Green Fairies & Red Windmills

I only have a couple weeks left before it's time to head home. I'm sad about that. Unfortunately, I've been under the weather now for four or five days, so my adventures out in the big world of Paris have been almost nonexistent, confined to local interactions with shopkeepers and other simple things like going to class. That's why I've blogged so little this last week; there hasn't been much to say. I seem to be coming out of it finally, which is a relief.

I have been writing, though. I've written a paper on Delacroix and his Liberty Leading the People. The sculptor, Auguste Dumont—who cast a work called the Genius of Liberty—is also part of it. He's Louise Farrenc's older brother, Tori's uncle, and the namesake for her doll, Augi Dumont. He's becoming a character the novel, an important link in Louise and Tori's life between music and art. Louise lived in the Louvre as young child—that's fascinating to me. I can see the two children running through the abandoned halls of the Louvre like they were streets.

I've walked all over the Louvre at this point and plan to go back at least once more. Napoleon kicked the tenants out. They'd been living there since the Revolution, when the Louvre was taken from the king and given to the people. Napoleon established a museum in the Louvre (Musée Napoleon, of course), but that's why Gericault could go there and study the masters, which he did for years. The Academy held their Salons there too, in the Grand Hall. So interesting.

Of course I wrote about Géricault and his visits to the stables at Versailles—stables that Napoleon turned into "Imperial" stables. So many scenes in my mind's eye that involve Géricault's life—I'm still trying to figure how all that fits and how much of it will make the page in "real time." I'm also finishing up a paper on the Romantic movement in general and how it emerged in art, music and literature in Paris at the turn of the 19th century—after the fall of Napoleon.

All of this has helped me clarify what I know. The fact is, I've learned a lot, and everything I've learned forwards The Appassionata—mostly in unexpected ways. In other words, it seems to me that I have accomplished what I set out to accomplish. Truly. Obviously there's much more to be done, but I'm no longer doing my research by flashlight. I can see what I'm looking at much better now. Fact is, I feel like planting myself in Berkeley and haunting the university library for awhile, the way I haunted the Bodleian at Oxford back 2004. There's no point in doing it here: I don't read French well enough. Yet. I intend to continue studying French even after I go home.

Coming to Paris seems to have changed many things about my novel—although I think I can use what I've already written. The shift is real and substantial, but I don't think it's going to undo what's done as much as change its centrality. (If that makes any sense.) I've come to several conclusions lately. One of which is, I think the story is going to work somewhat like a braid, with three pieces woven together until, in the end, it's all the same story. That seems to be what's taking shape in my mind. I have a lot of visual images, scenes that I haven't written, but want to. One of the tendrils which will hold the whole together is the street I live adjacent to, Rue des Martyrs.

Clearly Rue des Martyrs is central to my story, as is the neighborhood surrounding it. For one thing, it's an old street and not only were there two artists studios along Rue des Martyrs, (Géricault's and his friend Verney's), but also there was a paint store that sold to the artists and where they tended to hang out. And there was a cabaret, where they probably danced the Can Can back when it was still a partners dance. It's the kind of place Berlioz would have known about.

One thing on my To-Do list for before I go is trying absinthe. I've found a place not too far from here—The Hôtel Royal Fromentin—formerly Le Don Juan Cabaret—and it still has its historic bar. They not only serve absinthe using the whole sugar cube ritual; there's an evening presentation on its history.

There's more in Montmartre to mine too. Especially, Poirier-sans-Pareil, a guinguette (an outdoor restaurant) built in and around a huge old pear tree. A platform was built into the branches of the tree where people sat—a tree house of sorts, and there were two thatched cottages in a garden. All this existed in early 1800s. Its one of the places Hugo went to get his audience for Hernani. It's all gone, changed and finally destroyed in a fire, but I need to see where it was and imagine it—and the slaughter houses nearby with their salmon colored roofs, built at the order of Napoleon.

And les moulins—the windmills. Moulin Rouge is at the foot of Montmartre and not far from here. Moulin Galette is near the old pear tree. So something else I need to see before I go. And I would still like to get my portrait painted in Montmartre too. So. There's a plan for when I return from Provence (where I'm headed now.)