France (II)
French phrases, architecture, Sarkozy corruption trial, fashion, Dua Lipa, and why the apartments in Paris look the same.
Useful French Expression
“Je suis pleine comme une pute a l’aube” (I'm as full as a whore at dawn! [Full of what, exactly? Happiness? Gratitude? Self-respect?] This is a good family-friendly one I recommend cracking at the dinner table and/or church pew.)
“Oh la vache !" (The cow! Used to express regret or disbelief, I think. Actually, I don't even know.)
“Je m’en bats les couilles” (I beat my balls, or, I don't give a fuck!)
“Laisse tomber” (Nevermind. Literally, “Let [it] fall.”)
“Bonne continuation” (Good continuation! A way of saying goodbye that implies, like, have a good life. Enjoy continuing in time. Enjoy continuing. Enjoy existence.)
“Courage!” (Another way of saying goodbye, kind of like “Good luck”)
I’ve also never encountered so many literal pet names for lovers. I've overheard it all: Mon lapin, mon canard, ma cochon, ma chatton, ma crevette, ma poulette, etc. (My bunny, my duck, my pig, my kitten, my shrimp, my little chicken...)
The French also have an absurd number of ways to say “it goes” or “it's going” to describe any situation or sentiment, such as: ça va, ça joue, ça marche, and ça roule, which translate to “It's going”, “It plays”, “It works", and “It rolls.”
These are rendered in the imperative/interrogative mood to form a question: Ça marche? Ça roule? and both are roughly equivalent to “Is it alright?” but they're really just all-purpose French expressions that can be used as a question or a response in either the negative or positive. It could also mean “It suits you!” regarding fashion (“Ça vous va bien”). It can indicate agreement, how one's feeling, etc. It's a linguistic multi-tool and it's been my crutch more or less since day zéro.
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French Architecture and Planning
“Architecture is a symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our own collective mortality.” (Cringe.) This is one of the first things I wrote in my phone after arriving in France and fully immersing myself in the labyrinthine spiderweb of Paris streetscapes. Flanked by rows of balconied 19th-century townhomes and sunlight-splintered mezzanine windows in whose reflection I saw myself more like a guest in an open-air museum than a clueless tourist in a pandemic. Obviously, I was both.
Still not exactly sure what I meant when I wrote it. Maybe I was touching on memento mori, a reminder of our impending death. More than that, I think I was referring to the opposite. That architecture, when conceptualized as monuments, stands to remind us that our demise isn't guaranteed. In this sense, construction is an immortality project. Works of architecture are the crossroads between the physical world of built objects and the symbolic world of humans endeavoring to mean something. Architecture, and, I guess, art more generally, transcends the meaning-making dilemma despite the guarantee of death.
Architecture is part of something eternal: something that will never die as compared with our perpetually decomposing physical existences. Ernest Becker wrote at length about how immortality projects are one's self-management of death anxiety. These can be done at the unit of the individual (e.g., finishing an art piece, giving birth to and raising a child), or at the level of the collective (e.g., instituting revolution, city planning, constructing monuments or grand works of architecture). For me, I feel like the craft of writing - of generating text - is self-management of death anxiety. At one point, Ernest Becker wrote that depression is the failing of one's immortality project, and that schizophrenia is one's obsession with it. Dead on.
To regroup, let's take the examples of the various iterations of France throughout history, which, taken together, are a testament to the turmoil and unrest that has marked the French people for over a millennium:
The Kingdom of France (987-1792)
The French First Republic (1792-1804)
The First French Empire (1804-1815)
The Bourbon Restoration (1815-1830)
The July Monarchy (1830-1848),
The Second Republic (1848-1852),
The Second Empire (1852-1870)
The belle epoque/Third Republic (1870-1940)
The Fourth Republic (1946-1958)
Each of these periods in French history was marked by a different vision of what it meant to be French and what France's role in the world should be.
The various national identities of France throughout history are immortalized by works of architecture that Paris is renowned for, each corresponding to their particular era in French history and their respective idealization of the French aesthetic and ontological status as a force in the world. Notable examples include:
Thermes de Cluny (Ancient Roman, 2nd c.)
La cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris (Gothic archetype, 14th c.)
Musée du Louvre (Renaissance, 16th c.)
Chateau de Versailles (Baroque, 17th c.)
Les Invalides (Baroque, 18th c.)
Arch de Triomphe (Neo-classical, 19th c.)
Tour Eiffel (Modern, late-19th c.)
These structures are monuments to bygone eras. They are meaning systems unto themselves. Each of the sovereign states that were responsible for their construction is now dead, and the buildings they've left behind are the best representations we have of their existence. Louis XVI, dead. Napoléon Bonaparte, dead. Jules Ferry, dead. But, in this way, their civilizations still have feet in the ground.
I understand this is probably the coldest take in the history of takes, but that's how it all felt to me, with more urgency than is probably deserved, on this sunny day in Paris.
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Haussmannian Building
Although few can recognize them by name, there are no works of Parisian architecture more iconic than the Haussmann buildings. Unlike most architectural standouts, Haussmann buildings are marked by their uniformity:
Row home, six storeys tall, storefront on the ground floor, vaulted first floor ceiling, low second floor mezzanines (what they call the 1e étage) for storage, and then four subsequent residential floors and a balconied attic on top.
The attics, formerly the maid's quarters, are tiny studios called chambre de bonne which now mostly house students and low-income residents. In square footage, they're more on the level of a minivan. They have a little shower nook right next to the bed, as well as a sink and a desk. No bathroom. For that, you've got to venture down the hall to the literal water closet with a toilet you share with the five or six other people living with you up on the attic-level. That, for 850 EUR in rent. It's easy to resent a place that taps your pockets that hard. The balconies are pretty sweet though.
Here's the best shot I have of the view from my chambre de bonne:
The Haussmann building is the vision of Georges-Eugene Haussman, the prefect of the Seine appointed by Emporer Napoléon III to renovate Paris starting in the 1850s. It remains one of the most expensive and ambitious beautification projects in world history.
Before Haussmann was tasked with modernizing Paris, the city was still medieval in layout, with thin, winding streets meandering through disparate, loosely-connected neighborhoods. Between 1853 and 1927 Haussman tore up much of the old city and transformed the overcrowded and waste-ridden streets into wide, spacious boulevards with open public squares, fountains, Art Nouveau metro entrances, and ample lighting provided by natural exposure and gas-powered wrought iron lampposts for which Paris was given the nickname the City of Light. Haussman took the Paris of Voltaire and Balzac and left the Paris of Hemingway and Sartre.
His critics alleged that the renovation project was a ploy, where widening the streets was motivated by the strategic necessity of free movement for the French military in order to snuff out uprisings. The country was fresh off two successful revolutions in 1830 and 1848 and needed modern infrastructure to maneuver an army quickly through the city in case they'd try for a third. They eventually did stage a third successful revolt in 1871, but it only lasted a couple of months before being squashed. Picture the scenes from Les Miserables where the revolutionaries barricade entire streets with piles of tables and barrels and assorted Victorian furniture. Not so easy when the boulevards are 50 meters wide.
In any event, Haussmann's central planning succeeded in creating the most beautiful city I've ever seen. It's also the first (and only) city-wide tear down without a natural precursor event, such as the Great Fire in London. I would hope the lesson learned is to extend the same thought and patience and foresight to planning other cities as Haussmann did Paris over a century and a half ago. Planning takes time and selflessness. Haussmann never lived to see the finished project, but his is a n=1 case study that the libertarian fuck-it-let-the-market-handle-it approach doesn't create any lasting beauty capable of outdoing thoughtful deliberation and the belief that cities can be more than atomized living spaces and centers of housing. A city itself is an artwork.
There are only a handful of extant buildings left over from the pre-Haussmann days in Paris. For example, this replica of a 14th century building near Le Marais, which was actually built sometime in the 1600s. Locals and tourists alike still falsely believe it's an authentic half-timbered residential home from the medieval era, but modern carbon dating proves otherwise. Still, it's one of the only glimpses we have into the pre-renovation Paris.
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Fashion
French people are just ludicrously dapper. It was probably the first thing I noticed when I landed in Paris. It feels like every French dude's got a turtleneck and argyle sweater and every girl's got a ruffle blouse and beret. This is one way in which Paris definitely lives up to its reputation.
And it holds up across socioeconomic strata. No matter your station in life, if you're Parisian, you put care into your dress. Every day you see working-class blue collar types rocking button-up Oxfords and dress shoes. Sweatpants or leggings in public are non-starters. After four months, I don't think I saw either worn once.
I’m not sure whether to feel charmed or humiliated by Paris's fashion standard. After a while, I felt kind of bummed at my own milquetoast looking ass style by comparison. It's just impossible to live up to the French streetwear standard out of a backpack.
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Fever by Angele & Dua Lipa
Putain, cette chanson bangs.
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Sarkozy Trial
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is currently on trial for corruption, criminal conspiracy, and for peddling his influence to dictators and magistrates. Specifically, it's alleged that Sarkozy took a bribe from Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2007 to the tune of ~five million euros. There's also a separate, less-interesting campaign finance charge pending. Taken together, he's facing charges that would put him in jail for a decade and make him liable for a one million euro fine. This, for an ex-head of state who ran the world's seventh-largest economy between 2007 and 2012.
The whole case is bizarre even by 2020 standards, with Sarkozy stooping to cartoon villain levels of corruption. If the accusations are to be believed, the French president received suitcases full of cash from a blood-soaked foreign military dictator inside of his own cabinet office.
It was crazy to see this all play out as a media footnote. In any other place, at any other time, this would be the story. Now whatever noise it makes is drowned out by bigger stories, like the assassination/decapitation of history teacher Samuel Paty, the controversy surrounding the global security law, and a notable incident of police violence against migrants/refugees. Throw in the lockdowns, curfews, and confinements, and the Sarkozy trial doesn't even register as something worth talking about among the French.
What this story means to me, and what I find endearing about the French state, is that their justice system isn't afraid of going after an ex-president. It means that all the talk about “Republican values” isn't for show and that the French judicial branch is truly separate and impartial from the power centers of the state. That they take seriously the republican promise of every man being equal in the eyes of the law. And it wouldn't be the first time. Sarkozy's predecessor, Jacques Chirac, was also taken to court and handed a two-year suspended sentence for embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds during his time in office.
This is to say nothing of Gadhafi, by the way, who got absolutely rinsed on the bribe. Imagine paying five million euros just to have the bribee enact a no-fly zone over your country and spearhead an international coalition that topples your government and kills you.
Quelle indignité.