"Dream of Paris" & "Zu and Zhan"
Not long ago, Woody Allen's "A Rainy Day in New York" was released, which is reminiscent of "Midnight in Paris" many times ago.
In the movie, the protagonist walks alone on the streets of Paris at midnight, gets into an antique car, comes to a celebrity party more than half a century ago, and he mistakenly meets Hemingway, Picasso, Fitzgerald, Dalí, Stein, etc., and has a romantic encounter with Picasso and Modigliani's lover Adriana.
Hemingway once wrote: "Paris is a mobile feast", and perhaps only a place like Paris can afford such a reputation as "feast". To this day, you can still meet the people of the Golden Age in Paris.
This is Godard's Paris, Houmai's Paris, Woody Allen's Paris, and Patty Smith's Paris.
How Thinking Works (Excerpt)
Patti Smith, "Dedication, Daydreaming"
I crossed customs and walked sleepily out of paris Orly airport. My friend Alain was waiting for me. I checked in at a hotel in a narrow alley next to the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. While waiting for the hotel to prepare the room, we had coffee and ate baguettes at the Flower God Café.
After Alain said goodbye, I turned into the small garden next to the church, and at the entrance stood Picasso's bust of Apollinaire. I sat in the chair I had sat in the spring of 1969 with my sister. We were in our early twenties at the time, and everything, including the poet's emotionally rich mind, was revelatory to us. We were two sisters, full of curiosity, and a number of precious cafes and hotels were waiting for us to visit.
Sliding left and right, the Flower God Café of different periods, this café was founded in 1887 and was used by many literary painters in the early 20th century.
The existentialist double-sorcery café. It was here that the Hotel Exotic, Verlaine and Rimbaud became the souls of the Zutique school of poetry. At the Lozan Hotel, with its glittering lobby, Baudelaire wrote the first few lines of "The Flower of Evil" amid the smoke of marijuana. We wander in places that have become synonymous with poets, and our imaginations sparkle. As long as you can get as close as possible to where they write, fight, and sleep.
Sliding left and right, the Café des Bleuards of different periods, founded in 1812, is an important part of the cultural life of Paris, where Picasso, Sartre, Beauvoir and others were once regulars.
Suddenly, the temperature dropped. I noticed crumbs on the ground, pigeons fighting fiercely for a little crumbs, young couples lazily kissing, and a long-bearded tramp in a long coat begging for coins. Our eyes met, and I got up and walked toward him, his gray eyes reminding me of my father. The silver-gray light sprinkled on Paris, and the perfect moment made me feel a little nostalgic. The sky began to drizzle, as if the particles of film film were spinning and falling. This is Paris for Jane Silbo, who sells the New York Herald Tribune in a one-line collar stripe shirt. It is paris in Houmai standing on The Hochet Road in the rain.
Part 1: Hou Mai's "Man About Paris"
Bottom: Godard's "Exhausted"
Later, in the hotel room, I struggled with drowsiness and did not sleep, casually flipped through WeiYi's biography, squinted in the middle, and then woke up to read a completely different paragraph, such a reading order seemed to make the reading experience more vivid, and Simone Weiyi walked briskly into the picture from three-dimensional space. I seemed to be able to see the edges of her long cloak, her short, thick dark hair, like Frankenstein's clever and independent bride.
However, another Simone's form also flashed before my eyes, like the travelers portrayed by René Domar in "Similar Mountains". Heart-shaped face with hair protruding horizontally, gold-rimmed round glasses behind a pair of inquisitive dark eyes. They knew each other, he taught her Sanskrit, and I imagined the pair of mutually consuming people, their heads almost touching together, leaning over the ancient writings, their frail bodies craving the nourishment of milk.
Simone Weil (1909-1943), French Jew, mystic, religious thinker and social activist, profoundly influenced postwar European thought.
Gravity's hand was dragging me down. I turned on the TV, flipped through a series of channels, watched the end of a documentary about the rehearsal of Racine's "Feder," and fell into a deep sleep.
I woke up early in the morning and went to the Flower God Café to order a ham egg and black coffee. The egg is perfectly rounded, next to a perfectly round piece of ham.
Alain came to meet me, and together we set out for five Rue Gaston Galima, which has been the headquarters of my French publishing house since 1929. My editor, Aurelian, opened the door of Camus's former office, and from the only window in the office there was a view of the garden downstairs. In one cabinet door were Simone Weil's books—edited by Camus after her death—letters to a monk, supernatural cognition, and roots.
Mr. Gallimard received me in his office. On his desk was a grandfather clock that St. Exupéry had given to his grandfather. We walked down the smooth marble steps that had been polished over the years, through the blue salon, and into the garden, where Yukio Mishima had taken a picture on a white rattan chair. We stood there for a while, admiring the simple geometry of the garden.
Midnight in Paris
This reminds me of some other garden, as if it were a stereoscopic photography scattered in time and space. In Pisa, for example, the centuries-old botanical garden, there is a forgotten statue of Humboldt and a towering Chilean coconut tree. There is also the herb garden in Bologna, where the wild herbs extend and calm the consciousness. I think of Joseph Knecht (the protagonist of Hesse's Glass Ball Game), alone in the plain garden of scholars, contemplating his future as a master of the game. and the garden of Schiller's summer residence in Jena, where Goethe is said to have planted a ginkgo tree.
—I know René, Galima whispered, and then, to avoid appearing less humble, looked elsewhere.
I was fascinated by the several curved patterns carved into the high wall on the right, which looked like spiral sculptures by Brancusi for James Joyce's The Story Told by Sam and Sean (Black Sun Edition), and I walked around the garden, feeling very satisfied with the ghosts of the writers who had been here. Camus was smoking against the wall, while Nabokov was staring at the spiral pattern on the wall in contemplation.
That night, I dreamed that I had learned to swim. The sea was cold, but I was wearing a coat. When I woke up, I was shaking and realized that I had opened the window to see the church before going to bed, and then forgot to close it. I can see the church from the window and thus see a long time in my life. I first met it in the late spring of 1969, with my sister. We walked in cautiously and lit a candle for the family.
I got up and closed the window. It was raining outside, quiet and steady. I burst into tears.
- Why are you crying? A voice asked.
I don't know, I replied, maybe because I was happy.
Paris is a city that can be read without a map. Walking down the narrow Dragon Street, the former Grave Street, where there was once a mighty stone dragon, you will come across a sign commemorating Victor Hugo on the 30th. Abbey Street. Christina Street. 7 Rue Grand Augustin, where Picasso created Guernica. These streets are like psalms waiting to hatch—think of Easter, full of Easter eggs.
I wandered aimlessly and found myself in the Latin Quarter, taking the Boulevard Saint-Michael, looking for number 37. This is where Simone grew up, where the Weil family lived for decades. I thought again of Patrick Modiano, looking for addresses one by one, walking through Paris, just to find some staircase somewhere. I think of Albert Camus, who, before winning the Nobel Prize, made a pilgrimage to Weil's former home, but only for a more serious will—not only out of curiosity, but also for meditation.
A set of routines takes shape quickly. Wake up at seven. At eight o'clock to the Flower God Cafe. Read until ten o'clock. Walk to Galima Publishing House, meet reporters, sign books. Then galima and the editors of the publishing house—Aurelian, Chris Taylor—ate, and ate ducks and beans in local cafes. Drink tea in the blue salon and do interviews in the garden. A journalist gave me an English translation of Simone Weil's book. Do you know her? She asked me. Later, a journalist named Bruno gave me a portrait of Chandra de Neval, which I put on a nightstand, like the melancholy portrait I had pasted on my desk when I came here in my twenties.
The good mood brought about by good weather is a kind of pleasant lightness that can easily convince me. I walked into the church of Saint Germain, and the boys in the choir were singing, presumably in the eucharist. There was a solemn pleasure in the air, a familiar feeling of wanting to accept the presence of Christ, but not joining them. But I lit candles for my loved ones and the parents who lost their children in the Bataklan Theatre shooting. Candlelight flickered in front of the statue of St. Anthony holding a baby, covered in paint carefully applied over the years, looking as if they were alive, and it was the unforgettable pleas of the living that made them come alive.
"Lovers of Shimbashi"
The last time I went up the rue de la Seine, could it be that I went downstream? I don't know either, just walking. There was a strange sense of familiarity that kept reminding me, coming from memories from a long time ago. Yes, my sister and I have walked this road. I stopped to look at the narrow streets of Via Visconti. I was so excited when I first saw this street that I trotted a bit and jumped up. My sister took a picture of me, and in that picture I saw myself forever frozen in mid-air full of joy. Being able to reconnect with these adrenaline rushes and the ideals of that time is like a small miracle.
At the top of place Onorre Champione, there is a sense of déjà vu. Behind a bland garden, I recognized a statue of Voltaire, the first thing I had photographed in Paris. Surprisingly, this small garden remains as quiet and unoccupied as it was half a century ago. The statue of Voltaire has changed a lot, and it looks like it is laughing at me. His once friendly face, faded with the erosion of time, appeared dark and mocking, as if in the process of gradual corrosion, he was still stubbornly guarding his territory.
"Love at Dusk and Sunset"
I remember seeing Voltaire's cloak in a glass display case in a museum somewhere. It was a very plain flesh-colored lace cloak. At that time I had a strong desire for it, and I had a strange fantasy that whoever put on this cloak would be able to see fragments of Voltaire's dreams. Of course, all dreams are in French and belong to his time. At that moment I realized that dreamers dreamed based on their own times. The ancient Greeks dreamed of their gods. Emily Brontë dreamed of the wasteland. What about Christ, he may not dream, but he knows all dreams, all the ways in which dreams are combined, until the end of time.