Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [262]
—Judy Morrill, Hollins Abroad Paris, 1982; managing director, Highmount Capital
The Hollins Reid Hall program (hollins.edu) welcomes students from all colleges and universities, so if you know someone who might be interested, encourage him or her to explore further!
Hôtel
The word hôtel in French not only refers to a lodging but also is a general word used for many other buildings or complexes. Some common hôtels are: a private, aristocratic mansion (hôtel particulier, like the Hôtel de Sully in the Marais); a city hall (hôtel de ville, which every French town of any size has); a hospital (sometimes called a hôtel-Dieu); a general post office (hôtel de poste); an auction house (hôtel des ventes); and, in Paris, a home for wounded war veterans (the Hôtel des Invalides, founded by Louis XIV, now also a military museum).
I
Interdit
The French word for “forbidden” or “prohibited,” interdit can be an annoying word, especially when it is displayed on signs on the grass of many Paris parks and gardens, justifiably among the world’s most beautiful. I used to bristle at the signs, but then I decided that a feature I really like about Paris parks is that they are part of people’s daily lives, not a place for recreation only. Parisians walk through parks and gardens every day, to and from work, to take a break, to rendezvous with friends or family. We have very few urban parks and gardens in North America that are quite the same—New York’s Central Park and Boston’s Public Garden are two that are—as we tend to think of parks as places to go just to play sports or lay down a blanket for a picnic. In Paris, you can’t separate the parks from the boulevards or avenues, and I think being prohibited from walking on the grass is a small price to pay to stroll or sit in such picturesque surroundings (and the grass is often the most perfect you’ve ever seen).
J
Jeu de Paume
Today reserved for temporary exhibitions with an emphasis on contemporary photography and video, the Jeu de Paume museum once housed the Impressionists. For many years after living in Paris as a student (when I was typically at the museum twice a week), I was able to still remember the exact placement of each painting in every room. Alas, my memory fails me a bit now, though I do remember whether a work was on the first floor or the second, on the rue de Rivoli side or the Tuileries side. It may seem pointless to mention something one can’t really experience anymore—after all, we can still see the Impressionist paintings in the Musée d’Orsay (thankfully)—but there is something very special and worth emphasizing about viewing art in a small museum.
Thinking about how compact the Jeu de Paume is reminds me of a passage from the chapter “Hunger Was Good Discipline” in Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, in which he speaks of the small museum of his day:
There you could always go to the Luxembourg Museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.
I was hungry often in Paris, too, but I will never forget how standing and looking in the Jeu de Paume made me feel about art, about my life, about the extraordinary place that is Paris. I mention all this to encourage visitors not to overlook Paris’s wealth of small museums—in any one of them, you may very well have your own illuminating