The American poet Henri Cole celebrates all things Parisian in his intimate Paris journal, written during a spell there in 2013.
"For a time I lived here, " writes Henri Cole, "where the call of life is so strong. My soul was coloured by it. Instead of worshipping a creator or man, I cared fully for myself, and felt no guilt and confessed nothing, and in this place I wrote, I was nourished, and I grew."
Cole is stimulating from the off in this affectionate memoir, which includes atmospheric photographs, although his medieval reference on the very first page conjures a nightmarish vision. He writes of an an epidemic of ergot poisoning from a cereal fungus which swarmed through the city in 1129. The result was a people brought low to `a delirious and psychotic state' in which spasms, diarrhoea, itching, headaches, nausea and vomiting invariably concluded in the expiry of the unfortunate victim. Only the solemn bearing of Geneviève remains through the city saved its inhabitants from further destruction. Thus, she became the patron saint of Paris - and for very good reason, it would appear.
Cole's ties to France are close, aside from the aesthetic affinities of literature and art. His father was from North Carolina, but mother was a first-generation Frenchwoman who spoke French and Armenian as a young girl. Her parents had emigrated to Marseille from Asia Minor after the Armenian genocide of 1915. 'So French is not my mother tongue, though it is my mother's tongue,' as he puts it neatly.
The poet takes us through a sumptuous dinner, known as a révillon, customarily served on Christmas Eve and of which he has been the fortunate beneficiary. The meal begins with a bracing drop of pastis, before paté, lobster, cheeses, walnuts, hazelnuts, clementines, red wine, and champagne. Not entirely fat-free obviously, yet it was a decidedly healthy repas gourmand which still sounds delicious.
He observes a beautiful sleeping chipmunk, gets up from his bed at his flat in Rue du Pot-de-Fer to write down of dreams in the small hours, reviews the 1939 film of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, sees and senses as much as he can in the City of Light. He studies paintings in the Louvre, strolls Montparnasse to visit Susan Sontag's grave, and witnesses a protest against same-sex marriage and and adoptions by same-sex couples. "In France, any surrogacy arrangement - whether commercial or altruistic - is illegal, " he writes, leadingly.
The impetus for change in France had overcome public disquiet, however. A few days after the protest, the first same-sex marriage took place in Montpellier when Vincent Autin and Bruno Boileau tied the knot on May 28, 2013.
