Patrice Higonnet, Paris: Capital of the World

Nostalgia for the Old Paris

IN    1851  Theophile Gautier railed  against   the vestiges  of  medieval Paris: "Three-quarters of the streets  are nothing but  rivers of black and  putrid  muck,   as  in  the  days  of outright  barbarity." What  most struck  him  about  the demolition work undertaken by Haussmann was "all the ugliness"  it revealed: ''One  had no idea how hideous  Paris was, for so much  was carefully  hidden  away behind  its boulevards,  its river, and its fine streets. It is only after visiting  the cesspools laid bare by the new construction that  one  becomes convinced  of the  need  for all  this work, which is turning the city upside down  to good  purpose  and mak­ ing a home for civilization."

Within  thirty   years,  however,  a  reaction   would  set in  (and  I  use the  word  "reaction" advisedly):  a  new myth  of  Paris  would  overturn the  modernizing myth  that  had  shaped  Gautier's  perception.  Arrayed against the liberal, Haussmannian myth of Paris, capital of modernity and of crime, there now arose the counter-myth of "old  Paris."  In I840 old  Paris  seemed repellent. By  1890  it  had  become  quite   charming, rather surprising everyone,  including Haussmann, who said of this new mood and of its votaries  that  "it  is now fashionable  to admire  old Paris, which  they know only  from  books"-a point  of view  that  surprises  us today, in turn,  because we too are moved by the Paris of the past that Haussmann so disdained. We are glad that of all the cities of the world, old and new, Paris is the one that  has taken  the best care of its architectural and monumental past.

Engraving of the Les Halles Region of Paris Before Haussmann's Changes by Charles Meryon (1821-1868)

Meryon's Engraving of the view from the top of Notre Dame.

. . . [Victor] Hugo's premier contribution to the history of the city was the reinvention of its past when he published his first great  novel,  Notre-Dame  de Paris. [Usually translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre Dame] Old  Paris was not just a setting for Hugo's novel. He  now made of it an organic  entity,  a living organism, whose future  should  be a function of its past, an idea that  he illustrated with  a profusion of Parisian metaphors: the city was a "forest of steeples,  of turrets, of chimneys"; in Paris,  "buildings ... have their own  way of growing and  spreading ... they  shoot  up like pressurized sap."

Notre-Dame de Paris was an event in the history of the city, and in its wake a host of neo-Romantic writers set out  to counter the rival myth of "laboring classes/dangerous classes." Instead  of a Paris  beset  by crime and wallowing in filth, one now had a picturesque Paris, a city  that  was a work of art  or at any  rate a strange  and  wonderful thing, an organic whole; and Hugo's  use of such metaphors  proved  contagious.

Alexandre  Dumas,  for example,  in his Isabelle de Bavière, has two characters contemplate the city  from atop  a tower of the Bastille.  They see "an indistinct mass of houses stretching from  east  to west,  whose roofs seemed  to run  together in  the dark  like  the  shields  of an army  on  the march."  In his Fragments de Nicolas Flame!: Drame chronique. Gerard  de Nerval climbs  the Tour Saint-Jacques in order  to take in all of Paris at a glance:  "How   high   this  tower  is! The  higher   I  climb,   the  more  the things of  the  earth  seem  to fall away like  mist.  Paris  ... all  Paris  is there,  wirh irs dais of haze ripped  by a thousand  needles ... And what if I were ro dive from here into those waves of roofs and belfries?". . .

Many  other  writers,  such  as Alfred  des Essarts,  Louis Bouilhet,  and Victor  Fournel,  followed  suit  and  wrote  copiously  not  only  about  the charms of old Paris but also about  the brutality of Haussmann's project. Haussmann here was a kind  of villain;  in 1856 a German  observer  by the name of Adolf Srahr accused "the  new master of Paris'' of wanting  to destroy  the  old city altogether, and  in  that  same  year the poet Charles Valette called Haussmann  a "cruel demolisher":

Je cherche  Paris en vain
Je me cherche  moi-meme ...
(I search in vain for Paris
I am searching  for myself .. .)''

Engraving of the Seine in earlier times by Charles Meryon.

From year to year, more and more Parisians  were moved by this new nostalgia.  Now  people began  to weep for old  Paris,  with its placarded walls and noise-filled streets,  which  Edmé Bouchardon  had captured  in his eighteenth-century engravings. They sighed  for Paris as a whole and for each  of  its neighborhoods taken  one  by one,  forgetting even  then what we still  forget today: that  compared  with  the great cities of northern Europe,  the four arrondissements of central  Paris had suffered rela­ tively little. For many, each neighborhood became a city unto  itself,  indeed  a  separate  country,  with   its  own customs,   manners,  languages, signs,  and  markets. . . . In 1854 the writer  Alexandre Privat  d'Anglemont declared: “What is wonderful  about  Paris  is that the  customs  of the people  who live on one street  are no more like  the custom’s of the  people who live on the  next street  than  the custom’s of Lapland  resemble  those of South An1erica ... It is this constant kaleidoscope that  is so charming to observe. . . ."

"If no other  city offers more striking or more agitated  lives," explains Emile Souvestre  in Un Philosophe  sous les toits (A Philosopher  in the Attic), a work  to which  the  Academie awarded  a prize  in  1851, "neither does any other  city  offer lives more obscure  or unperturbed. Big cities are like the sea: as you descend toward  the bottom, you come upon a region inaccessible to bustle and noise."