París era una fiesta
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
Ernest Hemingway
La Seine sur le Pont Royal
Marcel Jefferys
1872-1924
"Le moindre vent me dirige. Au lieu de remonter la Seine j’ai suivi son courant. Des patrouilles escortaient ce poète qui allait au travail - et voici la Tour Eiffel ! Mon Dieu, quelle confiance il possédait en la gravitation universelle, son ingénieur ! Sainte-Vierge, si un quart de seconde l’hypothèse de la loi de la pesanteur était controuvée, quel magnifique décombre ! Voilà ce qu’on élève avec des hypothèses. Voilà réalisée en fer la corde que lance au ciel le fakir et à laquelle il invite ses amis à grimper…"
Extrait de Jean Giraudoux,
Juliette au pays des hommes, 1924
Les quais de la Seine
1949
Lucienne DELYLE
“La phrase dans les villes est interminable.On ne voit pas les virgules entre les maisons, ce qui en rend la lecture si difficile et les rues si lassantes à parcourir .La phrase dans les villes est interminable”.
Debout un poteau à deux jambes donc un homme
près d'un autre qui n'en a qu'une
et ronde tout à fait : Donc un arbre
Comme les arbres sont proches des hommes !
les hommes presque des arbres
à peu de chose près, comme tout est homme !
Heni Michaud
Je voulais dessiner la conscience d'exister et l'écoulement du temps.
Heni Michaud
1899-1984
Sabine Weiss, Pont Neuf, Paris, 1949
In the spring mornings I would work early while my wife still slept. The windows were open wide and the cobbles of the street were drying after the rain.The sun was drying the wet faces of the houses that faced the window.
I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood. At the head of the Île de la Cité below the Pont Neuf where there was the statue of Henri Quatre, the island ended in a point like the sharp bow of a ship and there was a small park at the water’s edge with fine chestnut trees, some huge and spreading, and in the currents and back waters that the Seine made flowing past, there were excellent places to fish. You went down a stairway to the park and watched the fishermen there and under the great bridge.
“With so many trees in the city, you could see the SPRING coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the SPRING as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the SPRING, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.
In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.”
…
“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”
A Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway
1899-1961
“Je voulais faire de la peinture. Mais la vie de Paris m’intéressait tellement que m’enfermer pour faire de la peinture ne me plaisait pas du tout. J’étais beaucoup plus passionné par toutes ces choses que je voyais la nuit. J’en étais hanté…”
“On se demande parfois si la vie a un sens... et puis on rencontre des êtres qui donnent un sens à la vie”.
Brassaï
Gyula Halasz Brassaï
... A veces lo único que quisiera es irme y llegar a París, sentir que tocas mis manos, que me tocas entera con flores, y después otra vez no saber de dónde vienes y adonde vas. Para mí eres de la India, o de un país aún más lejano, oscuro, marrón, para mí eres desierto y mar y todo lo que es misterio. Sigo sin saber nada de ti...
Para mediados de agosto estaré en Paris, un par de días solamente. No me preguntes por qué, para qué, pero quiero que estés para mí, una noche o dos, tres ... Llévame al Seña, vamos a mirar y mirar bien adentro hasta que nos hayamos vueltos pececitos y nos reconozcamos.
Ingeborg Bachmann a Paul Celan, Viena 24 de junio de 1949.
¡ Ponte fea!
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