Day 1



Bibliotheque nationale de France

 We landed at  Charles de Gaulle Airport early Tuesday morning, which was waaay early by my internal clock.  I got downtown with a minimum of effort, and after getting myself all turned around for a brief time, found the Novotel easily.  The room wasn't ready, so I headed off to the nearest attraction: the Bibliotheque national de France. Four large book-shaped buildings surrounding a rectangular courtyard with a garden sunk so deep you're just looking at the tree tops from the access level.  I tried to go into the main reference room and LIS collection: no one ever thinks to lock up the LIS books.  But they were here, and a very nice young woman informed me that I had to get a pass at the main desk.  I nodded and smiled and backed away feeling like an imposter.  I hadn't come to do RESEARCH, just to goop at all the books.  One more dilettante caught in the filter.

After getting into my room at the hotel, I headed out for the Latin Quarter.  But, as so often happens in Paris, the city just took me and I followed.  I drifted off to see the Mosquee de Paris, lured by the prospect of their tea room, which the guide book recommended as a place to have a baclava and mint tea. But the tea room turned out to be a full-blown restaurant, with prices to match, so instead I followed a sign for the Pantheon.  Upon reaching it, I decided to go into the smaller Eglise Saint-Etienne Du Mont, first.  I was touched by one of the chapels right back in the ... what's the term... clerestory?  The walkway around the back of the alter.  The tomb of Pascal was next to one piller, with the tomb of Racine next to its partner on the other side.  Pascal and Racine... if eternity consists of eternally breaking up into small groups, I'd say they were both fortunate.



Pantheon

 Then across the road to the Pantheon: that cathedral that was later turned into a secular celebration of France's government and culture.  The Foucault's Pendulum swings steadily where the altar would have been, showing us how we humans, while undoubtedly surrounded by mysteries, occasionally muster up the brains to solve some of the more brain-cracking ones.

Looking at the statues surrounding the central area, I was struck by the gender divisions.  While the main actors in dramas like the French Revolution were men, their muses were largely female. Typical, I suppose, but still: after all these years of hearing aggression attributed to testosterone, it pulled me up short to see the battle being led by Muse-type women with startling measurements and drapery that's always falling down.  It put me in mind of Katherine Hepburn's line as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter, remembering how she rode bare-breasted on Crusade: "Louis had a seizure and I damned near dies of windburn, but the troops were dazzled."

The crypt underneath the Pantheon is a Who's Who of French history.  Everyone who's anyone is there: it's like a select party of the best and the brightest.  And, like so many elite parties, dull as a long wet weekend.  Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo, Dumas, Brailled, Curie.... they may have been cool when they could say and do things, but the conversation has begun to flag, and they all look the same anyhow: long and rectangular.  I was glad to get into the sunshine.

I browsed the bookstores in the French Quarter, feeling very cosmopolitan and educated.  After a quick meal I wandered over to Sainte Chappell, and found myself just in time to hear one of their regular evening concerts.  An artist I didn't recognize played the Bach Goldberg variations, and she was marvellous.  Unlike other versions I've heard, this one was light: like a big balloon floating among those indescribable stained-glass windows.  The acoustics aren't crisp, they way they are in some concert halls, but after each variation she paused and let the sound spiral away.  She'd sit for a second in silence, and then the hands would go to the keyboard, and she'd assume a whole new persona for each variation: sometimes solemn, sometimes playful, sometimes wistful, sometimes majestic.  She did some Chopin for an encore, and it was out of this world.

I emerged from the concert to see a full moon hanging over the city, and walked back to the hotel along the Seine, stopping first to get a crepe (I'm missing the LWB pancake breakfast, so I'm entitled).  The river banks were full of action: people were ballroom dancing in one place.  It's true what the guidebooks say: the river is an integral part of Parisian life.

Tomorrow it's the Louvre and its environs.  That and preparing my paper, as well as my class for Thursday.