Liberty Enlightening the World (La liberté éclairant le monde)

Tensions between France and the U.S. have not always existed. For one, there's the help with the American War of Independence.

For another, there is the Statue of Liberty. I have seen two Statues of Liberty in Paris. The top image is the one in the Luxembourg Gardens. The other is a figurehead on a boat in the Seine. Perhaps there are many more?

I did not see the most famous one in Paris, which is mounted next to the Pont de Grenelle, a bridge crossing the Seine, 1.5 km south of the Eiffel Tower.

The Statue of Liberty Revisited edited by Wilton S. Dillon, 1994, page 155 (as quoted here):

"On July 4, 1889 the American community in Paris offered the French people a gift of a bronze replica of the Statue of Liberty; it still stands now, on an island in the Seine River, downstream from the Eiffel Tower. In a symbolic sense, this recently restored American gift closes the circle of gift giving that was launched by the French in the 1860's with the gift of Miss Liberty. In a deeper sense, though, the American replica in Paris serves to extend and strenthen the chain of reciprocity between the two peoples that has existed since before the founding of the American Republic and that promises to continue well into the future.

This magnificent exchange of gifts illustrates a declaration delivered by French ambassador Jule J. Jusserand on the occasion of the 1916 ceremony at which Liberty's torch was first lighted with electricity: 'Not to a man, not to a nation, the statue was raised. It was raised to an idea - an idea greater than France or the United States: the idea of Liberty.'"

Hemingway in Paris

Hemingway's passport photo

The Moveable Feast was written by Ernest Hemingway soon before he died in 1961 about his expatriate years in Paris in the 1920s.

Hemingway's apartment at 74 rue de cardinal Lemoine

It is an interesting account of life in Paris with wife Hadley and his relationships with other expatriates referred to as "The Lost Generation" by Gertrude Stein, including Ford Madox Ford, TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda.

I spent some time in May retracing Hemingway's steps between his apartment at rue de cardinal Lemoine and Gertrude Stein's apartment on the other side of the Luxembourg Gardens, 27 rue de Fleurus.

Gertrude Stein's apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus

Ernest and Hadley spent quite a bit of time with the daunting Stein in her apartment filled with original artwork by their contemporary Picasso and others. Stein told Hemingway to invest in art, though he had barely enough money to keep his wife and himself fed.

Here is an excerpt from A Moveable Feast:

"Then there was the bad weather. It would come in one day when the fall was over. We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescarpe. The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the Café des Amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over from the heat and the smoke inside. It was a sad, evilly run café where the drunkards of the quarter crowded together and I kept away from it because of the smell of dirty bodies and the sour smell of drunkenness."

Place Contrescarpe in May


Players of a game similar to bocci ball called petanque in the Luxembourg Gardens, which lay between Stein's and Hemingway's apartments

Luxembourg Gardens: Women in and out of their element

Today I met Catherine from Toronto (after seeing but not meeting her yesterday at a restaurant on the Champs Elysees), both of us feeling a bit lonely traveling unaccompanied in Paris for a week, strange women in a strange place (so why does it feel so much like home?).


Luxembourg Gardens

When I met Catherine I was walking toward the Luxembourg Gardens, getting away from diesel fumes on the busy quais along the Seine. I needed quiet, fresh air, and sprawling gardens with birds, men playing bocci ball petanque and kids toddling around, where a palace was built for a non-French-French queen who herself was out of her element.


Luxembourg Palace

Marie de’ Medici, married to French King Henry IV, was from Florence and did not feel at home in France. After her husband was assassinated (1610), she wanted to leave her residence at the Louvre and asked architect Salomon de Brosse to design and build this Florentine-style palace (like her childhood home), now home to the French Senate.


Henry IV's boot and spur on statue of him at Pont Neuf

She was an Italian woman adjusting to Parisian life, but apparently she influenced French culture, from fashion to food. Some say she is the mother of French cuisine!

One of the few surviving remnants of her commissions is the Fontaine de Médicis, in the photo below.

Currently in the still water of the Medici fountain, dusted with seeds floating down from the surrounding plane trees, there is a woman definitely out of her element. (No, I did not photoshop her in. I searched the Web for information about this sculpture, without luck; ParisDailyPhoto informed me that this sculpture was created by Lotta Hannerz of Sweden.) What would you name her? Do you love her or hate her? (Apparently Marie de’ Medici had lots of reasons to be hated.)


Sculpture in Medici fountain at Luxembourg Gardens

I think I love her. She is a woman learning to breathe in an element not her own. I have no problem breathing in Paris (until I get too many diesel fumes), but Marie did, many women must, and whoever this woman is, it seems that all she does is breathe.


Update: Thanks to ParisDailyPhoto, the artist's name is Lotta Hannerz, from Sweden.