowed to be buried on sacred ground.

 

But by all accounts, his total devotion to the theatre and perceived ‘genius’ was as such that while the sacred and secular authorities of 17th-century France were often against him, he finally emerged to win acclaim with Parisians, royal favour as the official author of court entertainments.

 

His peeling of social veneer and attacks on religious hypocrisy often combined in his satires being roundly condemned and lambasted by the church and moralists, but personally he continued to work hard in many theatrical capacities, so sedulously in fact that ultimately it would claim his life.   

 

In 1673, aged just 51, during a production of his final play, The Imaginary Invalid, Molière (who suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis) was seized by a coughing fit and haemorrhaged. He insisted on completing his performance, but collapsed again a few hours later and died. The superstition that green brings bad luck to actors is said to originate from the colour of the clothing he was wearing at the time of his death.

 

Right beside Molière is the greatest of French poets/fabulists, Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695).  One of the most widely read French poets of the 17th Century, he is known above all for his fables which rank amongst the more significant masterpieces of all French Literature.

 

I pondered a while at the sepulchres of these two late renaissance literary giants and in the case of Molière, the fact that he had been buried here almost one hundred years before a British explorer named Cook had even sighted the shores of my own country. 

 

Not far from the pair can be found the tomb of Polish born composer and virtuoso pianist, Frédéric François Chopin (1810-1849). The child prodigy grew up in Warsaw, left Poland aged 20 (one month before the ‘November Rising’) and settled in Paris, where he became one of music’s earliest superstars.

 

Because of this, his political leanings, love life and early death aged 39 from tuberculosis, he has become by public consciousness, a leading figure of the Romantic era, his music as popular today as ever it was.

 

Chopin arrived in Paris in late September 1831 and he would never return to Poland. The same year, the 21-year-old had his first episode of hemoptysis (coughing up blood). After receiving French citizenship in 1835, he travelled on a French passport. However, he remained close to his fellow Poles in exile as friends and confidants and he never felt fully comfortable speaking French and always saw himself as a Pole. 

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In Paris, Chopin encountered artists and other distinguished figures and found many opportunities to exercise his talents and achieve celebrity. He became acquainted with, among many others, Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Ferdinand Hiller, Heinrich Heine and Eugène Delacroix.

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From 1842 onwards, Chopin showed signs of serious illness. On 17 October, 1849, after midnight, a physician leaned over him and asked whether he was suffering greatly. "No longer", he replied. He died a few minutes before two o'clock in the morning, following a sudden coughing fit. The funeral procession to Père Lachaise Cemetery, included Chopin's sister Ludwika, who took her siblings heart in an urn, preserved in alcohol, back to Poland in 1850.

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Chopin's disease and the cause of his death have since been a matter of discussion. His death certificate gave the cause as tuberculosis. Other possibilities were advanced including cystic fibrosis, cirrhosis and alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency. In 2017, an autopsy was performed on Chopin's preserved heart, which confirmed that a rare case of pericarditis, caused by complications from chronic tuberculosis, was the likely cause of his death.