On our visit to Lyon, my husband and I stayed in the city center, Presqu’ile (the Peninsula), where we walked narrow, cobbled streets enjoying intriguing shops and wonderful restaurants. Crossing the Saône on a pedestrian bridge, we explored the remarkably preserved Roman ruins at Lugdunum, part of the UNESCO World Heritage site and wandered through Vieux-Lyon (Old Lyon). It is among the most beautifully preserved Renaissance districts in Europe thanks to the intervention in 1962 by Minister of Culture, André Malraux, who saved it from destruction and made it the first “secteur sauvegardé”—protected zone—in France.

Yet I was drawn to the CHRD, across the Rhône, because of my enduring desire to understand how ordinary citizens muster the will to resist, sacrifice and survive in the face of inhumane and repressive treatment. In visiting the CHRD, I hoped to gain insight into WW II beyond dates, battles, and distinguished names from history books.

By coincidence, we were in Lyon on Victory in Europe Day which commemorates the unconditional surrender of Germany to the Allies on the 8th of May 1945. President Emmanuel Macron was there to pay tribute to the Resistance and to the memory of Jean Moulin, but public transportation was disrupted and gatherings to the parade were discouraged, so we watched the ceremony on television. We were touched by its solemnity and by conversations we had with people during the day. Memories of war endure in the collective consciousness of France, and Lyon is a particular reminder of that period as it was both a center for Nazi forces and a stronghold of the French Resistance.

Jean Moulin, who unified disparate resistance fighters throughout France and served as the first President of the National Council of the Resistance until his torture and subsequent death in 1943, is revered throughout France. In 1964, during the presidency of Charles de Gaulle, he received France’s greatest posthumous honor when his remains were transferred to the Pantheon in Paris

The day after the May 8th commemoration of Victory in Europe, we walked from our hotel, near the bank of the Saône, toward the Rhône as we headed to the Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation. Along the way, we encountered striking public monuments to suffering and sacrifice during World War II in France and to injustices to humanity in other parts of the world. After traversing Place Bellecour, kilometer 0 in Lyon and the third largest square in France, we came upon a solemn and stunning permanent exhibit memorializing the Armenian Massacre of 1915, considered the first genocide of the 20th century. Installed on Place Antonin Poncet, adjacent to Bellecour, it beckons passersby with a series of 36 white columns made from Armenian stone on which are inscribed poems by Armenian poet Kostan Zarian. The site is bordered by large, evocative photographs of people and sites associated with the massacre.

On the other side of Place Bellecour, in front of what was a café during the war, stands a looming statue called Veilleur de Pierre (Stone Watchman), erected where five resistance fighters were murdered by Nazis in July 1944. An inscription entreats, “Passant va dire au monde, qu’ils sont morts pour la liberté” (Passerby tell the world that they died for freedom). The passionate simplicity of that voice through time touched us deeply.

We crossed the Rhône on Pont de l’Université, itself a vestige of the war; as were 22 other bridges in Lyon, it was destroyed by the Germans on September 2, 1944 in order to slow the American advance as German forces fled north. The bridge reopened in 1947 with the original stone piers supporting the rebuilt arches that span the river.

Entering the Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation, we were welcomed by attentive staffers who spoke little English but were helpful when we plunged ahead with our less than perfect French. The headsets with English audio that we were given worked intermittently, but during our visit we encountered empathetic visitors, who, upon hearing our English, offered translations without being asked. And the artifacts and photographs in the CHRD convey powerful commentary without requiring words.

We were encouraged to start our visit with a film about Klaus Barbie. Barbie, head of the Gestapo in Lyon, was known as the Butcher of Lyon because of his brutality toward prisoners, primarily Jews and members of the Resistance. In addition to ordering the torture and execution of thousands of prisoners, Barbie personally tortured those he interrogated in savage ways, often for days on end, using devices such as spiked balls and hot needles, along with causing near drowning and trauma to open wounds to maximize pain. After the war, Britain and later America recruited him to help with intelligence to infiltrate Communist cells. In 1950 the United States helped him assume a new identity and relocate to South America, where he remained as an agent of the Americans while maintaining his Nazi ideology. In 1983 the Bolivian government arrested and deported him to France. That same year, the United States officially apologized to France for helping Barbie escape justice for 33 years.

Barbie’s trial was held in Lyon between May and July 1987. The Barbie Trial, Justice for Memory and History, produced by legal journalist Paul Lefèvre, highlights witnesses who endured Barbie’s physical and psychological torture. The film has English subtitles, so we understood the compelling accounts of those who had been brutally interrogated by Barbie or had relatives tortured and killed by him. Included in the film is testimony by Sabine Zlatin, founder of a children’s home in Izieu, a small village in the hills outside of Lyon which for two years served as a refuge mostly for Jewish children. In April 1944, 44 children, all under the age of 14, and their caregivers were arrested and sent to their deaths at Auschwitz. In her emotional statement against Barbie, who had signed the order to seize the children, she addressed the court in a broken, emotional cry: “The children, 44 children. What were they supposed to be? Members of the Resistance? They were innocents.” We were riveted by the voices of witnesses and repulsed by the smiling, arrogant Barbie. The documentary lacks artifice; it is humanity in the raw. Following the film, the audience in the small theater exited in silence. (Barbie was sentenced to life in prison. He died of cancer in prison four years later, at the age of 77.)

The light of the museum lobby and the sound of voices breaking the silence brought relief from the weightiness of the film. We were instructed to go to the second floor to begin the self-guided tour which starts with the history of the building.

The main gallery is composed of a series of exhibits that provide information about the complex and dangerous workings of the Resistance as well as insight into daily life under the occupation. A visitor may choose to follow the order of the displays, which contain primary source material such as newspapers, identity cards, ration books, photographs and posters, as well as hardware used for communication and intelligence, thus building a chronological background of the period. Others may prefer to focus on exhibits that target personal interests, pausing to contemplate or make connections with other visual and written information.

On display are materials created by the Resistance as well as those used to propagandize against it. Posters and leaflets recruiting support for the Resistance are presented next to posters hailing the Vichy government and promoting the vilest of Nazi ideology. Communications equipment, clothing worn by its members, the parachute Jean Moulin used to reenter France after meeting with de Gaulle in London in 1942, and photographs from the period create not only vivid images of war but a history of individual and collective sacrifice. It is particularly touching to see handwritten diaries and letters belonging to members of the Resistance and citizens of Lyon.

Prominent among exhibits are newspapers, flyers, and other print material effectively used by the Resistance to inspire confidence in eventual victory, to convey important information about the effort to subvert occupation, and to disseminate information to Resistance members. Compared to today’s complex telecommunication systems that instantly provide information and propaganda, this use of printed language on paper may seem simplistic. Its effectiveness, however, is evidenced by the ability of the Resistance to transmit intelligence and perform acts of sabotage while maintaining a constant presence in the public mind. Likewise, the handguns and rifles on display seem so basic compared to modern lethal technology; they support the image of the intrepid Resistance fighter as a confident armed man with a cigarette in hand. The real men, women, and youths resisting occupation and conquest, however, lived dangerous clandestine lives among the populace and assumed many responsibilities. Some fed people, hid them, and transported weapons where needed; others planned and conducted subversive attacks on German interests or dispatched information. Since there were collaborators within the population, the Resistance relied on the integrity of individuals and on munitions obtained clandestinely.

The vital role of women, accounting for between 12 and 25 percent of Resistance members, was not fully recognized until decades after the war. Women did what was needed, including transporting arms, relaying information, and hiding Jewish children. In some cases, they also took part in acts of sabotage. Because women were not as readily suspect as men, they were effective in avoiding Nazi scrutiny. I was not surprised by the suppression of the contributions of woman, but, as always, when reading history that is revised to include truth as well as popular myth, I empathized with the invisibility of such sacrifice. It is suggested that the contribution of women to the Resistance influenced Charles de Gaulle’s government in exile to grant women the right to vote in 1944.

Photographs and audiovisual testimonies add human dimension to dates, statistics, and information. The dedication of men and women who risked everything to oppose tyranny is made palpable by valuable equipment like the “Minerve” printing press clandestinely operated in Nazi-occupied Lyon to produce communiques, coded messages, and information for the populace. Likewise, guns carried by members of the Resistance underscore their constant proximity to death. The lives of those who committed themselves to saving France and to the post-war future is both inspirational and challenging. I wondered if I could have measured up to their sense of duty and courage? If needed, could I stand up to dangers threatening the world today? I found myself reading names of those captured, tortured and in many instances killed and whispering them under my breath to honor them: “Marc Bloch, Marie Besson, Daniel Cordier, Pierre Poncet.”

The historical narrative moves from the Resistance into a space that focuses on the capture and deportation of Jews, immediately made real by the display of the authentic striped flannel suit of a deportee interned in a concentration camp. It was donated by Jacques Micolo who kept the clothing after his liberation from captivity. Further exploration discloses detail about the Jews of Lyon and the indignities suffered as they were identified, captured, and deported to camps. Quite poignant is a series of drawings of the Ravensbrück concentration camp by Nina Jirsikova who survived and was liberated in 1945. The images depict women enduring a claustrophobic and humiliating existence, overseen in some cases by the contemptuous scrutiny of their guards. Barefoot, often naked, the women initially appear devoid of expression, but a closer look reveals identity and individuality seeking survival amid extreme depravation.

Exhibited documents include forged identity papers, leaflets announcing the roundup of Jews, a yellow Star of David declaring “Juif” (Jewish), and photographs of children and adults sent to concentration camps. Particularly poignant are objects from Ravensbrück made by captives that testify to their will to survive and reflect aspects of life in civil society. Mittens, for instance, made from a camp blanket elicit a momentary smile because they appear so child-like. Documentation on the CHRD website states they were made by an inmate as a present. How generous of the resourceful tailor to create cheerful warmth for a friend amid shared deprivation and imprisonment. Also from Ravensbrück is a multicolored deck of playing cards made by Yvonne Rochette who survived captivity.

As in the section concerning the Resistance, there are audiovisual testimonies of Jews of Lyon who were targeted by Nazis. Time spent in this sad gallery infuses painful reality into what could tragically become just a chapter in history were it not for artifacts collected and people remembered.

This section of the museum does not lend itself to random wanderings; the exhibit about the Jews of Lyon leads to a beautifully detailed dining room from Lyon in the 1940s complete with period furniture, tableware, and a radio broadcasting events of the day. We felt as if we had gone back in time to a modest apartment belonging to a family wary of every announcement over the wire and every noise from the street. There is a certain warmth because it is so homelike—despite the portrait of WWI hero then collaborator Maréchal Pétain—but it is accompanied by feelings of dread culled from the collective experience of witnessing the horror of the Barbie trial, the urgency of the Resistance, and the road to death for Jews.

This feeling was heightened when we walked down a dimly lit industrial stairwell to an austere stone basement. The effect of introducing a visitor to the fear of those captured and descending in the dark to interrogation and torture is powerful. At the bottom of the stairs, we sat on bench seats, saw a short film about the Resistance, and learned how even as individuals and groups worked against Nazis and collaborators, the leadership was documenting and formally writing concrete goals and organizational structure for a post-war government. Members of the Resistance were among the factions that helped develop the constitution and government of the Fourth Republic, which governed France beginning in 1946.

Before we left the Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation, we stopped to explore a special exhibit dedicated to Madeleine Riffaud who, when only 18 years old, joined the Resistance and functioned as a liaison between units of partisan fighters. Now 99, she is one of the last surviving members of the Resistance. She famously killed a German officer in broad daylight in Paris. Riffaud was captured and tortured but upon release rejoined the Resistance. After the war she was awarded the Croix de Guerre and later become a journalist who focused on human rights. She traveled widely, reported from Algeria, and lived with the North Vietnamese resistance for seven years. She is also an author, poet, and the subject as well as coauthor of two graphic novels that tell her story, “Madeleine Riffaud, Résistante.” The CHRD used the title of her book as the name for its exhibit. Although the exhibition closed in June 2023, all past exhibits, including this one, can be explored on the CHRD’s excellent website.

As my husband and I walked away from the CHRD in the late afternoon, we commented on the incisive and highly effective planning behind the exhibits. Informed by personal histories and primary source materials, we emerged with a picture of a dark and dangerous time in which individual citizens from every segment of society—shopkeepers, professionals, students—came together to be part of a local and national alliance to resist Nazi terror and help defeat it. Likewise, the horror confronting the Jews of Lyon was made real, as was their resolve to survive and maintain moral integrity.

I was drawn to 14 Avenue Berthelot because of its connection to the ascent of evil and to evil’s eventual defeat. Witnessing the Barbie trial in the place where he made decisions that destroyed so many lives reveals the long, traumatic arc of that rise and fall. Likewise, seeing the faces and names of people who recognized evil in their own time and in their own city speaks to the importance of the courageous choices they made to combat occupation and barbarism. It also reinforces the implied mission of the CHRD as stated on their website— “History, Essential to the Present.”

I am not certain that my experience enabled me to understand how people muster the courage to sacrifice and survive, but I do recognize the strength and integrity of the individual who decides that he or she can make a difference. I believe the curators of the CHRD want visitors to appreciate how defying tyranny at the grassroots level impacted the events of the war and how it led to freedom in France and the Western world. The courage and sacrifice of men and women in combatting barbarism remains with me in the faces and names I encountered in the Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation.

© 2024, Elizabeth Esris. Cover image by Michael Esris.

Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation(CHRD), 14 avenue Berthelot, 7th arr. Lyon.

Jean Moulin, the Children of Izieu, French resistance fighters and many others were tortured or otherwise held prior to execution or deportation at the Prison of Montluc, about one mile from the CHRD. The site is now the Mémorial National de la prison de Montluc (National Memorial Prison of Monluc), which pays homage to resistant fighters, Jews and hostages who were victims of the Nazis and of France’s Vichy government, while also examining the politics of repression and persecution from 1940 to 1944. 4 rue Jeanne Hachette, 3rd arr. Lyon.

Lyon Tourist Office, Place Bellecour, Lyon.

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Baldwin felt the burden of race and identity in America from the time he was a shy, but precocious child in Harlem. Born out of wedlock to Berdis Jones who bore eight more children when she married Reverend David Baldwin, James was humiliated, physically abused, and told repeatedly that he was ugly by the man he called father. Young James was aware of the boundaries set by white America and, indeed, the boundaries accepted by blacks. He recalls in The Fire Next Time, “the fear I heard in my father’s voice” when he realized that James believed he “could do anything a white boy could do.” Early on, however, teachers recognized his intelligence. One, Orwilla Miller, saw his devotion as a reader and talent as a writer. She convinced his reluctant stepfather, who deeply mistrusted whites, to let her take the 10-year-old to films and plays. Baldwin credits her with encouraging his intellectual development and they remained friends over the years. Orwilla called him Jimmy, as did friends and family all his life.

Baldwin probed race and identity relentlessly as an expat in Paris. In “The New Lost Generation,” an article in the July 11, 1961 Esquire Magazine, Baldwin attributes his decision to leave America to his recognition that attempts to deal with racism and inhumanity through political or social systems was a process that always led to “failure, elimination, and rejection.”

Considering realities such as the plight of blacks in the US, the Holocaust in Europe, and Hiroshima, he concluded that “all political systems . . . seemed morally bankrupt.” Dealing with issues of hate, intolerance, homophobia and alienation on a personal level was equally perilous as exemplified by the suicide of a close friend two years earlier who jumped from The George Washington Bridge in New York because of the relentless fear of living life as a black man in America. Considering the impossibility of ever attaining fulfillment as an ambitious, gay, black intellectual in the United States, Baldwin sought life in Paris to find the long heralded “refuge from American madness” that generations of artists and writers hoped to discover in the City of Light. More importantly, Baldwin wanted to explore and define his identity and “accept his own vision of the world”; this, he felt, was impossible for him in the United States of 1948.

Baldwin did not find utopia in Paris—and he did not expect it. In his 1972 memoir, No Name in the Street, he states that “I had never, thank God—and certainly not once I found myself living there—been even remotely romantic about Paris”; in fact, he had considered going to Israel to live on a Kibbutz. His flight “had not been to Paris, but simply away from America.” He later recalls, however, feeling the lure of Paris when he studied French as a high school student in Harlem with poet Countee Cullen. He credits reading Balzac for his understanding of Parisian institutions and conventions, but upon arrival he came to grips with everyday realities of being poor in Paris directly. He remarks in Esquire that surviving meant “not expecting to be warm in one’s hotel room,” and in Notes of a Native Son that poor expats, Africans and students in the Latin Quarter lived in “ageless, sinister-looking hotels” and were forced to “continually choose between cigarettes and cheese for lunch.” There was nothing resembling an American toilet, and toilet paper was day-old newsprint. He admits to “moments” of longing for familiar American comforts and missing family, but when he thinks of what he so resolutely left behind in America, he chooses to adapt and continue his search for identity.

Baldwin was lonely at first and mourns that he and other poor expats were “surrounded by quite beautiful and sensual people, who did not, however, find us beautiful and sensual.” Parisians generally kept travelers “at an unmistakable arm’s length” even though comporting themselves with “impenetrable politesse.” He recalls that it was a long time before he made a French friend and even longer before he saw the inside of a French home. In the essay, “Encounter on the Seine,” from Notes of a Native Son, he states that “the American Negro in Paris is very nearly the invisible man” ignored not just by the French but by Americans in Paris. In an “undemocratic discrimination,” white Americans did not expect to see blacks in Paris. When they did, they assumed the Negro to be “a needy and deserving martyr or the soul of rhythm.” While meeting a white countryman in Paris did not evoke fear as it would in the US, it did not inspire a bond of community between compatriots abroad.

In Paris, Baldwin became aware of France’s problems with race from its colonial past. He affirms in “Encounter on the Seine” that the African in France has “endured privation, injustice, medieval cruelty” and exploitation in his native land. In addition, he cites the “intangibly precarious” existence the African has in Paris as a colonial desiring freedom for his country. But Baldwin also notes that this “bitter ambition is shared by his fellow colonials, with whom he has a common language.” When the African in Paris meets a fellow-countryman, there is camaraderie, unlike the “lifetime of conditioning” that often keeps the white American traveler at an uneasy distance from the black American. The African has “not yet endured the utter alienation of himself from his people and his past.” A salient difference for Baldwin is that the Africans had the solace of belonging to a culture, the possibility of a homeland and a people to which they could return. The American Black, in contrast, is a “hybrid,” with the “memory of the auction block” and alienation from his own homeland rooted in America’s violent racial past.

In No Name in the Street, Baldwin recounts that after returning from a visit to the US in 1952, he “began to realize that I could not find any of the Algerians I knew.” He discovers that “Algerians were being murdered in the streets, and corralled into prisons, and being dropped into the Seine, like flies,” awakening him to the fight for Algerian independence and the consequences for Algerians in France. He muses on the irony of his coming to France for “the comparative freedom of my life in Paris” as he witnesses the harassment and abuse of Algerians. Still, he recognizes a shared, violent history of colonialism and concludes that he “was still a part of Africa, even though I had been carried out of it nearly four hundred years before.”

In the video below, James Baldwin expresses some of this when asked about his relationship with Paris during an appearance before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on December 10, 1986, a year before his death from stomach cancer. Listen to the full three minutes of his answer. (After reading this article, consider returning to watch the entire 55-minute video for a sense of Baldwin’s point of view, the type of questions in the air at the time and their relationship with America and the world today.)

Despite his initial poverty, loneliness, and familiar encounters with prejudice, Baldwin came to love Paris and lived there on and off for the next nine years, returning to the city and its environs after time spent in places including Switzerland, Corsica, Turkey and several visits to the United States. Upon arrival in 1948, he connected with the editors of an avant-garde English language publication, Zero, who took him to the second floor of Les Deux Magots, a regular haunt of artists and intellectuals since the 1890s including James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Picasso among others. Richard Wright, the celebrated American author of Native Son, who had long encouraged Baldwin in his writing, was there to greet him. That night Wright helped him find a room at Hôtel de Rome on Boulevard Saint-Michel. Despite the camaraderie between the two, the next year, Zero published Baldwin’s essay, “Everybody’s Protest Novel”—later part of Notes of a Native Son—rebuking literature that attempted to show the brutality of racism without a realistic representation of humanity. Richard Wright’s acclaimed Native Son was among the books chastised for the portrayal of its protagonist, Bigger Thomas, as someone whose “life is defined by his hatred and his fear” rather than in more complex ways. It caused a feud between the two that erupted publicly at Brasserie Lipp. Nevertheless, by 1950 Baldwin was hailed in Commentary Magazine as “the most promising Negro writer since Richard Wright.” They continued their relationship, somewhat tenuously after the outburst over the article, and Baldwin maintained his respect for Wright’s importance as a writer and influence throughout his life.

In James Baldwin, a Biography, Baldwin’s biographer, archivist and friend David Leeming states that once in Paris he eventually met some of his acquaintances from the lively Greenwich Village scene he had left in New York, and that before “long had no shortage of English-speaking friends in Paris.” He and other struggling writers and artists lived at the Hôtel Verneuil on rue de Verneuil in the 7th arrondissement. There he was part of a vibrant but impoverished group of men and women who shared rooms and friendship. He also found compassion in Mme Dumont, the Corsican woman who owned the hotel. Early in 1949, shortly after arriving in Paris, Baldwin fell ill. She exempted him from rent and cared for him for three months, allowing him to feel human kindness amidst the cool indifference of Paris. Leeming also notes that Baldwin “maintained non-Bohemian friendships as well” and eventually frequented the homes of “liberal, white, mostly Jewish middle-class Americans in Paris.” It was at dinner parties at these homes that he “met other American writers such as Saul Bellow and Phillip Roth.”

As he became integrated with life in Paris, Baldwin came to love walking through Les Halles, investigating the clubs and sex shops of Pigalle, and eating at Chez Inez, a jazz club and restaurant on Rue Champollion in the Latin Quarter specializing in fried chicken and emerging talent. Over time and with growing reputation, he met luminaries including Norman Mailer, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir and Truman Capote. In 1953, artist Beauford Delaney, cited by biographer Leeming as “the most important influence in his life,” moved to Paris. A close friend and mentor from his Greenwich Village days, Baldwin credits Delaney for being “the exemplar of the black man as functioning, self-supporting artist.” Delaney eventually moved to “an old house surrounded by a garden in Clamart,” outside of Paris, which became a refuge for Baldwin for many years.

Despite his increasing comfort with life in Paris and the jobs he picked up reviewing books or writing articles, Baldwin struggled financially for years and often felt lonely. He took loans from friends and family, but it exacted a toll on his sense of self-worth. Once, Leeming notes, a desperate Baldwin “agreed to take a job as a singer in an Arab night club” until a friend “saved him from that job by employing him as a clerk.”

It was in Paris that James Baldwin finally became comfortable with his homosexuality and found love. According to his biographer, “Lucien Happersberger was a Swiss who had left home in search of excitement and success in Paris.” Baldwin declared that in Lucien he found “the love of my life.” They shared an intimacy for two years that was new to Baldwin. Their complex connection lasted in various iterations of lover and mostly friend for thirty-nine years. Baldwin wanted a permanence that Lucien did not; Lucien married three times and fathered two children. With Lucien, as well as in other relationships, Baldwin had experiences that would surface in Giovanni’s Room, his beautiful and tragic 1956 novel about a gay, white American in Paris who comes to terms with homosexuality, denial and brutality. The bar in the novel, Guillaume’s, is reported to be modeled after Reine Blanche and Fiacre, gay bars frequented by Baldwin in Paris.

A painful experience for Baldwin was his arrest and imprisonment in Paris for eight days over Christmas in 1949. A New York acquaintance, a traveler, spotted Baldwin in a café and decided to move from his hotel near Gare Saint-Lazare to the Grand Hôtel de Bac where Baldwin was living. It was a dismal lodging described in his biography as one of the “enormous, dark, cold, and hideous establishments” typical in those years. The man brought with him a sheet with the name of his previous hotel on it. Since Baldwin was having problems getting the hotel to change linens, it wound up on his bed. Two policemen came looking for the stolen sheet and found it. He and the acquaintance were charged and imprisoned until the 27th of December when the case was dismissed. The experience was frightening for someone new to the language, to handcuffs, to the putrid shed in which men were initially squeezed together with a hole in the center for a toilet, and to the isolation of a cell. One of the interesting observations about the ordeal that Baldwin relates in Notes of a Native Son is that “the Frenchmen in whose hands I found myself were no better or worse than their American counterparts”; under arrest he felt fear and the unknown as he would have in the States. But he also notes that in the “commissariat I was not a despised black man” as he might have been in America. In fact, he observes that in New York he would have been described as “what” he was—a black man. In Paris he was described as “who” he was—an American.

Over time, Baldwin began to concentrate on writing and, in doing so, to explore his vision of himself as a man and as an American. It was in Paris that he began to seriously develop his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, setting up shop, like generations of writers seeking to escape their unheated rooms, on the second floor of Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore. Largely biographical, it recounts one day of a boy’s 14th year in Harlem where he awakens to the reality of racism, brutality within family and injustice on the streets and begins to pursue his own identity. The story had been incubating in Baldwin for years; it confronted his own history within family and in the racial divide of New York. It was published by Knopf in 1952 while he was visiting family in New York for three months. When he returned to Paris, Baldwin arrived with the resources so lacking when he first saw Paris in 1948. Following its publication, he won a Guggenheim fellowship and in 1956 he published Giovanni’s Room which is set in both Paris and the south of France. The novel was written mostly in France but not only in Paris. Baldwin also wrote essays in his early years in Paris that would become part of Notes of a Native Son.

In writing Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin was able to begin unlocking the identity he longed to discover and define when he first left New York. Leeming points to its “theme of the destructive fear and guilt at the base of racism.” This would be explored by Baldwin throughout his life’s work. By writing much of the text in Paris, he was—like so many writers in the past—able to look to look back to America with a new clarity through the lens of an observer. He had the freedom to be a writer and live without the fear and impenetrable barriers he felt in New York. His biography notes that in his “Paris years he never lost sight of his need to confront his ‘inheritance’ as an American black in order to achieve his ‘birthright’ as a man.” In 1955, in his introduction to Notes of a Native Son, Baldwin declares that “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Baldwin spoke no French when he arrived in 1948, but he did eventually become fluent, as you can hear in this extract from a 1973 interview in French.

Baldwin never idealized Paris or saw it through the “charm of legend” as he referenced the appeal it had for so many Americans; however, he believed that his life “began during that first year in Paris.” Baldwin returned to America for a time during the height of the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s. He traveled the country as a writer as well as an activist. He came to see first-hand the American South where so much violence was taking place. He met with leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., James Meredith and Thurgood Marshall and took part in the March on Washington in August 1963. He also raised support for the march from expats in Paris.

In 1962 he published The Fire Next Time, his seminal compilation of two essays that warn about white America’s need to confront and examine the reality of historic and systemic racism. It brought him international fame. In it he describes the “rope, fire, torture, castration, infanticide, rape, death, and humiliation” of “the Negro’s past” in America. He decries that blacks still feel “fear by day and night” and “doubt that [they are] worthy of life.” It is also a text, however, that concludes with the interesting and hopeful metaphor that “relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks” must “like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others.”

Once more, Baldwin left America. He traveled to Africa, Israel, Turkey, England, Switzerland and America again over the years, returning to Paris frequently but declaring himself to be a traveler rather than belonging to any country. (He also referred to himself as a “commuter” between France and the United States.) Leeming reveals that while visiting Paris in 1958, Baldwin “realized that he had changed a great deal in the years since his first arrival in Paris. Paris was no longer home, but it had been an important place in his life.” Later, after more travel and living in Turkey for a few years, Baldwin returned to France in 1970, this time to the south. For the last seventeen years of his life Baldwin spent a large part of every year in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. His home there became a refuge for his thoughts and writing, as well as a magnet for writers, artists, and intellectuals including Marc Chagall, Ella Fitzgerald, Yves Montand, Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone and others.

Baldwin’s need to explore race and identity and to define his life as a writer was pivotal in his decision to leave America in 1948, and he reflects on his decision to come to Paris in the 1961 Esquire article. “I think my exile saved my life, for it inexorably confirmed something which Americans appear to have difficulty accepting. Which is simply, that a man is not a man until he is able and willing to accept his own vision of the world, no matter how radically this vision departs from that of others.” He adds that Paris and Europe gave him “the sanction, if one can accept it, to become oneself. No artist can survive without this acceptance.”

© 2020, Elizabeth Esris
First published on France Revisited, October 2020.

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Photographs from nearly half a century ago lead Elizabeth Esris to revisit her first encounter with Paris with her then-boyfriend (now husband) and to rejoice in the timeless nature of travel discovery.

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During lockdown I can travel virtually anywhere with a few clicks: to a book club in Pennsylvania, to an aperitif with friends in France, to an opera at the Met, to exercise with Olympic athletes, to meditate with Oprah. But I miss real travel and find myself journeying through memory as I spot mementoes around the house.

Two such souvenirs remind me of my first trip to Paris when I was 21, in 1971. With backpack and boyfriend—later my husband—I had set out on a “grand tour” of Europe.

Reaching up to a high shelf in a closet, I find a cherished copy of “Paris Match” that I had bought in Center City Philadelphia in August 1970. The tattered cover proclaims, “La Mini-Jupe est Morte” and foretells of radical changes dictated by the capital of fashion. From the mid-60s to that summer, mini skirts were de rigueur for young women. I remember being angry at the thought that mini-skirts, emblematic of the freedom, defiance and promise of my generation, could be so easily dismissed. But when I went to Paris the following summer, I saw calf-length skirts that I would soon be wearing and long, knit triangular shawls that draped the shoulder and reached down the back to the sandaled feet of beautiful Parisians. For me, it was the most romantic look I had ever seen. When I came home, my grandmother made a long shawl for me, and I wore it in the fall with my peasant skirts like an acclamation for haute couture on my college campus.

The “Paris Match” further reminds me of the worn copy of Julie Child and Simone Beck’s, Mastering the Art of French Cooking tucked between the French cookbooks in my kitchen. I purchased it when I returned from Paris that summer. I was determined to make croissants for my family, to amaze them by baking the most delicious pastry I had ever tasted. After twelve hours and endless handfuls of butter, I produced a cracker-thin crescent that brought me to tears. Still, I smile when I recall it and realize that my journey to Paris was more than a visit to monuments and literary mystique; Paris infused me with an urgency to make it part of my identity.

When I met Mike in college I confided in him a resolve that had been with me since devouring Flaubert, Fitzgerald, Balzac and Hemingway and being introduced to Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel in Madame Cooperstein’s French 1 class: I was going to explore Europe and see Paris while I was young, no matter what. I was leaving at the end of the spring semester with or without him.

By June we had a copy of Arthur Frommer’s Europe on 5 Dollars a Day, Eurail Passes and our paltry savings from after school jobs along with his Bar Mitzvah stash. We planned that the final stops on our travels would be the South of France and finally Paris. Paris was to be savored and left to steep within us for the flight home and beyond.

Mike and I purchased backpacks that are unrecognizable in today’s wilderness outfitted world. They had bulky, exterior aluminum frames onto which was strapped a thick nylon bag. As we crossed borders from West Germany to Poland and back into the free world on our summer journey, we bought and sewed patches on our packs to declare our wanderings. They hang in our basement today as mementoes of two travelers landing in Frankfurt so naïve that we didn’t know to exchange dollars for Deutsche Marks before trying to pay a bus fare.

Preparations for the trip also led us to buy matching pairs of the first true athletic shoes we had ever seen—Adidas. They were made of white leather with three distinctive black stripes and had a sturdy, supportive construction unlike the relaxed canvas sneakers we had worn since childhood; we were confident that our feet would survive the extensive walking we anticipated. Adidas were new to us, but they were sensations in Eastern Europe where people stopped us to see the shoes up close and to ask how Mike could have cut his jeans to make shorts. Levi’s and Lee’s and Wrangler jeans were highly prized by young Europeans who were fascinated by everything American.

We finally reached Paris after more than six weeks of travel, arriving at Gare de Lyon on a night train from Nice, a diesel that lumbered on for 12 hours and clanged into the station. We were tired and anxious to reach the pension we had selected from our guidebook. With map in hand we walked across the Seine on Pont d’Austerlitz and followed the Quai. Our eyes were drawn to the river, to Notre Dame, and the bouquinistes on the Quai de la Tournelle, but what imprinted itself upon me was the fountain at Place Saint-Michel as we turned left to head toward rue Saint André des Arts. Place Saint-Michel and the fountain were alive with young people—meeting, reading, embracing, walking, and looking like the literate, involved intellectuals that I had imagined. My literary passions may well have played a part in my perspective.

We were headed to Pension Eugénie on rue St. André des Arts, described in Frommer’s as offering cheap but decent room and board in the heart of the Left Bank, near to literary shrines that I wanted to visit. We booked a room for ten days with a shared hallway bath and WC for 8 Francs a night—about $2.50. The room was a tiny space that must have once been part of a bathroom; there was a defunct bidet about a foot from our bed. We had never seen one nor did we know how it worked. Other friends who traveled in those days said they used bidets to wash their jeans.

Our room had large windows that overlooked the noisy street. On most nights we watched a group of Hare Krishnas who chanted and smiled up at us. The most wonderful thing about Pension Eugénie was the breakfast of a large croissant with butter and preserves and delicious café au lait—included in the price—delivered to our door each day. We were cramped as we sat on the bed and bidet to eat, but we could not imagine more beautiful mornings. Years later, as parents with kids in college, we returned to the street to find a refurbished Hotel Eugénie offering rooms for over 100 Euros—breakfast not included. (It is now up to about 300 euros a night!)

Today, I’ve set up our old slide projector to match my memories with images. As the slides click by, I see all the tourist stops: views from the top of la Tour Eiffel, Sacré Coeur, and Notre-Dame; the Louvre without the Pyramid; Jeu de Paume and the Impressionists before Musée d’Orsay became a reality; Napoleon’s Tomb, Versailles, Samaritaine; and the obligatory stops at 27 rue de Fleurus, where Gertrude Stein lived with Alice B. Toklas, and La Closerie des Lilas, where Hemingway regularly drank and wrote at one of its marble-topped tables. We certainly could not afford a meal at La Closerie or any of Hemingway’s haunts, so there are no restaurants to note, but I remember savoring steak frites in unnamed cafes and vin rouge ordinaire that Frommer’s taught us to order. Like Hemingway, I had given the address of The American Express at 11 rue Scribe to family and friends as a point of contact. On the morning after our arrival we made our way there, marveled at the Paris Opéra and picked up mail feeling like heirs to The Lost Generation.

In the photos, structures in Paris appear grayer than today, with soot marring limestone walls or outlining sculptures such as those on the Arc de Triomphe. I am surprised by how light traffic seems to be in my pictures. There are many photos from both day and night where the streets seem quiet compared to the congestion and speed of Paris that I’ve witnessed on subsequent trips. Most cars in the pictures are small and boxy except for the occasional elongated Citroen or dilapidated VW bus, and I recall the many scooters and Solex mopeds that navigated streets and, occasionally, sidewalks.

Visible in all our slides are reminders of the endless walking we did in the summer of 1971 and the places we stumbled upon. Historic Les Halles, the legendary food market, had recently been torn down, but we would visit the Flower Market on Île de la Cité mentioned in Frommer’s—or so we thought. We were surprised when we arrived and found what looked and sounded like a jungle; we did not know that on Sundays it became the Bird Market. Walking through row after row of colorful birds in cages, in cars, and in the hands of those who came to buy, we reveled in exotic bird calls as well as the more familiar sounds of chickens. But it was the enthusiastic pedestrians who were drawn to them that captivated us. This was not the scene of a reluctant parent taking a child to buy a pet; it was a dynamic venue that existed because so many people delighted in birds of all kinds.

Birds intrigued us again when we walked to the Jardin des Tuileries and saw a gentleman in a dark suit feeding groups of frenetic birds and then enticing them to perch on him. Among the birds were pigeons and sparrows. Passersby were interested and a few stopped to chat, but they did not surround him as if he were an oddity. Years later we read that he was part of a long tradition of Tuileries Garden Bird Charmers, as they were called, with roots that date back to the 19th century. The original bird charmers were street performers who had been featured in French, British and American periodicals, including Scientific American in 1885. Whether this gentleman regarded himself as a performer or as someone who simply loved birds, we did not know; to us he was yet another wonder in a city that surprised with every turn of a corner.

In 1971, the Eiffel Tower did not sparkle with twinkling lights; rather, it was illuminated with a dramatic amber glow. Still, the image I see in my slides is as iconic as the bridges, the boulevards, and the churches. Without the intrusion of dated cars or clothing styles on pedestrians in photos, Paris’s beloved landmarks are timeless.

Among my favorite pictures is a long shot of a man in jeans sitting on the bank of the Seine. One leg hangs over the wall, the other is pulled up to his chest. This young man, my peer, depicts so much of what I find compelling about Paris. He seems at ease and thoughtful. His moment of intimacy with the river is natural. Surrounded by history and beauty but not constrained by it, he is part of a complex city that endures as well as changes. His sanguine presence, like that of the old bird charmer, suggests that Paris embraces the individual as vital to its identity.

My afternoon immersed in Paris 1971 includes the predictable nostalgia for youth and life about to unfold. It also validates my belief that Paris is alive and changeable yet cultivates a dignified permanence that seduced me then as it does today. In my adolescence I was drawn to Paris by literature. My first visit fulfilled my girlhood aspirations as reader and dreamer but also left me wanting to learn more about its history, read more of its literature, cook its food, find streets not in guidebooks, and visit again and again. My first trip to Paris ensnared me and I have been a willing captive ever since. This vicarious journey during quarantine allows me to savor the decaying pages of a 50-year-old “Paris Match” and look forward to my next moment on the banks of the Seine.

Text © 2020, Elizabeth Esris.
Photos © 1971, Michael Esris. (Photos taken with a Pentax Spotmatic.)

More of Elizabeth Esris’s illustrated personal essays about travel in France can be found here.

Readers interested in contributing an illustrated personal essay about their own long-ago travel experiences are invited to write to the editor at gary [at] francerevisited.com.

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On Saturday, June 10, 1944, four days after Allied Forces landed on the beaches in Normandy, beginning the liberation of Europe, and while locals went about their business, Nazis from the 2nd Waffen-SS, an armored division, arrived without warning and sealed off the village. Starting in mid-afternoon, residents were rounded up, herded to the market square and separated by gender. Men were corralled into barns and other large spaces and machine-gunned; shots were aimed first at their legs to prohibit escape. Women and children were taken to the church and locked inside. A device was lit that caused suffocating smoke; the church was then barraged with hand grenades and set on fire. Later, the soldiers ransacked the village, set fires and used dynamite to maximize destruction. By eight in the evening, the German soldiers withdrew from the smoking ruins of Oradour-sur-Glane. Only six men and one woman survived the carnage.

After the war, Charles de Gaulle, with consensus from the French government, ordered that the “martyred village,” as it is called, remain shattered and charred as a painful reminder of the brutality of war. Oradour-sur-Glane has been labeled a historical monument since 1946.

A sign directed us to the car park. It was not crowded, and as we walked to the Centre de la Mémoire we looked toward where we had first glimpsed the ruins in a macabre attempt to see more than the tops of walls, but nothing else was visible; visitors must follow a prescribed route in order to experience the village. Along the way to the entrance is a tall column constructed of rough-hewn cubes of stone topped by a statue of a naked woman emerging from flames, her arms flailing upward in anguish. On the column is a line from poet, Paul Eluard: Ici / Des hommes / firent à leur mère / Et à toutes les femmes la plus grave / injure / Ils n’épargnèrent pas les enfants. (Here, men have made their mothers and all women the most serious insult: they did not spare the children.)

The Memory Center of Oradour-sur-Glane comes into view as a series of angled, irregular, rust-colored slabs thrusting up from the earth. The center’s website describes the design for the Memory Center as “non-architecture.” As you walk toward it, the peaceful, verdant surroundings of the Glane Valley disguise its purpose. But upon approach, the blade-like slabs purposefully rupture the scenery and the epithet “village martyr” appears on the entrance.

Visitors descend into the building which is sparse and utilitarian. There is a room off of the main space, a theater for informative films about the site. Upon entering, we were startled by a wall of black-and-white photographs of the 642 men, women and children who were massacred at Oradour-sur-Glane. Each minute or so an enlargement of one of the photographs appeared on a screen and then dissolved into another and then another, while names were spoken in a continuous, somber cadence. The faces and names of babies, children, teens and adults, individuals in every stage of life, forced us to confront human connections to an historic event.

In a room adjoining the wall of photographs, scrapbooks were assembled alphabetically by family with materials and photos painstakingly collected and catalogued to convey the loss of homes, businesses, religious lives, careers, interests, personalities and voices. We turned the pages, looking into the eyes of the school teacher and the doctor, smiling at the faces of children peering over a balcony at a family gathering, recognizing the affection of a family for its dog, and feeling the joy of sweethearts on their wedding day. Through the photographs we pieced together a scene of village life like those we had seen in so many old films. The church, bakery, café, clothing store, other businesses and private homes became backdrops for people smiling and posing and walking by, revealing a vital community where life went on despite the war. Images of intimacy suggested passages that resonate in all societies. These were cherished moments meant to be looked at again and again in albums filled with the chronology of family. Today they were a preface for travelers about to journey through a moment of savagery.

Visitors emerge from the austere, underground Memory Center into natural light and into the present. Passing a sign that declares “Souviens-Toi” and “Remember,” we walked the streets of Oradour-sur-Glane.

Sidewalks and roads and intersections declare that this village was planned and grew over time with commerce and life, but crumbled walls and rubble reveal a community long dead. We had anticipated the desolation and the ruins; we had even envisioned some specific remains from photographs. What we could not foresee, however, was our own emotional response. Rather than being transfixed solely by the material remnants of a village frozen in time since 1944, we felt our senses stunned by the horrific impact of life unexpectedly and instantly extinguished.

Throughout the occupation the Nazis maintained a precarious relationship with the puppet government in Vichy in an effort to control the civilian population. But the destruction of Oradour and its citizens was so barbaric that the German military realized it had to do something to deflect blame and suppress public outrage. Within days, in response to a protest from Vichy, the German military put together a document that accused the villagers of initiating the fight and blamed the deaths of the women and children in the church on an explosion of hidden ammunition kept by the villagers. They also ordered a perfunctory criminal investigation. The massacre was brought up at the Nuremburg trials, and in 1953 it was the sole focus of a military tribunal at Bordeaux. Neither of these investigations resulted in decisive understanding of the event. To this day, no definitive evidence exists as to why the SS attacked the village, but there are theories.

Systematic attacks upon civilians as a way to maintain order in occupied countries was an inherent Nazi strategy. This was regular practice in the Eastern Front, and as the war continued, violence against civilians became more common in France. After the Allies landed at Normandy, efforts by the French Resistance to disrupt German supply lines and communications increased. In response, orders were issued by the German military to crush the resistance without mercy. The resistance was particularly active around Clermont-Ferrand and the department of Corrèze, not far from Oradour-sur-Glane. Tactics of the resistance included attacks on troops and kidnapping. On June 9th, the day before the Oradour massacre, ninety-nine men were hanged in Tulle, capital of Corrèze, as punishment for partisan harassment of the Nazi 2nd SS division as it made its way north toward Normandy. It was this same division that annihilated Oradour-sur-Glane the following day.

An audio tour can be rented at the Memory Center, but we chose to walk the streets of Oradour on our own and construct a narrative from the simple plaques that identify businesses and their proprietors and homes and their residents. Each step reveals objects that support life; the remnants of tables, bed frames, bicycles and cars are wedged within the rubble of collapsed buildings. Buckets and rusted sewing machines sit in extant frames of windows or niches. Irregular, partially standing walls give testament to the bombardment of the village by the Nazis following the murders. Places that enrich and nurture a citizenry are ravaged. The roofless offices of the doctor and dentist, the wine shop, a girl’s school, an iron forge and the boulangerie are fragments of dirt and stone. The outline of a café has a single outdoor table; the automobile repair garage still has the frame of a door large enough for a truck, but no walls or roof to enclose it. Each vestige of life rests useless amid the disarray of charred stone and wreckage. Weeds push up beneath the rust and rubble of seventy years. Flowers bloom through as well. As we roamed the streets with other visitors, the uniformity of silence was remarkable. This is not a place for conversation or expletive even though each step leads to palpable savagery.

The main street meanders through the town past the market place, barns, fields, residences. It opens to side streets but eventually everyone takes a road that leads to the church. If a visitor expects solace, some divine absolution from this site, it does not come. A rusted baby carriage in the barren, roofless nave of the church is a reminder that the youngest victim murdered and burned was eight days old. The symmetry of the marble altar could be lovely as a relic aging naturally over time. Instead, the image of Christ that adorns it, rendered faceless by bombardment, and the empty rectangle of its tabernacle are reminders of congregants whose desperation and wails filled this cavernous room on June 10, 1944. Perhaps there are prayers uttered by visitors but they too are silent. Silence punctuates Oradour-sur-Glane.

A great deal of material exists about the destruction of Oradour-sur-Glane. Research has examined assertions that the village was a storehouse of armaments and that it harbored resistance fighters; information reveals that a number of Jews were among the dead. After the war a few Nazi soldiers were investigated for their part in the massacre, but only one was held accountable. As recently as 2013 Germany started a new investigation to locate soldiers who might have been involved. That same year German President Joachim Gauck stood with French President François Hollande to acknowledge the atrocity.

Photos, documents and maps can be accessed with ease, and the question “why” goes unanswered. But the significance of Oradour-sur-Glane is found in its very existence and in the power of its empty streets to elicit profound questions about humanity. As objects eventually rust beyond recognition, and rubble is eroded by nature, the village will survive the decay and abide the silence of visitors. And in its admonishment—“Souviens-toi,” “Remember”—Oradour-sur-Glane will continue to remind us to remember and to be vigilant.

Text by Elizabeth Esris
Photos by Michael Esris

For practical information about Oradour and surroundings
The Memory Center at Oradour-sur-Glane, L’Auze, 87520 Oradour-sur-Glane. Tel. 05 55 43 34 30.
Situating Oradour: Oradour is located 14 miles northwest of Limoges in the department of Haute-Vienne, one of three departments in the historic region of Limousin, itself now a part of the vast region of New Aquitaine.

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* * *

Aspiring 21st century novelist Gil Pender walks away perplexed but elated after a conversation with Ernest Hemingway at Restaurant Polidor in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. Hemingway promises to show his novel to Gertrude Stein, and Pender is off to pick up the draft when he remembers that he never established a place to meet Hemingway on his next magical midnight excursion to the 1920s. Turning back to retrace his steps in the darkness of early morning, Le Polidor has vanished and Gil finds a sleepy green glow illuminating dormant machines in a laundromat where moments before Hemingway had been drinking wine and imparting truncated macho aphorisms.

At that moment I was still laughing at the caricature of Hemingway. He was so like the cartoonish image I had envisioned decades earlier within the penumbra of mid-20th century America when many English majors  suffered what Hemingway biographer A.E. Hotchner described as “an affliction common to our generation: Hemingway Awe.” But I laughed more when I recognized the laundromat as the one that is directly across the street from the Polidor on rue Monsieur le Prince. My laundry had tumbled in those machines a number of times. I suspect that, like me, other aging English majors continue to be charmed by the “lost generation” that Woody Allen eulogizes and laughs at in Midnight in Paris. And like me, they may still carry a notebook wherever they go—even to a laundromat.

The last time I did my laundry on rue Monsieur Le Prince it was early morning. My husband was off to a business meeting in Lille and I was alone on a rainy and chilly summer day in Paris. I looked forward to just walking and finding a comfortable spot to read and write. After depositing my laundry in a washing machine, I headed toward the Luxembourg Gardens. I was attired very casually since I couldn’t dress for the day until my laundry was done. I felt comfortably anonymous, and when I stepped under the awning of Le Rostand, I chose to sit outdoors even though all of the other customers were inside.

I took a table next to the door, furthest from the street and the rain. The waiter came and then went to get my café and I opened my notebook. I glanced toward the gardens just opposite and felt a wonderful sense of satisfaction.

I looked up when the waiter returned and saw that another woman was electing to sit outdoors, but in contrast to my well-worn zip-front and Velcro nylon rain jacket and Teva sandals, this woman wore an elegantly tailored fitted raincoat, an indigo silk scarf shimmering around her neck, and flesh-colored pumps. She carried an umbrella and a small buttery handbag.

When the waiter noticed her he almost clicked his heels. She greeted him by name and looked toward my table: I knew instantly that it was hers. When she took the table next to mine the bulge of my backpack in which I had carried the laundry seemed to groan with shame. As she sat, she put her purse on the table; our eyes met and she smiled. She knew I felt ill at ease. I murmured “Bonjour, Madame.”

The waiter took her order and then she rose to go indoors. She was about my age and I knew where she was headed. She was about to take her pocketbook with her when she changed her mind. No matter how nice the café, the toilettes is a limited space at best. She intimated with gesture and a knowing smile that I should keep an eye on it, and with some stumbling French I nodded in accord. How many times had these same silent messages been passed between me and female friends at home? I was amazed by her delicate sense of civility and at her graciousness in acceding to a sisterhood of trust. The rain came down harder as I waited for her return and I felt a compliment that almost moved me to tears.

The watched purse engendered conversation when she returned. She thanked me with a warm, sincere smile. I introduced myself as Elizabeth and she said she was Josette. There was no need to say I was an American. She told me in French that although she knew some English, she did not speak it because her mastery of it was flawed. At that moment I was grateful that this was the last leg of a three-week trip that had taken us through Provence and into the Dordogne; as always, language improves with immersion. I was happy to struggle with French and she was gracious. The waiter watched as we chatted.

Josette asked what brought me to France and I told her about our vacation in the south and the few days in Paris where my husband had business. She asked where I was from in the U.S. and I told her I lived outside of Philadelphia, not too far from New York City. She said she had lived briefly in New York and that was where she had practiced the English she had learned in school but never quite mastered. She said that she felt inadequate during that time and that it ruined any desire to stumble with English again. I encouraged her by citing my own joyful struggles with French, but I understood that this was a matter of principal and pride that was deeply woven into her being. In response to my question as to what took her to New York to live, she told me her husband worked for the government. She did not tell me his position and I refrained from asking, but she said that because of it, they had lived around the world for many years. When she spoke of “his work” I was acutely aware that we were close to the French Senate as well as the University of Paris. I also recalled how the waiter deferred to her.

For the next forty minutes I extracted from myself all the French I knew, and because of both her patience and steadfast avoidance of English, as we spoke of children and schools and travel, I learned a few new words and validated my long-held belief that great conversation is always possible when strangers look to each other with respect.

The richest part of our conversation was about Paris. When I told her how I had come to envision and love France and Paris as a young woman reading de Maupassant and Hugo and Flaubert and Fitzgerald and Hemingway, she nodded with understanding and said that Madame Bovary was a particular favorite of hers. It was one of mine, as well. She asked if I had been to the Pantheon to visit the tombs of Hugo and Zola. She said that to her Paris was very beautiful in a physical sense but that more importantly it was a reminder that mankind is capable of beauté et dignité.

When we first began talking I was dreading the moment when my laundry would be done and I would have to excuse myself from the conversation; I was certain that this was a woman who rarely washed her own clothes. My pride, bedraped by worn travel clothes and a backpack, was inflamed. In my mind I had conjured excuses: “Excusez- moi, mais j’ai un rendezvous” or perhaps “Excusez-moi, je dois quitter de rencontrer a un ami.” As the hands on my watch approached the time, however, I felt that I was at the end of a chance meeting with an elegant, perhaps important woman who had savored our forty-minute conversation on a rainy morning in Paris as much as I had. I knew that she appreciated my enthusiastic, often bumbling French and she complimented my accent a couple of times. More than that, however, we had spoken as women speak everywhere; we unfolded a bit of the panorama of our lives before each other, and in between words there were smiles, nods, and eyes that met in understanding—just as they had met when I realized I was sitting at her usual table and when she asked me to watch her lovely handbag.

When I knew I had to leave I said, “Excusez-moi. Je dois prendre mes vêtements à la laverie de la rue Monsieur Le Prince.”  We smiled, shook hands warmly, uttered each other’s name as we said au revoir, and I walked back to the laundromat in the gentle rain.

While my clothes were tossing in the dryer I took out my notebook and jotted down what I remembered about my early morning café at Le Rostand. I wanted to save the moment because I knew that if, like Woody Allen’s Gil, I retraced my steps, it would be gone.

© 2013, Elizabeth Esris

Other great travel stories and poetry by Elizabeth Esris can be found here.

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* * *

The largest plane tree in France sits like a beloved grandfather in the square in Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, an ancient village in the Hérault Valley, 27 miles west of Montpellier. Children race around its massive trunk and stop to drink from the multiple spouts of the nearby fountain topped by Liberty. Adults sit in its shade to chat. It’s a beautiful, comfortable spot whose history runs deep, but it was not on our itinerary as we originally skirted this part of the valley on our way from Provence to Toulouse.

A chance encounter with a shop keeper in Pézenas, a wine town among the vineyards between Montpellier and Béziers, however, made us change directions and head north into the Hérault Gorges. The shopkeeper’s excitement about the beauty and history of the village convinced me and my husband that a detour would reward us with a memorable stay. She was right, and at the time we did not realize that we would come face to face with sublime architecture, some of which could be found just a short drive from our home in Pennsylvania.

Approached from the south along the Herault River, Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert is heralded by a striking series of bridges, including the medieval Pont du Diable, arched high above a steep gorge lined with grey-white rocks that look as if they had been drizzled down the cliff.

The village itself is surrounded by chalky limestone mountains stippled with green shrubs. Embedded in the hills are the remains of a Visigoth fortress and a dusty old mule path, portions of which have been traveled for centuries by pilgrims following the sign of the shell that marks routes of the Way of Saint James leading to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostella in Spain where the remains of St. James the Greater are said to be buried. Today this path also affords walkers day hikes that begin at the edge of the village on the rue du Bout-du-Monde, the street of the end of the world.

The graceful, rounded apse of the Abbey of Gellone dominates the pale buildings with tiled roofs that emerged as we drove past a gentle flow of the Verdus, a stream that keeps the area verdant as it runs toward the Herault River. We parked the car and walked a narrow street that led to the main square. Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert can be filled with tourists, but as with any well-known site, arriving off-season allows for less hindered signs of the past and of local life.

Those signs were already clear from the hotel room we found, from which we could hear the bells of the abbey, the greetings of residents on the pavement and watch an old dog make his way from the direction of the square toward the welcome of a water bowl.

As we meandered through the cobbled streets of the village we spotted scallop shells embedded in fountains and near doorways as signs of welcome for pilgrims traveling the Way of Saint James. We wondered if these doors opened as readily today to pilgrims as they had in past centuries.

We were charmed by the personalized doors and windows that reflect the artists who reside in the village; we were also struck by a few handmade signs protesting the possession of the original cloister from the Monastery of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. One poster advertised a meeting where a speaker would ask the question “Qui a Vendu Le Cloitre aux Americains?” Who sold the cloister to the Americans?

The Cloisters, in northern Manhattan, is the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to the art and architecture of Medieval Europe. It sits majestically atop a hill in a lush 66-acre park with wonderful views of the Hudson River. The impressive monastery-like building is, according to the museum’s website, “not a copy of any specific medieval structure but is rather an ensemble informed by a selection of historical precedents, with a deliberate combination of ecclesiastical and secular spaces arranged in chronological order.” The Cloisters developed out of an impressive collection of cloister sections and other medieval art accumulated by American sculptor George Grey Barnard early in the 20th century. That collection was later acquired and curated at the Fort Tryon site through the donation of land and funding by John D. Rockefeller. Among the highlights of its ecclesiastical spaces is a cloister, one of five, created with 140 fragments from the cloister of the Monastery of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert that, according to the museum, Barnard had discovered being used as “grape arbor supports and ornaments in the garden of a justice of the peace in nearby Aniane.”

The monastery in Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert dates to the 9th century when it was founded by Guilhem, Count of Toulouse and grandson of the Duke of Aquitaine. Guilhem was a cousin of Charlemagne and noted in his time as one of the emperor’s most valorous knights for his battles against the Saracens of Spain. For centuries that followed Troubadours sang about his bravery. Charlemagne presented him with a piece of the Holy Cross (it was an age of relics) that he brought with him when he came to establish a home and a monastery in 804 in the remote region that would eventually bear his name, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert. (“Le Désert” refers not the geography but to the absence of people in the area at the time.) The relic helped make the Abbey of Gellone an important stopping point for pilgrims on the road to Compostella, and it remains there to this day. Despite his life as a warrior, Guilhem was deeply religious and spent his final years at the monastery as a monk from 806 until his death in 812.

Thanks to the traffic of pilgrims, the monastery prospered and most of the Abbey of Gellone visited today dates from the 11th century when it was rebuilt in the Romanesque style. Like many monasteries in France it eventually suffered from the vicissitudes of faith and politics. It was pillaged during the Wars of Religion and vandalized during the French Revolution, losing both furnishings and architectural elements. Each historical trauma, whether natural (e.g. floods) or man-made, led to more decay, and by the 19th century parts of the abbey were dispersed throughout the region, including sections of the cloister later purchased by Barnard.

The interior of the abbey conveys an intimacy and warmth due in part to the variegated rustic tones of the stone. The vault of the soaring apse is punctuated by three high windows that represent the Trinity, and an ornate marble and glass altar presents a stunning contrast with the simplicity of architectural line. Near the altar rests what are said to be the remains of Saint Guilhem and the relic of the Holy Cross given to him by Charlemagne. There are lovely spaces within the abbey, one of which houses an 18th-century organ. The abbey has an atmosphere that suggests mystery and evokes contemplation. It is also a perfect venue for intimate musical performances such as the string and flute ensemble we attended during our visit. The cloister that was rebuilt in the second half of the 20th century, which includes a few original columns, also affords a quiet retreat.

The village of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert appears to flow from the monastery. The narrow streets that begin at the portal of the abbey on the square seem a natural path to the beauty of the tight houses and the chalky tops of the mountains that appear beyond their roofline. An approach to the village offers a lovely view of the rounded apse symmetrically flanked by the round exterior walls of two smaller curved vaults and bordered by a low wall encasing a small garden. The exterior of the monastery, however, does not convey the serenity of the interior. Evidence of the tumultuous past is reflected in the monastery’s outer surfaces in color variation, patched walls, and solid sections that seem almost fortress-like. Still, there is a sense of calm and history as you walk between trees and flowers and enjoy time along a quiet path.

* * *

We drove to The Cloisters Museum in the fall on a radiant day much like the one that welcomed us to Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert. The museum rises from the topmost height of lushly wooded Fort Tryon Park on which it occupies four acres. It conveys medieval perfection through its stone tower, unmarred arches, metal steeple atop a spire such as those found on village churches in the south of France, and the graceful curve of an 11th-century apse from a church in Spain. It may be “an ensemble informed by a selection of historical precedents” but the total effect of The Cloisters is that you have arrived at another time and place. Cobbled paths wind up a hill toward the powerful stone structure, and visitors step into remarkable spaces that belie the 21st century. The statuary, paintings, tapestries and other artifacts humanize the medieval world. Coming so close to medieval art within authentic stone chapels and chambers and gazing into the faces of sublimely painted wooden sculptures makes a connection to ancient life that is transformational.

Four of the cloisters at the museum have outdoor settings with skillfully tended gardens. Everything appears natural and free; the eruption of color and texture suggest a rustic landscape, but the reality is far more calculated. The Cuxa Cloister from a Benedictine Monastery near the Pyrenees in Spain is breathtaking; stone pathways, flowers, trees, and dense foliage frame pink marble columns, a central fountain and low tiled roofs. It is a realization of how we imagine a medieval cloister to have looked and felt.

The reconstructed cloister from the Monastery of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert at The Cloisters is an interior space with a high glass ceiling for natural light and lovely arched windows that overlook the Hudson River behind one side of the cloister. A few potted plants and some large vessels from the period dot the hard pebbled courtyard. The columns are stunning, set in pairs to support the arched stone of the installation. They vary in both the shape of the columns and design of the capitals. Some of the columns are rounded, others hexagonal, still others are ornate with waves from top to bottom, and some are wide and fully sculpted. The capitals are carved with exquisite renderings of acanthus leaves, vines, flowers, honeycombed patterns and both animal and human figures. The passageways behind the columns suggest a sense of contemplation with stone benches for reflection. Care has clearly been taken to respect the extraordinary craftsmanship in the stonework and gracefully echo the serenity of a monastic setting.

I wanted to love this cloister, but I could not. I felt the artifice of museum lighting despite the open ceiling, and I begrudged the closed space that made it more of an exhibit than a setting where imagination might take you back in time. Viewing the columns from multiple perspectives, I tried to place them mentally at the peaceful Monastery of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, among the trees and flowers, the passageways to the abbey, the prayers of monks and the footsteps of approaching pilgrims. I wanted to see them not as individual elements of interest but as an essential part of an idea, a purpose, a commitment to the necessity of contemplation and prayer. Instead, despite the splendor of The Cloisters and my appreciation for how it celebrates the beauty and humanity of medieval life, makes it accessible to so many and preserves it for the future,  I found myself wishing I had attended the lecture that answered the question, “Who sold the cloister to the Americans?”

© 2013, Elizabeth Esris

Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, population 265 (2012 figure), is located in the department of Hérault in the region of Languedoc-Roussillon. The village’s official website, which also provides information about the surrounding Hérault Valley, can be found here.  Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert is a member of the association Les Plus Beaux Villages de France.

The Cloisters Museum and Gardens, Fort Tyron Park, New York, New York 10040. The website for The Cloisters contains a wealth of information. In exploring the site you will discover photos that show Barnard’s collection as it was originally displayed in New York City. Worth accessing are wonderful videos that detail the history and construction of the museum in Fort Tryon as well as detailed videos that focus specifically on the reconstructed cloisters, including further information about the cloister from Saint-Guilhem-Le-Désert.

Elizabeth Esris is a teacher and writer. Her poetry has appeared in Wild River Review, Bucks County Writer, and Women Writers. She wrote the libretto for Elegy For A Prince with composer Sergia Cervetti which premiered in excerpts at New York City Opera’s VOX Opera Showcase in 2007. She and Cervetti also collaborated on a one-act chamber opera, YUM!, a celebration of wine, food, and friendship. She teaches English and creative writing at Central Bucks High School South (Pennsylvania).

Other work by Elizabeth Esris on France Revisited include this article and poem about the Luberon and this article and poem about the Abbey of Senanque.

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* * *

By Elizabeth Esris

If you buy a calendar for a Francophile around the holidays, the kind in which each month is a spectacular scene from a different region in France, chances are that July or August will feature a view of long, arching rows of lavender running to a gray stone abbey that evokes romantic visions of Provence.

I drove into that very scene on a summer day as I approached the Abbey of Sénanque. The view of the mass of vibrant lavender against the stark eloquence of the 12th century Romanesque monastery took my breath way.

I wasn’t alone. The spectacular scene is shared by many visitors drawn to this rural valley just north of the chic and stunning perched village of Gordes. Walking the dusty path from the parking lot amid the quiet conversation of others, I knew that I needed to move beyond the photo op in order to make my visit a lasting and intimate experience.  When I approached the old stone walls, I wanted to engage my imagination as I learned about their history.

The Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque  was established when local lords donated land to build a Cistercian monastery in 1148, 50 years after the founding of the mother of Cistercian abbeys at Citeaux in Burgundy. At Sénanque, twelve monks were brought to live in huts while construction of the abbey was begun.

The church of the monastery was consecrated in 1178, though it wasn’t until 1250 that other essential buildings such as residences and the refectory (dining hall) were complete. Over time additional structures of a self-sustaining medieval religious community were added, including a cloister, a chapter house for meetings, a scriptorium for writing of manuscripts, and barns and other outbuildings that were part of a series of granges for food production.  Four mills completed a productive agricultural community that enabled the diligent and entrepreneurial Cistercians to lord over a prosperous center of influence in Provence well into the 15th century.

In addition to being an industrious order that worked hard to create efficient agricultural techniques, the Cistercians also established a core group of lay members at the Abbey of Sénanque who toiled at the most arduous manual tasks in the granges and at the mills. These men lived within the monastery, but slept and ate in separate quarters.

Perhaps it was inevitable that with prosperity came exploitation of the Cistercian’s original religious mission. The riches of the agricultural operations afforded temptations that gave way to worldly pleasures and diversion from the precepts of simplicity and service. Profiteers within the order eventually took control of the monastery in the 1400s, and it fell into decline because of mismanagement and corruption.

The Cistercian mission for a life of austerity and manual labor was reinforced once more at Sénanque in 1475 when a new abbot, John Casaletti from Avignon, was appointed to oversee the monastery and return focus to the values of the Cistercians. The abbey prospered again and became an agent for ministering to the poor, including caring for victims of the plague early in the 16th century.

In 1544 the abbey became a victim of the Wars of Religion when it was attacked by the Vaudois whose oppression and slaughter in the region had been sanctioned by the Catholic Church since the 12th century. The Vaudois pillaged the abbey and destroyed the lay quarters. The Abbey of Sénanque never recovered its prosperity and influence, and during the French Revolution the property was nationalized.

In ensuing years the monastery changed hands a number of times until monastic life was again established in 1988 by the small Cistercian order that lives there today. The community is for the most part financially self-sufficient through income from tours of the monastery, production of lavender and honey, sales of related items in the gift shop, and hosting of overnight visitors, though on occasion the French state and the department of Vaucluse have provided financial assistance to keep this historic setting alive and in good condition.

Learning some of the history of the Abbey of Sénanque in guidebooks, in pamphlets, and during a tour led me to ruminate about monastic and rural life in medieval Provence.  I imagined the narrow mountain road (now D177), which leads to the valley from Gordes, as a dusty mountain path upon which novices came by foot, or perhaps on saddle, to begin a life of silence, simplicity, and long hours of labor in the fields.  I asked myself who they were and what drew them to such an austere life. I envisioned them nearing the rugged stone walls that would become their refuge—perhaps their prison—and I tried to sense their last images of home and the anticipation of what awaited them.

The Abbey of Sénanque was built without a main door to the primary façade; this emphasized the aestheticism of the Cistercians and their desire that the monastery be unadorned.  It also reinforced the insular quality of the community and its purpose in sustaining a simple and silent life away from distractions that a grand portal might communicate to those outside the order.

It was in late June, amid the brilliance of the early blossoming of lavender, when I stepped inside the monastery.

When the voice of the tour guide echoed through the severe but beautiful vaulted dormitory where at night the monks once slept fully clothed in marked sections on the hard floor, I asked myself if they slept peacefully, fatigued by the day’s labor or if they were stalked by dreams of life outside their cloister.

In the scriptorium, the chamber where monks in medieval times worked copying manuscripts, I imagined faces bearing down on parchment and the meticulous lines of letters that inched slowly across the page, formed by hands that ached by day’s end and eyes that wearied with the dimming of natural light.  It is the only room with a fireplace—heated so that the monks could perform their delicate work.

The abbey church was and is still a place of prayer and contemplation. (It’s possible for visitors to attend mass here.) Even though it is stark, the symmetry of the nave speaks of artistry—restrained artistry, an aesthetic that denies excess but is unable to deny beauty. The aim might have been austerity, but when the eye follows the arches to the line in the vaulted ceiling, the radiance of sunlight on stone feels like adornment.

The most memorable part of the abbey is outside, where the eye collides with an impossibly beautiful vision: thousands of lavender flowers, growing in even rows, sway with abandon in the valley breeze against the gray walls of the monastery. It’s at once simple and sublime. Large slate tiles top roof lines. Low sections of the abbey emphasize the rustic nature of the setting, while the rounded lines of the apse and the angles leading to the bell tower suggest the divine. How many stories played out in the heat of the Provençal sun and behind the secretive windows of the monastery? The eye returns to the lavender and back again to the monastery.

On a warm summer day, arriving very early or late in the afternoon, one can avoid seeing buses and hordes of tourists with cameras taking the inevitable shots of lavender against the gray stone. It is possible then, to indulge in fantasy of how it was in medieval times—or how it is today among the robed inhabitants. I visited twice, both times in late June before the height of the tourist season but just in time for the lavender. Both times I stooped low to watch large black bees hover over blossoms , and I looked through the lavender to the abbey wondering how villagers viewed this monastery and it inhabitants so long ago. I imagined an alter ego sitting atop the roof in summer, ruminating about the insular monks who lived within.

Those reflections evolved into the poem, “Musing at the Abbey.”

Musing at the Abbey

In a tide of lavender
arms dappled by sun and stem
vie with black bees for nectar.
The stone wall of the abbey
is weary of the artist’s brush and
bleach of lenses.
It breathes them away
with memory of silent skies and
novices on dusty roads.

Women appear on the tiled roof
with gauze skirts draped
between their thighs.
They bathe in the June sun,
listen to the steps of monks
inching toward prayer,
and whisper to them
with attar from the blooms.

I join them in their hopeless vigil,
my arms hungry
for the heat of summer prayer.
They know me from a dozen other churches.
We have stalked robed ghosts before,
seducing ourselves with chants
of hooded profiles
who share lavender
with black bees
in a quiet coupling
of earth and the divine.

© Elizabeth Esris

Poem first published as “At the Abbey” in Women Writers, June, 2009.
Accompanying text first published in France Revisited, Dec. 2011

Also read Elizabeth’s explorations of and poem about the massacre of the Vadois at Mérindol in the Luberon area of Provence.

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Sergio Cervetti is a native of Uruguay, but his mother was born in France of Waldensian ancestry.  Persecuted for centuries in both France and Italy, the Waldensians–les Vaudois–were a sect founded in the 12th century by Pierre Valdès (or Valdo), a Catholic merchant from Lyon who relinquished his property and riches to preach an ideal life of devotion to Biblical teachings of poverty, simplicity, and non-violence.

Originally identifying themselves as Catholics, the “poor men of Lyon,” as Valdès and his followers came to be known, were declared heretics by the church for beliefs that are remarkably contemporary—such as a penchant for equality, disdain for clerical hierarchy, and acceptance of female preachers as early as the 15th century.

Because of the threat their radical ideas posed to the Church and Church-sponsored thrones, the Vaudois were chased and slaughtered throughout France and rural areas of Italy, where many fled in hopes of finding refuge.  So great was public outcry in Europe in the 17th century that Oliver Cromwell made official appeals for an end to the slaughter, and poet John Milton wrote a sonnet, “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” to protest and memorialize the horrific murder of hundreds of Vaudois in the Italian Alps in 1655.

The Waldensians eventually found tolerance and survival, at times, in ghetto-like pockets established in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Today, their descendents maintain their religious identity, and the largest contemporary community of the Vaudois is in Italy, where they were granted religious freedom in 1848. Some of the Vaudois eventually joined the legions of Europeans who immigrated to the Americas in search of religious tolerance and economic opportunity.  Small, active communities exist today in Argentina, Uruguay, and in North America, particularly in Valdese, North Carolina, which takes its name from the Vaudois who settled there.

Mérindol, in the Vaucluse, is the site of a hilltop village whose inhabitants were massacred over a period of five days in 1545 in a crusade ordered by the French King Francois I and orchestrated locally by Jean Maynier d’Oppède, president of the parliament of Provence. The population was virtually exterminated, but it is said that some of the Vaudois of Mérindol survived by hiding in the dense mountains of the Luberon.

When my husband and I turned off the D973 road and drove through the modest, contemporary town at the base of the mountain, we had no idea how we would be touched by the hike up to the ancient village of the Vaudois. We found ourselves challenged by the climb, the sad ruins, and a view from the summit that must have been beloved by those who called the mountain home.

It was mid-afternoon when we began our ascent, and we were alone on the path until our return in the late and lingering dusk of Provence. “At Mérindol” describes our journey to the summit and to a spiritual connection with an intangible presence that we felt amidst the ruins.  It is dedicated to the friend who led us there.

At Merindol
(for Sergio Cervetti)

The sun clings to the summit,
and blinks through dark trees
that spiral the hill.
We falter in stone and
growth of four hundred years.
Ahead is a ruin,
looking with shrouded eyes
for its generations.
Our feet pound in ascent.
Our companions are the wind
and punch of breath.
The shadowed twist of tree and earth
blinds us to all but tree and earth.

Remnants of parapets and corners
press into the acclivity–
carcass of village
blanched by sun and crusade.
We think we see the top, but there is more:

more fragments of wall and window
ghostly stairs, flesh-hewn for
rush of man and child to
the smell of bread on stone
a woman’s hand upon a door,
conversation across a sill,
fatigue of night,
the brace of morning.

Sorrows of path and village
yield to the summit and
ochre mountains, the bend
of the Durance through purple fields,
Alpilles to the south, and the sea.
Joy reaches beyond ghosts and martyrs
to hearts on a summer evening
and this sunset: assurance of
the divine in valley, sky, the walls of home.

Light bleeds through a crater in the last ruin.
Shadows sink at its base like souls
returning to the grave.
We read the timeline of Les Vaudois en Provence.
1545    mort pour leur foi

leur descendants affirms
flight to purple fields and the Durance,
ochre mountains, Alpilles to the south,
the sea, searching for the divine,
for home.

Winds of dusk calm to a breeze
and darkness looms.
Our feet move cautiously in descent,
spiraling the dirt path and stone wall
past life and loss, our
eyes on twist of tree and earth
guided by ghostly hands that
know the way.

© Elizabeth Esris

Elizabeth Esris is a teacher and writer. Her poetry has appeared in Wild River Review, Bucks County Writer, and Women Writers. She wrote the libretto for Elegy For A Prince with composer Sergio Cervetti, which premiered in excerpts at New York City Opera’s VOX Opera Showcase in 2007. She and Cervetti also collaborated on a one-act chamber opera, YUM!,  a celebration of wine, food, and friendship. She teaches English and creative writing at Central Bucks High School South (Pennsylvania).

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