The Cemeteries of Paris
I didn’t expect to encounter Susan Sontag in the Montparnasse Cemetery. I assumed she would be in New York. Her tombstone however was no surprise; a slab of polished black slate about the size of a single mattress and a smaller one on top of it, with just her name and the important dates engraved on it: “Susan Sontag 1933 – 2004”. There were no clues to her achievements, and certainly no religious symbols. She, or whoever arranged for the headstone, was aware that so far as a monument was concerned, anything extravagant would have been absurd. I wondered however whether she believed that her name and her years on earth were all we needed to know about her or was it the case that we ought to know who she was so any more information was superfluous. Was it, in other words, a modest tribute or more the very opposite? Incidentally, this custom of giving only the bare details of someone’s life is a privilege of the very famous or the humble and anonymous. The rest of us expect a few words to remind everyone else of why we were here.
In Guy de Maupassant’s short story Laid to Rest the narrator, Joseph de Bardon, a well off flaneur, describes to his friends how he likes wandering through Montmartre Cemetery. It is like a city, “densely populated at that. Just think how many Parisians are packed in there forever … Then of course you get all the monuments, some of them much more interesting than in a museum”. While in the cemetery one day, paying his respects to an old flame he was rather fond of, he meets a young woman grieving at a tombstone. Always the opportunist, he moves in, takes her to her apartment and then to dinner, after which things he is not expecting happen. Two things occurred to me reading this story. One was that the way de Maupassant describes them walks in the cemeteries probably were a popular pastime in the1880s. De Bardon’s point about the monuments being more interesting than some museums must have occurred to a few people and the ambience isn’t that dissimilar. One strolls, pausing before works that catch the eye, and both are spaces designed to inspire contemplation.
The second is when it comes to being pick up joints cemeteries work better than some more obvious places. The moment you enter one your mood changes, it becomes more subdued, leaving you open to suggestion. Sometimes sobbing but more often mourning in solitude, most of the statues are absorbed in a romantic melancholy. They encourage quiet intimacy.
Maupassant lies in Montparnasse, not far from Alfred Dreyfus. His grave is neat and well tended and when I visited a small teddy bear and china dove had been placed on the stone. Baudelaire lies in the same cemetery but across the street. His grave is a mess of dead flowers, bus tickets, empty cigarette packets, whisky bottles and 1664 beer cans. Did people really feel obliged to drink and smoke at his gravesite? And why? What a curse. All his short life he demanded to be taken seriously as a literary figure but a hundred and fifty years after his death he couldn’t escape his reputation. Maupassant’s bear and the dove were a more authentic homage than Baudelaire’s cigarette packets. He wrote hundreds of short stories but his most memorable are gothic accounts of madness or cruelty: The Horla, Boule de Suif, Mother Savage and The Necklace. Whoever placed these tokens at his gravesite felt something personal that had nothing to do with his renown.
All of us set out for the cemeteries with the aim to visit the famous and outside the gates we can pick up handy guides pointing us in the right direction (though not necessarily, as you’ll know if you’ve used one, to the right place). There’s more pleasure however in stumbling across people by accident. I was delighted to run into the Goncourt brothers at Montmartre since The Journals is one of my favourite works of French literature. (You can struggle through Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables or you can read about his behaviour at one of the brothers’ dinner parties. One is more vivid and disturbing than the other.) Edmond and Jules face off against each other as though locked in a ferocious dispute yet they were inseparable as long as they were both alive. It’s true too that some of the most striking monuments, especially of weeping women, Egyptian deities and the cobwebbed interiors of neglected crypts belong to unknowns.
The most touching encounter I had was at Père Lachaise. Walking down a narrow corridor I saw a group of Asian women with their heads bowed. It looked like an actual burial and I was about to turn and take a detour when I realized one of the women was a tour guide. As I drew closer they began stepping forward in turn to place a pink rose at the base of a grave. When they had finished they remained still for a minute’s silence then left. It was Chopin’s tomb. The base was covered with wreaths and vases of flowers. No other grave at the cemetery attracted such large and respectful veneration.
I didn’t expect to encounter Susan Sontag in the Montparnasse Cemetery. I assumed she would be in New York. Her tombstone however was no surprise; a slab of polished black slate about the size of a single mattress and a smaller one on top of it, with just her name and the important dates engraved on it: “Susan Sontag 1933 – 2004”. There were no clues to her achievements, and certainly no religious symbols. She, or whoever arranged for the headstone, was aware that so far as a monument was concerned, anything extravagant would have been absurd. I wondered however whether she believed that her name and her years on earth were all we needed to know about her or was it the case that we ought to know who she was so any more information was superfluous. Was it, in other words, a modest tribute or more the very opposite? Incidentally, this custom of giving only the bare details of someone’s life is a privilege of the very famous or the humble and anonymous. The rest of us expect a few words to remind everyone else of why we were here.
In Guy de Maupassant’s short story Laid to Rest the narrator, Joseph de Bardon, a well off flaneur, describes to his friends how he likes wandering through Montmartre Cemetery. It is like a city, “densely populated at that. Just think how many Parisians are packed in there forever … Then of course you get all the monuments, some of them much more interesting than in a museum”. While in the cemetery one day, paying his respects to an old flame he was rather fond of, he meets a young woman grieving at a tombstone. Always the opportunist, he moves in, takes her to her apartment and then to dinner, after which things he is not expecting happen. Two things occurred to me reading this story. One was that the way de Maupassant describes them walks in the cemeteries probably were a popular pastime in the1880s. De Bardon’s point about the monuments being more interesting than some museums must have occurred to a few people and the ambience isn’t that dissimilar. One strolls, pausing before works that catch the eye, and both are spaces designed to inspire contemplation.
The second is when it comes to being pick up joints cemeteries work better than some more obvious places. The moment you enter one your mood changes, it becomes more subdued, leaving you open to suggestion. Sometimes sobbing but more often mourning in solitude, most of the statues are absorbed in a romantic melancholy. They encourage quiet intimacy.
Maupassant lies in Montparnasse, not far from Alfred Dreyfus. His grave is neat and well tended and when I visited a small teddy bear and china dove had been placed on the stone. Baudelaire lies in the same cemetery but across the street. His grave is a mess of dead flowers, bus tickets, empty cigarette packets, whisky bottles and 1664 beer cans. Did people really feel obliged to drink and smoke at his gravesite? And why? What a curse. All his short life he demanded to be taken seriously as a literary figure but a hundred and fifty years after his death he couldn’t escape his reputation. Maupassant’s bear and the dove were a more authentic homage than Baudelaire’s cigarette packets. He wrote hundreds of short stories but his most memorable are gothic accounts of madness or cruelty: The Horla, Boule de Suif, Mother Savage and The Necklace. Whoever placed these tokens at his gravesite felt something personal that had nothing to do with his renown.
All of us set out for the cemeteries with the aim to visit the famous and outside the gates we can pick up handy guides pointing us in the right direction (though not necessarily, as you’ll know if you’ve used one, to the right place). There’s more pleasure however in stumbling across people by accident. I was delighted to run into the Goncourt brothers at Montmartre since The Journals is one of my favourite works of French literature. (You can struggle through Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables or you can read about his behaviour at one of the brothers’ dinner parties. One is more vivid and disturbing than the other.) Edmond and Jules face off against each other as though locked in a ferocious dispute yet they were inseparable as long as they were both alive. It’s true too that some of the most striking monuments, especially of weeping women, Egyptian deities and the cobwebbed interiors of neglected crypts belong to unknowns.
The most touching encounter I had was at Père Lachaise. Walking down a narrow corridor I saw a group of Asian women with their heads bowed. It looked like an actual burial and I was about to turn and take a detour when I realized one of the women was a tour guide. As I drew closer they began stepping forward in turn to place a pink rose at the base of a grave. When they had finished they remained still for a minute’s silence then left. It was Chopin’s tomb. The base was covered with wreaths and vases of flowers. No other grave at the cemetery attracted such large and respectful veneration.
