MARTINA’S FRENCH WAYS #5: Theatre, Drama, and Illusions.
Bienvenue to Martina’s French Ways — a corner of the site where I share the little rituals, objects, and routines that shape my writing life here in Paris.
A Glimpse of Paris
The New Yorker magazine in America, launched in 1925, focuses on the cultural life of New York, and each week an artist designs the magazine cover in the form of a poster. In Paris, from 20 May to 13 October 2021, an imaginary magazine called The Parisianer was re-created in the likeness of The New Yorker front page poster designs. It was a façade! An illusion! Only the front cover was issued, with no magazine. But the poster told the story, not of the cultural life in Paris, but of the exhibitions of the Natural History Museum in Paris.
The artistic project was called “The Parisianer: Chroniques du Muséum” – “The Parisianer: Chronicles of the Museum.” A collective of 150 cosmopolitan artists created designs for the cover page poster of the imaginary The Parisianer. The museum’s promo stated that each fictional cover was “a little gem of poetry and sweetness.” With over 200 years of the museum’s history, The Parisianer posters covered many topics over time, combining art, history, and science. The fake magazine showed fictional dates from the years 1717 to 3107.
The exhibition of the 21 covers was held on the grounds of the Botanical Garden at the Natural History Museum in Paris.
Related articles with photographs:
Imaginary magazine The Parisianer captures the Chronicles of the Natural History Museum in Paris
On My Nightstand
A departure from reading books about Paris and France, I always return to poetry or to books about nature. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer is a book that I read again and again for its interconnection between science, nature, spirit, and storytelling. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2013) is a ‘braid of stories’ from the botanist author, also a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She adds, ‘but I am also a poet and the world speaks to me in metaphor.’
The book begins with sweetgrass, a sacred plant believed to be the first plant to grow on Earth. The author tells us about other important plants too: pecan, strawberry, maple, witch hazel, freshwater green algae, water lily, corn, and so on.
She talks in powerful poetic prose of the ‘communal generosity’ of plants, a ‘mycorrhizal network’ that unites people to land and ancestral responsibility, and the gifts of plants that go beyond food and shelter to songs of wisdom. She tells of the ‘grammar of animacy’ and indigenous words that encapsulate words of action, purpose, and process that have no equivalent in the English language, such as ‘puhpowee’ meaning ‘the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight.’ It is an interesting book, blending sacred and spiritual knowledge with the scientific world of botany in storybook form. It brings people back to poetry and back to nature. (Braiding Sweetgrass is available here.)
Paris Details: a crooked illusion
In this seemingly simple street scene photograph from Rue de la Gaîté in Paris, there’s a striking juxtaposition: a traditional Parisian gas lamp leans theatrically into view, while the bold vertical sign for the Théâtre de la Gaîté (Gaiety Theatre) rises upright in the background. It looks like the lamppost is crooked, but it is just an illusion. It’s an optical trick created by the angle of the photograph, one that mirrors the street’s slightly offbeat character steeped in theatrical history.
Rue de la Gaîté (Gaiety Street) itself has an ancient theatrical history. Its street name is from the French word meaning cheerfulness or merriment. The Théâtre de la Gaîté (today officially called La Gaîté-Montparnasse) opened in the 19th century, and has undergone several transformations, from musical hall and avant-garde venue to mainstream theatre stage.
What makes this image special to me is not just its aesthetic harmony, but also the moment it captures: tradition and transformation, nostalgia and neon. The old-style lamp is an icon of Parisian streetscapes, evoking gaslit evenings – but again, this is an illusion because the lamp itself is electric and modern. The theatre sign, clean and contemporary in its design, points to a space still very much alive with innovative performances. Together, they tell a visual story of Paris, a city where the past leans into the present. So next time you walk down Rue de la Gaîté, glance upward to see a different perspective of Paris.
Postcard From Paris
In the previous edition of Martina’s French Ways, I mentioned the 1894 Galeries Lafayette department store on the Boulevard Haussmann, and its iconic 1912 Neo-Byzantine dome. For Postcards from Paris, I’ve chosen a photograph from the rooftop terrace of Galeries Lafayettelooking directly at the golden dome of the Palais Garnier and beyond to the dramatic skies overhead, and the rooftop café scene.
Galeries Lafayette’s rooftop offers one of the best free panoramic views in Paris, with the Eiffel Tower in one direction, the Sacré-Cœur in another, and everything in between. It’s a place where locals bring out-of-town guests to get a peaceful vantage point of the city. But Paris offers views like this from almost anywhere, such as when you are climbing the steps of Montmartre, standing on a bridge over the river Seine, or looking out of a small balcony window in the Marais. In this image, even the weather plays a part in the stormy story as if to highlight the brightness of the gilded dome and the striped parasol. It is an image of everyday luxury: an ordinary lunch made extraordinary by its setting. It’s the kind of image that Paris does best.
MERCHANDISE
Until Next Time
Thank you for being here.
À bientôt,
Martina
