Memoirs of my Visit to France by Govinda Raj Bhattarai

  

Memoirs of my Visit to France

    This morning the city of Paris looks slightly fuming; the sky is overcast, and it is drizzling too. But it does no harm to me. I have decided to go out for a visit or an observation tour. I had asked Nirmal bhaai for a list of museums in the vicinity of Paris yesterday. He brought me some brochures with the names and addresses, and street maps of Paris Museums in the evening. Paris has more museums than temples and gods in Kathmandu, he says. I am new to Paris, staying here for only one week. Hope these maps and brochures will show me Paris metro zones and guide me to some museums today. Last week Nirmal bhaai showed me Pompidou Centre, ‘a complex building of high-tech structure’. This visit has emboldened me to explore further.
    I guess I can cover a maximum of two museums today. It means just giving a cursory glance. This is my plan. They say Cézanne is quite far away,  Paul Cézanne, the post-impressionist painter, may be in the outskirts. I cannot visit him all alone, and cannot cover two museums in a day. So I chose to visit a museum nearby in the heart of the city. Likewise, Braque is far, Du Champ is farther away. So I have decided as per Nirmal’s suggestion to start with Rodin’s. Maybe I will go to Monet’s next.

    People know I am never a painter, nor a sculptor, nor a connoisseur of art, or a professional, but then, the world knows that my interest in the lives of great artists and their lasting works is growing deeper. So wherever I go, I prefer to visit art museums first of all. In Russia, in Greece, in England, in America—I did so. I move merely a dilettante, however, with a deep sense of awe and rev- erence. I have no words to express how I felt upon seeing Mona Lisa in Louvre yesterday. I must say why my interest in this is growing gradually in this way.
Two decades ago, I was entrusted an Academy project titled Introduction to the Literary Trends and Movements in which I had to present a glimpse of literary trends and movements of the world. Most literary movements developed from the western movements of art and philosophy. They are entrenched firmly. Therefore, I studied and wrote briefly on new trends of art such as Impressionism, Expressionism, Symbolism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism and their relationship with literature. I had used secondary sources to write about them. Later on I visited the Modern Tate of London to write on postmodernism.
Most new thoughts originated in France. Most of them came to literature through art; they went to other literatures from France. Later on when I studied the great works of Lainsingh Bangdel, his memoirs and travels and journals, I was moved, everybody will be moved to read him, his Muluk Bahira Ma, a magnum opus. Have you read this or his Spenko Samjhana? Or, his Romko Kanda Ra Pyarisko Phool? ... He spent 12 years in Paris and studied Fine Arts in those difficult days. He had to spend 42 days travelling by ship from Calcutta to London. Every young heart will be moved to read those great love letters exchanged between Bangdel and his beloved (Manu). Muluk Bahira Ma presents 500 pages of a rare collection of love letters exchanged between Lainsingh and his consort. There is wisdom, experience, hope and sadness. His desire for great art and great literature is indomitable. I don’t recommend any other book to an avid reader like you more than this Muluk Bahira Ma. This book proves that he had gained an incomparable height and success in Nepali art. Mostly, it is in the form of a daily diary. On his regular entry of 17^th of August 1952, one year before I was born, he wrote these lines from Paris:
    I visited Musée d’Art Moderne (Museum of Modern Art) today. I had an opportunity to look at the paintings of all the artists of France, living and dead, together. The paintings of Braque and Picasso moved me exceedingly. I came across many artists who have imitated the form of Georges Seurat and styles of Cézanne and Gauguin.
    But I could not see here the paintings of Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Renoir. Probably they are upstairs. I will come some other day (Page 145).

    Nirmal bhaai had described my way to two Museums - Rodin’s and Monet’s. I set out all alone, for the first time in the megacity of Paris. I had to enter the metro station, deep down below, buy tickets from the vending machine. Nobody will speak English to me if I got lost, perhaps, because they speak French, but for me everything is so strange and unknown. I must have spent innumerable days and nights in learning France since SLC. We had a map of France, we had history of France. The French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, First and Second World Wars, the Existentialists… It is an endless story. Lainsingh’s writing produces a living France; even B. P. Koirala has detailed his brief journey of France in his book Hitler and the Jews. I have known great people and the land, and I feel the French people too must know me.
    But when I think deeply, I know, nobody knows me. I am alone, and I wonder about the consequences if I take the wrong line. Then I mustered up the courage to travel along the underground tubes alone. Nirmal had bought me tickets and shown routes. I entered the underground world near Paris Nord station and travelled for about 30 minutes. It was claustrophobic, the crowd was so huge and shifting all the time. At last I got out of the tube near Vernon. Then, I ascended to the surface of the earth, as if from nowhere, by climbing the escalator. I reached a broad street where vehicles were plying swiftly. I came to a different air, an open space, and I no more felt suffocated. I didn’t know which direction I was supposed to follow. So I asked a passerby: Excuse me, can you show me the way to Musée Rodin please? He did not speak, just pointed towards the direction with his white fingers. Perhaps he was telling me the direction without any words. Most French like the Chinese, they say, do not like to speak in English, though they know it, or love to speak in their mother tongue. He spoke in French, politely of course. I could only guess what he said. I thanked him, though he had gone a bit further ahead, and I continued my pace.
    This morning is damp and the road is wet. The sky is overcast. I walked on, with an umbrella on my head. The road is broad, its sidewalks lonely and desolate. These are shaded by tall trees like poplars; there were some maples, too. The leaves of maple and different exotic trees along the boulevard shine yellow like a flower. They keep falling all the time in early autumn, soft paper-like dry leaves have made the street a carpet of different colours. Some were swept by rainwater, waiting to be swept in the manholes. Having walked for about five minutes, I again asked a slim lady walking towards me, tick-tocking her pointed soles, ‘Excuse me, how far may be Musée Rodin, please? She also pointed towards the same direction and moved ahead. She spoke no words. There are people, but they don’t know me, neither do I expect to know any of them. A total stranger, a bit scared, I am walking. And I felt a bit lonely and helpless. After a hundred steps I came to a sharp bend like a dead end, and across this stood a yellowish cream colored building, at the entrance of which I could read Musee Rodin.

    I entered the building, and as instructed by the curator, I bought a ticket and hired a special hand machine that will play the recorded voice to explain to me everything in English. As I passed the administrative building, I came across a beautiful garden; it was full of pointed shapes of fir and pine trees, giving the best proof of French topiary. Far away stood other trees like walnut, juniper and yew, birds chirruped from the top. Among the topiary art stood a huge black bust, on top of which lay a drooping figure of Rodin. Not Rodin himself but a magnificent sculpture of him. It is commonly known as Rodin’s Thinking Man. The Thinking Man squatted on a large and tall marble slab, in half bent posture and pensive mood. This is one of the masterpieces in modern art, an incomparable work. Rodin’s pensive mood is remarkable.
    Three years ago I had visited a smaller museum in Baltimore; Sewa had joined me from Illinois. In that very small museum, Rodin’s copy too was quite small. Rodin’s little thinker in Baltimore was a black metal work, just a replica. I remember writing an article which reminds us of our visit to Baltimore, and van Gogh’s Irises. It got published in Antarderisti edited by Jyoti Ghimire of the USA.
    Since I heard of the name of Rodin as one of the greatest sculptors of the twentieth century, I had always desired to see him, that is, his work, or his Museum. The brochure distributed at the metro station suggests: If you are going to spend four days in Paris, please visit Rodin Museum on the very first day. Enter the sculpture garden premises and go close to the thinker and feel or experience the weight of the pensive mood he has.

    On that noon, it was drizzling I tried to feel the pensive mood Rodin sculpted in his immortal art. At that moment my mood also turned like his.