#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
Arc de Triomphe Red Awnings
Early, and it's cooler than it has been - delicious summer heat - I walk my husband across the bridge to his meeting. I keep going, to wander. Here, behind the tree, above the red awnings, is the Arc de Triomphe. I keep going, down the Champs-Élysées, and down Avenue George V, and eventually, past the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais, through a bit of the Tuileries and then across, back to the Quai D'Orsay, and I have to stop to appreciate the maple wings dangling from tree branches over the Seine. I've been taking pictures for weeks of the maple wings on the forest trees, and on the forest floor and all the wet rocks and ferns - everywhere, and so I was very pleased to suddenly see them hanging so spectacularly here in Paris. Then, off to meet the family at a café before a happy day of shopping for one and all near Saint Germaine des Pres, where we have a special lunch at the mussels place.
Tonight, I sent the family off without me to dinner, so I could attend a book talk at the American Library in Paris, just a block or two away from our flat. I very much wanted to hear Agnés Proirier talk about the literary, art & cultural life on the left bank in the decade of the occupation and liberation of Paris, 1940-1950. And, so I did. And it was a very smart talk, hosted by NPRs Eleanor Beardsley. And now I am off to bed to read the copy I bought. Goodnight!
“One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.”
“Agnes Poirier’s Left Bank: Art, Passion, and the Rebirth of Paris 1940-1950 is a riveting, rollicking read through the explosive intellectualism and labyrinthine love affairs of many of the key writers, philosophers and artists of this decade that came to define Paris and the Left Bank. The book is centred around Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, the couple whose transcendent partnership — intellectual, romantic, political — forms the fulcrum of this telling. Around them gathered an expansive array of fascinating, complex characters — Picasso, Janet Flanner, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Juliette Greco, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Edith Thomas, to name just a few. Some were French; others were ex-pats from before the war; many were American GI’s who fell in love with the city and returned under generous post-war educational programs.”
