SubscribeVilla Seurat
Henry Miller’s first sojourn at 18 Villa Seurat began in the summer of 1931 when he spent a month as the guest of Michael Fraenkel in the ground-floor apartment (to your left). Miller slept on the floor in a corner of the living room, which he later described in The Cosmological Eye:
The room is in a state of complete disorder, as usual. The enormous table is piled with books and manuscripts, with pencilled notes, with letters that should have been answered a month ago. The room gives the impression somehow of a sudden state of arrest, as though the author who inhabited it had died suddenly and by special request nothing had been touched.1
Fraenkel was enthused at having a companion to harangue about his favorite subject: the spiritual death of modern man. This “death theme” which Fraenkel laid out in his book, Werther’s Younger Brother, was a subject of endless discussion that summer and Miller warmed to the debate.
The death theme centered around the idea that modern society, gripped in an economic depression and enthralled by the specter of death manifest in the slaughter of the first world war, was spiritually deceased. Any attempt to mend its wounds by means of political movements or economic adjustment was futile. The task of the artist then was not to struggle to repair society, but to accept its death on a personal level and dispose of the body.
The two men were well matched. Fraenkel saw in Miller a protégé who might live out his philosophy. And Miller found in the death theme a structure that helped order some of his own ideas and which lent a sense of purpose to his earlier failings. If he had failed as a father, husband and business man, then surely he was out of step with modern society and thus well on his way to accepting the spiritual death that would precede his artistic rebirth. “I have no money, no resources, no hopes”, he would write,“I am the happiest man alive.”2
The conversations in the Villa Seurat sparked Miller to begin writing the book that would become Tropic of Cancer. Fraenkel encouraged him to abandon the manuscript he had been laboring over (Crazy Cock) and begin writing the way he talked.3 As Miller wrote to his friend Emil Schnellock, “the process of losing myself began at the Villa Seurat.”4 He refashioned Fraenkel’s death theme for use in Tropic of Cancer, an early draft of which began, “I am living at the Villa Seurat, the guest of Michael Fraenkel. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere or a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.”5 Later, the name of Villa Seurat was changed to “Villa Borghese” and Fraenkel became “Boris”.
Miller’s second stay at this address began three years later when, on the very day that Tropic of Cancer was published—September 1, 1934, he moved into the top-floor studio at 18 Villa Seurat where he remained until May of 1939. The rent was negotiated by Anaïs Nin, who briefly shared the apartment. He reported to Schnellock that “it is a marvelous place—with sun parlor, bath, steam heat, space, etc. and the price has been reduced to 700 francs a month for me, tout compris.”6 And to Fraenkel he announced:
I am singing and I want the neighbors to hear. I am moving in, my neighbors. Moving in to the Villa Seurat. I am the last man alive. They say these are bad times. Perhaps they be. But they are good times for me. I move with the changing climate. I move with the sun and the light. With the birds. With the wildflowers.7
Miller’s gregarious nature soon made the Villa Seurat a hive of artistic activity. Friends and fellow writers dropped in frequently. Alfred Perlès relates that the apartment was host to “cranks, nuts, drunks, writers, artists, bums, Montparnasse derelicts, vagabonds, psychopaths.” The visiting writer Cecily MacKworth recalled:
When the writing moment came, it made no special difference. If there were visitors, they went on playing jazz on the gramophone, reading their poetry aloud to each other or doing whatever they happened to be doing at the time. Henry just moved over into the table in the corner and started to write. Once he began, he went on, apparently never feeling the need to take a walk or go to bed. He wrote on without fuss; pages of Tropic of Capricorn piled up beside him while the red wine in the bottle at his elbow sank lower and lower.8
During this stretch, Miller completed Tropic of Capricorn, Black Spring and Max and the White Phagocytes. Perlès recalled the sense of electricity that Miller’s creativity produced:
Henry Miller radiated from No. 18. Radiated is the correct word. There was a quixotic mood of coercion hanging about the place, like an atmosphere. On approaching, the least sensitive visitor must have become aware of an exceptional presence. Even I who had by now known him for nearly six years, even I couldn’t mount the stairs to his first-floor studio without experiencing a queer feeling of exultation and enthusiasm. I seldom entered without pausing outside the door for a minute or two to take in the familiar Miller noises within. Usually it was the clatter of the typewriter I caught. The door to the sanctum was peppered with notices and avis importants: “If knock you must, knock after 11 A.M.”—”am out for the day, possibly for a fortnight.”—“La maison ne fait pas de crédit”—”Je n’aime pas qu’on m’emmerde quand je travaille.” And so forth.9
Villa Seurat was designed as an artist community in the nineteen-twenties and many famous artists lived on the short street. In addition to Miller, there were at various times: Antonin Artaud, Chaïm Soutine, Salvador Dali, Andre Derain and Chana Orloff. The street is named for the French pointillist painter Georges Seurat.
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Location
18 Villa Seurat – See it on Google Maps
Next Stop
Our next stop is on the rue de la Glacière. To get there, return to the entrance of Villa Seurat and turn right onto rue de la Tombe d’Issoire. Then take a right onto the rue d’Alésia and follow it under the railroad tracks. Once past the the Hôpital St. Anne, turn left onto the rue de la Glacière. Keep walking until you cross the boulevard Auguste Blanqui. 
Notes
- Henry Miller, “Max”, The Cosmological Eye, 25-26
- Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 1
- Michael Fraenkel, The Genesis of Tropic of Cancer, 25
- Henry Miller, Letters to Emil, 116; April 11, 1933
- Michael Fraenkel, The Genesis of Tropic of Cancer, 43
- Henry Miller, Letters to Emil, 149; May 12, 1934
- Michael Fraenkel, The Genesis of Tropic of Cancer, 48-49
- Cecily Mackworth, Ends of the World, 5
- Alfred Perlès, My Friend Henry Miller, 132
