"(and buds know better/than books/don't grow)"

Moi, Rue de Nesle: par MollyThere are far too many things I want to say about the first half of Tuan’s book. I have long been fascinated by the concepts of space and place, with a particular interest in cities. My concentration focuses on city cultures specifically outlined in film and literature and also how these texts interact with realties and history of a particular city. I tend to focus on Paris and New York. They are my two favorite cities in which I have lived (sorry L.A., where I happen to be at the moment) and therefore have experienced these places in a very different manner than any I have only visited or merely read about. I am reminded of e.e. cummings’ “if everything happens that can’t be done”… When I studied abroad in Paris last spring, I took a course entitled “The Myth of Paris.” My professor seemed to know a superhuman amount regarding Parisian literature (Balzac, Baudelaire, Bréton, etc.), film, and even architecture. She took us on a Victor Hugo themed walking tour beginning, naturally, at Notre Dame and finishing in Place de Vosges (the oldest square in Paris, along the way noting details such as which parts of the same buildings were Medieval and which were post-Haussmann. What the course aimed to uncover were the ways in which Paris, an ever-changing city, had come to be defined through its history books, literature, film, et al. It has a larger than life quality drawn from the synergetic nature of countless conceptions added on top of one another. When discussing mythic space for Europeans, specifically the English, French, and German, Tuan states the following:

“Citizens with any knowledge of their country are seldom at a loss to compare and contrast its two halves in a language that indiscriminately mixes fact with fantasy. Countries have their factual and their mythical geographies. It is not always easy to tell them apart, nor even to say which is more important, because the way people act depends on their comprehension of reality, and that comprehension, since it can never be complete, is necessarily imbued with myth.” 98

I am intrigued by a multi-faceted definition of a historically rich, culturally vibrant, and artistically diverse city such as Paris. There are an unimaginable number of ways to understand and experience the city. Its constant motion only adds to the fuzzy mythic nature of Paris because it appears rather impossible to concretely define any entity that is always changing. Locals, temporary transplants, and tourists all have different knowledge—experiential, literary, etc.—that could answer the question: WHAT IS PARIS? I am trying to figure out if there is a way to even approach defining such complex place.

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