Friday, July 20, 2012

A "too tired to write a post" post

I was going to write up something last night about how I was too tired to write anything, but I was too tired.  By Monday I will be rested and relaxed, or so I hope.

Travelers of a certain energetic type would be shocked and perhaps embarrassed by how little I did and saw in France.  Day trips shrunk to half days, rest days were spontaneously added to the schedule, the length of meals expanded to civilized lengths.  No Barcelona, no Carcassonne, no Montpellier, even though these marvels were only a few hours away.  Still, I managed to fill the time while barely leaving Roussillon.

The two themes, so to speak, of the trip were food and – well, food is always a theme.  I was particularly successful with cheese, chocolates and produce, moderately so with wine and restaurants.  If in Perpignan, do not miss the narrow but superb Don Jamon – do not click if bothered by lovingly photographed Spanish ham.

The second theme was an attempt to make some sense of medieval France, inspired by a brief stop on the way south in Chartres and an attempt or two to look at Chartres Cathedral, all under the misleading guidance of Henry Adams and Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1904).  Adams’s book, like its ancestor,  John Ruskin’s Stones of Venice, moves far beyond the title edifices, discussing medieval French poetry, philosophy, and religion.  The book provides a strong misreading of the Middle Ages with Chartres as the primary text.

“Reading,” in the context of a cathedral, is just a metaphor, but in the case of Chartres a near literal one.  A couple thousand sculptural figures surround the entrances, and hundreds more are in the stained glass, all characters in stories, some of which I knew well and some that were utterly baffling.  The construction and history of the cathedral is yet another story.  Chartres is useful not just because it is a masterpiece, or an agglomeration of masterpieces, but because its story is, for a Gothic cathedral, unusually coherent.  The window that tells the story of The Song of Roland was hidden by renovation, so I will have to go back just for that.

Traveling, tourism, is like reading in this way – I read a complex book as preparation for the next reading, I visit a complex place to prepare for the next visit.  I was just getting somewhere, I think, when I have to leave, but next time I will be ready.  Or perhaps I will never return, never re-read, and the preparation is really for the next trip, the next book, or some trip or book in the distant future, one I have not yet imagined.

20 comments:

  1. The Chartres Cathedral is one of the most majestic and all around impressive places I've ever visited. An indoor/outdoor rival to Yosemite, the Sequoia National Park, much of the Coast Drive along Highway 1 in California, the Monterey Bay Peninsula in general, the ruins at Teotihuacan in Mexico, etc. Glad you got to visit it but sorry you missed Barcelona, my personal favorite city. Don Jamón, with or without the accent, sounds mouthwatering by the way. Of course, it's lunchtime where I live, and since it's my day off, I'm off to my favorite Portuguese restaurant. Maybe I'll have some presunto c/queijo fresco after reading about that place in Perpignan. Welcome back!

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  2. Somehow I don't think that an American restaurant named "Sir Ham" would be quite as appealing as its Perpignan counterpart.

    Welcome back. Chartres cathedral and jamon serrano alone would make for a great European trip (leaving nothing un-done and thus having no need to go back would not). I greatly look forward to reading more once you've recovered.

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  3. I agree that traveling is like reading, in that one feeds the other. The rood screen at Chartres--that was another place where I realized the first visit was in preparation for another. And we had lunch at the most marvelous restaurant in the shadow of the cathedral...

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  4. That choir screen - a masterpiece in its own right. Not medieval (16th c.) so Adams does not mention it, but by itself worth days of study. By "days" I mean whatever small portion of the day I have the energy to look carefully at carvings on a choir screen.

    I would love to spend a week in Chartres, visiting the cathedral every day, seeing it in different light. Side trips to Orléans, Versailles, Percheron country.

    I do not know why "Don Jamon" loses its accent. We specified that we would skip the most expensive ham, but otherwise just asked the owner to fix something up for us, and did he ever. The hams were all so different. All so delicious, so so delicious.

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  5. Welcome home. What did you get me?

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  6. How awkward. You can't have the wooden train. It's for my nephew. Oops, I hope he's not reading this.

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    1. Wooden train? Lucky for you the nephews I know can't read yet.

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  7. travel does tire ,I work shifts and often feel to tired to write posts ,all the best stu

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  8. I once went to Chartres ready for some big revelation or other when all I got was a man shouting "Phyllis" at the top of his lung in front of the cathedral. "Phyllis, Phyllis". It was heartbeaking but much less so when Phyllis dashed out of a bush, dishevelled and with her tongue hanging down, a hunting Pekinese. I was hoping for a lady in a long swaying dress.
    Oh the pictures in our head...

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  9. oops that last comment was from me, no idea why it changed the name

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  10. It is not travel as such that has become more difficult as I age, but that dang flight home.

    Phyllis seems like a nice name for a Pekinese. We unfortunately did not see her in Chartres.

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  11. What's the Adams like, aside from wrong? I read him for the first time a short while ago -- Democracy -- and liked his sentences; they're deft.

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  12. Brilliant, the Adams book is brilliant, at the sentence level and the productive idea level. What I really hadn't understood is that it is a companion to The Education - the past in one book, the future in the other.

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    1. Well if it's brilliant and inspired by Ruskin then I've got to look out for it. Gutenberg swears it can give me both books, the Mont Saint Michel and the Education as well. I'll see if I can locate hard copies first.

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    2. There were certain points where I am pretty sure Adams is subtly arguing with Ruskin, but my memory of Stones of Venice is insufficient to prove the case.

      And if I am just counting startling sentences, measuring their density, Ruskin is unbeatable. But Adams does his part.

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  13. Was there and saw that incredible doorway and the stone steps worn uneven by thousands who trod them. The centuries registered there. That struck me--and also how the light streaming through the windows threw shifting colors on the stone walls. Re travel and re-travel: I have to do everything two times now, if not three, to really get it in my head. Visit and re-visit, read and re-read. But to change the subject: I want to say hello! It's been too long. I lost your blog when I got a new computer--didn't make the data transfer--and I am trying to set it up again. Carol

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  14. Hi, wonderful to hear from you. We went to an organ concert in the cathedral. I spent the length of the performance watching the way the light through the windows changed as the sunset. Not so respectful of the organist, I fear. But the interior of the cathedral was a powerful distraction.

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    1. My moniker got mangled last time--let's see if it works now. Your blog continues to amaze me--and now the Spanish poets. I read some, back in the day (as they say), doing my 13 hrs in Spanish when gen ed requirements for a BA required those hours in a foreign language. Loved it--wish I had kept up (but I didn't). Iowa this fall, maybe>

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  15. Nope--still mangled--may try to fix that--C.

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  16. How funny - the apostrophe stumps the computer.

    Spanish poetry is stunning, but it is the early 20th century that is the 2nd Golden Age. Bécquer is just getting the language warmed up again.

    I should go write today's post.

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