Paris is one of the most stunning cities of the world; often choosen for finding ourselves; choosen by couples for romantic week-ends or trips. For this reason no other one like John Baxter can guides you through Paris telling to you in this latest book published by Museyon the CHRONICLES OF
Let's start to say that maybe French people are fixated with heads and...headless people and everything started with the
saint protector of France, Saint Denis.
Catholic, he vibrantly tried to convert a lot of pagans of the area; the story didn't convince at all the protectors of paganism and so Saint Denis was killed. Legend wants that Saint Denis, once killed keeping his own head on his hands walked for various miles before to dying. The author writes: "The severed head preached a sermon on love and forgiveness... Arriving at the home of a parishioner, a wealthy woman named Catulla, he handed her his head and died at her feet. She buried him on the spot. Wheat and other plants sprouted miraculously from the grave..."
And the story sounds real. No, wait: not that the saint walked keeping on his hands his head but as reported by the author: "Some accounts suggest the swordsman missed his mark and sliced off only the top of his skull – by no means rare;
executioners were notoriously inept. Such slipshod work may explain why he didn’t die immediately, since not all such head wounds are immediately fatal."
The Left Bank is surely the place more culturally fertile of Paris and same it was in the High Middle Ages when a young boy called Pierre Abelard afforded there. Abelard joined the cathedral school of Notre Dame and after a while he started to interact with Heloise, a relative, maybe of Fulbert. Considering that, according to Abelard the girl needed some private lessons,"He convinced Fulbert he should move into their home as her tutor. Inevitably, the couple became lovers" writes Baxter. And soon the arrival also, of a child. Illegittimate. What to do? Heloise was more sure that "it would be dearer and more honorable to me to be called... your whore” declared to Abelard. She didn't want to become a nun, and Abelard didn't want to become a friar.
For some misunderstanding there was an escalation of facts: Abelard was castrated. It was an immense tragedy for the two lovers. Heloise became a nun although she wrote in a letter to her ex lover: "“Even during the celebration of mass,when our prayers should be purer, lewd visions of those pleasures take such a hold upon my unhappy soul that my thoughts are on their wantoness instead of on our prayers."
I imagine you read some books by De Sade. Personally I was introduced at one of them The 120 Days of Sodom by a friend of mine during high school. The most lurid book I have ever read, De Sade had sex with female and male servants, imported prostitutes to one of the castles where he lived in and seduced his young sister-in-law when she came to visit.
The wife became the mistress of a man close to Robespierre and considering that De Sade was often incarcerated, he avoided the guillotine for this reason.
Onxe his most famous works published De Sade publicly admitted the horrified actions of the men described in that books in this wat: "If man is indeed born with free will,he has the right to commit the worst of crimes, just as his victims have the
right to avenge them".
This was too much even for Napoleon. Imprisoned again, De Sade became in prison the lover of the prison governor’s 13-year-old daughter. The little woman was there when he died.
The book will also take in consideration Marie Antoinette. Hated and misunderstood by the folk, her life will end tragically.
In what way people were assassinated or killed in France? Execution could count before the invention of the guillotine on the wheel. "The victim tied to a wagon wheel and his bones broken one by one with an iron bar" explains Baxter.
For richest people the end was quickest: strangled, stabbed or poisoned.
With the Revolution monsieur Guillotine became a deputy of the Parliament and his genial idea of cutting heads pretty quickly sounded truly fascinating. The first execution April 25, 1792, this new method of execution became Madame La Guillotine.
At the end more than 40,000 people were killed with the guillotine and one of the last ones was Robespierre.
Mr.Guillotine in the while, decided of changing his last name, for the shame he constantly proved: he was the founder of this brutal method of execution. He needed a new, fresh start.
Napoleon and the sad existence of Chopin and his relationship with George Sand will also be taken in consideration. Madame Duplessis, once dead would have become La Dame aux Camelias. "Born Alphonsine Rose Plessis in 1824, she had a prostitute for a grandmother and a priest for a grandfather. Her father, Marin Plessis, was a violent alcoholic."
Once grown up and with tubercolosis Alphonsine understood that if she wanted to live a longer life she had to become the mistress of a rich man. Alexander Dumas became the lover of Alphonsine. Both 18 years, he completely lost his head for this girl, but Alphonsine didn't want to be "exclusive meat" of Dumas and so the relationship ended up pretty acrimoniously with an upset Dumas who in a bitter letter wrote: “My Dear Marie, I am neither rich enough to love you as I could wish nor poor enough to be loved as you wish."
Dumas didn't forget her and once she died, he wrote La Dame aux Camélias telling their love-story. The book was not a great success, but on stage it was. Giuseppe Verdi called this sad love story La Traviata.
The characteristics of these women? “We don’t own ourselves” said Duplessis, once. Violetta in La Traviata searched for pleasure, love 'till the end, staying always free.
In this book Baxter will let us discover the story of Escoffier, maybe the most known chef of France, (Ritz, Savoy) but also the the creation of the Opera Garnier, thank at Charles Garnier, and the one of the Eiffel Tower thanks to Gustave Eiffel.
We will indulge at Monmartre, we will understood the theft of La Mona Lisa, giving a look at Marcel Proust and at that research of lost time; Coco Chanel, Hemingway and the gang of the Left Bank in the 1920s with Sylvia Beach, James Joyce can't be forgotten, like also the so-called Black Pearl, and Jean Mulin.
A chapter will treat the Beat Generation and another one the Students Revolution of 1968.
The book ends with wonderful walks in Paris.
Ah, what a dream!
You can't lose this book. It's too fascinating!
I thank Museyon Books fot the copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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