The Belle Epoque A Cultural History, Paris and Beyond by Dominique Kalifa

 The Belle Epoque

A Cultural History, Paris and Beyond by Dominique Kalifa is an exciting new book published by Columbia Press. 

The topic, no sure for you, is one of my favorite ones: the Belle Epoque, a cultural moment experienced in Paris, pretty fertile, where richness became more extended, and where there was the possibility for everyone of enjoying the beauty of a capital like Paris: Paris became a city democratically great for rich and poor, and if you were an artist, someone creative, the best place you could live in. 

Started historically in 1889, when there were also the celebrations for the first centenary of the French Revolution, this one was an historical moment pretty happy and creative.

Paris: still without cars, where people tended to cultivate plants of every sorta and where there was a genuine friendship; where the Moulin Rouge, created that years, had a completely different touch; a calm plenty of expectations but, also, a city that lived in perfect harmony with the rest of the world. 

The Exposition of 1900 counted more than 50 million of visitors; 1900 meant for France a new re-start after the Dreyfus affair.

Someone wrote somewhere that also when people were poor was possible to live in a city like Paris; Paris was at that time the place where everyone would have wanted to be; a place plenty of expectations with a positivistic approach; Paris was looking directly to the future; there was the perception of the future; a future, and a century, the XXth one that had to be without wars, but that, differently, was in war most of the time, with horrible conclusions.

The expression Belle Epoque, that it is now commonly used for characterizing, not only in France, but also in other countries, a stellar, pacific moment of a certain country, (another expression could be Gilded Age) has been created only later. 

No one in France, tried to define the end of the XIX century or the beginning of 1900. People continued to live without the perception that this one was an exceptional historical moment. 

Writers published remarkable books, I name Proust for everyone and there was an immense cultural fertility.

But...When the Belle Epoque ended?

It is difficult to define the end of a good historical period, but everyone mark a psychological date: the 1914 and the entrance in war: that year meant the end of the lightness breathed since there: the horror of the war, with its heaviness, replaced the past years, the pandemic flu and what had been seen by people, made a difference in negative.

The moments immediately after the first world war for sure were not conceived by people like a state of a new pre-war, but were lived with more uncertainty because the world wasn't in a great state and things were becoming every day more difficult and unpleasant. The enchantment experienced at the end of the XIXth century and the beginning of the XXth century was over. People grew up mentally, there was great sufferance and nothing was anymore like before: that state of beatitude and innocence experienced before was over. Forever.

Then, when time passed by, when the horror of two world wars and a pandemic flu changed the world, someone defined the period lived in Paris before these devastastating experiences calling it La Belle Epoque: being an attractive topic, people who lived during that years published a lot of memoirs on the topic: there was also who wrote that the Belle Epoque was an hypocrital moment in the history of France, plenty of contradictions.

For sure in the Belle Epoque there was relaxation, but also dances, parties, people were cheerful, and happy. A state of mind, this one, after a long period of crisis, that was re-created, paradoxically when Paris was occupied by Nazis.

Immediately after the first world war in France the production of movies fell dramatically, and foreign productions, with new emerging actors, like Rodolfo Valentino, became real stars for the people.

Who lived the Belle Epoque missed and missed and missed so badly that years. In the present there were lost friends, there was the perception that the sweetness of life was over forever, because the Belle Epoque incapsulated all together these three elements: a place, a time and a society.

The cinema tried all his best, later, in the 1950s, putting on the big screen an idea of 1900, thanks also to the works of Maupassant, Colette, the stories of Arsène Lupin.

After all paying a tribute at that first decades of the XX century meant also paying a tribute to that infant cinema. Differently, the other decades of the century focused on trasgressions of every sorta: a new conception of the Belle Epoque was borning.

It is the case of Jules et Jim by Francois Truffaut sets in Paris in 1912.

While cinema tried to re-define the role of the Belle Epoque, time passed by and most iconic places known during the Belle Epoque were destroyed for the creation of more spaces for always new citizens.

The myth of the Belle Epoque, although partially "killed" by the immense problematics brought by the two world wars and the exigencies of a city under construction, returned with prepotency thanks to wagons of pictorial books, micro-stories sets in different parts and cities of France, and Brussels Publisher became the specialist of this genre.

The Belle Epoque was splendid and magnificient just for a little portion of people in the proper sense of the word, and not for the masses, but...

But...That one has been a positive period for everyone. 

And what a nostalgia. 

Dorgelès wrote that "The only past that counts is the living past, which is transformed along with us." 

The Belle Epoque, writes Kalifa, "Truly exists because we have needed it;" yes because it was an age of security and writing security we want to add that people lived peacefully and pleasantly well in this world.

This last work by Kalifa is a tribute to a city and its more magnificient historical period. Beautiful, written with heart and competency, this one is a complete portrait of the Belle Epoque: I am sure you'll love so badly, as I did. 

And now some words on Dominque Kalifa. I had also previously read and reviewed Vice, Crime and Poverty always published by Columbia Press. I discovered in the website of Columbia that Kalifa died just a year ago.

In the postcript by Venita Datta: "For those of us who were fond of Dominique Kalifa, our Belle Epoque is located in a Paris of the recent past, in which we share lively conversations with our friend in his graduate seminar at the Sorbonne, in cafés, in his house around the dinner table, and finally in his oeuvre, in which the true history of the Belle Epoque lives on."

Highly recommended book.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori