History, Art, Memory, Nation, Devotion

Them’s big terms, I know. They were the ones pinging around in my brain when I left the Musée de Cluny on Saturday. It was my first visit, shamefully enough. I went with my Victorianist and the Reluctant Anthropologist, an American friend I made during our mutually frustrating time in Toulouse. We were all thrilled with the place, for different reasons — I because I harbor secret medievalist ambitions, the Victorianist because, in addition to the cultural-historical curiosity we share, she’s a bit of a Marianist idolator, and the R. A. because she is passionate about art history, and interested in the Cluny’s array of objects primarily for their aesthetic values.

As we made our way through rooms full of wooden and marble altarpieces, saints’ images, chapel windows, the R.A.’s constant refrain was, ‘I cannot believe — I just cannot believe that France was once a Catholic country.’

It’s an odd statement. Even given the rigor with which la laïcité has been enforced as a national way of being by the Cinquième République, France — at least to a WASP from the American Northeast — still feels Catholic. It feels especially so to a WASP from the Northeast who spends much of her time in a period when the whole point about France was that it was a Catholic country. And not just any Catholic country, but — as even the most stringent modern laïcarde will note with bizarre grudging pride — la fille aînée de l’Eglise.

And yet, amid all this palpable Ecclesiastica, one can’t help but think about laws regarding public exhibition of signes ostensibles de la religion, about the unspoken prohibition against discussing divinity or religion in polite, casual company, about how weirded out the French are that the English maintain a state Church, or that the American President is sworn in on a Bible. One must confront the fact that la laïcité has been a defining feature of French républicanisme since the 1790’s.

The Cluny is, nevertheless, a national museum. With the exception of a few tapestries and the odd bit of garment and such, virtually every object it contains was once a prop of the Catholic Church. Exquisitely looked-after, well-curated, these ecclesiastical belong to a state that professes to want nothing to do with religion.

The museum is currently experimenting with free admission. It is not only a national space, then, but a truly public one. Anyone may enter, at no charge, to view this array of objects that form part of the patrimoine national closely guarded and deeply valued by the French nation-state.

How is this possible? These objects have, it would seem, become public, historical art-objects, memorials to a history that is now sufficiently other to be showcased as an object to be visually consumed. The very fact that the laïc state subsidizes this showcasing seems to indicate that these objects have been irreversibly transformed. This is a place for history, not for devotion. These are not devotional objects, claims the Musée National du Moyen Age.

That line — between art/history and devotion — is, I think, one that only a modern nation-state could make. The distinction is one that this wee mouse, apostate though she is, simply cannot force herself to maintain when faced with these objects. It seems somehow sad, somehow degenerative. What happens to religion, to devotion, to the spirit (or Spirit) when once it has been constituted as an artifact?

Day in life of Mouse

I left the house this morning at 6:30 wearing tons of clothes and carrying a mugful of coffee since I don’t have a go-cup.

I waited for two and a half hours in the twenty-degree air outside the préfecture. I smoked a whole bunch of cigarettes, read Céline, listened to the laughter and ranting around me. Once inside, I had several outbursts. I got what I wanted and left, lighthearted and delirious with the joy of being done, done, done with immigration bureaucracy. I knocked on wood the moment I sat down at a café. The waiter, amused, filled my own funny green mug with the most delicious café crème I’ve ever imbibed. I read some more Céline. I counted the number of passers-by I found “attractive enough” (approx. 8.5). I studied the whirly velour upholstery of the chair across from me. Céline made me laugh.

I went baby-clothes shopping. I went into Hermès looking like a homeless person wearing all that clothing and my hair all floppy from my bureaucratic morning and smelling of cigarettes and the stares I got and the sneer of the doorman drove me straight out again. (Too bad for my mum, who’d have got a scarf otherwise.)

I went home and took a nap.

Then I talked to my (scarfless) mum.
– Antonio’s brain cancer is worse; he’s dying quickly. He’s 48. Patty married him after two disastrous, abusive marriages because he, after a lonely life, couldn’t stand not to marry the woman he worshipped. They adore each other, wildly. They got married in Vegas. He’s changed Patty’s life. They were happy. One year after their marriage, brain tumor. Radiation, chemo, he did all right. One year after that, Antonio suddenly grows an enormous, inoperable tumor. It’s Christmas and Antonio, who’s 48 and the love of Patty’s life, is going to die.
– Powerful, laughterful Debbie who recovered from brain tumors and seeming-happily renewed her vows with her seeming-splendid husband this summer filed for divorce on Thursday because the bastard’s been beating the shit out of her for years.
– The ex-parent of the two (more) golden retrievers Jeff’s adopted is a three-time breast cancer survivor. She finally got married to a wonderful man. She warned him that her health was chancy at best. He married her because he loved her. They had two golden retrievers. Then he dropped dead of an aneurism.
– Reflection: in the past month, my father’s estranged sister Jean died of an illness none of us knew about, and our very close Uncle Lou died of being 98 years old. Jean’s face was pockmarked. Uncle Lou drove small me around in his red-leather-upholstered Cadillac and knew about Shakespeare.

I told my mom about the préfecture to cheer us up. We laughed, we said I love you, we hung up.

I went out for more Christmas presents. I listened to the Nields and skipped happily across the Pont Neuf. The holiday decorations throughout the city are gaudy but warm, some are beautiful. The illustrated edition of Voyage au bout de la nuit that I wanted to get for Chris turned out to be hideous and cartoony. I flirted happily with the bookseller girl about it. I ate a pain au chocolat.

(This is a kind of delirium. A kind of insanity, a psychic disjuncture or a happy schizophrenia that I’ve caught over here.)

I wandered through the quartier des antiquaires and stumbled onto the place in front of St Etienne, where I’d just been, leaving the préfecture. I was struck. I went inside. It’s one of the most beautiful churches I’ve ever seen. Awe struck me into a pew to… kneel. I don’t know how to pray. So for the first time ever I lit a candle and for the first time since I was thirteen and went to Mass with my Nonna, I crossed myself and whispered something about healing and injustice and care for the weak. I don’t know how to pray and it came out as an angry hiss and by the look on her face the Virgin took it badly.

Suddenly I felt wretched and turned and all but ran back out into the sun.

Antonio is Catholic. I lit the candle for him.

I bought gloves for myself and for Lucile, and hilarious music boxes that play the Marseillaise for miscellaneous folks and failed for my parents and failed for others, too. So I paid way too much and in euros at that for a gorgeous dress which I have no occasion to wear but I look divine and a little diabolical too in that dress so I bought it, and besides it goes with my boots and maybe I should have a New Year’s party.

I bought some beers and came home and smoked some cigarettes and put on Tori Amos live and ate a yogurt.

I’m a legal resident of the Republic of France. Antonio is dying. I live a spectacular, almost-adventurous Life Abroad. Antonio is dying and Lou is dead and Jean disappeared one day and never came back. I look spectacular in that dress. Antonio is dying. Somebody on the radio is reading Verlaine to a hip-hop beat and I’m almost done with my beer; the phone is ringing and Antonio is dying. Lou is dead and Debbie’s husband beats the living shit out of her, and the vaults of St Etienne are so striking, and the tapestries, and the disrepair, but I don’t know how to pray. There was a choir practicing in the basement and the soprano just reached me as I stood in the nave gaping and trying to remember how to pray.

Lucile is cooking dinner and lighting candles. Cold and the smell of woodsmoke drift in through the open window.