Gustave Moreau Museum and Centre Pompidou

Combining the Gustave Moreau Museum and the galleries in the Centre Pompidou made for a potent, if seemingly disjointed, artistic combination. Climbing into the upper stories of the Moreau Museum, I was enraptured by viewing paintings such as Jupiter et Semele, just as Huysmans described in À rebours (with reference to a different Moreau work). Just walking around in the house, with its impressive spiral staircase linking the upper floors, and old paneling and ballroom ceilings, is worth it. Of the Pompidou's offerings, I especially found the scale and humor of Jeff Koons' pieces especially appealing.

 

 Pompidou Centre

 

Interior, Gustave Moreau Museum

Gustave Moreau Museum

10 Rue Nicolas-Appert

Today, outside the site of the Charlie Hebdo attack, 10 Rue Nicolas-Appert, Paris.

Catacombs of Paris, Montparnasse Tower

I plunged down spiral depths and traversed the Catacombs of Paris. My previous mental image involved mounds of bones far off in vaults. Instead the wreaths and fractals of skulls and femurs and armbones, slammed together without heed of station in life or other individualities, lined the walls of the vaults, pressing in very close. Other oddments jumped out, basins, springs, memorial slabs, concrete-encapsuled ceiling collapses, or "bell collapses." Memento mori," vanity of vanities, always shards of hipbones and clutter in the vacuum atop the neatly and grimly-assembled bones.
I walked by Montparnasse Cemetery too late to locate any of the famous dwellers. A gatekeeper furiously rang a bell, a warning closing was nigh, as I desperately worked the outside lanes of the tombs. Then I ascended to the top of the Montparnasse Tower, and saw the cemetery, and Paris, from high above.

And encountered a talking toilet capsule. My one year of high school French availed me little as I punched buttons, causing the door to open repeatedly, with a robot voice issuing injuctions. I finally figured it out -- don't press any buttons. After use, the toilet recedes into the wall, and an automatic system washes the whole interior.We could use more of those in other countries -- and it was free,  unlike potties in many other European nations.

 

Catacombs of Paris

 

 

Montparnasse Cemetery, seen from Montparnasse Tower -- De Beauvoir, Sartre, Beckett, Baudelaire, you're in there somewhere. 

A couple more shots from Père Lachaise

 

 



Headstone of the Iranian author Sadegh Hedayat in Père Lachaise, and a view of the dense necropolis. Hedayat's novel The Blind Owl, with its mystical refrains and echoes of Poe, and some of his short stories affected me greatly when I read them years back.  After I took the photo, an Iranian fan of the writer appeared, also taking a picture.  I spoke with the man briefly.  He said, "There he is... He died much too soon."

Louvre

Today I went to the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and some other sites.