Paris and Myth: One Vision of Horror

Abstract

Paris and Myth: One Vision ofHorror CATHERINE LAFARGE In the beginning of the eighteenth century Paris became in the eyes of the world a source of great interest and even of fascina­ tion. This phenomenon was brought about by a convergence of various historical, financial, intellectual and artistic forces. Paris exercised a powerful attraction on non-Parisians, both French and non-French, and inspired many types of writings—letters, diaries, memoirs, novels and pamphlets. Out of these works comes the representation of a city nurtured by the imagination of authors which bears little resemblance to reality, for Paris both attracted and escaped these writers. It is opened for exploration and yet remains secretive and mysterious. It is an elusive and multi-faceted world of contrasts. For some it offers retreat, it is the source of life, the guarantee of freedom, the center of the universe, an idealized world. For others it is a caldron of vice, a city to rival Sodom and Gomorrah, a new Babylon. Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to go into a full discussion of these many aspects of Paris, I would like to give a few examples of varied visions before looking at one work in detail. Both Bernardin de Saint-Pierre in the Etudes de la Nature and Louis-Sebastien Mercier in the Tableau de Paris see the capital as an asylum, a place where one can live obscure and free. In his 281 282 / CATHERINE LAFARGE Memoirs Goldoni confesses that he has been enchained by Paris, and Galiani, when back in Naples, feels the most disconsolate exile. He writes: “My kingdom is Paris . . . Paris or life it’s all the same. . . When they tore me away from Paris, they tore my heart out.”1 Karamzin sighs with joy on his arrival in Paris, but notes the shocking mixture of wealth and poverty and adds that “it is the most magnificent and the most foul, the most perfumed and the most stinking of cities.”2 A less-balanced opinion is to be found in the chevalier de Mouhy’s Paysanne parvenue; there Paris is seen as hell.3 For Fonvizin Paris evokes Sodom and Gomorrah.4 As for Alfieri, he loses his illusions as he enters the capital for the first time and wonders what has led him to this cesspool.5 On a second trip in the spring of 1789 he has but one haste to leave “this fetid hospital . . . this awful Babylon.”6 And there was Fougeret de Monbron who called his last book La Capitate des Caules ou la Nouvelle Babylone.1 To most, the work of Fougeret de Monbron is little known and seldom read. Nevertheless, it deserves attention on several grounds. First, in a few pages Fougeret impresses the reader as a skilled satirist whose caustic style brings to life the seamy side of the capital. Second, never losing sight of his aim—the destruction of a glorified and unreal Paris—he takes on different garbs and systema­ tically proceeds to show the evils of the city as would an econo­ mist, a moralist, a social reformer, an artist, and a caricaturist. Before analyzing what emerges from perhaps his most impor­ tant work, and showing the place it occupies in the birth of a myth, I would like first to present a few facts about the author’s life and suggest some ties to better-known authors and writings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Fougeret de Monbron, born in 1706, was the son of a well-to-do member of the bourgeoisie who lived in the northern town of Peronne. During most of his life it was his father’s wealth which enable Fougeret to lead the life of an idler. In Paris, where he came to live in his late twenties, he was an habitue of cafes, theaters, gambling-houses and brothels. He was indeed familiar with the sordid side ofthe capital, and when he describes it first in Paris and Myth I 283 a pornographic novel Margot la Ravaudeuse and later in La Capi­ tate des Gaules, it can be presumed that his information was first hand.8 It happened, to his misfortune...