Café de Flore, Paris-notes du 23 novembre 2009

Notes for the 22

Below is a short video which I shot from the bus number 68 from Sevres Babylone to Place Clichy for lunch at Flunch. The 68, and the 94 pass through the Louvre, Carousel. You can hear the bumpiness as the bus goes over the cobblestones that still remain in this stretch of the Paris streets in front of the Louvre.

Cocteau at Comedie Francaise\ Just missed it

The Reserve, by Russel Banks translated into French and read by an actor of the Comedie Francaise.

Russel Banks is not to be confused with the revolutionary fighters Russel Means and Dennis Banks in the US. The Reserve, by Russel Banks seems to me more of this E.L. Doctorow stuff where the American writer tries to show his progressiveness by writing with references to Sacco And Vanzetti, the Haymarket Martyrs, etc.

Like many things American, the French are more in tune to our « leftist » history than most Americans. Dashiel Hammet is in an Expo here in Paris this winter and also you see articles on him in the Kiosks.

Bought Les monstres, started reading in Starbucks

Umberto Eco is coming to Louvre. Thoughts on the Medieval Esthetic and his Lists.

Lists are the same. The same happened in the Middle Ages in the East, no, as far as the greek esthetic. It is just that the Middle East kept the Roman Law and its traditions whereas Luther and the teutonics dispensed with it . That is why the English are so much against Sharia perhaps. But the Arabs had Aristotles, Poetica, too. So, in reality they had the same esthetics. And a comparison between Homer’s lists, like Eco does, and the lists of the Medieval Arab historians should be made : Maqrizi, Lisan al-Arab. However there is no Dante, no Ariosto. Or is Jahiz that ?
Shakespear’s Macbeth witches seene is a list—the observations of astronomers in Tus, Maraqha, Baluchistan are lists.


On things Italian. Umberto Eco is invited to the Louvre ! Le Louvre invite Umberto Eco. And La comedie francaise is playing La Grande Magie by Eduardo De Filippo.
Eduardo De Filippo with Dario Fo is the most famous post war author-actor in post WW2 Italy. He made L’Abito nuovo in collaboration with Luigi Pirandello. He wrote La Grande Magie in 1948 and has been an actor in the cinema. I hope to see a matininee of it (La Grande Magie) on Sunday at 14h.

As for Umberto Eco, I had previously only associated him with « The Roman de la Rose, » Which I think was made into a film with Sean Connery. But he is a writer about many things relating to history of Art. I cama cross a book of his in the Louvre bookstore, in the Carrousel du Louvre, just inisde the entrance to the Louvre, where you don’t have to pay to go inside :Umberto Eco, Art et beaute dans l’esthetique Medievale Grasset 1997 Italian original Arte e Bellezza nel estetica mediavale 1987.
He notes what I came up against in 1971—that people don’t accept that there was an aesthetic in the Middle Ages. I must buy the book, I thought to myself as I was in the Louvre bookstore.

Then I cam areound a corner and say that there wss a whole table of Umberto Eco books and that he was coming Wednesday for a signing of his book published under the Louvre’s own « habitants du Louvre « series : Vertige de la liste : Traducion du tete d’Umberto Eco : Myriem Bouzaher. He willl be signing the book today, so if I’m not to shy I’ll go meet him. His book on lists relates to what I have frequently thought about Islam. That the Histories are essentially lists. In this sense, they are a form of Art. This idea of seeing lists in art by umberto Eco is very good.

En bas, video du Louvre vu du bus 68, allant a Place Clichy pour manger au "Flunch."