{"id":1196,"date":"2016-07-24T17:40:20","date_gmt":"2016-07-24T17:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=1196"},"modified":"2016-07-26T07:19:36","modified_gmt":"2016-07-26T07:19:36","slug":"paris-tends-the-flowers-of-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=1196","title":{"rendered":"Paris tends the Flowers of Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jean<\/a>

Jean B\u00e9raud<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

If Paris is still a poem, it\u2019s a 19th century poem.\u00a0 It\u2019s a poem of dualities, and that\u2019s good and bad. \u00a0 In spite of the\u00a0 century and a half that has passed, Baudelaire\u2019s masterpiece, Les Fleurs du Mal<\/em>, his mingling of beautiful and evil, seems seethingly contemporary. \u00a0 Beauty is still on the streets and gardens, and in private spaces , and it is cheek to jowl with squalor, envy and everything else. \u00a0 The queen of capitals that is an intimate marriage of splendor and misery, a description of codependence observed over a century ago, is as alive now as then.<\/p>\n

No matter how much you love the city (I do), one can\u2019t help but observe its strange life in strange time.\u00a0 Street life is bustling – food and drink is sustenance,\u00a0 perhaps more than ever.\u00a0 Breakfast gives stamina to prepare lunch. \u00a0One sees the bustle of shoppers with armful of bags from the street market, young restauranteurs\u00a0 laying out cloth, glasses and napkins for the noontime rush, in window frames of red vernis, menus written on boards in chalk – all has melting Paris appeal.\u00a0 Could there be more cafes and restaurants in these square hectares?<\/p>\n

On everyone\u2019s minds and their mouths is the memory and queasy fear of new attacks at the very places where they are (if not that sidewalk, the one l\u00e0-bas, over there); a sinking despair that this is the new norm. \u00a0It could be that France will become a country like Northern Ireland once was, where terrorism will be a civil war strategy that will exhaust the public and end, somehow, when everyone is too tired to remake a new better society, though everyone will go on.<\/p>\n

Terrorism isn\u2019t the only \u201cmal\u201d – la mis\u00e8re,<\/em> misery, poverty its all around.\u00a0 If it was les petites vieilles,<\/em> poor widows in Baudelaire\u2019s time, and ragpickers and drunks, with sandbags for shooting at police, now there are mattresses on corners and blocks where homeless people are sleeping. \u00a0Camped all day at the entrance to little markets are panhandlers.\u00a0 Refugees, unemployed, homeless?\u00a0 Unclear. \u00a0Gypsies.\u00a0 Garden fountains are used to wash feet; there are squatters in friends\u2019 buildings.\u00a0 Some say these are unresolved problems from crash of 2008, that the economy has been dragging since, under the weight of\u2026 your favorite ill.\u00a0 Call it Europe, the refugee crisis, bloated government, the right wing, left wing. \u00a0 In spite of continuous development of public green, often reclaimed space, bike paths, the plugs for electronic cars, in spite of an unbelievably cosmopolitan mix of modern and traditional people, there\u2019s a squalor and sadness.<\/p>\n

The state of emergency, the anger, the hatred from segments of the third generation that hasn\u2019t integrated, the war that is so woven into the everyday that it could be the city\u2019s double. Evil in its irrational dark heart that can\u2019t be rationally understood or regulated or controlled. \u00a0And then there is spectacular beauty. \u00a0Enter, Les Fleurs du Mal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  If Paris is still a poem, it\u2019s a 19th century poem.\u00a0 It\u2019s a poem of dualities, and that\u2019s good and bad. \u00a0 In spite of the\u00a0 century and a half that has passed, Baudelaire\u2019s masterpiece, Les Fleurs du Mal, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[451,475,477,474,131,476,473],"class_list":["post-1196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-age-of-terror","tag-beggars","tag-europe","tag-homeless","tag-paris","tag-refugee-crisis","tag-sdf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4D5qU-ji","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1196"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1203,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196\/revisions\/1203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}