In 1950, Ernest Hemingway reportedly told his friend A.E. Hotchner, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
Years later, when I was 19, those words spoke to me, as they did to many young Americans. On the surface, Hemingway and I were opposites. He was a brash, square-jawed Midwesterner. I was an awkward, bookish girl from New York’s outer boroughs. Hemingway lived in Paris for two years, writing and interacting with soon-to-be famous writers and artists. He then moved on to write about war in Spain, wrote essays, short stories, and novels, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature. I lived and worked in Paris for six years during the 1980s, studied literature, met no famous writers or artists. Yet I returned home with my own moveable feast. Here is a sampling:
Perfection is unattainable. Grades in France are given on a scale of 20. A professor once explained to us that a score of “20 out of 20 was for God, 19 out of 20 was for the professor, and 18 out of 20 was a grade earned once every 10 years.” In this age of incessant self-promotion and desire for exceptional accomplishments, it is refreshing to let go of the idea of perfection and to do something simply very well.
Bigger and more are not better. Whether dogs, cars, houses, or portions in restaurants, there is a point at which more is too much.
Interpersonal distance trumps fake closeness. To my naïve young mind, it was wrong to keep people at a distance with the formal “vous” pronoun in French. I wanted to make new friends! I learned otherwise when a postal clerk informed me, in front of a roomful of customers, that she and I had not raised cows together, and so we should not use the informal “tu” pronoun with each other.
“Tu” is always reciprocal between adults and reflects a mutual desire for closeness. The “vous” form of address acknowledges the reality that one’s interaction with another individual will remain on the professional or functional level (as when selling or purchasing stamps).
Free public education at all levels is possible. When my French classmates referred to “work,” they often meant reading, researching, and writing, not earning money through full-time or part-time jobs. This was new to a young American.
In France, if you could pass the tests, tuition was free — nothing to pay but a small registration fee. There were even highly exclusive, yet public, colleges where students were housed and received living expenses. This is not the case in the United States, where funding for public colleges has decreased at the federal, state, and city levels, and students from families of modest means incur enormous debts to pursue higher education.
Never apologize for the arts. I studied literature while I was in France. When I told Americans this, sometimes they would ask, “What are you going to do with that?” This never happened in France. French high-school teachers and college professors were well regarded and decently paid, at least when I lived there. As far back as the 17th century, French identity has been intertwined with the arts. The state invests in and supports musicians, actors, writers, dancers, and visual artists — and the public benefits from that investment.
Seduction is not always about sex. My years in Paris were not about being swept off my feet by a Frenchman (or even another Hemingway). Yet I was seduced again and again in Paris — by the bridges over the Seine, by the parks, by the roofs and the gray-blue sky, by the view from seats at the very top of the Paris Opera’s Palais Garnier, where you could watch the luster of the chandelier while Chagall’s figures danced on the ceiling, and the performers seemed so far off they looked like singing ants.
Hold the door open. Of the many things I missed from my life in Paris when I returned to the States, one detail stands out. When you enter or exit certain Métro stations, those with doors, it is customary to hold the door ajar a second or two for the next person. You don’t even need to look at the person, but the gesture of holding the door open indicates an awareness that there are other people on the journey, and that it is good to make the trip a bit easier for the person following you. Fraternité, if you will.
I am not suggesting that Paris is perfect. Given the history of wars, massacres, and violence in France and its former colonies, every cobblestone in Paris has been metaphorically or literally drenched in blood. Paris appears beautiful to visitors partly because its suburbs are neglected. Racial, religious, and economic injustice thrive there. And during the past few decades, there has been diminishing support for the arts and education.
Hemingway was a carnivore, I am a vegetarian. Yet we were two hungry Americans drawn to a place of beauty, history, and cruelty; two people trying to escape the narrowness of what we were told were certitudes, but which deep inside we sensed were lies. We were, each of us, looking for a new language — and each of us found sustenance in Paris.