Regina's Rants

I’m running out of space.  Old and new books accumulate around the floor of my study, unruly stacks that threaten to tumble and destroy my world.  In desperate need of shelf space, for there’s nowhere else I can squeeze more bookshelves, I sort out books in heaps to disperse among the local library, the book club, and a charity.  Sometime along the way, one life stops and another starts, when I put aside my well-intentioned sorting out  aims:  I find Guy de Maupassant’s short stories and end up re-reading tales that I’d sworn I’d never forget.  Life turned out differently, and, as in a keen lover’s promises, I forgot all about them.  Guy’s (we’re on first-name terms these days as he’s become my accomplice in maintaining the status quo) humane and time-defying stories, written in the 19^th century but still inspiring in our times, are set in Normandy and provincial towns in the south France; many are set in Paris.  

Paris, the City of Light, of Illuminism, of Enlightenment;  Fauvism, Impressionism, Cubism, not to say gastronomy, philosophy, and haute couture.  A bit like my study with its books of famous and unknown writers, Paris embraces a hyper-concentration of famous people in her cemeteries.  So much so that tourism companies have entered the cutthroat business of cemetery sight-seeing:  countless tour guides spearhead groups of visitors, all still alive, and descend like spectres in Parisian cemeteries each year, to visit their dead idols.  

Due to the amount of foot traffic, you’d think that Parisian cemeteries and their tombs, or monuments, would be trampled into oblivion.  Unlike my study, the cemeteries were planned to grow into parks, attracting visitors and possible future occupiers with their bubbling fountains and avenues made beautiful with hundreds, if not thousands, of gnarled old trees.  They’re a retreat from the bustle of the  great city. They seem pleasant places of repose even when neighbours, whom you may dislike, may be too close for comfort. But entombees do not have a choice in the matter, even when they’re splendid company.

Recently, in the interest of preserving historical cemeteries, Paris City Council has been sorting out its cemeteries, like I have attempted with my books, but they have been more successful. Paris Council managed to select 30 tombs, ten in each the three most prestigious cemeteries and has put them out there as lottery prizes, upon payment of a fee. The lottery tombs now are nameless and, most importantly, empty. 

If you want prime real estate for your hereafter, Père Lachaise Cemetery  is the place of choice.  It’s the Paris’ Ritz and London’s Claridge’s put together for the dead.  In its 44 hectares in the east of Paris, Père Lachaise has welcomed over one million bodies, so  you can honestly say that you’re one in a million.  There you will find the graves of  composers Georges Bizet and Frédéric Chopin, gastronome Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, painter Amadeo Modigliani, writers Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, and Honoré de Balzac.  You will also find the founder of spiritism, Alan Kardec, who will  hook you up with ethereal chums who may have been striving to preserve their pizzaz in the afterlife.

At Père Lachaise, besides graves of known and unknown people, you can admire and reflect on 23 memorial monuments for veterans, deportees to labour and death camps, and a cenotaph for diva Maria Callas.  The crematorium and columbarium, where ashes are kept, have become national architectural monuments in their own right.  Besides, you will not be short of 19 peaceful and bubbling fountains.  But there are only two W.C.’s according to my map, so if you’re a visitor of the living kind, take precautions before visiting.

The second offering of empty graves occurs at Montparnasse Cemetery, in the south of Paris.  It spreads over 19 hectares, and has seen 300 thousand burials.  You will meet, if you’re so inclined, a  whole panel of writers (Yes, I’m biased towards writers, so what?):  my friend Guy, Marguerite Duras, Susan Sontag, Samuel Becket, Eugène Ionesco, Charles Baudelaire, Júlio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, and the grand editor Pierre Larousse.  Philosophers and long-time companions Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre are together in one tomb.  As if proof of her intelligent superiority were necessary, the author of The Second Sex was buried above her lover.

The third place of rest, Montmartre  Cemetery,  with 11 hectares, holds 20 thousand graves in the north of Paris.  The smallest of the three cemeteries packs a punch with the graves of  Marie-Antoine Carême, the inventor of modern cuisine;  fashion designer Pierre Cardin;  singer  Dalida;  painter Edgar Degas;  writer Émile Zola; ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.  Imagine all the parties in the spirit world.

The lottery tombs now have peculiar bureaucratic codes such as MTM-22-316, which is a burial place of two square meters with a stone flat top at Montmartre Cemetery. It’s deep enough for 6 layers of caskets with their dividers. It gives a new meaning to six feet under.   

Paris Council is refreshingly honest that plot MTM-22-316, has problems of foundation:  open joints, gaps, chips on the base, absence of footings, colonised by moss and lichens (although these last might not matter much to future occupants), and there are photos to prove their engineer’s report.  The lucky lottery winner will pay a fee, and he has the deadline (no pun intended) of six months to fix the assigned lot at  their own expense.  With that, it’s my understanding that a winner gets to occupy the restored monument for all perpetuity for the bagatelle of €17,668, much cheaper than an apartment in the Algarve.  There are other prices for fewer years of occupancy, but I do believe one needs to accept, in a life-affirming moment with long-term vision, the nature of an unchanging future.  So go for broke and choose a distinguished location for your hereafter.  Imagine the bragging rights you’d acquire.

Paris’ cemeteries  protect the remains of some of the most adored, hated, influential artists and thinkers of the 19^th and 20^th centuries.  For me, it’s enough to enter their world and honour them without a visit to their graves.  It’s enough to (re-)read their books or listen to their music, admire their creations whatever they were.  Without fail, they lead me to introspection, discoveries, pleasure, laughter, and perhaps a little wisdom.  I take comfort in Guy, who once wrote, “Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe:  it gives back life to those who no longer exist.”   

I glance around me at the plethora of books in search of new owners.  I need to make space for new ones. But the books can wait, crammed on their shelves, or teetering on old and new stacks now labelled “To read.”   That’s when I recall tongue-in cheek Oscar Wilde,  “We’re all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”   

I’m buried in splendid company, looking at the stars.       

Music of the Rant

Sous le ciel de Paris, music and lyrics by Hubert Giraud, sung by Edit Piaf. YouTube/Bing Videos