A tour of cemeteries may seem like a strange activity to undertake while on a holiday. But in Paris, paying homage to some of the greatest writers is as common as visiting the Louvre or gawking at the Eiffel Tower.
It was a good day to go see my heroes. Splinters of the sun were lighting my path, Frenchmen were throwing away come-hither looks, my feet were tapping to an invisible harp. Paris was coming together like a well-directed scene. Too bad all my heroes had gone underground.
Writers over the last two centuries have hungered for Paris like loners hunger for love. They came looking for inspiration and freedom, they left with Ulysses and A Moveable Feast. This is the great city where they failed and succeeded, lost their hearts and found a few words. And though there’s nothing more I’d like than to bump into them, à la Midnight in Paris, I have to contend myself with walking past their graves, head bent in awe.
Ghosts of writers past
My first stop was Père-Lachaise Cemetery, the most famous resting place in the world with the likes of Chopin, Modigliani and Edith Piaf within. The site was so sprawling, it could easily be mistaken for a park. Ivory-coloured headstones were shaded with chestnut trees, creating a gorgeous foil of silver and gold. While meandering through, I noticed the distinct lack of space, and discovered later that more than a million were buried in its 108 acres. Père-Lachaise was certainly popular among the departed. As Paris expert David Downie says, it’s “the burial place of all of France’s great and good.” Albeit, thrown in with some very bad boys.
Most come here to visit rock god Jim Morrison, but I was interested in the man who was the life and soul of literary parties in the late 19th century – Oscar Wilde. Hounded by a Victorian government over his choices in love, Oscar Wilde died poor and bereft. History, though, has been kinder on him. When I’d visited, his angel tomb was covered in red and pink kisses. The French have since cleaned it up and installed a barrier of glass. Undeterred, fans have covered the glass in lipstick marks, heart signs and graffiti today. They believe that a man capable of crimes of passion (a crime at least according to those times) deserves their affection. I believe his sharp wit deserved mine.
In the maudlin landscape of Père-Lachaise, French greats like Balzac, La Fontaine, and Molière lie. But I made my way to another one – Marcel Proust, a man who’s more talked about than actually read. In all fairness, In Search of Lost Time isn’t easy to finish, neither is his crypt easy to find. I had taken a couple of wrong turns before I reached his ebony-coloured grave – a marker as simple as his genius was dazzling. This was a man who created a storm in a madeleine-soaked teacup. But all that remembered him today were a few dried flowers and a bright summer day. Maybe someday when I’m looking at dying tulips, in true Proust style, I’ll recall this exact moment when I paid my respects to one of the few authors who changed my life.
Tales from the crypt
Warm from the day’s sun, I headed towards the Left Bank, to the cool insides of Paris’s Panthéon. As a building, it’s an imposing structure with wingspan domes and tall Corinthian columns. The massiveness was hard to take in even as I was standing there. Everywhere I’d look, a vivid biblical painting or architectural flourish would stare back. Straight up ahead was a fierce Marianne, the national symbol, with a sword and the French motto, ‘Live free or die’. It shouldn’t be surprising then that two of the greatest thinkers, Voltaire and Rousseau, were entombed here. However, as a burial place I feel it suffers from too much seriousness. The cemeteries of Paris had luminescence and crisp air. In contrast, the crypt here felt as confined as a coffin.
Nevertheless, with Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas interred within, I had to experience it firsthand. Dumas was buried in his birthplace but moved to the Panthéon in his bicentennial year. He shared a chamber with Victor Hugo, his on-again, off-again friend and fellow Romantic. And with Émile Zola, the acclaimed French naturalist. I couldn’t help feeling that I was in the company of a different set of three musketeers. Men who weren’t brave in body, but in soul. They pushed the thinking of their generation by pushing their own minds to its highest ability. They wrote without fear, spoke without favour. This tiny room suddenly felt giant thanks to its literary Goliaths.
Cemetery of forgotten books
My last stop for the day was a gravesite nestled in the 14th arrondissement. Seen from above, the Montparnasse Cemetery looks like a Monopoly board with neat boulevards and house-like graves. Seen from below, it looks like a smaller and eccentric brother of Père-Lachaise. The statues on the tombs vary from a fully dressed couple in bed to a mummified man, from evil cats to jaunty centaurs, from boys with missing arms to angels with missing togs. But the authors I really wanted to see were the ones with the least fanfare – Julio Cortázar and Carlos Fuentes.
Marquez had once remarked that “Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination.” Perhaps it’s this magical truth that Latin American writers carry with themselves wherever they go. Argentinean Cortázar and Mexican Fuentes had similar journeys in many ways. They wrote passionately about their homeland while sitting in cafes half a world away. Their works divided more people than football clubs. They were never honoured by the Nobel when they both should have. Their graves didn’t receive many visitors which they both should have as well.
Pausing by the remains of Sartre and Baudelaire (men I’d never read) and Samuel Beckett (‘Waiting for Godot’ had left me stunned), I finally made my way out. The trees were shedding their colour, the sun bathing the landscape in honey. Melancholy and silence, love and longing mingled in the air. On a regular day, if Paris could offer such beautiful elegance to the dead, imagine what it must do for the living.
Published in JetWings February 2013.
Shela ke Sholay 