Paris!

Okay. I’ve rented an apartment. Totally blows my mind, but there you have it. I’ve rented an apartment in Paris for three months. Just writing it down gives me the shivers. I’ve finally moved to excitement. I’m still really afraid of myself, but such is life. What I mean is, I’m just blown away that I actually have made this thing happen. I’ve sent off the first half of September’s rent. I mean, I’m financially invested. That’s part of what’s frightening.  But it’s all frightening, flying, speaking French, living in a big, sophisticated European city….. and finishing my novel. (That’s the easiest part, actually.)

My apartmemt is in the 9th arrondissement, just south of Montmatre, in an area people call “the new Left Bank.” My street is described thusly: “The Avenue Trudaine is wide and stately, as beautiful as any of the grand streets of Paris, but it’s only three blocks long, a boulevard to nowhere…. It runs into the trendy Rue des Martyrs, easily one of the hippest shopping streets in Paris and one that is always packed. But the Avenue Trudaine is mostly empty, and some mornings I take one of the shaded sidewalk tables in front of Sole Caffe and join the expats reading the Guardian.” An expat cafe just down the street? That feels good.

Anyway. I’m taking little steps, and in fact, big steps. I’ve joined a program. I’ll be studying art history and French Culture along with a couple days of French and I’ll be researching the locations in my novel. I’ve got this thought that I’d like to have a completed manuscript before I go, but that’s a reach. In any event, I’m going, going, going…..  how amazing. That’s all I can say.

My apartment is also walking distance from two of the major locations in my novel, the home of Georges Sand and the home of Ary Scheffer, a dutch painter and the host of many salons, including one that’s in my book. Scheffer’s home is now a museum dedicated to Romanticism in Paris and has a lot of Georges Sand’s effects on display. I’m also not that far, perhaps a long walk, from the home of young Franz Liszt and of the original Conservatory of Music, another important location in my book.  In fact, the streets in the area are part of my book, so obviously, I’m going be walking my neighborhood, looking for evidence of life 150 years ago.

In fact, here’s what that same article says about “my” neighborhood’s history: “This was the great Bohemia from the Restoration to Haussmannization.… It was built from about 1815 to 1840, and in the 1820s and 1830s this was the most modern part of Paris, where all the new money was.”  This is my time frame, The Appassionata opens in 1830 and moves very quickly to this neighborhood, where Franz Liszt and the Farrenc family live and where the Conservatoire of Musique plies its trade.

There is, for example, a fountain that I wrote about, a kind of landmark for Tori (my main character, Victorine Farrenc) and a street that I’ve described several times. Now I have to find something that is its equivalent and adjust my description to fit some version of the facts. That’s one of my plans. Another is to describe the Square d’Orleans, where Georges Sand lived. The buildings aren’t open, but the square is, and there’s action in my book that takes place outside Sand’s home, on the street and in that square. That’s the kind of research I have in mind. But I’ve also learned where Louise Farrenc’s original manuscripts (Tori’s mother was a composer) are housed, and where Chopin’s original manuscripts are—in fact there’s a museum called Salon de Chopin that I’ll be visiting. There’s also a museum dedicated to Delacroix and one of Victor Hugo’s homes is a museum.

Hugo was living in this particular home in 1848, the next major stopping point in my novel, the part I’m about to write. I’ve started thinking that I’m going to brave the obvious, and include Hugo. I’ve been intimidated by the idea because he’s such a huge character, but now I’m thinking that my girl, Tori, is going to find her way to his home… I’m working over the logical progression that will lead to this in my mind even now. I’ve wanted to include a 1830 piece of theatre that Hugo wrote and produced, called Hernani, one of the most significant milestones, marking the “beginning” of Romanticism in Paris. It parallels Hair in the 1960s in many ways, including the wild, “hippie” dress of Hugo’s fans. So, it seems important to get it into the story. I haven’t know how, and I still don’t, but I feel it brewing.

So. Enough for now. I’m planning to keep a running commentary of my Parisian experience going on my blog. So stay tuned for more.