A day in the life

By popular demand (i.e. one person asked me once), here is what we do on a typical work day.

After getting up, we make coffee in our retro* non-automatic-drip coffee pot and have our breakfast of yogurt and granola. When we first arrived, our breakfasts were all croissant/pain au chocolat/baguette with cheese and sausage all the time, but since that was also what we ate for lunches... well. I think the 'French people don't get fat' myth was not associated with eating pain au chocolat for breakfast every day.

* I have not mastered making good coffee with a pour-over pot. But I refuse to buy a 'swan-necked kettle' or whatever else is necessary for true coffee-nerd happiness while in Paris, so maybe I'm just stuck. The link goes to someone who cares far, far more about coffee than me. If you didn't think that was possible, now you know.

Then we pray, and we're ready to go!

Or rather, I get ready to go to the library. T usually stays at the apartment, since he hasn't found anywhere close and quiet enough to be worth moving to. So he just settles down to work:

If I don't get to the library early enough one of the security guards who has come to recognize me gives me a hard time. It kind of makes me feel at home, though. I sign in and get assigned a seat in one of two reading rooms. If I'm working with manuscripts, it's upstairs in a smaller room. You aren't allowed to take anything in to the manuscript reading room besides papers and pencils or computer equipment, so as to avoid putting the manuscripts at risk. So I'm assigned a small cubby where I lock up my coat, purse, and lunch. Alas, I'm not allowed to photograph this room, which has a spectacularly gaudy ceiling fresco and glorious chandeliers, so here's a picture from the internet:

Galerie Mazarine, photo from here

If I'm working with microfilms, I go to the main reading room, the Salle Ovalle. It is huge and very imposing. The Times recently ran a piece about its architect, actually. Again, photography isn't allowed, so here's someone else's picture:

Salle Ovale, photo from here

Readers at home may be glad to know that 'Washington D.C.' has been inscribed on the ceiling among a list of great cities of the world: Paris, Babylon, Byzantium...! Also in the dust on the big skylight, someone has traced "Je t'<3" ("I <3 you")...

What is T doing all this while? Well...

... thinking metaphysical thoughts.

After a while I eat a lunch packed at home. There are some sad little benches around the first floor of the library where other graduate students eat their sandwiches. I think the older professors mostly go out to lunch! Some of them seem to have inhuman endurance that doesn't require food breaks, though. This is probably why they're such good scholars.

While I eat, I sometimes look at the busts of venerable former librarians which decorate the lobby. This one is of Léopold Delisle, who overhauled the cataloging system in the late nineteenth century. He was from Normandy and thus took quite an interest in Norman medieval records, so I've used a lot of his work.

Somehow I didn't picture him so grumpy-looking when his catalogues of manuscripts are so helpful!

The lobby also contains a magical vending machine, which I would like to import to all libraries at home. It dispenses very decent espressos and macchiatos for a mere 40 Eurocents, and the food side is well-supplied with madeleines and chocolate bars. Basically it's the best.

I work til around 6, when the manuscript and microfilm departments close. I'm doing two sorts of work, for the most part. I've located a bunch of manuscripts from the monastery where the monk-historian I'm writing my dissertation on lived; they're now scattered around France and a few other places. When things written at this monastery during my guy's lifetime exist only in later copies, I just have to read them and copy out anything that looks interesting. The texts I copy can be documents about the monastery's property, rights, and legal disputes, or other historical works and poems from the time. The library has made microfilm copies of many of these manuscripts, and I can use those for transcription work. Of course, sometimes I have to turn to the originals, because the handwriting in these later manuscripts sometimes looks like this:

Can you read this? Seriously, if you can, can you let me know what it says?

My work is more fun when copies from my monk-historian's lifetime survive. In that case I have to examine the binding, page layout, and organization of each book. For each book which was produced at the time and place I'm interested in, I measure its pages, figure out whether the book is missing any bits or has had any added, and what the original book was like. I try to tell which texts were copied in the same handwriting and which weren't, whether each gathering of parchment pages has a particular theme or common source, etc. It can be tedious, since it doesn't always lead immediately to any useful information. But sometimes it turns up something really good. All these observations on all of the books from this one monastery at this one time should add up to a picture of what the monks' common literary project was. That will help me to situate my particular monk-historian.

Medieval handwriting is much clearer.

And of course it's cool just to work with medieval books, too.

When I come home, maybe picking up a baguette along the way, this is what greets me:

We relax for about an hour, or maybe I start dinner, and then we often take off for daily mass... which is at 7pm, because everything is later in France. A couple nights ago we were surprised to find that our evening mass had been sponsored that day by the 'Ajaccians of Paris,' who apparently meet annually to celebrate their city being spared in a plague. The mass used Corsican chant, which was like nothing I'd ever heard before. Here's an example of something similar. Sometimes we go to the Louvre on its late nights instead, though.

I cook us some dinner at home, and then we pray again afterward. Usually we try to do something productive in the evenings if we're home--for example T's doing French language tapes, and we occasionally manage to eke out a blog post. But sometimes we just end up watching Star Trek instead. And that's a working day for us!

Les Jouets

A few days ago in a country far, far away...

... Star Wars toys. Thirty five years of Star Wars toys.

Mon père à Paris

Before our trip to Vienna, we had a visit from my Dad. It was great to see him! We spent a lot of time running around looking at art etc., but also some time in our apartment eating baguettes and cheese and drinking wine and talking. The latter is not pictured because it doesn't photograph very well, but here are some of Dad's photos of the former--I slacked off in recording our adventures once he was here so these are all his.

 

As he arrived, the sun favored us by making an appearance, so we walked around a bit, stopping to take in the nice French-straight-lines view down to the Place de la Concorde. The Place has had a few names: formerly the Place Louis XV; then Place de la Révolution, when the guillotine was set up there; and then, finally, renamed 'concord' as a conciliatory gesture. But our real goals were twofold:

First, La Maison du Chocolat, a fancy and delicious chocolate store (we shared a hot chocolate, and it was definitely rich enough for two), and second, Marriage Frères, a fancy and old-fashioned tea shop. Those canisters are all different sorts of tea. You can see Dad holding his purchases as we stopped by the Louvre later in the evening:

Our walk also took us past this monument to Gaspard de Coligny, a Huguenot leader who was nevertheless close to the French king Charles IX. This statue memorializes his death in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.

That evening at the Louvre, Dad captured the many barriers and guards protecting the Mona Lisa--along with one of the smallest crowds we've seen around it, actually:

I'm impressed Dad was up for as much as he was on the first day! The next morning, we got up all too early and took a train out into the countryside...

Headed to Chartres Cathedral! It was snowing as we arrived, which made for a freezing but beautiful atmosphere. We also had the place to ourselves--a far cry from Notre Dame de Paris' constant hordes of tourists. Also unlike Notre Dame, Chartres was finished quickly (quickly for a medieval cathedral, i.e. about 60 years instead of several centuries), with the result that its architecture and decorative program are unusually unified--except for that left-hand tower, which was rebuilt in the late Gothic "flamboyant" style. You can probably tell why it was called that! However check out that strong division of the facade and the triple portal, both typical gothic-y things that Chartres helped make popular:

Evidence that Dad was there.

No one but us and the more devoted dog-walkers of Chartres were braving the cold that morning, but this square used to be the destination point for pilgrims and merchants traveling to seasonal fairs. Dad brought a 'monocular' (like binoculars, but only one) for looking at high-up statues and stained glass:

Chartres Cathedral, dedicated to Our Lady, was a major site of pilgrimage from the twelfth century onward. Pilgrims came to see a garment thought to have belonged to her. They still make their way to the cathedral, of course, but I was surprised to see a sign that looked very familiar from my time on the camino:

This plaque helpfully informs you that it's only 1,625 km to Santiago de Compostela! That's over three times the distance I walked.

Inside, major restoration work has begun. You can see the contrast between what's been cleaned and what hasn't, above. You can also see, faintly, that some of the original polychrome painting has been restored. Again, many medieval things weren't as dark and grey as we imagine them. This type of restoration, executed this well, seems to be rare, but it makes a huge difference to the light and color inside.

The windows are also super important. Almost all of them are medieval, and even some twelfth-century ones survive from a previous cathedral building on the same site. Much of the glass is "Chartres blue," a brilliant shade enhanced with slight traces of red. It has been remarkably stable over the centuries, whereas many other colored glass formulas shift their tone slightly with time. The story is that modern craftsmen don't know how to recreate a color of the same intensity. It seems like most scholars don't think that anymore (sorry), but it's still beautiful:

The photo on the right is of "Notre Dame de la Belle Verièrre," Our Lady of the Beautiful Window, one of the twelfth-century windows that survived the fire which destroyed the earlier building. The blues are so luminous in person, it's a shame the picture can't quite capture it.

And finally, the church is famous for its labyrinth pavement. Unfortunately the chairs are only cleared out on Fridays for pilgrims to walk the labyrinth in meditation, and we weren't there on a Friday. There's a copy of this labyrinth next to the chapel where we were married, which made seeing the original especially significant for us. Nearby I saw a plaque announcing that Charles Peguy had prayed in this spot: his and the Maritains' affection for Chartres was yet another reason I had wanted to visit.

Here is an excellent source for more images etc. of Chartres, including a panoramic view that gives you a great sense of the restoration work. The small town of Chartres is charming, and provided us with a leisurely and warm meal at a restaurant that turned out to have a slight New York theme (fortunately the food was still quite French). After taking the train back to Paris, we found Dad a suitably Parisian scarf at the Galeries Lafayette, a big department store, and had a quiet evening in.

Our next day together was a Sunday. After church we headed to the Musée de l'Orangerie. This former greenhouse in the Tuileries is now home to a set of amazing panoramic water-lily paintings by Monet. He designed the display space himself, and it's really an ideal way of experiencing them. Photos are forbidden inside, but there's an online virtual tour here, which gives you an idea of the soft light, all-white oval rooms, and experience of being surrounded by the paintings. The rest of the collection is small but we found these rooms alone to be worth the trip.

This is a serious organ.

We ended our day with some music: an organ and trumpet concert at La Madeleine, an imposing Neoclassical church where they are not kidding around about organ music. Saint-Saëns and Fauré have been among its titular organists. The music ranged from the Renaissance to works by living composers, so we enjoyed hearing the range produced for this combination of instruments.

On Monday, the cold rain didn't deter us from exploring the Left Bank. We passed Notre Dame on our way across the river, and enjoyed showing Dad some places from our earlier trips--Shakespeare and Company, St Germain des Prés, Librarie La Procure. We also discovered some new ones, like this tasty-looking sweets shop, Saint Sulpice, and a little crepe shop where we had lunch.

Above: St Germain des Prés; inside it, the tomb of René Descartes flanked by the tombs of two Benedictine antiquarians, monks of St Germain, Bernard de Montfaucon and Jean Mabillon. Below: gallettes (savory buckwheat crepes), and Saint Sulpice.

We even made a quick stop in the Louvre again that evening and visited the Dutch paintings. Trust the Louvre to take all its Rembrant paintings and cram them in one corner of one small room, some hung on top of the others. You can imagine we were pretty tired by the end of the day! But the next morning we were up early for the Musée d'Orsay, which is built inside a former train station:

It was a delight; the exhibits are all so well-curated in comparison to some other big museums one could mention in Paris and of course the collection is amazing. We spent a long time with the Impressionists. Photographs were forbidden but there was a view we couldn't resist out of one of the big clocks of the former train station, across the river and up to Montmartre:

Then we got lunch in the museum at the Cafe d'Ours, named for this nice bear:

And then looked at post-Impressionists, a little sculpture, and early twentieth century decorative arts! It was a lot of museum, but completely engaging. That evening we enjoyed our fanciest meal in Paris to date at a bistro near our apartment, and said goodbye to Dad, whose ride to the airport left the next morning. As busy as this account may sound, we especially enjoyed the time we took to relax and talk together. I love Paris but I miss my family too!

Ils viennent a Vienne

The first weekend of March we flew off to Vienna to visit E's mom, who had been speaking and consulting at a nearby conference in Hungary. It was great to get to spend some time with her. Never having been to Vienna, we didn't know what to expect, except good art, good music, and good coffee and cake. We weren't disappointed! It was so nice for me to be back in a place where people speak German after my long and painful exile in French-speaking... France. And to have brötchen and döner again!

E's mom kindly arranged for us to stay together in an apartment in the very heart of town. The space was palatial by comparison to our Parisian digs and quite a change from the one-room-fits-all way of life we've grown accustomed to. The extra space made it a nice place to relax and talk in the evenings, since, unlike with E's dad's visit to Paris, in Vienna each of us had a seat to sit on with a back to lean on - wondrous strange. And as you would probably expect(?), the apartment came furnished with a nice sketch of Wagner(!).

And the couch featured some very nice people, too.

The place was just around the corner from the Karlskirche, a famous baroque church built by Emperor Karl VI in the eighteenth century in thanksgiving that his prayers had been answered when the last great plague epidemic subsided. Who knew the plague lasted so long? Among other things, the church features two enormous columns, remeniscent of Trajan's in Rome, and a dome fresco that seems to be the church's main attraction. On the first evening we made our visit.

Someone had the brilliant idea to set up scaffolding right in the middle of the church, with a lift to take visitors up into the dome to see the fresco up close. Apparently no one realized that being on a shaky platform 150 feet above ground is more fun for school children than the baroque. This helpful sign was addressed to them: "Running and jumping is life-dangerous! Screaming is uncool!" Note the rare occurrence of the German term 'uncool', from the middle-German root 'cool', meaning 'cool'.

We had a lot of fun together reading the dome's varied Christian iconography. Apparently heavenly blessings are best depicted by money literally being flung at you from on high.

The ecstatic effect of the baroque painting, or maybe just the dome's height, left us in a bit of a blur. 

That night we had tickets to the Wiener Musikverein(!). It turned out that while we were there the Vienna Philharmonic had gone looking for us back home at Carnegie Hall, so we heard a visiting orchestra instead. 

 

I was especially interested in that night's program, since it featured a piece for choir and orchestra by Arvo Pärt. Pärt is an interesting and now quite popular contemporary composer, in spite of his Catholic faith and his preoccupation with sacred texts and music. A monk-friend of mine first introduced me to some of his music a few years ago, but I hadn't heard anything more since then. As it turns out, I didn't know what I had gotten us into. Pärt's oeuvre divides starkly into two vastly different periods. He spent the early part of his career using the best of the contemporary techniques and styles (or anti-styles?), all of which he eventually came to find completely bankrupt in themselves and useless for his purposes, which were and are essentially spiritual. Pärt's struggle with the best of contemporary music eventually reached a crisis point, after which he wrote almost nothing for more than seven years, while he studied the roots of Western music, like chant and sacred polyphony. He emerged from this silence with a unique new style, which he calls tintinabuli, that characterizes his later period and for which he is now justly famous. But the piece we heard at the Musikverein, "Credo," was written on the verge of the crisis that ended his early period, and it terrifyingly communicates all the turmoil that Pärt must have been experiencing at the time. I have never before heard a piece of music that so effectively evoked fear. The experience was deeply disturbing. Fortunately Pärt's piece was preceded by Grieg and followed by Sibelius, which made for a balanced and rich evening of music.

We spent most of the next day together at the Kunsthistorische Museum, which featured a wide range of famous masterpieces, from Raphael to Vermeer, Caravaggio to Holbein, Bruegel to Rubens, not to mention many other interesting works by lesser known artists. The building itself was also grand and inspiring, and very well designed for displaying art.

That night we saw Don Giovanni, one of E's favorite operas, at the Wiener Staatsoper(!).

E and I had seats in one of the boxes, which really was a box and gave us the opportunity for a lot of fun imagining ourselves in another time.

We hung our coats in a small antechamber, covered all over in red satin and furnished with a mirror so that we could primp and press before seeing and being seen. We were in the very back of the box, which meant that we had to stand and lean for a decent view of the stage, but also that we were well positioned for hiding from prying eyes and sharing secrets about our fellow opera-goers. The production was mostly a flop, but the cast and orchestra were excellent. E can tell you more about it.

The next day we went to Sunday Mass at Vienna's great gothic cathedral, the Stephansdom. I had hoped we would get to see Cardinal Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna and editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. As an undergraduate I read and liked some of his works of theology, and followed an interesting debate he ignited with an opinion piece in the New York Times about evolution and intelligent design, so I was eager to hear him preach in person. Alas, he was already in Rome preparing for the conclave.

In the afternoon we met up with an old friend of E's parents who has been living and working in Vienna for over 25 years. We went for lunch at a local vineyard on the outskirts of town, where we each had our token Wiener schnitzel, which was as big as the plate and so delicious. We spent the rest of the day exploring the heart of the city, which is really charming and mostly full of nothing but art...
 

... and monuments to artists .... 

... and schools and libraries for art...

... and artists' associations.

We eventually ended up at Cafe Central, a beautiful and much recommended spot where we had traditional Viennese cake and coffee. E tried the Sachertorte, I had a truffle cake, and E's mom had the cake of the house, which was by far the best of them all.

On our last day we visited Schönbrunn palace, seat of the Hapsburgs since the reign of Maria Theresia in the eighteenth century, which offered a great view of the whole city beyond.

We all enjoyed the tour of the palace. It was the first time that E and I experienced for ourselves, and finally understood, what art historians have to say about the rococo; before that it just seemed like more of the baroque to us. I appreciated the window into the daily life of the Hapsburgs who lived there, and especially the signs of their faith, like the priedieu and crucifix next to the bed of Emperor Franz Joseph I, and the devotional closet in the family room (where, famously, the child prodigy Mozart played for Maria Theresia before jumping in her lap and kissing her!). Actually the last reigning Hapsburg Emperor, Karl I, is blessed and will likely be canonized in our lifetime.

And we all found the palace's surrounding gardens - how shall I say? - "most diverting."

Clearly the French were here. 

In all it was a great trip, and a great visit with E's mom. Thanks to her! We hope to make it back to Vienna eventually, since in spite of doing so much, there was still a lot we didn't get to see, like any Klimt. Actually we saw a ton of Klimt all over Vienna, but only on posters, and booklets, and pens, and pillows, and bags, and scarves, and umbrellas, and paperweights, and...

Our painfully early-morning flight back to Paris gave us a beautiful view of the sun coming up over the alps, which made the 4:00 a.m. wake-up call well worth it.