Welcome to 1789...

Hello there, Revolution-lovers. I am living in Paris for the next four months (oh, yes) in the 17e arr., and for now I got the time to partially see the Parc Monceau, and on my way there, the famous Lycée Carnot in front of which Pierre Chaunu needs to spit every time he passes in front of it -- or so he says.

Today, I ventured to discover the Rue Saint-Just of Paris:



Here comes the joke about it -- prepare to laugh: I really love how it's a tiny, ridiculously tiny street almost out of the "walls" of Paris, that there's nothing worth seeing, and not even actual houses, and that it also happens to be connected to the "Avenue du cimetière des Battignoles". Oh, yes, because not only is it a dead-end, but it leads to a cemetary and all the addresses at the street are thus cemetary-related businesses:








No kidding.

Flowers for the dead, undertakers, marble for the tombstones and vaults, burial maintenance. Oh, the joke. Saint-Just appreciates the macabre humour, guys. It's really subtle. Subtler than that, you're called Simon Schama. Someone lol'ed himself to death when he gave him that street. Seriously. I'd like to see the minutes of the council that decided to attribute him that street... At least Robespierre's got a métro station, even if it's technically outside the 'walls' of Paris! Still better a métro station in a communist commune than a macabre intramuros street...

I think I stayed just two minutes on the actual street, because it was really almost, well, like they say la zone. It was really lost, and there were random people staring at me oddly or angrily or wtf-y, probably wondering why I was taking photos of the entrance of the cemetary, of the tiny businesses, and of the street panels, because none of them probably know who poor Saint-Just is.


--And, erm, because it just had to happen, as I was walking back the Avenue de Clichy to get the farthest from there, that's what I found:



Ooooooooooooooh dear. Now that's more of that same humour, isn't it? Oh dear.

Well, it's been a while we await it all and it's been three years I say it'll eventually come, and now, this is it: it's being officially predicted... by Dominique de Villepin? Bad news.

Among all the cynical comments to this French article on it, my favourite is the one that says:

Dominique de Villepin has apparently declared that Sarko was doing research on the Web to find the fastest way to go in Hungary, by avoiding Varennes... !!

Oh, oh yes. It's been a while I'm saying that too. >D


P.S. I can't believe I missed that news last week.

This website on Saint-Just was updated. There are some very interesting parts:

- An analysis of his portraits (and I think I finally know which one was kept by the Le Bas family...) + one I hadn't seen before (but it's not so pretty).

- The colourful portraits of his parents. I hadn't seen them in colour before, I think, so I'm glad. Hm. I think he has his mother's mouth and the shape of her eyes, somehow... and, the nose of both. ^^;

- A page on Robespierre's 250th -- where estellacat and I were. And, look, I found myself:



^^; I was very likely playing with my camera if you're wondering what I was doing. ._. /shameless self-pimping.



I don't know if there's anybody in France at the moment, but there is, on November 23rd (yes, that's in three days), the presentation of a play on Thermidor in Arras:

23 novembre 2008: pour les 250 ans de Robespierre, l'ARBR organise à Arras la lecture par la compagnie "A livre ouvert" d'une pièce inédite de Caroline Fregeac "THERMIDOR". Rendez-vous à 16 heures, à l'Office culturel d'Arras.

It's on the page of news where you can also find a quite girl-looking portrait of Saint-Just too, ughh ._.