The Long Road to Paris
Autumn turning to winter turning to spring
I am at the centre of the labyrinth of streets that comprises Paris. Long circuitous wanderings have brought me quite by chance to a new art gallery in the complex known as Les Halles.
My return journey from the German border took me through the night as I had to drive along the autobahn till 3am to find a motel with any rooms, and then on to a glorious autumnal morning in Nancy.
Here, high above the proud town that was once the capital for the Dukes of Lorraine, I went looking for the old farm labourer's cottage in the lane leading from the village. But 15 Rue de la Tarrere no longer exists. Indeed, that beautiful garden with its quilt of blue and white spring flowers no longer exists, it has been buried by a bulldozer building a road up to the village from the town. Even through the cottage
had no bath, it had romance. The romance of watching a young woman washing at the sink, her upright well-rounded breasts gently bobbing all the while. And that poster from faraway Paris nightspots declaring ' Nous sommes toujours sexy'.
Romance remains in the lane, as it leads down to the croissanterie in the village of Laxou past intermittent fields, nestling houses and a tree with its freshly rained-upon leaves glowing rich flamingo pink-red. The changing seasons. How different from last time when snow fell on the first, very first, day of spring.
The road leads straight and long to Paris past wide open hills and stands of trees variegated with all the soft turning colours of autumn. The waitress in the wayside cafe has brilliant blue eyes, golden red hair and is aware of her soft beauty as she decorously bends down to sweep the floor, revealing white breasts with a hint of pink tenderness.
But Paris is the lure, the irresistible compulsion that exerts its pull on you well before the underpopulated countryside gives way to city suburbs. The frequent government attempts to reward motherhood in France have to compete against a thousand other temptations.
Lost in the labyrinth searching for the jazz club that always lies in the next street, the next arondisement, while a fight breaks out in a narrow alley off the Rue Saint Dennis
patrolled by glamorous ladies of the night serious and matter of fact in their negotiations with potential clients. The Sunset Club, Rue des Lombards,
just in time for the last number. The girl behind the bar is a smiling paragon of efficiency, dispensing a glass of lager for five Euros. She needs to be. On to a wine bar where long legged bar girls have all the allure of that barmaid from the Moulin Rouge., French women return your gaze and add to it, sure they are in command in this most feminine of all cities.
Art is the city's countryside, its inspiration, its philosophy among the beautiful constructions and statements of past and previous generations of French lovers. The prompting is to soar and surpass all that has gone before.
The art gallery is empty on this early Saturday morning, it stands like a church waiting for its worshippers, uniformed attendants watch out for any sign of desecration. The exhibition is a retrospective of the art of Fritz Winter, a German who Paris has taken into her ample bosom. He lived through the worst the century had to offer. Saw service on the Russian front, having been sought out even in his remote Bavarian village where he attempted to create his art away from Hitler's bully boys systematically eliminating all opposition among the stunned population.
The exhibition begins with dancing colours that have an intensity at their centre and then radiate outwards into ever more subtle refinements, the whole held together by bold strong forms. One circling of the gallery opens up a dance of light and shade, colour and life.
Hidden away behind some glassare three small notebooks. They offer quiet testimony of the primeval abyss. The period they cover in their few pages is 1940-1944, and the pictures they contain are all created in black, grey and white. '1942, Destruction', says the simple title. Everything collapses and dissolves into shades of black and grey, you sense the seismic contortions that the mind has tried to comprehend, the chaos, there are no people at these depths. Down in the bottom layes of the earth's early swamps, subsumed and consummated, future forms are born and ooze into life far from the view of man. It is the sight Fritz Winter has witnessed as the Russian winter settles the war by freezing the great German army as it stands outside Stalingrad. The record goes completely bland for four years after Fritz Winter, badly wounded, is captured and sent to a Russian prisoner of war camp in Siberia, only to emerge in 1948.
A red sun dances above an irridescent grey-pink backdrop filled with praeternatural light. Two elegant curving shapes, are they early trees? reach upwards towards the warmth of the sun. It is the springtime of the world. The man has survived and been reborn, it is 1949, the spirit has triumphed in spite of all. Here is eloquent testimony of one soul who has won through in a tumultuous century.
Paris
From Galactic Federation Dispatches
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