Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris
September of 2007, I landed at Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport on my way to a school year in Guingamp. One of my dearest friends and I had plans to spend several days mooching off family-in-law in the 16th arrondissement.
My extreme fatigue made me briefly consider a taxi across all of Paris. But instead, I navigated the steps of Paris’s metro with luggage that most likely surpassed my own body in weight. Worried strangers helped me carry my unwieldy bags down and then up and down again networks of staircases, until I found myself surrounded by turnstiles. Each group of gates leading to a different metro line that could take me to any corner of the city.
An older Metro employee gave me directions, «jusqu’a d’enfer.» My understanding was to take the train “just until from hell.” From hell? That couldn’t be right.
I repeated, “d’enfer?”
«Oui, d’enfer rawrawrawr.»
Okay, so trusting that I was headed in the right direction, I worried that I’d miss my stop. The station name cycled through my head, “d’enfer, d’enfer, d’enfer rawrawrawr.” Maybe I can blame this mantra for my experiences during my seven months in Guingamp, France?
The metro came to a stop in a station marked «Denfert Rochereau», and the world once again made sense, so I disembarked. Eventually, I did put down the luggage and find my friend, Kathleen.
Soupe!
Had I been a more intrepid traveler, I may have learned that Denfert-Rochereau is the location of the main entrance to the catacombs, which are open to the public.
However, I never would have never discovered the historic relevance of the square and avenue of the same name, without Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris by Graham Robb.
Each time that Robb mentioned Denfert-Rochereau, my interest spiked. Not only because of my personal memory of the spot, but because of the dynamism of this singular location. Had I been traveling through Paris anytime before 1879, I would not have misunderstood the Metro employee’s directions. At that time, the street was known as the Rue d’Enfer. There are numerous theories on where the street took its name, but when a sinkhole opened up on this major artery in 1777, many believed it was an entrance to hell.
Of course, there was no fire and brim stone, just vast empty caverns where the underbelly of Paris had been mined for its rocks and minerals. Enter one of Robb’s heros, Charles-Axel Guillaumot, who ventured into the mouth of hell and undertook major public works that provided stability to the growing metropolis.
Remember those catacombs? Those were Guillaumot’s answer to two of the city’s most pressing public safety concerns of the time. But much like Guillaumot whose subterranean network could not prevent all future sink holes, Robb accepts the ambiguous shadows that history casts. Sometimes Robb will explicitly provide competing explanations. In other, more emotionally charged, episodes his historical accounts become expressionistic glimpses of Parisian life.
The book is most interesting, however, when Robb roots his story in the streets and places that form the city because we see how they shaped history. Marie Antoinette’s escape from the Palais-Royal, Hitler’s tour of the nearly-empty city, and the 2005 uprising in the banlieues; in all those accounts, the city is a main character determining the course of events.
Robb’s history passes through Denfert-Rochereau quickly during World War II and again during a stand-off during the 1968 protests. But much like in life and history, he does not let us pause to enjoy the locations and incidents that most drew us in. And when we do return to the Rue d’Enfer, it doesn’t live up to the first impression.
Ballet at Place de la Bastille
For more on Graham Robb’s fantastic book, NPR’s OnPoint discussed the book in May of 2010.
