Decided suddenly on an additional excursion to Paris even though we had said the visit to Charleville – Mézières would be our August trip for this year…. But my eye fell on a special offer by the French Railways and the fact that we did want to see Ann Veronica Janssen’s intervention under the pendulum of Foucault… So we decided to take the opportunity to make use of our Peruwelz-succursale (depinterdep) as springboard and took the TGV from Valenciennes… Making all very manageable and easy, at least we hoped so… We had not always been lucky with fast train connections, and so it was somewhat fingers crossed.
Woke up early because I thought my alarm went off, but after a while, already puzzled by the darkness of the morning, I noticed it had not been the alarm but a message from the SNCF to say that the wifi on our train wasn’t working… Thus, much too early and bleary-eyed chugged off to our way-station where we boarded the tram to Valenciennes, since I wanted to save parking fees for down-town, cutting periphery costs further… In the end it all went well, though a good bakery in V was a bit of an idle hope.. Train was comfy though, one of the newer ones… Not many passengers until Arras… And that’s where the price is from… Slow going till there (via Douai) and then speedy along the fast line to Paris. On arrival could curtail our tendency to go strolling from the station and took the metro to Odeon, where we then did have a decent coffee before heading towards the Jardin du Luxembourg, to then peal off towards the Pantheon.
This immense building has regained some interest of late, after years of relative calm… With the installation of permanent works for the ‘pantheonisation’ of Maurice Genevoix in 2020, six large vitrines by Anselm Kiefer and a sound work by Pascal Dusapin, the place has been revitalised and now with the intervention of Ann Veronica Janssens under the Pendulum of Foucault seemingly quite an attraction… With reason. While only one of the numerous shows she has in France this year, she managed to find just the right balance to avoid being too present in this imposing space but the literally reflect it while reminding us, though Foucault, that we are just part of the whole, turning slowly through space.. The space subverted while being elucidated… I saw one visitor approach the mirror as were it a huge gap in which one could fall into the cupola instead of the cover to the central space of the labyrinthine crypt below… Interesting idea since the bombast of the place relies on the diminutive remains which our physical life on earth leaves us to ponder… The pendulum marking each passage with a slow grace and constancy, and in this case reflected to form an eight forever turning in on itself… A fifty-fifty movement as it were.
An impressive intervention in an impressive space, in which the work of Kiefer also functions but takes a bit of getting used to: while well integrated in the space and materially sympathetic, they do somewhat stand out and hopefully with time and patina recede into the whole… But as an update it seems to work…
Down to the crypt to consider the other question we had posed ourselves after the trip to Charleville-Mézières, namely the controversy if Arthur Rimbaud should be ‘pantheonised’ too… Along with Verlaine of all people… This is a bit of a headache, and gut reaction would be: No way! Rimbaud was practically against everything this bombastic war-mongering monument originally stood for and still retains in its epic murals and huge figures towering over us mere mortals… On the other side also, the conceivers of this place would flip in their mausoleums if riff-raff such as Arthur and Paul should gain access… All sides would agree that it is completely impossible…
But wandering around the crypt one can’t help notice that there is still a lot of space… The builders probably thought the nation would keep producing prominent figures at a frightful rate… Ah, Vive la France… But quite a few of the cells are used as storage for all sorts of stuff and could easily house (even a live) riff-raff (SDF) poet or two… More to the point would be what the existing (permanent) residents and their next of kin or sponsoring entities would think… Probably they would balk, and who knows, some illustrious residents might move out! Merde!, not another (ever so long) season in hell?. No matter if the illuminating light breaks out of Rousseau’s tomb…(égalité, huff, Voltaire just across the way) So, on balance I think it’s better to leave him in Charleville cemetery, punishment enough.
Speaking of which, another conundrum concerning these two cities – we headed down the hill to my old haunt in the Marais, more specifically the Place des Vosges, still not sure if it is copy or original of the Place Ducale in Charleville… But here it is… They were conceived at around the same time by brothers, (some say father and son) both architects, one Clement, the other Louis Métezeau, one in 1606, the other in 1612… Or around that time, accounts vary… (various architects in family, buildings attributed but not certain…) It seems quite a few people are confused & don’t really know: Parisians consider the Place Ducale as ‘try-out’, the Charlevillians see the Place des Vosges as a copy… So having now visited both within a fortnight, we still don’t know… (thus remaining a fifty-fifty question for next time)
Returned to the Gare du Nord via Port de Chapelle and were impressed that there seem to be more Indians than ever before, displacing to some degree the Africans from the neighbourhood, thus as with all cities, movement afoot all the time, even if in the city centre one might cling to the illusion of timelessness… For a bit between the tourist hoards… The ride back to Valenciennes was on time and a bit crowded, but late sunshine and pleasant cloud-play made it pass quickly, regaining our car and Belgium in good time and home before long… Well worth it.
depinterdep 