BLOG. Paris-Montrouge Scribbler
This is a new blog that picks up from https://www.ankarascribbler.blogspot.com, written during the years 2012-2022 while I was living in Ankara, Turkey. I will still post there from time to time, for return trips to Turkey and travels in the neighboring region: Greece, Cyprus, etc.
This new blog will feature my experiences in Paris, other parts of France, and western Europe, and maybe elswhere, we'll see.
Welcome!
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21 January, 2023. (post no. 1). Street signs – agents of
education
I now live in Paris, in the Petit-Montrouge section (quartier) of the 14th arrondissement. [Paris is divided into 20 arrondissements, or districts.] The area belonged to Montrouge, a separate town, until 1860 when it was annexed by Paris. Montrouge the town still exists, immediately to the south of Paris, with metro (subway) and bus connections into the capital.
I have been coming here since 1975, when my in-laws bought a small apartment, a 5th floor (= 6th floor, American) walk-up in a building of either just before or just after World War I, a real fixer-upper. They fixed it up and it became a family base. Eventually a tiny elevator was installed in the building’s small stairwell – a godsend when arriving with suitcases or simply returning from the market. Apart from the school year 1978-79 and the spring semester, 2011, my visits have been short. But now we’re here for good.
Although the neighborhood is familiar, I’m amazed by how many new details I am noticing. The architecture, the architectural decorations such as Greco-Roman masks and the signatures of architects, little gardens, cafés each with a distinct personality, markets and shops of all sorts, and people of all physical types and ages speaking not only French and the occasional English but all sorts of languages I cannot identify. Pet dogs are frequent, mostly small, some very small. They do pee and more (owners are supposed to pick up after them; these days, as opposed to the 1970s, most do, but not all, despite the threat of a fine). Pigeons are another menace. Fortunately, the municipality sends a truck around a few days each week with a high powered hose to clean the sidewalks. Oddly, I don’t see any cats. I say oddly, because street cats are a staple in Turkey, where I have come from. My path was crossed late one evening this past fall by a rat. Rats are surely countless, but stick to places more secure than well-trod sidewalks.
One aspect of Paris that strikes me as I walk around is the active role street names, park names, and commemorative plaques play in promoting history, politics, and cultural achievements. To recall Turkey again, in Ankara, street names in the city center reflect that city’s role as a capital. Country or capital city names (Iran Avenue, Paris Street) or names of leading statesmen (J.F. Kennedy Street, Jinnah Avenue) are common. In outlying districts, the streets are numbered, as in New York, although numbers go up into four figures, which are hard to keep straight. In Istanbul, street names are amazingly varied. In my first long stay, in 1975, we lived on Tavuk Uçmaz Sokak (The Chicken Doesn’t Fly Street), eventually renamed as Akyol Sokak (White Way Street). Here in Paris, no numbers, no eccentricities. The mission of street names is entirely different. One encounters people from antiquity to the present, French and even foreign, as well as references to geography and to activities in the specific area, past and present. Moreover, street signs don’t simply give a name, but typically add a bit of biographical information. The aim is to be instructive and to be inspirational. In a recent walk to and from my tai chi class, I encountered the following – organized here by category.
Military and Wars. Ancient:
Rue des Thermopyles. 300 Spartan and 700 Thespian soldiers guarded the crucial pass of Thermopylai when Persian troops were invading the mainland of Greece in 480 BC.
The Spartans and Thespians were treacherously ambushed, but fought valiantly to the end. This street is private although open to public traffic. It’s much more picturesque than this graffito suggests.
Nearby is the rue Leonidas, commemorating the Spartan leader at the battle of Thermopylai.
A narrow park with majestic trees lines a long stretch of the street.
A street, a “villa” (=a dead-end street), and a metro station remember the battle of Alesia, in central France.
Roman troops under Julius Caesar were invading Gaul (today’s France and Belgium). In 52 BC, they besieged the town of Alesia, whose soldiers were led by Vercingetorix. The Romans won this key battle, which proved to be decisive for the Roman takeover of Gaul.
The victory is remembered as a symbol of France’s Roman heritage. But Vercingetorix, the Gallic chief, would be heroized under the Third Republic (1870-1950) as the first national leader of the French – and remembered (as you might guess) in another street here in Paris, not too far away.
Napoleonic period
Régis Barthélemy Mouton-Duvernet (1770-1816) was a general under Napoleon. Because he supported Napoleon during his return from exile in 1815, soon thereafter, after the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, he was executed. A few decades later, the tides turned. Napoleon, although reviled after his defeat at Waterloo and during his final years spent in exile on St. Helena, a truly remote island in the south Atlantic, was rehabilitated. His military victories, in particular, were seen as moments of French glory well worth bringing to public attention. Napoleon was reburied in grandeur under the great dome of the Invalides, while his generals and the battles won have been commemorated by place names throughout Paris. Mouton-Duvernet himself is remembered by a street and a metro station.
World War II.
Much emotion here. Resistance leader Jean Moulin, tortured and killed by the Gestapo,
and the philosopher Victor Basch and his wife Hélène Basch, killed by pro-Nazi French militias, are remembered by a street and by a large square.
The Aspirant (cadet) Jean-Louis Dunand, a young army cadet from the neighborhood, died early in the war, in 1940; the park near the city hall of the 14th district is named for him.
In many places throughout the city, the memory of Jewish school children rounded up and sent to die in the concentration camps is honored by plaques. “Let us never forget them” reads the final sentence.
In August, 1944, the Free French, led by General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, entered Paris from the south, the Porte d’Orléans, and marched to the Montparnasse railway station where the German commander surrendered to him and to Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy. Known simply as Leclerc, he is remembered by the major boulevard leading from the Porte d’Orleans north to the Place Denfert-Rochereau.
Sadly, Leclerc lost his life in an airplane crash in Algeria in 1947, when he was only 45 years old.
Other people honored by street names on my recent walk include:
Benefactors. Michel Brézin (1757-1828), an industrialist, founded a hospice at Garches, outside Paris, for old and infirm workers in foundries.
The Abbé Pierre Carton (1815-1887), the priest in charge of the Catholic church of St. Pierre de Montrouge, founded a hospice for women, Notre-Dame de Bon Secours.
Writers and Editors. The Didot family, from the early 18th century on, has been famous as publishers and booksellers.
The Abbé Jacques-Paul Migne (1800-1875) was a Catholic priest active as a publisher of religious books.
Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) was a Lebanese poet. A Lebanese cedar tree was planted in his memory in the centrally located Aspirant Dunand park.
Also in the park is a statue of Michel Servet, a Spanish religious non-conformist of the 16th century who met a grisly end. But more on him in the future, when I look at statues.
Artists and film makers. Film directors Agnès Varda (1928-2019), who lived and worked in this district from the 1950s on, and her husband, Jacques Démy (1931-1990), are remembered by a mural and a square, both near the city hall of the 14th arrondissement.
The twice-weekly open-air market sets up in Jacques Démy Square.
The Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) lived mostly in Paris from 1922 on, with his studio in the 14th arrondissement.
A small park now bears his name.
Civil rights and politics. My tai chi class takes place in the Rosa Parks sports center (espace sportif Rosa Parks).
Rosa Parks (1913-2005), who refused to give up her bus seat for a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, became an emblematic figure in the campaign for the civil rights of Black Americans.
The city hall of the 14th arrondissement
A recent mayor of the 14th arrondissment, Pierre Castagnou (1940-2009), has his street next to the city hall.
Vincent de Moro-Giafferi (1878-1956), a politician and high-profile lawyer, is remembered in a square very close to the Rosa Parks sports center.
Last of all for today's walk: remembering agricultural and horticultural activity in the neighborhood, before World War I
and a region of France:
And the ideals of the French Republic:
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