Today marks the seventh day of my arrival in Paris which makes it a full week since I have started my residency here at Cite. To celebrate, I have decided to go to Cimetrie Montparnasse to pay my respects to the author who changed the way I thought and lived - Jean-Paul Sartre. The cemetery was easy to find. Took the metro and got off at Raspail and found the side entrance near a flower shop (pompes funebres). A metal map will guide you where the famous persons are buried and surprisingly Sartre and De Beauvoir are in marked as 1 in the 8th division, near the main gate. Got to the site and saw people milling around with men wearing blue Jewish skull caps - it was a Jewish burial. True enough, the tomb was quite easy to see and to notice because of the number of flowers on it along with dozens of used Metro tickets held down by small stones. I noticed that the headstone was changed because in online pictures it is seen as a short triangular pediment with names of Sartre and de Beauvoir on it. The headstone is higher now and names of both are spattered with hues of red kiss marks. Wonder if that makes Simone strangle Jean Paul underneath. The explanation for the metro tickets is that Sartre supported a group of French Maoists who stole train tickets when it hiked up its fare and distributed it to the people. The metro ticket has become what is a stone on Jewish graves or candles on a Catholic one. Even in death this emperor of Existentialism is as urban as it can get.
Since I have no Metro ticket, I laid down an LRT card from Manila and wrote a brief letter in the carnet I was carrying and included it in my hommage. I said it was a useless gesture since Sartre wrote that death is a wall without a beyond, but I thanked him anyway, to emphasize the passion inutile that he used to speak of and told him NOT to rest in peace and bade goodbye.
Then I was on the hunt for other famous graves and found those of Man Ray and his wife Juliet, Eugene Ionesco and his wife, Charles Baudelaire and his kin. Tried so hard to look for Brancusi's but failed to spot it. The graves maybe numbered on the map bit there isnt really a number on them so one has to approximate.
I have to note this that even in the cemeteries, I could not feel anything "spooky". It is as if the French die and leave no trace of their parting.
Since I have no Metro ticket, I laid down an LRT card from Manila and wrote a brief letter in the carnet I was carrying and included it in my hommage. I said it was a useless gesture since Sartre wrote that death is a wall without a beyond, but I thanked him anyway, to emphasize the passion inutile that he used to speak of and told him NOT to rest in peace and bade goodbye.
Then I was on the hunt for other famous graves and found those of Man Ray and his wife Juliet, Eugene Ionesco and his wife, Charles Baudelaire and his kin. Tried so hard to look for Brancusi's but failed to spot it. The graves maybe numbered on the map bit there isnt really a number on them so one has to approximate.
I have to note this that even in the cemeteries, I could not feel anything "spooky". It is as if the French die and leave no trace of their parting.
The headstone of Jean-Paul Sartre's and Simone de Beauvoir's common grave. Notice the kissmarks? Although they were lifelong partners both writers were free to have affairs on the side as part of their arrangement. When Sartre died, Simone said: "His death separates us; but my death will not reunite us."
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