Going from the ocean air, ever-changing weather, and the growing knownness of the Faroe Islands to Paris, France is a shock. Paris, to which my sister and I visited in 2015 and which I loved, seems dirty, polluted, extremely populated, and frantically busy. But the sun is out. And, here, the rain predictions are more or less dependable and I don’t need to have my raingear with me at all times (though being prepared is better than being without).
The trees have budded white blossoms and tulips stretch up cheerfully out of garden beds and pots. I walk from the 18th arrondissement to St-Denis marveling with an islander’s horror at the traffic and construction and litter and the blocking out of the sky.
At each corner I look left expecting to see the sea and am surprised it’s not there at the horizon, between these buildings.
What’s even more surprising is how quickly having been on the Faroe Islands (was I really there yesterday?) begins to seem like another life, another me. How quickly I stop looking for the sea.
I’ve come to fill the week between my trips to the Faroe Islands and Skagen, Denmark with visits to Gothic cathedrals in and around Paris. I’m researching an idea for a novel I will write (that will hopefully end up being) about light. The Gothic cathedrals with their stained glass windows and their flying buttresses allowed more light in than their cathedral ancestors and were meant, as one aspect of effect, to emphasize the sacred nature of light.
In addition to the cathedrals, I’m mixing in my love for the impressionists by obsessing over Monet’s studies of the western façade of Rouen Cathedral. This obsession ties in well, for Monet is said to have said, “Light is the most important person in the picture” and he did over 30 paintings of the Rouen Cathedral at different times of the day. I’m also going down the same route for the art of Marc Chagall who not only painted strange scenes with interactive animals (prompting Hugh Grant’s character in Notting Hill to say when viewing the painting La Mariée, “Happiness isn’t happiness without a violin-playing goat.”) but also designed the stained glass in the East chapel at Reims Cathedral.
St-Denis is the first of the five Gothic cathedrals I visit (there are more than five, but five is as many as I can cram into my timeframe). First, because I can walk there from my Airbnb. For some reason (possibly the fact that it’s slightly complex and I’m here alone and my spoken French is really bad and my listening French is mostly untried though my reading French is somewhat decent and I’m oddly feeling as if I’ve never been to a big city or traveled by a variety of vehicles within a city before and I have to keep reminding myself that I’m resourceful enough to figure things out), I’m intimidated by the Paris transportation system. Which pass or single use ticket am I supposed to buy? Which ticket or pass works for all modes of transportation? (None.) What if I can’t validate the t+ ticket on the bus which I’m probably taking in the wrong direction anyway and I get a fine because I can’t explain that I paid and I tried to validate it but nothing about this system is crystal clear?
I see it and I’m distantly amused at myself and still I can’t quite pinpoint the reason for my insecurity. Maybe it’s just that I’m missing the reassuring presence of having my sister here with me.
Second, St-Denis seems a fitting place to start as the cathedral is considered to have been the first truly gothic cathedral which sparked the outbreak of gothic building in France and then spread out to other countries as well. When Abbot Suger (1081-1151) undertook the supervision of the rebuilding of the medieval church he leaned on the influence from the writings of Dionysius the Auropagite who posited that a person could achieve spiritual presence through light. This prompted Suger in his idea that natural light (lux) turned into spiritual light as it passed through the panes of the stained glass (lumen) and led to a person’s spiritual understanding (illumination). This play on words with light has intrigued me enough to come see these places in person.
As with most (all?) of the cathedrals, some part is under construction. Here, at St-Denis, the worn centuries-old stained glass is actually being replicated and replaced as one of the ways to restore the cathedral to its former glory. I sit on a chair and watch the two workers climb up and down the scaffold as they fit the new pieces in place. I think about old and new. I think about how a cathedral is never really finished. I think about how the stained glass making method hasn’t changed much in its thousand-year history. I think that if my French were better I could talk to these two workers.
I sit until the cold creeps in between the layers I’m wearing—cathedrals are vast spaces and warmth wasn’t the objective when building them. I think about that too as I stand up and walk the outer edges again, looking up at each stained glass window as I go.
Throughout the church, the sunlight comes down through the panes sending rainbows across the floor and walls. Is the dispersion of light lumen? I smile. Prism rainbows make me think of my mom. So I take some pictures to send to her.
As I wander around, I try to imagine what my main character would be looking for, what would have brought her here—work, hobby, a quest—and what her connection to light is exactly.
Down in the crypt which was the burial place for the kings of France (which opens up a whole new level of inquiry and leads me to learn that all but three kings were buried there from 987 to 1789 and that revolutionaries destroyed much of the place in 1793. I also stumble across sentences like, “Saint-Denis was the Royal Necropolis for body tombs while the entrails rested in Reims Cathedral.” And I have no idea if I should go down that rabbit hole. Reims Cathedral is where the kings were also coronated. But entrails?) there is also a temporary exhibition on beeswax and candle making and Abbott Suger’s dreams of light by artist Olivier Darné titled Sculptures, Performance, Light Machines, Candles, Wax, and Celestial Thoughts. Which feels like some kind of gift for my research. I take pictures of the plaques so that I can translate them more correctly later on (and double check how accurate my reading French actually is).
After I’ve seen everything at least twice, I walk back toward the Airbnb with the sunshine, the lux, shining down on my skin and turning it a shade of red. Here I will need sunscreen and will not need my jacket on when I’m walking. This is springtime in Paris.
I stop in at a grocery store and feel the shift in my brain as I am suddenly shopping for food listed in French rather than Danish or Faroese (and occasionally English). It’s somehow more familiar. It’s somehow simultaneously more foreign. I pay with euros instead of Danish crowns. I try to make it through checking out without revealing that I’m not French. I almost succeed. I put my items in the bag I’ve brought with me and leave the store.
Then I’m back to my Airbnb apartment with its locks and alarms and buzzers and behind the door where I can take off my shoes, make my dinner, and relax.
I leave my shoes near the door, prep my dinner, and sit down to take stock of what I’ve done and what I want to do.
Fortified by having survived a day in the city, I have the metro tickets I purchased while I was out, groceries, one cathedral checked off my list to visit, and the wherewithal to buy a train ticket online so that I can go to Rouen tomorrow.
It’s still a little bit intimidating in all the details, but I’ll take this week one day, one adventure, one cathedral at a time.
