French Language Blog

The most famous fountain in the city of Lyon was made by a Frenchman whose name is not likely to tell you much:

Auguste Bartholdi, originally from the Alsace region.

Doesn’t really ring a bell, non?

His other work, however, is one of the best known monuments in the world.

Ever heard of New York‘s Statue of Liberty, par exemple?

Well, the story behind the Bartholdi Fountain in Lyon is not less “mouvementée” (a French way to say “action-packed”, or just “eventful” if you prefer) than that of the Statue of Liberty “illuminant le monde” (“Enlightening the World.”)

But make that on a much more “compact” scale, so to speak.

Initially, the fountain, which has an “older sister” still standing in Washington D.C., was meant to be constructed in another French city, much to the west of Lyon.

In 1857, when he was barely 23 years old, Bartholdi struck a deal with the city of Bordeaux to build a fountain in its well-known Place des Quinconces, one of the largest city squares in all of Europe.  

A rather bonne affaire for a debuting artist.

However, for various tedious reasons better not to mention here, the project n’a pas vu le jour (did not see the light.)

More than thirty years later, Bartholdi finally brought his work to completion.

He exhibited it during the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. And what a franc succès it was.

La Fontaine Bartholdi

By then, the reputation of Bartholdi was not to be made anymore. Only three years earlier, he had finished the Statue of Liberty.

The Mayor of Lyon, a fine opportunist, to put it nicely, immediately seized upon the occasion to ask the French sculptor to install the fountain in his city.

Though a bit disappointed at first by the modest price the city of Lyon was willing to disburse for his œuvre, Bartholdi ended up accepting the less than generous offer.

He personally selected la Place des Terreaux, right between l’hôtel de ville (the City Hall) and the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, to be the site of his fontaine.

The choice of the location was probably not purely random.

The adjacent Lyon Museum houses works of Charles Le Brun, namely the Sun King’s favorite artist, and maybe more significantly to Bartholdi, the teacher of Jean-Baptiste Tuby.

Indeed, Lyon’s Bartholdi Fountain found its direct inspiration in Tuby’s Basin d’apollon in Versailles.

But instead of the Greek Sun-god which Louis XIV, “le Roi Soleil“, enjoyed comparing himself to so modestly, Bartholdi chose to feature a woman.

The lady topping the fountain is said to represent the Garonne river, which crosses the city of Bordeaux, leading quatre chevaux (four horses) who stand for the river’s four main affluents.

The Bartholdi Fountain by night

Although the Parc Monceau is wide open to the general public, it is certainly the “weirdest” park in Paris, and that is on more than a single level!

Curiously enough, next to it stands a small edifice where it is said that a fifth-generation park watchmen closely monitor its nine gated entries.

What is so special about this park that it prompts such a longstanding high-level of vigilance, unlike other prominent gardens scattered throughout Paris?

The answer can probably be identified based on the backdrop story of the park, facetiously nicknamed “the Folly of the Duke of Chartres“, in reference to the famous (or make that “infamous”, actually) Phillippe d’Orléans, Duke of Chartres and then Duke of Orleans.

Remember this Duke?

The state of New Orleans in the United States was named after his own papi (grandpa), no less.

But that is not his only claim to fame.

We actually mentioned him extensively in “Basta with Bastille Day.”

The Duke d’Orleans was le cousin of the King Louis XVI, who was famously beheaded during the French Revolution along with his wife Marie-Antoinette (and no, the poor lady never said “Let them eat cake.” The Parisian people started to starve because the wretched Duke d’Orelans was discreetly stashing the country’s wheat and barley in the Isle of Man on the English Channel. The reason? To engineer wide social unrest throughout the French capital, before openly claiming the French throne for himself.)

To keep a long story short, the French King lost his head thanks to the machinations of none other than his own cousin, the Duke, who was acting on direct orders from the city of London, as it turned out.

Monet's "Parc Monceau", 1878

Already at the age of 22, encouraged by some highly established mandarins of the British East India Company to whom he ended up owing tremendous amounts of money (Monsieur le Duc was indeed a compulsive gambler, a notorious habitué of the London casinos, a real-life “Duke of Hazard“), he purchased the land that hosts the park today.

A park which he fittingly and rather unimaginatively called “English Garden.”

Highly impressed by the English gardens that were famous for their “irregular” and “asymmetric” shapes (the exact meaning of the word “Baroque“), the Duke wanted his parc Monceau to mirror the gardens of the Stowe House in England, which belonged to a relative and close ally of his political master William Pitt the Younger.

Comparable places to the Stowe House, called “follies” (think of the French word “folie“, meaning “madness“) had already existed in France: the Folie Saint James and the Desert de Retz in Chambroucy, to name only these two (both of them are located on the extension of the so-called “Axe historique“, which appears to be pointing towards the UK.)

The "Axe historique": A compass needle pointing towards the city of London? (Picture from Wikipedia)

But that clearly didn’t seem to be enough for the Duke, who insisted on establishing his own “folly” upon Parisian land.

One object that stands out prominently in the whole park, and which may actually offer a hint as to why the garden is deemed o’ so “special”, is a mini Egyptian-style pyramid!

Indeed, the excessive infatuation with Egyptian mythology running deep among some French circles is nothing new.

Think of the Obelisk of Louxor in la Place de la Concorde, installed by non other than the son of the Duke d’Orleans who eventually became French King Louis-Philippe (the obelisk was set exactly where the guillotine was previously installed during the French Revolution), and the sphinx statues in Châtelet and the jardin des Tuileries.

More recently, former President François Mitterrand erected two giant glass pyramids within the Louvre—allegedly to celebrate the bicentennial of the French Revolution, which, as we saw in an earlier post, took a turn for the worse -bloody guillotine campaigns and all- under the aegis of the Duke d’Orleans and his British masterminds.

Another interesting yet usually unknown detail: Mitterrand’s controversial grande pyramide in the Louvre is perfectly aligned with the nearby Palais Royal, namely the Duke’s main residence, and the headquarters of his jacobins hords, whom he unleashed upon the streets of Paris exactly on July 14th, 1789, in order to subvert the French Revolution which initially began as a perfectly peaceful process.

Other “extravagant” features to be found in the Monceau Garden are a Roman colonnade and a bridge modeled after the Rialto bridge in Venice.

Later, the park was adorned with statues of the likes of Gounod, Chopin, Maupassant, and Alfred de Musset…

But you can bet your French fries that these relics are not what the nearby watchmen worry the most about!

Today, the site is an active free Wi-Fi area, to satisfy all the computer addicts who can’t live too long without Internet access.

French singer Yves Duteil sings about le parc Monceau, where he often went as a kid to do his “école buissonnière” (“playing hooky”, meaning to skip school…)

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• Picture shared by patricenaej, Guillaume Cattiaux, dinosaursarenotdead, jeremy saker, via Flickr

• Check out our new beginner French class for Transparent Connect! The class timeslot is Wednesdays from 5 – 6 PM EST. Use coupon code cnxt75 at checkout to save $75! Une chance à ne pas rater! (A chance not to miss!)

Famous French Lady singer Mylène Farmer, aka “Madame X”, wishes you “Merry X-Mas” in her very own special way:

Alors,

J O Y E U X

N O Ë L

to all of you, mes amis!

Mylène Farmer - L’Instant X

Bloody lundi

Bloody Monday

Mais qu’est-ce qui 

What is it that

Nous englue la planète

Sticks us this planet

Et embrume ma comète

And mists my comet

C’est la loi des séries

It’s the law of series

Le Styx, les ennuis s’amoncellent

The Styx, troubles pile up

J’ai un teint de poubelle

I’ve got a trash tan

Mais, c’est l’instant X

But, it’s the X Instant

Qu’on attend comme le messie

That wait for like the messiah

Comme l’instant magique

Like the magical instant

C’est l’équation

It’s the equation

L’ax + b qui fait tilt

The ax+b which rings a bell

Mais pour l’heure, dis

But for now, say

Papa Noël, quand tu descendras du ciel

Santa, when you come down from the sky

Du fun, du zoprack et des ailes

Some fun, some Zoprack [verlan for Prozac!] and wings

L’an 2000 sera spirituel

The year 2000 shall be spiritual

C’est écrit dans “ELLE”

It is written in “ELLE” magazine

Du fun pour une fin de siècle

Some fun for an end of a century

Humeur Killer 

Killer mood

C’est l’heure pour

It’s time for

Moi de prendre la pose

Me to take a break

De penser à aut’chose

To think of something else

C’est le cycle infernal

It’s the infernal cycle

Fatal, un rien devient l’Everest

Fatal, a little thing turns into Mount Everest

Mon chat qui s’défenestre

My cat that defenestrates 

Ah, à quand l’instant X 

Ah, when is the X instant gonna come

Qu’on attend comme le messie

Which we wait for like the messiah

Comme l’instant magique

Like the magical instant

C’est l’hécatombe, vernis qui craque

It’s a bloodbath, varnish cracking 

Asphyxie, pied dans la tombe

Asphyxia, a foot in the grave

Papa Noël, quand tu descendras du ciel

Santa, when you come down from the sky

Du fun, du zoprack et des ailes

Some fun, Zoprack, and wings

L’an 2000 sera spirituel 

The Year 2000 shall be spiritual

C’est écrit dans “ELLE”

It is written in “ELLE”

Du fun pour une fin de siècle

Some fun for an end of the century

* * *

Notice that Mylène Farmer’s album cover for “l’Instant X” is strikingly reminiscent of the classic movie poster of “Madame X”, the earliest adaptation of which goes back to at least 1910. The movie is itself an allusion to the widely famous and quite controversial “fin de siècle” painting “Portrait de Madame X” (1884), by the renown American painter John Singer Sargent, who was living in Paris at that time

Madame X Soundtrack (1967) – “Final Hour and End Title”