Literary Horizons Blog 1

PARIS

Literary Wanderings in Paris, September 2011.

Researching the Death of Mozart's Mother in 1778 -

A Trip Down My Own Memory Lane in 1957 -

Voltaire's Neighbour.

Thorkild Hansen 'A Studio in Paris' from 1947 in my rucksack.

                                  

            

about me

      "Je ne regrette rien …"

Jeg fortryder intet,
     - Edith Piaff:            

After turbulent years with travels, men, children, lectures, running a business etc… the order is quite arbitrary … I married Wolfgang and Düsseldorf became my hometown for the following eight years. I spent my time there studying the German language and literature as well as the culture that forms our private lives. And then we moved to Denmark.

We live in the farmhouse pictured above along with 2-3 super-sized guard dogs; the breed may change, but right now we are looked after by the mastiffs in the picture. 

I do not smoke, I do not drink (and there is no gallivanting with girls J), I am oblivious to all current food-trends, but nonetheless, the sum of all our sins is, as we well know, constant.

After all the many books help determine how ‘small’ a dwelling one can inhabit, so e-books and the various digital reading-plates which will eventually allow me to minimize my collection to take up no more than an Ikea bookcase or even just a modest shelf above the headboard are all welcome inventions.

By the way, the e-book is actually a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, a collection of text, sound, photos, little films and much more. Everything that a regular book cannot provide, but which is available through websites and blogs.

A two-year German writers workshop was of tremendous worth, and so far I have produced six books, both printed and electronic, of which the first was published in 2002 at the renowned publishing house, elkjaeroghansen, and it became a bestseller before the publishing house had to close down some years later.

The rest, including the 4^th revised and extended edition of ‘Constanze Mozart’ as well as the e-books and audio-books, have been published through my own company, Amadeo Publishing, which is a not entirely unheard of publishing company these days.

I have written articles, given lectures, recorded my own books as well produced the music that accompanies the texts, which has afforded me the distinguished title of music producer, NCB.   

Most of my books are now translated into English. (Iben Philipsen) and German (Monika Wesemann).

I am a frontier writer of genres as diverse as biographical historical novels, lyricism and poetry, fairy tales, reportage, journals, literary fruits and much more. Basically, I’ll produce anything the instrument is capable of. J

On top of that there is the writing itself … rewriting again, and again, and again… the process of publishing, including e-books, the hassles of marketing as well as reviews, both good and bad (nothing short of crime novels at times J), arrogant media people (far from all, but enough!) TV-interviews and programs, in short, I have been through the entire treadmill that constitutes the birth of an extensive novel.  

Take ‘Constanze Mozart’ as an example; it is just short of 400 pages, it includes numerous characters and it spans different historical eras between 1756 and 1841, all the way from the showy rococo era to the snobbish and prudish Biedermeyer era, as Otto Rung named that particular time. It is quite an effort to keep track of it all, and it demands meticulously kept archives on each character, including their different hair-colour at different times, their age and perhaps even a short list of their peculiarities etc.

Not to mention the writings of notes. Tons of little yellow post-it notes, messages to myself left on the stairs, the computer, the mirror in the bathroom, on the fridge … ‘Don’t forget to …’

Furthermore, it takes years of intensive research to come to grips with the specific eras as well as the factual background, which is fascinating and joyful work, but it also demands both perseverance and patience.

Oscar Wilde called it ‘Labour of Love’ or ‘Overnight with Labour and yet all Spontaneous’

During the process, your senses start vibrating … sounds, smells, visuals, dreams etc., which indicates that now is the time to put your impressions down on paper, and from there much text will often follow a certain direction all of its own. Perhaps it is useful, perhaps not, but either way, it is deeply fascinating.

Research is overall a very important word in my life, regardless of what I do; and before, during and even after a manuscript has morphed into a printed book, the brain continues to be on the look-out for new sources, details, new approaches to the subject for the next book or perhaps merely the next edition.

Because a biographical novel must spellbind the reader in much the same way, it did the writer. We’ll have none of the cold distancing. Virginia Woolf said it best,

// ... often, when we finish reading a novel and put it aside, some scene or other stays with us, large as life, and one of the characters will continue her life deep within our minds, and often when we later read a poem or another novel, we are overwhelmed by a sense of recognition, as if something was lodged in our memory that we already knew.//

However, … is it at all possible to discover anything new about Mozart? After all, there has been numerous round ‘birthdays’ that have been celebrated globally, over and again?

Oh, yes indeed, there is plenty more. Not least about his mother!

In view of all this, I feel like sharing my experiences -  as a warning but hopefully also to help and encourage others, not least you, currently reading this, regardless of whether you have published anything or not … or perhaps just not yet …

Maybe you have already tired of knocking on doors, doors of publishing houses that is, but don’t give up! Click onto www.forlaget-amadeo.com, go to ‘About the Publishers’ and read the article by author Trisse Gejl and my own comment. These two articles reveal a thing or two worth knowing. Four publishing houses - four years!

Following each rejection, I went over the story and rewrote it again and again and again - something that seldom makes a story worse!

As Hemmingway put it, ‘The first draft is always shit!’

But I’ll get back to that in future blogs and in connection with the book I am currently writing, ‘Madam Mutter’ as Mozart called his mother in a silly little rhyme:

//Liebe Madam Mutter     

Ich esse gern Butter!// 

(Darling Madam Mutter

I don’t mind eating Butter)

He wrote plenty of those rhymes for his mother. The rhymes he wrote for his father, on the other hand, were of a very different kind.

Anne Maria Mozartin, which was how she used to sign her name, was much more important to Mozart’s music that hitherto assumed. Not all his musical genes came from Papa Leopold; they also originated from his maternal granddad, Wolfgang Nikolaus Pertl. Through marriage German has become my mother tongue of choice, a linguistically fruitful combination, which is always the case when two languages kiss J. And so I booked an eight-day trip with Lloyd Touristik in Bremerhaven, enticingly titled:                                     "Literarische Streifzüge in Paris"                                 (Literary Wanderings in Paris)         It didn’t really have much to do with Mozart, and I had long since concluded my research for “Madame Mutter”, which I did following “Constanze Mozart” and “Seven Fragments of a Mosaic”, but I did need to find out more about Anna Marie’s last journey. And I wouldn’t mind brushing up on my knowledge of the Parisian writers from the same era; Balzac, Proust, Hugo, Benjamin, Hemmingway, Rilke, Baudelaire, Pound, Zola as well as the man who was then the new star on the Parnassus, Albert Camus.        Our German guide was a Master of Arts (in German and French) and her main subject was French writers from the 19th century, so she was well-prepared for the task.

   

Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac with ink on his fingers; tatty, messy and on the heavy side. Everything about Balzac is exaggerated, not least his production of novels. And his ingestion of coffee. Balzac was utterly addicted to coffee, which is partly because he wrote at night, I guess. Han sought out and purchased his own blend of coffee, which consisted of Bourbon, Martinique and Mocca. He concocted the syrupy brew himself, and in huge amounts, as he consumed close to 60 cups a night. His description of how coffee affected his imagination is quite colourful: ‘Coffee slides down to the stomach and sets everything into motion; ideas progress like a huge army battalion on the battlefield. The battle begins. Memories advance by leaps and bounds as if they were attacking columns. The light cavalry appears in a stately gallop, the artillery of logic storm forward with its grouped audience. Characters dress up and paper becomes cowered in ink. The battle is begun and ended amid a stream of black fluid, just as a real battle is smothered in black smoke’.

                                           

 From Balzac's La Femme Supérieure .. 

However, the coffee-habit backfired on him. After decades of sleep-depravation on account of really strong coffee. Balzac wrote, ‘The days when inspiration was sparked by extremely strong coffee and lasted all night are becoming fewer and fewer. Now, coffee will only succeed in stimulating my brain for 15 hours – a devastating development. And I suffer terrible stomach pains’. Voltaire and Rue de Beaune  In 1957, I lived in 31, Rue de Beaune, in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. Back then, it was a rather neglected area; dirty and run down. But there were all the shops that belonged in a small local community; the baker’s, the cobbler’s, the butcher’s, and the wine merchant on the corner, where you could taste the wine before you bought it ... in large wine glasses. There was also a barrel where snails slithered across salt to ‘de-slime’. It was awful! Today, it is a lot more elegant, and there are expensive antiques shops like the ones up on Quai Voltaire, and the apartments and studios are sublet at rather steep prices. I loved Rue de Beaune! The mere fact that Voltaire stayed in 1, Rue de Beaune from February 10th 1778 until he died on May 30th, in a house that belonged to the Marquis de Vilette ... about 500 yards from my room ... was enough to set my imagination off. The old musketeer barracks and stables lay behind the facades of no. 10-16, on the other side of the street. Voltaire would have heard the noises coming from the stables as well as smelled the horse-droppings in Rue de Pont, as Rue de Beaune was called back then.

Caption: The first picture is of the corner-house where Voltaire died. Today it is 27, Quai Voltaire, but back then it was Quai Théatins.  No. 27 was not the main building, 1, Rue de Beaune was… Which is pictured at the bottom with the somewhat battered blue door. The two middle photographs: on the left, the window to the courtyard in the building where Voiltaire died, probably to get as far away as possible from the caustic stench from the many tanneries along the River Seine, as well as the stench from the river itself mixed with the smell of rotting meat, faeces and the likes. You can just glimpse the blue street door.  On the right, we see a glimpse of the other side of the yard, which then and now belongs to 3, Rue de Beaune, where the Danish painter Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg lived in a small room in the attic from 1810-13.

         

 

Voltaire also stayed in 1, Rue de Beaune in 1722. Back then the house was owned by the Marques de Berniéres and the Marchioness was Voltaire’s mistress. In his youth, he was very fond of women and champagne.

Later he joined the team of coffee drinkers, and he gulped it down in huge amounts; 40 cups a day according to Frederick the Great, who spent much time next door to Voltaire in his beautiful palace, Sans Souci, where Voltaire had his own room, decorated in fashionable yellow, of course. Everything was yellow, from the stripes in ladies’ frocks to the walls in their rooms, though not in Frederick’s own rooms.

Frederick the Great, the soldier-king as he was known, spent most of his time in the company of men – his soldiers, or the best European brains whom he invited for evenings of discussions or music.

He did not spend much time with his beautiful wife, Elisabeth Kristina of Braunschweig-Bevern, whom he had practically been forced to marry, and as we all know, that won't help the production of heirs. So they had no children. 

She was present, though, at the musical soirees; like a piece of decorative porcelain, despite the fact that she was a very intelligent and well-read Lady. She wrote poetry, as did her husband. However, Voltaire once made fun of his poems in a letter definitely not meant for the eyes of Frederick the Great; and that was the end of their friendship.

When Frederick returned from the battlefield in 1763, he had not seen his wife for six years, and he merely commented, ‘Madame ist korpulenter geworden’ (Madame has put on weight). Surely, that must be one of history’s least elegant greetings.

When Voltaire returned to Paris in 1778, having been banned from the city for years, he was seriously ill, and he knew that he would soon die. He was still in high spirits, though, and he was present at the opening of Iréne, in which he was presented as a hero. Then he took to his bed; but unlike his usual modus operandi, in which he, like any other serious writer, would prefer the solitude of work to gossipy company, he now gracefully welcomed all and sundry. And half of Paris flocked to his sick-bed. On February 12th, Madame Deffand wrote Horace Walpole, her ‘pen friend’ in England, ‘Yesterday, Voltaire received 300 visitors ... The entire Parnassus, right from the bottom all the way up to the top...’ Unfortunately, the church also made an appearance, Abbot Gaultier from Saint-Sulpice was particularly insistent, though he did not gain entry right away. Other members of the clergy also tried to get Voltaire to confess his sins and return to the church. In the end, he succumbed, as he did not want to be thrown in a rubbish dump ... which appeared to be the only thing that could scare the otherwise tough little man out of his wits, in this life as well as the afterlife. So he confessed in writing and very diplomatically. On February 25th Voltaire started spitting blood. Abbot Gaultier tried to administer the Holy Communion, but Voltaire evaded by way of his well-known irony, ‘Mr. Abbot, can you not see that I am still spitting blood; you must be careful not to mix the blood of Our Good Lord with mine!’ And the last of his famous words to the clerics were delivered on May 30th, when Abbot Gaultier passionately tried to get Voltaire to accept the divine nature of Jesus Christ. But Voltaire turned to the wall and answered, ‘Go away! Let me die in peace!’ When Voltaire drew his last breath later on May 30th, Abbot Gaultier got his revenge by refusing to bury his fellow-townsman in consecrated ground. Saint-Sulpice had three graveyards, but no room for Voltaire. However, Gaultier allowed his body to be moved to the abbey of Scelliére, where Voltaire’s brother was one of the monastery’s two monks.  The trip there was almost incomprehensibly dramatic, but I would need so much more space to tell that story. In 1791 though, Voltaire’s body was returned to Paris, amidst much cheering, and his earthly remains were laid to rest in the Pantheon, surrounded by the other great men of France. In 1897 the following was universally accepted: The Danish writer Georg Brandes describes how Voltaire ended up in a rubbish dump after all, in his major work, Francois de Voltaire: ... One night in the month of May in 1814, his bones were taken from the led coffin in the Pantheon and put into a sack that was subsequently placed in a carriage behind the church, which proceeded  through the dark and barren streets to Barriére de la Gare, the site of a huge rubbish dump. Other members of this group (whose leader was ‘Mr. de Puymorin’) had dug a deep hole, where these remains hence disappeared. However, in 1897, due to the above metioned gossip, Voltaire’s coffin in the Pantheon was opened, and his well-preserved corpse was right where it was supposed to be. Mozart’s mother died one a month after Voltaire on Juli the 3rd 1778, and was buried from Saint-Sulpice the following day, July 4th. The question nonetheless remains, where is she now?

Au Pair Girl In my life as an au pair, I was fortunate, just as Napoleon demanded of his generals. My formidable luck came in the shape of Madame Delhumeau, mother of the three children I had to look after. Having attended the French School in Copenhagen from the 5th grade, which was the grade they started French lessons, and thus having quite a few years of school-French to help me along, turned out to be rather fortuitous as well. Madame was a translator of four languages, including German and English, and as I had spent a year au pairing in Germany as well as a year in England, I felt quite confident in both languages, in case my French proved insufficient. In spite of long days working at an American airbase quite some distance from Paris, Madame, as I used to call her, still managed to introduce me to the Parisian writers from the19th century and French culture in general. After Madam put down her books and went upstairs to her husband, I continued reading Stendhals ‘Le Rouge et le Noir’ wearing my knitted cap and wrapped in my duvet, which I had brought all the way from Denmark through Germany and England to France. I gulped down gallons of tea and enjoyed every second spent in the company of the French writers. So what if your toes get cold, when your head is up there on the French Parnassus. I devoured the French authors, read far into the night with only a torch, like some pupil at a boarding school. It was back then that I discovered the joys of quiet nights; the strange silence that allows an imaginary presence to manifest itself. I became the characters in the novels. I put the book down and elaborated on the events in my dream world. Wonderful hours spent in my large 17th century room situated just above the gate, in the same little apartment where the family’s two eldest girls, Valerie and Herveline, three and four years old respectively, also had their rooms … because the children were unmistakably my responsibility, affording me the role of surrogate mother, and we became very close. I cried, when I had to leave them, and I missed them for a very long time. In terms of the current domestic debate about au pairs in our country, Madame would make quite a role model! But enough of that for now. The only bathroom in the family’s apartment was right at the back and it had a door that led to the kitchen stairs, and the only light came through a little window in the bathroom. Well, light, might be overstating it a little, the bathroom faced a narrow shaft, so occasionally a beam of light would make its way through … and only when the sun was directly above the back yard, I hasten to add. Other than that, it was eternal dusk in that bathroom. Madame and Monsieur occupied the floor above us, on what used to be called the Bel Etage, even in Denmark. When viewed from the street, the Bel Etage has quite high windows compared to the other floors of the building and inside there was approx. 12 feet to the high ceilings. My room was incredibly beautiful, but derelict. Not from neglect but from hundreds of years wear and tear. ‘The walls whisper’, as Goethe wrote, and I just had to lift my head from the desk and there were the former residents, going about their daily business. The walls had beautiful soft-grey paneling. The four-poster bed stood right next to the wall, with its end protruding perpendicularly into the tiny room, specifically designed for that exact purpose. When you wanted to go to bed, you had to go through one of the two narrow gaps, either side of the foot-end. There were old, embroidered curtains at the foot of the bed, a sort of window, and when I pulled them apart, the mirror was directly on the opposite wall. I look like a framed painting of a harlot and I flirted with that idea for at short while. The broad floorboards, blackened by lacquer and wax, squeaked not only when I walked across them myself, but also several times in the course of the night, when I was especially attentive. Madame used to tease me, saying it was a rat that had come to say hello. But with or without rat, I was too afraid to sleep in the four-poster bed so Madame organized some sort of camp bed, which I placed against the foot-end. And on that, I slept like a baby for 15 months.  However, in winter it was freezing unless you lit up the fireplace all during the day as well as the night, or you could, which was what Madame did, place an electric heater in the room and keep it going 24/7. Mozart and his mother had to make do with one fireplace in the house they stayed in. However, it could also be used for cooking meals, if and when they couldn’t afford to fetch ready cooked meals from a café. Which they could not. She would never light the fire until her son was about to return home. In order to save money. Madame’s choice of 19th century writers … with a few detours to the greats from earlier eras … remained my most important teachers in the years to come. Right up until I moved to Germany where new literary giants entered the stage. And so I reckoned that it would be all right for me to play truant for a few days during our ‘literary excursions’, enabling me to search for more information on Mozart’s mother. At least, those 15 months in Paris were a highly defining experience for me, and one to which I often return for inspiration.            Read more about my time in Rue de Beaune in the short story ‘The Angel Nathanael’ from ‘Low-flying Angels’.