Читать книгу Sex in the Cities. Volume 3. Paris - Hans-Jürgen Döpp - Страница 5

“Paris cannot be grasped in one glance: it is not one composition, rather a welter of conflicting compositions. When one says ‘I am in Paris’, one is saying ‘I am nowhere’. It is just an expression. Everyone here lives in a multitude of Parises.” This is how the Russian symbolist, Andrei Belyi, describes the French capital in his memoirs in 1934.

But Belyi would have gotten the same impression 400 years before, for, as early as the 16^th century, chroniclers described the city of Paris as “the wonder of wonders”. Many chroniclers, whose works spread throughout Europe thanks to the invention of printing, wrote about the wonders of Paris.

From the Middle Ages onwards, Paris has been the centre of European culture and intellectuality. What made Paris stand out from all other cities was the fact that it was the first metropolis in the West. Here, there developed urban ways of life which broke down the existing social structure. This new anonymity of social situations helped create a sense of liberation, which in turn brought about various forms of liberty. Ivan Bloch sees a parallel development between the creation of cities and the growth of monetary economies. Corresponding to the late development of capitalism in Christian Europe, there was a complete lack of large cities compared to the Orient and the Islamic West. As far back as the Middle Ages, Cairo, Baghdad, and Constantinople all had populations of around a million people! These Oriental megalopolises were centres of a worldly high life in which, writes Bloch, “… the seemingly inexhaustible sources of wealth gushed out their golden floods; in which a limitless form of luxury arose, an insanely sensual life, a teeming mass of people, such as we can imagine only in ancient Rome or in the ways that modern metropolises like London and Paris have developed.”

As early as the Middle Ages, Paris was one of the largest cities in Europe. And many things that were described as “typically Parisian” were simply “typically metropolitan”. Whilst active daily life began to develop in Italy, Belgium, France, and England as far back as 90 °CE, Germany in this period still had no major cities. We can assume that the splendour of Paris shone especially brightly on those neighbouring European countries which were less economically developed. As a “late-developing” nation, Germany was amongst these countries.

The fundamental difference between the East and West was also of great significance for the development of prostitution. Until the Renaissance, there was no real prostitution trade in Europe and a sensual life, such as existed in the Orient, was just as unknown. Such a life could have been said to exist only in some Italian cities like Venice, Florence, and Rome, as well as in Vienna and, as we have seen, in Paris. Even in those days, Paris was regarded the world over as the new Babel, the site of the most sophisticated sensual pleasures. To foreigners, the city revealed itself as an overwhelming conglomeration of sensory stimulation, as an acoustic, visual, and olfactory experience. “It strikes me that I have been plunged into a giant whirlpool, with the raging waters swirling me back and forth like a grain of sand,” noted the Russian Karamsin – representing the many tourists to Paris during the ancien régime who felt the same.

Nowhere, writes Karlheinz Stierle in his study The Myth of Paris, is Europe more European than in Paris! However, “if Paris is the European capital city par excellence, it is also the capital city of foreigners. The metropolis knows no foreigners because everyone in it is a foreigner and this is the common factor, uniting even the most native Parisians with the most exotic foreigners.”

A contemporary, Montesquieu reaches this judgement: “Paris may well be the most sensual city in the world, which is aware of the most sophisticated of pleasures; but it may also be the city where life is hardest” (Lettres persans). The restless, universal pursuit of happiness and enjoyment, in which everyone takes part, makes Paris “… a city which is the mother of novelty”. The extraordinary mobility of the mind, which must constantly refocus while in turmoil, is also the reason for moral instability and insoluble ethical dilemmas. Its moral contradictions push the individual to debate with his conscience.

The metropolis is the scene of experiments in humanity. Yet, as Rousseau’s Émile casts back, the city, which has just been the place where everything is possible, appears in a totally negative light: “Well, then, Paris, adieu, famous city of noises, smoke and dirt, where women have forgotten all about honour and men all about virtue.”

Amusement with a hood, Paris, c. 1340.

Embroidered purse, gold and silver thread on linen,

16 × 14 cm. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.

Bartholomeus Anglicus, Book of the Prophecy of Things, Paris, c. 1400.

Herzog-August-Bibliothek, 1.3.5.1 Aug. 2 fol. 146r°, Wolfenbüttel.

In Nougaret’s three-volume book, Parisian Adventures Before and After the Revolution (1808), there are a number of anecdotes that reflect the spirit of the new age. Nougaret, too, sees Paris as a city of anonymity and alienation:

Everything in this unimaginably vast capital is mixed up; neighbours are strangers, and one only learns about the other’s death by reading the obituaries or by finding a notice pinned to the door when one comes home in the evening… Do you want to be thought a man who matters? Do you want to live a bachelor’s life whilst you’re married? Would you prefer to be popular or to live alone like a bear? Then come to Paris, because no-one will care how you live or what you get up to.

The city is a whole in which everything, even debauchery, has its necessary place: “Paris needs people of every possible kind, every type of temperament – for they all find their place, even quack-doctors, even cabaret artists and ladies of easy virtue.”

The French Revolution can also be interpreted as the final outcome of this modern “experimental metropolis”. The torch of liberty lit up all of Europe at that time. What chroniclers – whether enthusiastic or alarmed – reported from Paris were impressions that often combined political and erotic freedoms. “For what would a revolution be without universal copulation!”, wrote Peter Weiss in his Marat/Sade play. The Europe-wide influence of the French Revolution established the myth of Paris. “Liberty” was an indivisible concept: Paris, the city of erotica, was also a metaphor for a city of other liberties. In this context, liberty took on not just a political but also an erotic character: it promised a totally different kind of life.

In the period between the July Revolution of 1830 and the February Revolution of 1848, Paris became a refuge for Germans of various different classes and social strata, driven out of Germany by material as well as spiritual hardships. The total number of Germans in Paris increased dramatically in these two decades, until 1848, it had reached 60,000 to 100,000 – a figure which rapidly declined after Napoleon’s coup d’état. Paris then became the centre of intellectual opposition to the reactionary political system of the Germanic countries.

For Heine, Paris was the scene of the Zeitgeist itself. In Paris, in the rich tapestry of its daily life which brings forth all possibilities and contrasts, a new European world is born. He writes in 1832:

Paris is not merely the capital of France, but of the whole civilised world… a place where all its most noble spiritual qualities are assembled. Gathered together here is everything which has achieved greatness through love or hate, through feeling or thought, through knowledge or skill, through good or bad luck, through the future or the past. If you consider the agglomeration of illustrious or outstanding men who meet here, you will regard Paris as a pantheon for the living. A new art, a new religion, and a new way of life are being forged here, and the creators of this new world joyfully swarm about it. The powers-that-be are behaving pettily, but the mass of ordinary people is huge and acutely aware of its great and sublime destiny.

“Creators of a new art and a new way of life” is what, 90 years later, Surrealists also wanted to be; their ideas sprang from the same soil. Paris is a perpetual revolution.

The title of Heine’s book is Französische Zustände (Conditions in France). In fact, however, he is referring only to conditions in Paris, for “Paris is the real France – which is, in reality, only the outer districts of Paris”. And Paris is the surface on which the dream of a new Europe will be projected, on which all erotic desires, as well as political ones, are focused.

Vignettes, illustrations for a calendar, 1650.

Engravings on wood.

Vignettes, illustrations for a calendar, 1650.

Engravings on wood.

Vignettes, illustrations for a calendar, 1650.

Engravings on wood.

Vignettes, illustrations for a calendar, 1650.

Engravings on wood.

Maître du Champion des dames, The Chapel of Venus,illustration for The Champion of the Women, 15^th century.