19 June. I have a free day in Paris. My thesis has been submitted, Léa (with whom I have been spending my time with since Andy returned to the States) is at work, and I have no plans for the day. I have been reading Christopher Clark’s Revolutionary Spring which was published two weeks ago by Allen Lane. The book is engaging and well-written. It looks forward to the Arab Spring as parallel to the year’s revolutionary expectations (and failures) as well as the current ‘polycrisis’ as something akin to the Hungry Forties. He ends the book powerfully, telling us that “Historians are supposed to resist the temptation to see themselves in the people of the past, but…I was struck by the feeling that the people of 1848 could see themselves in us.”
Today, I read the book at my clean, well-lighted, place in the 18th arrondissement. I still think of the 18th as ‘my neighborhood’ (as much as any tourist can claim a specific part of a city as their own) despite my new Parisian home in a southeast Parisian suburb known as Vitry-sur-Seine.
Clark’s book is engaging and the café is the right venue for the text. He sees the revolutions as essentially urban events, contrasting them with the failed attempt at a Polish uprising in Galicia where Ruthenian peasants declared that they were not Polish, but imperial peasants. This divide existed in Vienna as well. In March 1848, the students of the Academic Legion, drunk on victory from Metternich’s flight, marched outside the city walls to beat back “riff-raff” and other non-urbanites who would threaten their bourgeois political revolution.
Clark does not come close to acknowledging that idea, however. He’s a good liberal and sees the violence meted out by middle-class urbanites against the social classes of various beliefs as a crime one must bear witness to as Adolph Reed would put it. The point is not why these Viennese students beat backing the hinterland peasantry, but rather that they did it. The political point underneath the violence is irrelevant. What matters is the violence.
But back in my café, I am taken in by pages 352-363. It is a small section about the memorials for the urban dead of the February and March insurrections. While I am waiting for my delicious and cheap meal made by the always friendly chef, I read about how the Republican militants who died during the February Revolution in Paris received a grand funeral for their service to the Republic that did not yet exist. The ceremony took place at La Madeleine because its neoclassical style made it the least religious of all of Paris’ many churches. French republicanism had clearly not fully divorced itself from religion by 1848.
Reading about the republicans who were intombed in the crypt of La Madeleine, I remembered that I am also in Paris. So, after my delicious meal, I took the Métro’s line 12 from my habitual stop of Lamarck to the appropriately named Madeleine. Normally, I would transfer to line 14 on my way to the French National Library passing a beautiful Franco-Russian mural (Ryaba la Poule) but today I make my way towards the surface. As I reach the light, I am confronted with the neoclassical architecture that Clark described and correctly assume that it is La Madeleine.
What I do not realize, however, is that I am looking at the church’s rear end. In a style endemic to Paris, the church’s magnificent iron doors are closed, protected by imposing Corinthian columns that overlook steps that only giants would feel comfortable using. Despite their size, the stairs are covered in another species that plagues the city. Flocked together in small groups are Parisians, pecking away at their lunches on this warm, sunny, day.
The last few days have been oppressively hot and humid. Last evening, however, a rainstorm came through and helped overcome the most oppressive ten degrees. The rain had the good sense to dry off quickly, leaving us with a relaxing summer day to take full advantage of before the return returns tonight. These Parisians clearly intend to make the most of today’s warm weather and have decided to enjoy their lunches on the imposing steps of La Madeleine rather than on the surrounding benches.
As I attempt to orient myself, I am impressed by their indifference to the imposing architecture around them. They laugh, play, eat, look at their phones, and chat idly in the summer warmth. The memories of the Napoleonic soldiers who La Madeleine was built for and the Republicans housed within are of no bother.
Two thoughts cross my mind. The first is the reaction of Napoleon’s Army of the Orient upon arriving in Alexandria. The great city of Alexander had been lived in for over two thousand years. The inhabitants are not slaves to the memory of another era, they are indifferent to the “glory” that surrounds them. The second thought is of Baron Haussmann. I often compare the Haussmannization of Paris to Hitler and Speer’s plan to rebuild Berlin into an imposing city called ‘Germania.’ We think of the later project with horror but Paris – which is so loved by millions – is also the work of a megalomaniac whose vision was built on the immiseration of millions.
When we think of Alexandria or Germania we do not think of the people who (would have) lived there. We only see the moments and grand ceremonial spaces designed to overawe our peasant sensibilities. We can see the people in Haussmann’s Paris, but not in those great public spaces. But the inhabitants use them anyway. Churches become benches and ceremonial promenades become soccer pitches. The space is misused in the sense that it was never designed for the living but the living have nothing to fear from the ghosts that fill their city.
I did not find the republican crypt nor did I see the church’s front-facing façade because of construction. Instead, I am left with the realization that there is a monument that was built by the dead for the already dead and that the living – like the grass that grows in cracked concrete – push through to make these public spaces their own.
Signed,
Andrew (Pfannkuche)
Normal Thoughts 