David Downie, author of A Passion for Paris; Romanticism and Romance in the City of Light, talks with Kaaren Kitchell for Paris Writers News (photos of Paris by Richard Beban)
For years, I had been hearing wonderful things about David Downie's books on Paris which have consistently earned high praise from readers and critics alike, and Paris Writers News is most grateful to writer Kaaren Kitchell for this wonderful interview with him for our interview series: Authors on Authors.
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Kaaren Kitchell: David, I loved this book. But then, I knew I would, since I share your passion for Paris. It is such a skillful interweaving of the last few centuries of Paris history, Romanticism, great stories about writers and artists, and the places where they lived. I just passed Baudelaire’s 1842-43 residence on the Quai de Bethune, and remembered your stories about him.
I read the book once for pleasure, and a second time to take notes on books you recommended, especially the novels by Hugo, Balzac and George Sand I haven’t read, and the places I need to revisit (the Carnavalet) or see for the first time (the Musée Victor Hugo).
David Downie: Your words are very flattering, I’m delighted that you “got” the book and especially that it has inspired you to read the greats of the 19th century and also to go out and rediscover Paris. The city the Romantics knew and loved (or hated, passionately) is in part still around. It certainly lives on in spirit.
KK: In discussing the French taste for noir melancholy, you ask the question: “Is it reaching too far to evoke the ancient Gallic worship of Dis, I wonder, the god of negativity, death and darkness, or to recall that these pre-Roman forebears of today’s Parisians measured time by night, not day?” I’d say, absolutely not, but I’d ask you, what about the goddesses Aphrodite (eros) and Demeter (the bounty of the harvest)? There is such appreciation for beauty and eros in Paris, and for good food here in France.
DD: You’re right, of course, and that’s what makes Paris such a rewardingly rich place: the city and its inhabitants operate at many levels and in synchretism, meaning, they are complex, paradoxical and often very widely and very deeply read. Their melancholy may be in part genetically determined, as has been suggested, but I’m convinced it’s mostly cultural. Eros and Dis and Demeter make for a fascinating love triangle, don’t you think?
KK: Juicy indeed. On that subject, what a wealth of intimate stories you tell about Victor Hugo. In spite of his history of womanizing, he was devastated when his wife, Adèle, succumbed to seduction by their mutual friend, Sainte-Beuve, the homely critic and writer. How the pain of that betrayal drove him beyond narcissistic ambition to creative heights, including his depiction of the two of them as Quasimodo and Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. How did your fascination with his work and life begin?
DD: Possibly at birth. I’m joking, sort of. My parents weren’t big on children’s books. I’m the last of six and was exposed from an early age to grown-up literature. Victor Hugo was an early influence, as was Dante, by the way. We had wonderful editions of old books on our bookshelves, including 19th-century illustrated editions of the Divine Comedy and Les Misèrables. My interest in Hugo was piqued perhaps 25 years ago when I first noticed the portrait of his official mistress, Juliette Drouet, hanging in the Hugo house-museum on Place des Vosges. Here’s a homely parallel: when you garden and start tearing up nettles you find they lead all over the place; that’s what it was like with Hugo. He was an astonishingly active man in every sense of the word: intellectually, sexually, and in terms of politicking and eating and socializing. He not only wrote, and seduced countless women. He also painted, made furniture, risked his life many times for the right causes, and went into politics to try to advance the cause of social democracy. An amazing, amazing individual. If I could find a publisher willing to invest in a new biography of Hugo I would happily spend several years researching and writing it.
KK: You would surely be the one to write it. Hugo’s motto in childhood was “Chateaubriand or bust.” His ambition was not just to be France’s leading playwright, poet and novelist, it was also to obtain a government post in order to fight for free education, universal suffrage and women’s rights, the abolition of slavery, poverty and the death penalty, the creation of a United States of Europe, and to avoid war. Much of what he fought for has come to pass. Just as with William Blake and Walt Whitman, it seems that the greatest writers have not only a romantic sensibility, but also a strong commitment to social justice.
DD: Indeed, though that model may no longer be fashionable. Being politically active and outspoken usually leads a writer or artist to be labeled as someone engaging in agitprop. Militancy in art can be tedious. It takes a hugely talented individual to be an excellent artist and also get across a message of social justice. There are not many around today and perhaps they have always been a rarity.
KK: You describe the difference between spirituality and religion in your description of Hugo as an “anticlerical believer, a mystic, a man with faith in man, woman, the perfectibility of the species, and God or the immortal soul, but an enemy of organized religion. “Truth, light, justice, conscience—that’s God,” he wrote. And “I believe in God.”
DD: Yes, he was, as we are, a product of both the Enlightenment and its skepticism, and Romanticism’s mysticism, the need to reach back to what seemed then, and seems now, to some, a more ordered universe, with a benign higher power or whatever you choose to call it, in charge. My guess is, the vast majority of French people today are like Hugo, no longer nominally Catholic, skeptical, adepts of the cult of Reason with a capital “r”, yet deeply rooted in a dark, magical past. Perhaps it’s the Druids they feel closer to these days, who knows, Descartes and the Druids!
KK: That Druidic strain is one of the things I love about France. You give us insight into the acceptance of adultery in France, even from a legal standpoint. Can you say more about this?
DD: I’d better not, my wife is fairly sick of hearing about adultery and frankly it is a topic that doesn’t wear well. If you are going to philander why bother to marry, these days? Yes, stuff happens, but as a general principle, if you want to play around, I say, don’t sign up for monogamy, unless your partner and you have some kind of specific arrangement. In pre-Revolutionary times and right into the 19th century people very, very rarely married for love, they married for practical reasons. Marriage contracts often stipulated that the spouses, and this was understood to be directed mainly at the wife, were bound for a period of years, usually five years, to be faithful. The reason was, an heir of known genetic makeup was felt to be needed, and the only way to assure that in those days was for the woman not to sleep around. Once the period of five or however many years had elapsed, it was usually understood that the spouses could discretely indulge their natural desires and drives to “know” others, especially if they had been in love with someone and could not marry that person for whatever reason—social class, wealth, family relationships, so forth. Practically this was a tacit acknowledgement that adultery was acceptable and indeed normal. However, women, especially, had to be very very careful for obvious reasons.
KK: As a reader and writer of crime and detective novels, you did some impressive sleuthing to unearth facts of biography about many of the great Romantic writers. Not only that Baudelaire might well have been a virgin, but also that he may not have even participated much in sampling hashish, in spite of the Club des Haschichins being held in his apartment on the Île Saint-Louis. You also discovered solid evidence that Balzac almost certainly never tried hashish. He was too strong an advocate for never abdicating one’s will power.
DD: Yes, all of this is well known to historians and specialists but little known to the general public. I love digging up material that sheds light on the darker aspects of even well-known personalities. It may be unfashionable nowadays but I still think it helps our understanding and appreciation of an artist or writer to know about their private lives. Knowing “the truth” or a truth or a different version of facts doesn’t necessarily influence one’s judgment of the worth of the artist or writer’s work, but it may enhance our appreciation of it.
KK: You tell such a beautiful story about Baudelaire in the sanitorium, dying of syphilis. The photographer Nadar describes how Baudelaire was no longer able to speak clearly, but the two carried on a pantomime dialogue about religion and death. Baudelaire at the window shook his fists and cursed God. So you believe then? Nadar asked. Baudelaire motioned to the sky, as if to say, Look up. How could God not exist?
DD: Yes, when I read that the first time around my eyes filled with tears. Nadar was an egoist, that’s for sure, but he was also a loving and giving man, was hugely popular and respected, and vastly talented—his photos are striking, and his gumption and courage were pretty much boundless. Beneath the jocularity and bohemianism he was a profoundly good person. Baudelaire instead must have been one of the most misunderstood, distrusted and disliked geniuses of his century. He was also an egoist and was capable of being nasty but he was if anything even more sensitive, intelligent and talented than Nadar. These people were simply astonishing. In comparison we have very few truly great men and women in the arts today.
KK: Your book is full of architectural details like the keystone harpy above the doors of one of Baudelaire’s mistress Jeanne Duval’s apartments. About Hugo’s saving Notre Dame and Viollet-le-Duc’s fantastical restorations of the church in the mid-1800s. I hadn’t realized that it’s the most-visited landmark in Paris, twice as many visitors as the Eiffel Tower.
DD: Yes, that’s what the official statistics say. If you try to get into Notre Dame much of the year you must join a very, very long queue. Admission is free and the crowds churn through. I’m not sure how many millions line up and climb the towers to see the view and the architectural details but I do know that the wait is often over an hour. There must be a reason. The place does have magic, despite the mobs.
KK: I haven’t read Balzac for years, but hearing from you that The Human Comedy was a variation on Dante’s theme, and that among the cast of 2,000 characters, the real star was Paris, makes me eager to dive right in again.
DD: You should! There’s plenty to read—100 novels and novellas. Paris is a character in most of them (some are set in the provinces). Balzac was a great admirer of Dante (and Shakespeare, by the way). The Divine Comedy had recently been translated (again) into French and was the rage… Balzac was like a sponge, soaking up all the influences of his day.
KK: I’m going to buy your favorite Balzac novel, La Peau de chagrin (The Magic Skin), just based on your brief description “in which an enchanted antiquarian’s boutique on the quay provides an unforgettable backdrop for a fantastical tale à la E. T. A. Hoffmann.” Have you read most of Balzac’s work?
DD: Oh no, I don’t have the time or the eye-power, as you know, I am visually handicapped. But I have read many, and have listened to many as audio books. It is sometimes surprising to realize that Balzac influenced everyone from George Sand and Victor Hugo or Baudelaire to Proust and Henry James. James said he wanted to be the Balzac of the English language!
KK: What an homage to Balzac! I loved the image of the great novelist limping through the streets of Paris dressed as a widow in bonnet and long dress, a shawl and gloves, disguised to outfox his creditors.
DD: He had debts, he was a life-artist, an endlessly fascinating character, so childlike and childish yet so sophisticated and savvy.
KK: What a great tale you tell about Balzac’s secret room, where he wrote up to eighteen hours a day. Please tease your future readers just a bit on the subject of Gautier’s visit to his studio, and the screams of Paquita Valdes.
DD: Oh, I mustn’t, they must discover that in the book. Put it this way, Balzac is what I’ve called a “method writer” meaning he had to “live out” many of the scenes of his books, or at least enact them in some way. The tale you refer to is particularly scabrous and saucy and quite shocking even today. But Gautier—another great writer—tells it with such humor and humanity!
KK: It’s clear that you love Père-Lachaise the way we do. It’s good to know that Balzac always said he wanted to live in airy places atop hills with a view, and just such a spot is where he was buried.
DD: It’s a pilgrimage spot for many, including me, one of the loveliest, most atmospheric parts of the cemetery. When I give people tours of the cemetery I always, always go there and leave a token for Balzac. That may be silly but perhaps not. In any case it is for me an uplifting experience.
KK: You honor his spirit, and he in turn inspires your writing. I’ve spent many an hour in the Jardin du Luxembourg and found your statue-by-statue tales of the Romantic greats inspiring. Which is your favorite male and which your favorite female writer, artist or musician honored there?
DD: Oh, I love them all. The statues are not great but that doesn’t really matter. Henry Murger of “Scenes of Bohemian Life” (which inspired Puccini’s opera) is actually well rendered in the bronze bust to him, and the statue to George Sand is flattering to her—in the extreme. The little bronze mask of Victor Hugo isn’t bad. My favorite writer in terms of talent and readability is of course Flaubert, but the sculpture to him shows him looking like a balding walrus. Oh well.
KK: Flaubert is my favorite, too, David. But I have to confess that I haven’t read a single novel by George Sand, though I’ve been hearing tales of her wildly erotic, cross-dressing, feminist life for years. Which of the novels by her would you suggest as a starting point?
DD: Actually I would start with Alfred de Musset’s “Confessions of a Child of the Century” about his affair with Sand, then I’d read “Lelia”. I am not a great fan of her writing, which I find too facile and stylized. What interests me about Sand is her extraordinary life. You’re better served by reading a biography of her for that—her autobiography is fascinating as a self-serving reinterpretation of events, an auto-hagiography. She was the original narcissist!
KK: So I’ve heard. George Sand was not the only woman writing under a masculine pseudonym in Paris. Franz Liszt’s lover, Marie Flavigny d’Agoult, wrote novels under the name Daniel Stern. So many of the Romantics seemed comfortable with fluid gender identities. So many of the female writers seemed to have male and female lovers. But we don’t hear about many of the male writers being bisexual. Any thoughts as to why?
DD: Bisexuality is now acceptable, even fashionable, but until recently it was a serious no-no, especially in America. The French have long known about the sexual behavior of their artists and writers and politicians and, for the last century or so in any case, it has been a matter of fact, not a scandal. Nowadays the young would find it normal that people followed their loves and passions, no matter what their gender or who they loved.
KK: The story of Sand and Chopin ends sadly. Not so much that they parted, but that she destroyed the letters he’d sent her and many of hers to him, and that he died still loving her. What drove these two lovers apart?
DD: He was weak, dying of consumption, and he was also in love with music, his music, that was his primary passion. She was a sexual animal—it’s a complex story, believe me—and he simply didn’t have the juice to satisfy her. She was also, as I’ve said, a narcissist of vast proportions, though she clearly had charm and charisma, and was a talented and above all prolific writer. It’s amazing the affair lasted as long as it did.
KK: You describe so many writers who worked through the night, and slept through most of the day, such as Sand and Balzac. Are you a Night Owl, too?
DD: No, I used to be, but I am now the opposite. Early to bed and early to rise: I’m up at dawn every day, I love the dawn and pre-dawn quiet. Paris is at its best at dawn, when no one is around and you have the place to yourself!
KK: One thing that struck me is how many of the great male French writers—Hugo, Baudelaire, Flaubert—seemed to have major mother complexes. Any comments on those you mentioned?
DD: Well, I will get in trouble for saying so, but I must wonder if most Frenchmen aren’t like the three you mentioned. The mother figure in this country is very powerful, perhaps all-powerful. American women, be warned! Marry a Frenchman and get his mother—for life, and for the afterlife!
KK: Here’s an odd historical fact you mention that I found baffling: King Henri IV sent messengers a week before his arrival to order his lady friends to stop bathing. Was a pungent-smelling body considered an aphrodisiac then, or was this his personal preference?
DD: Both. People were pretty funky, as a general rule, but if everyone stinks perhaps it’s less noticeable. Henri IV in any case liked his ladies “faisandée”, i.e. like ripe game. It turned him on. Again, I risk a lynch mob, but the French have very different notions about hygiene and body odors. People don’t smell like soap bars here, they smell like people!
KK: I was aware of the part Louise Colet played in Gustave Flaubert’s life and his novel, Madame Bovary. But I hadn’t heard how many other writers and artists she inspired, Alfred de Musset, Alfred de Vigny, Victor Hugo and the sculptor, James Pradier. And what a temper! What was the outcome of her attacking Alphonse Karr with a knife?
DD: To say “inspired” is understatement, she was a maneater of the first order! The outcome for Karr was blood—and a great quip, which I will not repeat here, but will encourage people to discover in my book!
KK: You are quite a flaneur. I’d never heard that Hugo quote, “Errer est humain, flâner est parisien”—wandering or straying is human, to flâner is Parisian. How much do you walk a day? Are you a morning, afternoon or evening walker?
DD: I try to walk 5-10 miles a day though that’s not always feasible. I am definitely a dawn walker and, when possible, an evening walker.
KK: I found your theory of the origin and etymology of the word jazz quite original, convincing, too. Can you riff on that?
DD: I’m glad you picked up on that. Again, it’s complicated, and you really need to read the chapter on Nouvelle Athenes to get the background. In a word, “jaser” was a very commonly used verb in France long before “jazz” was invented as a word or concept. In French it referred to improvisation, and music… I did a lot of reading, and I joined the dots.
KK: Anyone who loves Montmartre or is fascinated by French history must read your account of this site that was once holy to the war god, Mars, and called Mons Martis. So much has happened there, from the Commune struggle, to its site as the place where the lobster-walking poet Nerval committed suicide, and where Renoir, Cézanne, Monet, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Picasso, Braque, Modigliani, Vlaminck, Derain, Suzanne Valadon, Max Jacob and so many other artists lived before and right after the turn of the 20th century. But I must say, I disagree with your judgment of Salvador Dalí’s work.
DD: As the Romans said, De gustibus non est disputandum, we will have to agree to disagree. Dalí does not ring my bell and it’s my opinion his work doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Certainly to group him with any of the artists you mention above is to do them an injustice…
KK: Can we entice your prospective readers to order the book with one more detail? How do librarians in France inspire young French boys and girls to continue reading the great Romantic authors?
DD: I’ll give you a hint: all of the works of the great Romantics are in the public domain, and they’re all available free on the Internet… what might be a clever way to entice a passionate young, hormone-driven French boy or girl to troll through Balzac or Hugo or Baudelaire et al… seeking what? Since the notion of originality is old hat to millennials, I’ll bet you can join the dots on this one.
KK: Ah, yes. Thank you, David, for the delight of your book, A Passion for Paris, and the pleasure of talking with you!
(photos of Paris courtesy of Richard Beban
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About David Downie:
After San Francisco, New York, Providence, Rome and Milan, David Downie moved to Paris in the mid-1980s. His travel, food and arts features have appeared in over 50 leading print publications worldwide. and he is the author of a dozen nonfiction books, including the critically acclaimed essay collection Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light, and the bestselling Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James. His latest book is A Passion for Paris: Romanticism and Romance in the City of Light (St. Martin’s Press, April, 2015), has been hailed as an entertaining romp around contemporary Paris in the company of the 19th century’s literary and artistic greats: Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, George Sand, Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Delacroix, and many others. He is also the author of two thrillers including Paris City of Night and Downie’s Paris Timeline and Food Wine Rome travel apps are available from iTunes.
Downie is co-owner with his wife Alison Harris of Paris, Paris Tours custom walking tours of Paris, Burgundy, Rome & the Italian Riviera. They now divide their time between France and Italy.
For more about David Downie, see his websites and blogs: www.davidddownie.com; www.parisparistours.com or you can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Goodreads
About Kaaren Kitchell
Kaaren Kitchell is a writer who lives in Paris. Her book of poems, The Minotaur Dance, was published in 2003. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals, most recently in The Drunken Boat, and anthologies, most recently in Don’t Blame The Ugly Mug, and in a fine art manuscript at the Getty Museum. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, LA, and has just completed The Book of Twelve, a novel of interlinked stories about performance artists in Berkeley, California during the revolutionary 1960s. She has taught Living Mythically at the C.G. Jung Center in L.A., Esalen and in private workshops. Since 2011, she and Richard Beban have published her essays and his photos in their blog, Paris Play www.parisplay.com. She is Fiction Editor of TheScreamOnline.