François Truffaut's Les Quatre Cents coups | The 400 blows (1960)

In the vanguard of the nouvelle vague cinema mentioned below in Godard's film À bout de souffle, Les Quatre Cents coups was the first of the films starring Jean-Pierre Léaud in François Truffaut's Antoine Doinel saga, which was followed by the twenty-minute short Antoine et Colette (1962), and then the feature length films Baisers volés (1968), Domicile conjugal (1970) and L'Amour en fuite (1979).

In large part autobiographical, Les Quatre Cents coups (in spite of its very weird English translation) is a reference to leading a wild life: Antoine is brought up in a rather run-down flat with dysfunctional parents (his mother is far from motherly and is having an affair), his school is run on painfully traditional lines where learning by rote is the order of the day, and the main person he relates to is Rémy, his schoolmate who lives in rather more fortunate circumstances, but has a rebellious nature that chimes with Antoine's.

Antoine plays truant, indulges in petty theft, has a healthy disrespect for authority, sleeps out in Paris one day, lies to his French teacher that his mother has died, visits the cinema as much as he can, tells the truth when he says he's learned a Balzac passage by heart but is disbelieved by his French teacher. And finally he steals a typewriter but is discovered in the act of returning it and is denounced by his father. His punishment: ending up, at thirteen years of age, in a military-style youth centre, from which he escapes, runs, runs, until he reaches the sea and...what next? To be continued.

Victor Hugo's description of a fire in Notre-Dame de Paris | The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

At the time of writing, 10:30 on Wednesday 17 April 2019 in England, the above Livre de Poche edition of Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) stands at number 1 on Amazon's sales chart in France, with other editions at numbers 3, 4, 6 and 9. This is of course nothing to do with syllabus, and a non-fiction book of the same French name (priced at 85 euros!) stands at number 8.  As France and indeed the rest of the world mourns the awful destruction to perhaps Paris's second major tourist attraction, it is bizarre to read in Victor Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris the imaginary description of a fire in the church. Hugo wrote the book in defence of the church, which at the time was in decay and there was talk of demolishing it:

'Tous les yeux s'étaient levés vers le haut de l'église. Ce qu'ils voyaient était extraordinaire. Sur le sommet de la galerie la plus élevée, plus haut que la rosace centrale, il y avait une grande flamme qui montait entre les deux clochers avec des tourbillons d'étincelles, une grande flamme désordonnée et furieuse dont le vent emportait par moments un lambeau dans la fumée. Au-dessous de cette flamme, au-dessous de la sombre balustrade à trèfles de braise, deux gouttières en gueules de monstres vomissaient sans relâche cette pluie ardente qui détachait son ruissellement argenté sur les ténèbres de la façade inférieure. À mesure qu'ils approchaient du sol, les deux jets de plomb liquide s'élargissaient en gerbes, comme l'eau qui jaillit des mille trous de l'arrosoir. Au-dessus de la flamme, les énormes tours, de chacune desquelles on voyait deux faces crues et tranchées, l'une toute noire, l'autre toute rouge, semblaient plus grandes encore de toute l'immensité de l'ombre qu'elles projetaient jusque dans le ciel. Leurs innombrables sculptures de diables et de dragons prenaient un aspect lugubre. La clarté inquiète de la flamme les faisait remuer à l'oeil. Il y avait des guivres qui avaient l'air de rire, des gargouilles qu'on croyait entendre japper, des salamandres qui soufflaient dans le feu, des tarasques qui éternuaient dans la fumée. Et parmi ces monstres ainsi réveillés de leur sommeil de pierre par cette flamme, par ce bruit, il y en avait un qui marchait et qu'on voyait de temps  en temps passer sur le front ardent du bûcher comme une chauve-souris devant une chandelle.'

A version of this in English:

'All eyes were raised to the top of the building. They beheld a sight of an extraordinary kind. In the upper-most gallery, above the central rose window, a vast body of flame, accompanied by showers of sparks, ascended between the two towers — a fierce and irregular flame, patches of which were every now and then carried off by the wind along with the smoke. Below this fire, below the sombre balustrade, with its glowing red open-work ornaments, two spouts, in the shape of the jaws of monsters, vomited without cessation those silver streams, which stood out distinctly against the dark mass of the lower facade. As they approached the ground, those two streams spread like water poured through the holes of the spout of a watering-pot. Above the flames the enormous towers, each showing two sides deeply contrasted, the one quite black, the other quite red, appeared still larger from the immense shadows which they threw toward the sky. Their numberless sculptures of devils and dragons assumed a doleful aspect. The flickering of the flame gave to them the appearance of motion. Gorgons seemed to be laughing, waterspouts yelping, salamanders puffing fire, and griffins sneezing in the smoke. And among the monsters thus wakened from their sleep of stone by the flames and by the din, there was one that moved from place to place, and passed from time to time in front of the fire, like a bat before a candle.'

More from Le Cimetière Père-Lachaise Columbarium, Paris (75): #24: Isidore Isou Goldstein

Poet, painter, film-maker, playwright, philosopher and novelist, Isidore Isou Goldstein (1925–2007), who wrote as Isidor Isou, was born in Romania and died in Paris. A gifted child, he read Dostoevski at thirteen, Marx at fourteen, and Proust at sixteen. He is the creator of lettrisme and received the support of Queneau and Jean Paulhan, who published his lettriste manifesto Introduction à une nouvelle poésie et à une nouvelle musique in 1947.  Included here is a quotation from his La Créatique ou la Novatique - 1941-1976.

More from Le Cimetière Père-Lachaise Columbarium, Paris (75): #23 Pierre Castex

Pierre Castex (1924–91) was a journalist and writer of screenplays, cinema critic and journalist who worked for  Action, Libération, Les Lettres Françaises and VSD. He also wrote short stories, novels, screenplays and cartoons. 

More from Le Cimetière Père-Lachaise Columbarium, Paris (75): #22: Caroline Babert

Caroline Babert (1947–2010) was a journalist with Gala and a novelist who wrote Souviens-toi, Éléonore ! (1977), Les Méandres de la Moselle (1980), Un amour précaire (1982), Des amis et des amants (1992) and (with Isabelle Rivère) Lady D (2007). I can't find much more information about her though.

More from Le Cimetière Père-Lachaise, Paris (75): #1: Gerda Taro

'MEMORIAL

LIBERPRESS

2008

GERDA TARO (1910–1937)

A FIN QUE PERSONNE N'OUBLIE TA LUTTE

INCONDITIONNELLE POUR UNE MONDE MEILLEUR'

('So that no one forgets your non-conditional struggle for a better world')

Yes, although that better world seems increasingly unattainable. Gerda Taro is most noted for her photo-journalism, particularly during the Spanish Civil War. She was the photographer Robert Capa's partner. Her grave was designed by the sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

Eugène Manuel in the 16e arrondissement, Paris

The statue of the poet and teacher Eugène Manuel (1823–1901) by Gustave Michel in the courtyard of the 'Petit lycée Janson-de-Sailly', Avenue Georges Mandel.

'DANS CETTE MAISON EST MORT

LE 1^er JUIN 1901

LE POÈTE

EUGÈNE MANUEL'

Manuel died in rue Mignard, about half a mile from where his statue now stands. Coincidentally, a certain future great philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, was born next door. Unfortunately, much like this building, it is a huge block of flats that doesn't make for a pretty photo. And there's not even a plaque on it.

Paris 2017: Cimetière de Vaugirard: Hector Bianciotti

Hector Bianciotti (1930–2012) was born in Argentina and was a film actor, a journalist, a writer and an academic who took on French nationality. He lived in from 1961 and in 1969 Maurice Nadeau published his first literary criticisms in La Quinzaine littéraire. He also wrote novels in his maternal language, although his first novel in French, Sans la miséricorde du Christ (1985), won the prix Femina. After his death Dany Laferrière took his seat at the Académie française.

Cimetière du Mesnil-le-Roi, Yvelines (78) #5: Jeanne and André Bourin

Jeanne Bourin (1922–2003) (née Mondot), was a historical novelist who returned to the Catholic faith at the age of forty. She had a sentimentalised and idealised view of the Middle Ages, and her La Chambre des dames (1979) is her most well-known novel. She married the literary critic and writer André Bourin (1918–2016) in 1940. André contributed to a number of magazines and wrote at least thirteen books.

Cimetière du Mesnil-le-Roi, Yvelines (78) #4: Louis Pauwels

'Quand verrai-je ma fin du monde ?
Que votre Volonté soit faite etnon la mienne.
Mais je vourdrais semer des oiseaux dans ceux que j'aime
Et qu'ils ne souffrent pas quand je m'endormirai.'

Louis Pauwels (1920–1997) was, as the stone above states, a poet, writer and journalist. He was the editor-in-chief of Combat in 1949, directed the monthly Marie-France, and with Jacques Bergier founded the magazine Planète, dedicated to science, philosophy and esotericism. He later founded Figaro Magazine, which he was in charge of for more than twenty years. The novel L'Amour monstre (1954) is one of his principal fictional works.

Cimetière du Mesnil-le-Roi, Yvelines (78) #3: Józef Czapski

Józef Czapski (1896–1993) was one of the officers to survive the Katyń massacre, and was a fourth founder of Kultura: another exile living in Maisons-Laffitte. He was a writer and an artist. His plaque just within the boundary of Maisons-Laffitte stands alongside Jerzy Giedroyc. Keith Botsford's Józef Czapski: A Life in Translation (2009) is an attempt write Czapski's 'autobiography', what Botsford calls 'a biography from within'.

Cimetière du Mesnil-le-Roi, Yvelines (78) #2: Zofia and Zygmunt Hertz

Zofia Hertz (1911–2003) was the first Polish woman to become a lawyer. She met Jerzy Giedroyc in 1933 at the Bureau de la culture, de la presse et de la propagande and she became his secretary. With Jerzy Giedroyc and her husband Zygmunt (1908–79), she also founded the Instytut Literacki (which in two years produced twenty-eight publications) and Kultura in 1946.

Paris 2017: Cimetière de Montrouge, Hauts-de-Seine (92) #2: Michel Audiard

Michel Audiard (1920–85) was a screen writer, a film director, and a novelist. Sometimes called a right-wing anarchist, one of his greatest regrets was not to have adapted Céline's Voyage au bout de la nuit to film. He is the father of the film director Jacques Audiard. His novels include Priez pour elle (1950), Massacre en dentelles (1952), Ne nous fâchons pas (1966), Le Terminus des prétentieux (1968), and Le Petit cheval de retour (1975).

Paris 2017: Cimetière de Montrouge, Hauts-de-Seine (92) #1: Albert Kazimirski de Biberstein

Albert (or Albin) Kazimirski de Biberstein (1808–87), of French nationality but born in Poland, was an Arabic-speaking orientalist who was the author of an Arabic-French dictionary, and the translator of several Arabic-French works, principally the Koran.

Bernard Dimey in the 18e arrondissement, Paris

Poet and singer Bernard Dimey is commemorated in this plaque in rue Germain Pilon. He spent fourteen years with painter and sculptor Yvette Cathiard, who wrote about it in La Blessure de l'Ogre (1993). 

Cimetière nouveau de Neuilly, Hauts-de-Seine (92) #10 Ferdinand Brunot

Ferdinand Brunot (1860–1938) was a noted linguist. A teacher at the Sorbonne, his famous work was Histoire de la langue française des origines à 1900, nine volumes of which were published between 1905 and 1937.

Cimetière nouveau de Neuilly, Hauts-de-Seine (92) #:9 Jean Aragny

Jean Aragny (1898–1939) was a playwright about whom little information seems readily available, apart from his writings, seems to be known. His plays include Les Yeux du spectre (1924), Prime (1932), and Bourreaux d'enfants (1939). He also wrote the screenplay adaptation of Timothy Shea's novel Toute sa vie (1930), the screenplay of Les vacances du diable (1931), and co-wrote the screenplay for Le Poignard malais (1931).

Cimetière nouveau de Neuilly, Hauts-de-Seine (92) #8: Victor Charbonnel

Victor Charbonnel (1863–1926) was a priest who left the priesthood and then gave a series of anti-clerical talks. Among a number of other publications he wrote  Séparation de l'Eglise et de la famille (1900), Victor Charbonnel: Sensations de vie (1906), and La Vérité sur le Vatican: Palais et caverne [1907]. In 1901 he founded the paper La raison and was a director of L'Action with Henry Bérenger.

Pierre Corneille in the 1e arrondissement, Paris

'PIERRE CORNEILLE

NÉ À ROUEN

LE 6 JUIN 16016,

MORT À PARIS

LE 1^ER OCTOBRE 1684,

EST INHUMÉ DANS CETTE ÉGLISE.

–––––––––––

Erigé en 1821.'

Église Saint-Roch, rue Saint-Honoré, where, as mentioned above, Corneille is buried.

Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, 1e arrondissement, Paris

'ICI
SE TROUVAIT DE 1845 à 1852
LE THÉÂTRE
DES
SOIRÉES FANTASTIQUES
FONDÉ PAR
JEAN-EUGÈNE
ROBERT-HOUDIN
RÉNOVATEUR DE LA PRESTIGITATION
CRÉATEUR D'AUTOMATES ET DE
NOMBREUX APPAREILS SCIENTIFIQUES'

Plaque at 11 rue de Valois, dedicated to Robert-Houdin (1805–71).