Paris on Paper: Writing
About the City
by Anna Gibson
There are artists who find inspiration in the natural world, who
paint mountains and craft poetry that evokes the trickle of a
stream or the roar of the ocean, who capture the sunrise between
branches on film or who create prose in which each line carries
the breeze whispering through corn fields. And then there are
those who find poetry in a city—in manmade forests of brick and
cement where long shadows are cast by spires and offices, not
trees, and where the hum of congested asphalt expanse replaces the
calls of the wild. To those who see nothing but industrial
claustrophobia in clustered architectural giants, a city lacks
those elements of inspiration so essential to the artistic muse:
there is no serenity, no calm tranquillity or elemental beauty.
But the modern era has heralded a new definition of beauty, one
that can incorporate the manmade, the industrial, the
brick-and-mortar possibilities of city life.
In a city past and
present converge to cheer in the dawn of every new day. A writer
will celebrate the sharpness of the smoggy air which carries with
it the excitement of life and the possibilities of the evolving
but ever-hopeful human spirit. The sounds of a city pump with
adrenaline and energize its inhabitants toward an emotion that
departs drastically from the serenity of nature. A city has its
own life-blood, its own character, formed by the people who live
in its limits and their developing philosophies and ideals, their
progress and their declines. The past is alive in a city even
while it leaps toward discovery and a new future. A city is built
around the human spirit and holds at its center the story of each
era it has witnessed.
Paris has inspired artists for centuries to search out the
mythical spirit of what was once an island settlement surrounded
by water. That Paris was a homing beacon for philosophers,
artists, and writers is not surprising, and perhaps it had little
to do with a muse as it did with the cheap accommodation and
abundance of bars and cafes, particularly during the prohibition
years after the First World War. But to this day the city retains
its reputation as the city of love and light and romance – ideals
perhaps rooted in the spirit of celebration and freedom so central
to the Paris of the 1920s, when Hemingway, Joyce, Stein, Ford,
Elliot, Pound and Fitzgerald found a welcoming release in the
French capital. Whether it was in the serpentine waters of the
Seine, the stones of the cathedrals, or the smoky bars of Paris’s
midnight hours, writers found artistic stimulation and they drank
it in like the alcohol they took to relieve their problems or the
coffee they inhaled to awaken their senses.
 Still
today, on the edge of the Latin Quarter, writers find refuge and
inspiration in Shakespeare and Company, the tiny “rag and bone
bookshop of the heart” where dusty volumes reign and young artists
can find room and board at the expense of reading a book a day.
Inside the dark corners of this shrine to the muse of Paris,
philosophies still reign supreme and the past is celebrated by the
exaltation of the written word. I love perusing the bookshop’s
section on Paris, which lives right beside the front windows where
the books can gaze out across the river toward the towers of Notre
Dame. At eye-level the books are modern—histories of Paris, tales
of expatriate life between the wars, modern travel narratives, and
collections of autobiographical odes to the city. I rifle through
a book on Sylvia Beech, the original proprietor of Shakespeare and
Company—even through I have my own copy, the temptation to buy a
new one with the bookshop’s stamp displayed in the front cover is
tempting. But it is further up the shelves, almost out of reach,
that I find books I have never seen before—the ones that usually
tempt me to reach for my purse. Second-hand books—histories,
biographies, old travel narratives, faded books of photos—show
signs of years of page-turnings, probably while they sat on this
shelf, never purchased. They are part of the shop, of its dusty
shelves and its position as guardian of the English-language
romance with the city.
To me, it is in finding the right words to capture Paris that the
city comes to life, and I use this as my excuse for my growing
collection of books dedicated to the spirit of this enigmatic
city. Perhaps every city is in some way enigmatic—they each
contain so many contradictions, so many contrasting elements and
such a multiplicity of life that they can’t be encapsulated or
imprisoned in a few words on paper. But, as my collection of
volumes on Paris can attest, the inability to summarize or seize
the city in words does not stop writers attempting their own paean
to the spirit of Paris. That there is no one true description of
this unfathomable city makes the reading fascinating, as if each
writer is attempting to stumble upon the illusive truth at the
center of the city. To me, Paris is many things, and seeing it
through others’ eyes is the only way to truly understand it.
© Anna Gibson, 2005
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