Montparnasse

Check out the map of Montparnasse.
prv_fred-kann

chez Fred Kann

The artist Frederick Kann was one of Miller’s closest friends and benefactors during his early years in Paris. In the fall of 1930, Miller spent several weeks living with Kann in his apartment on the rue Froidevaux overlooking the Montparnasse cemetery.

Le Dôme

Le Dôme in Pictures: 1931

While perusing the online photo collection of the French Ministry of Culture, I stumbled upon a real gem: A set of ten photos of Le Dôme café taken in the winter of 1931-32. The pictures provide a unique glimpse of the café as Henry Miller would have known it.

Cinéma de Vanves

Cinéma de Vanves

As he neared his hotel, Miller was stopped in his tracks by the visage of Olga Chekhova staring out from a large theater poster a workman was busy plastering above the Cinéma de Vanves. “I’d like to see that film,” Miller called up to the man, “but I don’t have a cent in my pocket.”

Honeymoon

A Henry Miller Honeymoon

Paris in the winter had all the stark angles of bare sycamores and gray steeples, but we found it welcoming and friendly. So crucial to Miller during the Depression, food became our main preoccupation, being only a few blocks from the markets of Rue Montorgueil.

chez les Schranks

Bertha and Joseph Schrank

The Schranks, who are caricatured in Tropic of Cancer as Tania and Sylvester, provided Miller a free meal each Monday night. However, Miller’s principle interest in these visits was not food. Rather, he was smitten with Bertha …

August Strindberg

Pension Orfila

Like August Strindberg, Henry Miller found himself alone in Paris, tormented by the disintegration of his marriage and despairing over his lack of friends or resources. As he recounts in Tropic of Cancer, Miller walked into the Orfila one day and asked to be shown Strindberg’s room…

Public Urinals

Public Urinals

On this corner, where the Luxembourg Gardens join the rue d’Assas, once stood a public urinal that was a favorite stopping point for Henry Miller.

Ossip Zadkine

Musée Zadkine

Slip into a narrow alley on the rue d’Assas and you’ll discover a small museum which is the former home of Ossip Zadkine, better known to readers of Tropic of Cancer as Borowski…

chez Walter Lowenfels

chez Walter Lowenfels

Henry Miller’s friend Walter Lowenfels, the model for Cronstadt in Tropic of Cancer and Black Spring, was a surrealist poet and editor of several influential anthologies of American poetry.

Henry Miller cartoon

La Closerie des Lilas

In an October 1931 column for the Chicago Tribune, Wambly Bald published a short biographical sketch of Miller which claimed that he occasionally spent the night sleeping on the bench outside the Closerie des Lilas…

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