Walking Paris with Henry Miller

As you cross the rue Laffitte, be sure to stop for a moment and glance up to your right toward the Sacré Coeur. For Henry Miller, the view of the Sacré Coeur from the rue Laffitte was an emblematic vision of the ideal Paris that had formed in his mind long before he arrived in Europe.

In New York, Miller had salivated at the vivid descriptions of Paris supplied by his friend Emil Schnellock. Though his own experiences in Paris were often troubled by hunger or homelessness, Miller could always count on a glance up the rue Laffitte to refresh his spirits. He would refer to the view again and again in his novels; First in Tropic of Cancer:

the Rue Laffitte which is just wide enough to frame the little temple at the end of the street and above it the Sacré-Cœur, a kind of exotic jumble of architecture, a lucid French idea that gouges right through your drunkenness and leaves you swimming helplessly in the past, in a fluid dream that makes you wide awake and yet doesn’t jar your nerves.¹

…and again in Tropic of Capricorn:

Sometimes, after a rain, riding swiftly through the city in a taxi, I catch fleeting glimpses of this Paris he [Emil] described; just momentary snatches, as in passing the Tuileries, perhaps, or a glimpse of Montmartre, of Sacré Coeur, through the Rue Laffite, in the last flush of twilight.²

…and in Quiet Days in Clichy:

Looking towards the Sacré Coeur from any point along the rue Laffitte on a day like this, an hour like this, would be sufficient to put me in ecstasy.³

Location

corner of rue Laffitte and rue La Fayette – See it on Google Maps

Notes

1. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 176
2. Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn, 41
3. Henry Miller, Quiet Days in Clichy, 6

Posted November 16, 2007 - trackback