How much can you see? I found myself thinking about this yet again after two hours in the Louvre. It is a museum designed to defeat ordinary human capacities. The collection of course is ridiculous in its extent. But what beats us every time is the building itself. The idea that you could just duck across to re-visit those wonderful Botticelli frescos before going home is thwarted by the fact that you can’t find your way out of the Marly courtyard, even with a map, and end up in medieval French sculpture, which you must, at least briefly, look at. And surely we don’t have to go through the (obscenely) sumptuous recreations of Napoleon III’s apartments (complete with the view to the Champs Elysées) again? The shape of the pyramid and
sortie (exit) finally appear on a wall. Perhaps we could exit the Richelieu wing, cross the pyramid courtyard and go directly up to the Denon wing. Even this idea involves an Escher-like series of ascents and descents. The Louvre is a place of stairs (pity those with mobility issues). In the end, I give up on Botticelli for the day, and opt for a slice of pizza. It is already 8.30pm and I’m louvred out again. The fact is I want to devour Botticelli, not pizza. What will seeing that fresco for the third time mean? I really want it on my wall.
In fact the same thing happened at the end of our three day visit to Florence. We were in the Academia, where we’d seen the original of Michelangelo’s David – blissfully free of crowds on an early morning in November, and yes, it is a truly amazing work. And there was a wonderful exhibition of works intended for Florentine domestic spaces, including a collection of decorated “birthing plates”, a tradition that I’d never heard of previously. After the birth of a child the mother was given a plate of fruit for her well-being – though over time, and being Italy, the plate decorations overtook the actual fruit. Still, a nice tradition which I think we should revive. We should have left then, since our plates were already full. But there is always one more room around the corner, and who knows if we will ever return . . . By the end I had a burning desire to be blindfolded and led away: “No more! I cannot see anymore!” Sadly (for me at least) this became the story for the increasing load of Christian art. It is a great passion for me, but taken from its original ecclesiastical context and viewed on mass it all begins to lose its power. You just don’t know what to do with row after row of annunciations and crucifixions. (By contrast, the Fra Angelico frescos still in situ in the monastery of San Marco were a highlight of Florence.)
Where is the balance between the overstimulation of overload and sad, but inevitable, numbing habituation? (At this latter end of the spectrum Notre Dame has become so much of the daily landscape for us that we have to keep on reminding ourselves to be astonished.)
But then there is a Saturday, with its randomly chosen agenda offering surprise and delight. Uncharacteristically I managed to get myself out of bed in the dark and join the monks and nuns next door at St Gervais for the morning office. Our time of rising has become slack to say the least, and, given neither of us has to travel to work, we have not felt the need to adapt to the absence of light in these mid-winter mornings. But on Saturdays
Laudes is at 8 am (with silent prayer for half an hour beforehand) instead of 7 am. As soon as I get out the front gate I remember why this is a good idea: the sky is inky and lightening into a Matisse blue, I can see the morning star, and the streets are quiet. The silence as you enter the dark church, though, has the shape of prayer. There is stillness until the bells begin to gently rock in the tower above. Then we stand to greet the day:
Seigneur, ouvre mes lèvres (Lord, open my lips)
et ma bouche publiera ta louange (and my mouth will proclaim your praise). The great silence of the night has ended. Will today be the day when we finally live with more than a fleeting mindfulness of the presence of God?
John and I have nothing particular on our agenda, so we toss around some ideas, and decide, in view of museum overload, to take a walk to a park we have not yet visited. We pluck out the relevant card from the box of Paris Walks and, following its instructions, head up the now familiar Line 1 of the metro to Charles de Gaulle Étoile, then one stop down Line 2 to Ternes, just down from the Arc de Triomphe. We find our way to a small but very chic market street, which, being Saturday morning, is buzzing with activity. We see our favourite Napoleon cherries and, even though they are clearly out-of-season imports we buy rather more than can afford (the French words for “stop”, or “a few less” instantly disappear from my vocabulary as the women places a large scoop into the bag). We breathe in the colours of the street, then stop to delight in the display of pastries in an Algerian Patisserie. We decide on an early lunch of warmed pastries stuffed with chicken and vegetables, and two small cakes for afternoon tea (one, blushed pink, is crafted in the shape of a fig!).
Map in hand we continue to weave through the streets toward Parc Monceau – classic Haussmann in this part of the city – until we reach the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, St Alexandre Nevsky. It was built in the mid-nineteenth century by the Russians living in Paris, a community that grew dramatically after the 1917 Revolution. The front facade has a beautiful mosaic of Christ, which at the time seemed familiar (in the way that icons do). Later I discovered that it was modelled on a mosaic in Sant’Appollinari Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy, which we had seen only in November. Our arrival at the Cathedral did not correlate with the specified visiting hours, but clearly something was happening. While John was hesitant,I suggested that being Christian was a good enough reason to enter. And so we stepped into the interior, to be greeted by the Divine Liturgy in full swing.
For all that is difficult about Orthodoxy, there is absolutely no question that everything inside the church conspires to mediate the holy: the soaring yet womb-like space, dimly lit yet warmly coloured with painted frescos; the icons, candles, incense swirling around the room; people - standing, bowing, crossing themselves, kneeling; and behind the iconostasis, through the royal doors, you catch a glimpse of the priest about the business of the sanctuary. I have difficulty with this – theologically, and especially as a woman. But the idea of the
glimpse is, nonetheless, helpful. The holy is always seen slant (as Emily Dickenson once put it). If I close my eyes, though, done with seeing, it is a pretty good glimpse. Chant weaves through the air: a resonant bass, a tenor or two, and the welcome strong voice of a mezzo-soprano. Where is this harmony coming from? Another back room perhaps. This is not performance, the singers are not on show. It is a gift: open my lips . . .
That evening, lured by a poster in the foyer of our studio advertising a free concert, we wander over to the Left Bank to Saint Séverin, a thirteenth century church noted for its “flamboyant gothic” style. Its most notable feature is its double aisle which wraps all the way around the nave and is held in the centre of the apse by a spiralling column that looks like a tree, with its branches, fourteen of them, spreading out to support the vault. The apse is a veritable forest of columns. It is good to have an excuse to sit here in the woods for an hour as we listen to a quartet of voices weaving a mass in honour of St Jerome by the Josquin Desprez, the polyphony a perfect match for flamboyant gothic. The church is named after Séverin, a sixth century hermit who lived in the area: I imagine him laying under a tree, gazing at the stars shining through the shadowy web of branches above him.
The concert over, we walk into the wintery Paris evening past St Julien le Pauvre (late twelfth century, now a Melkite Greek Orthodox Church) and the small gated park that sits by its side. Somewhere in the darkness, perhaps in the tree that was planted in 1602, a black bird is singing, yes, singing in the night.
This, I now realise, was my last full Saturday in Paris. Senses redeemed, I could go on hearing, and seeing, for a long time yet.
