Thursday, June 27, 2013

France 2012 - Day 8 - Montparnasse Cemetery (Part 1)

France 2012
Day 8 - 20th October - Montparnasse Cemetery
(Part 1)

I left Rambouillet this day. I'd intended to visit the Chateau (since during the week I'd have had to cut classes to visit) but it was closed for a private event, so it was not meant to be.

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"Domain of the Dukes"
Silly name for housing development

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Rambouillet market

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"Delivery and momentary stops"
How do they enforce this? Ah, the honour system!

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Around we go

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"Air Astana is quietly revolutionizing air travel to and within the vast and mysterious lands that make up Central Asia."
Self-orientalisation!

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More of the anti-nostalgia "no, not everything was better in the past" ads, featuring the Berlin Wall and Cod Liver Oil

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A documentary on Natalie Dessay preparing for La Traviata

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The Lion of Belfort

This being Paris, people ran red lights. Grr.

I'd intended to visit the Catacombs, one of the major things left in Paris I hadn't yet done, but it was closed.

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This despite my having visited the website (or what looked like the website) the night before and having seen no indication of its closure.

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"A piece of trash every 100m in Paris"
I'm not sure if this was a description or an aspiration, menace of fines notwithstanding

Luckily, the Cemetery of Montparnasse (another major sight I hadn't yet seen) was just beside the Catacombs. I'd intended to do both, but now had more time for just the former.

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Just past the entrance

It was cold and rainy - the perfect conditions to visit a cemetery. Happily, my heart was warmed by a free toilet being just by the gate and the guy in the booth giving me a free map automatically (at Père-Lachaise I'd had to buy one from a vendor outside)

For reference:
Balderdash: France/Spain 2011 - Day 5, Part 1 - Paris: Père Lachaise
Balderdash: France/Spain 2011 - Day 5, Part 2 - Paris: Père Lachaise

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On the cemetery. It's an important green area. Ok.

The cemetery was a lot more pratique than Père-Lachaise. The paths were straight, paved and in good condition. There were roads. There was not a lot of grass on where you'd walk. There was stone not soil between graves so navigating them was less messy (especially given the rain).

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Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier (mathematician)

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Dang-Ly family. I think they were Vietnamese

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Ferdinand-Frédéric-Henry de MYLIUS, General

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Police monument

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Baudelaire cenotaph

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"To you Laurence, to God"

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Modernity and Peace

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Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

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"Aug Dornes. Representative of the People, who died for Republic"
aka "Aug Dornes. Traitor to the Monarchy, who died opposing his Rightful King"

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C'est quoi ce bordel ?!
"To my friend Jean-Jacques a bird which took off too soon"

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Collard Bige Family

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Memento Mori

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Movie star remembrance photo (he died at 17.5)

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A poem in - English! Sacrebleu !

Poem For A Kid

I didn't really know you.
You were a fresh face
Unmarked by life
At a dinner table in silence

And fourteen years before
I know you only
From the way your father inhaled deep and
swelled
As he stood over you in a stroller
Before the terrace of the Select.

Now you have vanished
leaving only ripples of anguish
after you fell
in a Paris night.

And I know only
The empty space

*unreadable*
27/7/92

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Overflowing with flowers

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Way

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Lipstick marks, stones and métro tickets (seriously?!) on Sartre and Beauvoir's grave

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Jewish tomb. Now I know what JHWH is in French: D...

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Armand Silz family. It was impossible to read the plaque - the building was too small.

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Abandoned and dug up tomb

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Emile Durkheim
I was feeling very alienated at being unable to find his grave, but luckily I had my phone.

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Stained glass in one building

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Uhh. For Ricardo, a 37 year old

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Tombs along way

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Baudelaire. Again with Métro tickets

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"A tribute to Leonardo da Vinci, my Tuscan compatriot"
Nice try.

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André Del Debbio. He sculpted the Mona Lisa above his grave. Hah.

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Lions

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Monument to Navigation, Geography etc

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Garden of Remembrance

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I also want a curvy naked woman over me for all eternity. Would his sister/wife (whoever is interred with him) approve?

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Literally: Like A Boss

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"Aryan,
It is better to cry for you
Than never to have known you"

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Weary figure for Baltasar Lobo

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Example of the straight clean passages between graves at Montparnasse

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Sepulture of the Blind Sisters of St Paul

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Tower Mill

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Grave with Icon (which apparently can be removed)

Jean Hachette was not important enough to have his grave turn up on the first page of search results, so I gave up.

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Priests of St Sulpice

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Tree-lined way

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The grave on the left holds two sisters who both got married. Yet their husbands are not interred with them (usually men die before women).

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Astroturf

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Alexandre Duval

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I don't know how to translate "Defense Passive" - it's a concept of protecting the civilian population during wartime

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Another guy with an awesome grave representation

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Spirit of Eternal Sleep
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