Here in my final blog about a splendid week’s holiday in the South of France, I’ll let my camera do the talking but it should be sufficient to tell you that I spent a memorable Monday visiting the beautiful city of Montpellier, a short train journey away from Sète where we’d been staying.

So what was all the excitement about, you wonder. Montpellier is the capital city of the Languedoc-Roussillon region of Southern France, it has one of the oldest universities in the world (established 1289), it was the birthplace of the saintly Saint Roch (1295 – 1327), who gave up his wealth to tend victims of the Black Death and ended up catching it but then being cured after his wounds were licked by a friendly dog. Montpellier University was home at various times to the Italian poet Petrarch (1304 – 1374), inventor of the Petrarchan Sonnet, the spooky pseudo-prophet Nostradamus (1503 – 1566) who told us that the end of the world was going to happen some time ago and it didn’t (nice to know that, Nostradamus, old mate), Montpellier University also employed literature’s bawdiest wild man, François Rabelais (1483/94 – 1553) who advised us all to eat, drink and be merry. I think I’m on his side with this one.

So, as you can see, we’ve arrived in Montpellier – enjoy yourself wandering around this beautiful and highly entertaining city that still seems to delight in the spirit of Rabelais.

Let’s say au revoir to this inspiringly down-to-earth region of France with the voice of the great singer-songwriter, Georges Brassens – just because I can:

The post Montpellier – photogenic city of prophecies, poetry and fun. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

My week in Sète, in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of Southern France, was quietly pleasure-filled. There was a lot to do and to see including the glorious city of Montpellier  (the subject of a later blog) but there was also time to contemplate the reflections on water that I could see from my apartment. Sète, I think, is a good place to come to if you’d like to spend some time letting your brain find its own way home.

I had taken a small apartment in one of the main streets, above a shop and across the road from a small friendly bar. There was even welcoming graffiti (I hope) by the front door.

I was up on the second floor, far from street level up a long windy and, somehow, very French staircase that had the ability of making the mundane look as if anything was possible.

The constant flow of the marine landscape outside, encouraged the inside of the flat to take on its own inner calm and it proved to be a peaceful haven except on the morning when a builder began work upstairs at seven in the morning.  But then, out of chaos comes the calm, or so they say.

I grew quite attached to the little red leather chair which swivelled round to cater for my delight in contemplative fidgeting. I confess to enjoying chairs that allow me to change the view on impulse.

So there it was, a room with a view that was always changing with the light on the Marina’s Mediterranean water…

and a sky alive with inquisitive gulls.

and Qigong teaches you to salute the sun as it rises on each new day.

No, no! Arise! The future years unfold.
Shatter, O body, meditation’s mould!
And, O my breast, drink in the wind’s reviving!
A freshness, exhalation of the sea,
Restores my soul . . . Salt-breathing potency!
Let’s run at the waves and be hurled back to living!

Non, non! . . . Debout! Dans l’ère successive!
Brisez, mon corps, cette forme pensive!
Buvez, mon sein, la naissance du vent!
Une fraîcheur, de la mer exhalée,
Me rend mon âme . . . O puissance salée!
Courons à l’onde en rejaillir vivant.

Paul Valéry accompanied me out there sometimes but then there was my old friend Johannes Brahms who seldom leaves me alone either. As my chronological journey through the history of classical music nears its end, I took a recording of Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet with me holiday and, consequently, came to the end of my musical year, 1891.

Brahms, no stranger to depression, had decided that his composing days were over when he completed his beautiful String Quintet in G Major in 1890 but then he met the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld (1856 –1907) and, luckily for us, fell in love with the instrument’s mellow beauty and Mühlfeld artistry. The clarinet became, for Brahms, the instrumental equivalent of the rich vocal tones of his beloved mezzo-sopranos. Luckily for us too, he was to meet another young mezzo too that year and his composing continued.

 

Richard Mühlfeld (1856 –1907)

What has that got to do with Sète, I hear you ask. Well, nothing actually.  Except even though it was never intended, this wonderful music became the soundtrack to my stay in the South of France and a part of me will always see  Sète when I listen to it in future. We don’t need a reason though to listen to this glorious music but I like to think that the Paul Valéry of le cimetière marin would have liked it too:

The post From an apartment in Sète in the South Of France. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

In fact, it was a pleasure merely inhabiting the splendid space with its wonderful use of both natural and artificial light.

There were many paintings  by artists unknown to me from traditional and not always lovely history paintings, to landscapes not always as striking as this wonderfully tranquil painting by Courbet, an artist I had not associated with such Zen-like calm.

I was also delighted to make the acquaintance of the joyfully extrovert and shamelessly garish Sète artist Herve de Rosa.

 

Concentré Sétois (1987) by Herve di Rosa (b. 1957)

Another Sète artist, and di Rosa’s exact contemporary, is also brightly unshockable and not at all worried about raising a few blushes from those who find some of his imagery a little too direct for delicate constitutions.

Fernande by Robert Combas (b. 1957)

Visiting Sète in mid-March, it was good too to see another Sète artist, François Desnoyer, whose scorchingly hot landscape paintings of his native town showed me just what might await any of us who decided to visit in high summer.

 

 

La porte de Sète by François Desnoyer (1894 – 1972)

Then there was a room of 19th Century academic history paintings which, to be honest, didn’t really hold my attention but I did find Sylvestre’s painting of the Sack of Rome  sufficiently ‘Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer’ for me to admire its kitsch energy. He could’ve cast Charlton Heston as the young Vandal.

Le sac de Rome (1896) by Joseph Nöel Sylvestre (1847 – 1926)

The gallery had been advertising its new exhibition all over town but I have to confess that I didn’t know exactly what this Fata Morgana exhibition was going to be about. It was only when I got to the gallery that I realised that Fata Morgana is the name of a small but exclusive Montpellier publisher that for fifty years has been publishing beautiful fine art books of collaborations between artists and poets.

There were fifteen rooms full of these sensational publications and wall displays of some of the original artwork.

 

For someone like me who had come out for the afternoon to see the paintings, the day had soon turned into an event about poetry and art in partnership and there were so many riches on offer, I was soon worried that I would not have enough time even to skim these amazing works.

 

 

 

Pierre Alechinsky and André Breton

 

Michel Butor and Joël Leick

 

Paul Valéry

So after getting to the end of the Fata Morgana show, it was much later than I’d anticipated when I finally got to the room at the top of the gallery that was specifically built to house an extensive collection of Paul Valéry manuscripts. No matter how engaging the rest of the exhibits had been, the
Paul Valéry room on its own was worth the visit to the gallery. I don’t have the space here to say much about this fascinating man, poet, artist, philosopher and anti-Fascist patriot who is Sète’s most famous son. The room makes great play on one of his most admired poems which also happens to have a strong Sète connection. The poem is Le cimetière marin (The graveyard by the sea) which was inspired by the marine cemetery that lies immediately in front of the gallery looking over the Mediterranean – possibly one of the most beautifully situated cemeteries in the world. The windows at one end of the room allow you to see it from Paul Valéry’s viewpoint and I, for one, will never read the poem the same way again after placing it into this context. It was this poem that led General De Gaulle to call for the poet to be buried here after his death shortly before the end of the Second World War.

from Le cimetière marin 

(The graveyard by the sea)

by Paul Valéry

(translated by C. Day Lewis)

This quiet roof, where dove-sails saunter by,
Between the pines, the tombs, throbs visibly.
Impartial noon patterns the sea in flame —
That sea forever starting and re-starting.
When thought has had its hour, oh how rewarding
Are the long vistas of celestial calm!

Ce toit tranquille, où marchent des colombes,
Entre les pins palpite, entre les tombes;
Midi le juste y compose de feux
La mer, la mer, toujours recommencee
O récompense après une pensée
Qu’un long regard sur le calme des dieux!

 

The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!
The huge air opens and shuts my book: the wave
Dares to explode out of the rocks in reeking
Spray. Fly away, my sun-bewildered pages!
Break, waves! Break up with your rejoicing surges
This quiet roof where sails like doves were pecking.

Le vent se lève! . . . il faut tenter de vivre!
L’air immense ouvre et referme mon livre,
La vague en poudre ose jaillir des rocs!
Envolez-vous, pages tout éblouies!
Rompez, vagues! Rompez d’eaux rejouies
Ce toit tranquille où picoraient des focs!

My day of looking at paintings turned out to be much more about poetry so it was no surprise to discover that that day was to see a poetry demonstration in the town centre in the afternoon. The so-called canons de paix pour 3 millions de poèmes (guns of peace for 3 million poems) that meant quite literally what the title suggests.

Those guns for peace certainly scattered their poems efficiently, benign litter on the streets of Sète that made a strong impact on everyone who passed by – including the men employed to sweep up the remains.

Each piece of coloured paper is printed with a French poem, there for the taking.

It was a lovely idea and I was glad to finish my day of poetry picking up five poems at random, pleased to find that one of them was by  Le Sylphe by Paul Valéry.  I plan to make a poem out of some of the lines in these five poems as a souvenir of my trip to the excellent town of Sète where there is poetry in its very DNA.

 

 

 

The post Looking for fine art and finding poetry at Le musée Paul Valéry, Sète appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Last week, I got back from seven days in the delightful Mediterranean town of Sète in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of Southern France where I rented an apartment over-looking the Marina in this small port town which is punctuated with canals earning it the name of the French Venice. Here though, I was far away from the madding crowds of Venice because Sète, so far, has escaped the influx of tourist crowds even, apparently,  at the height of the summer.

In March, it was the perfect destination for an Englishman wanting to get away from it all for a week even if the sun doesn’t always shine. Actually it shone more than I deserved at this time of year and it only rained when it wanted to.

Standing on the top of Mont St Clair, the town’s very own  and very steep hill, I could work out some of the geographical complexities of this town which is very nearly an island with the Mediterranean on one side and the vast inland lagoon known as the Étang de Thau on the other.

Sète is a seaport but it is also a seaside resort with miles of sandy beaches which look like most of the Mediteranean coast must’ve looked in the days before the Med got, well, too popular for comfort.

I don’t know how long it will be before this charming place will escape internationalisation but, walking along that practically empty beach last week, I dared to hope that it won’t be any time soon.

I was in the white building in the centre of this picture, on the second floor with pleasant balcony that let me take in the views.

I was high enough up to get under-flown by the seagulls who looked as if they were reverting to their taste for fish rather than the contents of holiday makers’ picnic baskets or rubbish bins.

I was aware of their beady eyes scrutinising me as I sat there but they decided, obviously, that I wasn’t of much interest when there was a little fishing fleet offering much tastier pickings.

Fishing here, it seems, is often a family affair and it was good being able to watch the evening’s dinner being carried ashore every morning.

Just as welcome was the little late-night bar across the road which opened in the mornings to serve excellent espresso coffee allowing me to appreciate that, yes, I really was in France.

The people of Sète look decidedly French but with a touch of Italian.

Inside the bar, everything was pretty French too. The Au bout de la rue (‘the end of the road’) was just about perfect if you want to visit France as its most unpretentious and welcoming. After a few days I felt like I had lived here all my life.

I wasn’t working, of course, so I shouldn’t assume that everyone else was just enjoying themselves but the people of Sète give a good impression of knowing how to keep themselves entertained.

I was happy enough to wander round town between cups of coffee and others seemed content to saunter too in a place where the views are often surprising.

Life here, it seemed, doesn’t have to be a constant rush.

There was never very far to go between bars that let you sit either inside or out.

In fact, I could have got dangerously used to café-crawling.

I was truly charmed by the town’s unpretentious manners and I sincerely hope that it manages to stay that way.

Street level is special in a town where there are numerous tree-lined urban spaces and, of course, always somewhere to sit and to drink coffee.

No, I was in town to see my son Henry who has been living in the South of France since January – lucky man.

He tells me he is loving la vie francaise and he does appear to have fitted into the scene with ease.

Later that night, we went with some of his friends to a bar called  La mauvaise réputation (‘the bad reputation’)  just round the corner from the apartment. I liked the name  and felt it fitted the mood of the place but, at the time, I didn’t realise that it was named after a famous song written and performed by one of  Sète’s most famous sons.

Georges Brassens (1921 – 1981) was a singer-songwriter, a respected poet who grew up the tough way and who never quite gave up his anarchist instincts. It seemed entirely appropriate that he should’ve been born here in this delightfully independent-minded town.

The post A relaxed week in the South of France at Sète appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.