Reviews for Seven Ages of Paris

The average rating for Seven Ages of Paris based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-08-16 00:00:00 Laura Kennemer She is a woman. I mean she is female. And she is not just any female. She is of colossal fame. A mythical female she is. And yet she is well alive and exists today. Because she has more presence than you or I have. I am talking about resplendent Paris. For if this woman is outstandingly beautiful and alluring, at times she as also been violent and bloodthirsty and this mix of personas has made her eminently enigmatic and mysterious. Alistair Horne in this book traces the history of Paris through what he sees as her Seven Ages. As he traces her history we see that her life has evolved around a few celebrated men. Or may be it was that these men needed her when pursuing their ambitions and she knew how to position herself as these requirements changed through history. Her Seven Ages succeeded as follows: Lutetia, a young wench from Roman times, was elevated by Philippe-Auguste to the status of a gentle maiden in a chivalrous and First Age. Henri IV stepped in to herald the Second Age and she was the one for whom and in genuine faith and extraordinary credulity, he switched religions. For him this Lady was worth a Mass. She sadly felt neglected in the Third Age when Louis XIV moved all splendor, music and light to that upstart demoiselle of Versailles. But it was Napoleon who, as the hero of the Fourth Age, tamed her when she became a revolutionary and instead raised her to her rightful throne of Empress of all cities. In a characteristic ambitious tone, he had vouched that he would make her the most beautiful city in the world. And even though Horne titles the Fifth Age after the common La Commune who took over and played its jarring tune in her elegant arena, it is still the age of a self-appointed hero, Louis-Napoleon. Nor is the Sixth Age one that can be honorably remembered under one single man. This was a period framed and marked by horrid wars during which her enemies dared to invade her three times, spanning and puncturing the Belle Époque and then adding on a second Thirty Year war. Her politicians had failed her. Horne has identified this age with the invitation to the frivolous upstart from earlier times to come back to stage, this time in strict austerity, and sign the Treaty of Versailles that would supposedly expel Hell but which didn't. But this long period of no heroes was a period of artists who honored her as their muse. In her final and current Seventh Age we see again a hero, De Gaulle, who once he admitted that he could not be Emperor and put a veil over her past as Empress, gave her, for a fifth and still successful round, the dignified and modern mantle of Lady of the République. But if these five men dominated these Seven Ages, we should not think that these were the only men in her life. There were others, many others. There were those who gave her things, beautiful things. For example, Louis IX gave her the dainty Sainte-Chapelle. Francois I gave her an elegant Renaissance palace to replace the rough Louvre bastion, and invited the inventive Leonardo to visit and pay her homage. She was given many bridges as she grew from the little island and expanded to the two sides of her river. And these were all the gift of cavaliers, for even the Pont Marie was not related to the virgin but designed by the architect Christophe Marie. She certainly offered a fruitful ground for the creations of ingenious architects, national and foreign, all the way to the daring and gaudy Beaubourg conceived by the Italian Renzo Piano. The things she was given were not always strictly material objects. Gabriel Nicolas de La Reynie, the Chief of Police under Louis XIV, gave her street lighting and this was her first step towards becoming the City of Lights. To strengthen her Finances the Banque de France was organized by Napoleon and his bankers and it was also him who realized that hygiene was a sine-qua-non for beauty. A new sewage system and greater access to drinking water were the benefits when she got her Canal de l'Ourcq. In embellishing her some had to mutilate or exert some other traumatic changes. Baron Haussmann, who thanks to this entered the Senate after having been the Prefect of Police, had to demolish areas so as to build avenues plotted according to a regular and structured framework and devised a new kind of housing with façades that would unify long street vistas. The scale of Haussmann's grid of boulevards, and enduring model for apartment buildings, however, were not entirely new. During the Third Age, both Le Vaux designed the prototype for the beautiful dwellings still surviving in the Marais, and Le Nôtre plotted the Champs-Elysées, well suited and named for our mythical lady. Some reconstructive surgery was later performed by Viollet-le-Duc who thought that Young-Looking-Middle-Ages-Bâtiments were just the thing. And the Would-be-Mutilator Le Corbusier concocted the horrifying and cruel idea of demolishing her center and build in her Right Bank a string of towers like shoeboxes over two hundred meters high. Such an operation would have had a despairing and irremediable damage to this Lady's beauty. Better and more natural methods were applied by the intellectual André Malraux who prescribed a deep cleansing and whitening treatments as the most appropriate to erase the scars of age in her stone cheeks and skin. It was not always her beauty the main objective. Some of her men were also concerned with her education. It all started with Abelard, who though a friar, had a weakness for women (admittedly educated women with an inclination to epistle-writing) and founded her first University. This University later took on, as her own, the name of another man, Robert de Sorbon, the Confessor of Louis IX. Subsequently François I thought not only of palaces, since he founded the Collège de France, a center of Humanism, and he was followed about a century later by Richelieu who constituted the various Académies (Language, Arts, and Architecture). But as we know, education is dangerous, and in May 1968, it was in some of these centers of knowledge that trouble brewed for this bluestocking. And it was not all things, beauty and centers of learning; she also needed some occupations on which she could spend and enjoy her time. For her culinary interests some cooks established delicious centers, such as those set up by Boulanger or Beauvilliers, and many palates desired restaurants like Chez Noudet or Maxim's. The Cafés fashion was quickly developed so that most people would have sat around the Café de la Paix, Café de Paris, Café des Aveugles. Her interest in music welcomed many locals such as Berlioz, Debussy, or Ravel, or attracted ethereal virtuosos from Poland, or offered a venue for the celebration of a demonic Rite of Spring for the exotic Russian. And since music beckons her temples, she had her Opera designed by Charles Garnier, a building that became such an exemplary model that replicas sprouted later in Hanoi and Buenos Aires. Knowing that obvious symbols of social differences could breed trouble she proceeded to have the Opera of the People and build, in a place with no lesser emblematic meaning than the Bastille, her second grand music hall. Of course it was not all grand music that tuned the ears of those men who were always orbiting nervously around her. She had to provide a special entertainment for those. Her Moulin Rouge, or the Folies Bergère, or Le Chat noir became world famous as centers of naughty fun and in so doing became also sources of inspiration for her painters, with Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet, or Picasso, to name just a few of those who left unforgettable images. For if she has had an innumerable string of painters that have left us with a history of her countenance, in particular those who exalted the richness of her city life, like Pissarro or Caillebotte, she has also had a series of bards who wrote copiously having falling prey to their fascination. Eugène Sue, Balzac, the Goncourts, Zola, Proust, and a long etcetera, have left volumes and volumes of her splendor and squalor and luxury and vice and mythical grandeur. And it is for this never-ending string of men that she has taken care to present herself in an exquisite toilette. For even if the concept of Haute Couture had its inception in her secluded royal courts, it was thanks to her Couturiers that her style would rank as the most elegant that would set the fashions openly. The English Charles Worth had to establish his business there if he wanted to drape the right model, but plenty of locals, Paquin, Poiret, Dior and Gautier, later exported her allure to the rest of the world. And since dress nicely but with no "parures" could seem that she was displaying a nudity of elegance, thanks to the Cartier males (father and three sons) and their innovative use of platinum for jewellery, she set a trend that most of the European Royals would copy in their tiaras, forgetting the Republican nature of their inspirational model. As we close this book after reading about her Seven Ages, we are left with a whiff of her perfume, for she, the Eve of very many Adams, could only use a scent named Le Fruit Défendu. Evoking her mystery...

Review # 2 was written on 2016-11-24 00:00:00 Richquell Thompson 3 stars ? Very generous. Instinct told me : do not read in chrono order. So I began with the 6th "Age," which begins w La Belle Epoque and covers W1, and moves into the 7th "Age," W2 and ends c 1969. Instinct was kerect. Author Horne -- in 400 pages -- condenses centuries of French history and shows the importance of good writing and selectivity of material. Reading about what I knew, fairly well, enabled me to consider what he was up to. Yes, he writes damn well -- but why can't I remember anything vital ? Is it important to learn that Josephine Baker danced wearing only a crotch feather and had a boff w author Georges Simenon? Or that Nijinsky may have performed, at least once, minus a jockstrap? I do like the Sacha Guitry quote: "The burdens of marriage are too heavy to be borne by two people alone." In the 7th "Age," when author turns to post-war2 culture (and his researchers fail him here), he ignores the New Wave cinema revolution (with an off-hand line or two), which dismays me, as this had a profound effect on La La Land. Belmondo, at this time, was on the cover of LIFE, for god's sake, in a French movie: That Man from Rio. He was followed by Jeanne Moreau on the cover of TIME (1965). Very rare kudos! Blinkered author gives a mild hiccough over the disastrous building of La Tour Montparnasse, started in 1959 and finished in 1973, that famously obscene skyscraper in the middle of the Left Bank -- a ghastly blight on the Paris he claims to love so well. At this point, I thought, Aw, piss off Mr Horne! I do not believe he "loves" Paris. So, I dutifully returned to the beginning, "Age 1: 1180-1314," and plodded along, cranky, but curious. He stays very chatty and is never hesitant to repeat a cliche, like "Paris is a woman." Here, I required a double vodka martini. He mostly delivers political strategems-betrayals-deceits-wars-slaughters-royal mistresses & bastards-and the stench of Paris sewage. (It wasn't until the 1970s that every hotel room had a wc -- and many apartments, too.) Aah, the necessity of perfume, so important, I pondered....well, he didn't. Bidet, anyone? Author Horne likes Henry IV (reign: 1572-1610), who was stabbed to death by a Catholic crackpot in his open coach during a traffic jam. (Mull that--) Henry was kindly to Protestants. Nancy Mitford gushes over Louis XIV, the Sun King, though 1000s of Versailles chamber pots had to be emptied, but let's move along... ca va ? ~~ I like author Horne when he allows that life at Versailles was leaden -- unless you had a taste for cards, hunting and gossip. In sum, my feelings are mixed. And rather blurry. Let me recommend anew "The French" by Sanche de Gramont, who offers a perceptive look at everything French, "from bureaucracy and pettiness, to grandeur, fashion, politics and philosophy," and, of course, food and sex. This is the book you want. He points out that the US-English kid is told to "be good." By contrast, the French child is always told, "sois raisonnable" -- be reasonable. This is called Thinking French. Ca va.