Literature - Paris - page 688

FOREIGN LITERATURE: INTERWAR HEYDAY
Foreigners have found inspiration in Paris since Charles Dickens used the city along-
side London as the backdrop to A Tale of Two Citiesin 1859. The heyday of Paris as a
literary setting, however, were the interwar years.
Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises(1926) and the posthumous A Moveable
Feast(1964) portray bohemian life in Paris between the wars. So many vignettes in
the latter - dissing Ford Maddox Ford in a cafe, 'sizing up' F Scott Fitzgerald in a toilet
in the Latin Quarter, and overhearing Gertrude Stein and her lover, Alice B Toklas,
bitchin' at one another from the sitting room of their salon near the Jardin du Luxem-
bourg - are classic and très parisien.
Gertrude Stein let her hair down by assuming her lover's identity in The Autobio-
graphy of Alice B Toklas,a fascinating account of the author's many years in Paris, her
salon on rue de Fleurus, 6e, and her friendships with Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Hem-
ingway and others.
Down and Out in Paris and London(1933) is George Orwell's account of the time he
spent working as a plongeur(dishwasher) in Paris and living with tramps in the city in
the 1930s. Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer(1934) and Quiet Days in Clichy(1956) are
steamy novels set partly in the French capital. Then there's Anaïs Nin's voluminous di-
aries and fiction; her published correspondence with Miller is particularly evocative of
1930s Paris.
French Romanticism
The 19th century produced poet and novelist Victor Hugo, who lived on place des Vosges
before fleeing to the Channel Islands during the Second Empire. Les Misérables (1862) de-
scribes life among the poor of Paris in the early 19th century . Notre Dame de Paris (The
Hunchback of Notre Dame; 1831), a medieval romance and tragedy revolving around the
life of the celebrated cathedral, made Hugo the key figure of French romanticism.
Other influential 19th-century novelists include Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), Honoré de
Balzac, Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin (aka George Sand) and, of course, Alexandre Du-
mas, who wrote the swashbuckling adventures Le Compte de Monte Cristo (The Count of
Monte Cristo; 1844) and Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers; 1844).
In 1857 two landmarks of French literature were published: Madame Bovary, by Gustave
Flaubert, and Les Fleurs du Mal , by Charles Baudelaire. Both writers were tried for the sup-
posed immorality of their works. Flaubert won his case, and his novel was distributed