It is said that the Normans do not like to talk much
It's not that they don't like to talk, it's that they don't like to answer.
Which is not the same thing.
-Fred Vargas-
Carmelites Square
Wooded square in the historic center of Rouen.
In the center of the square is a statue of Gustave Flaubert , a copy inaugurated in November 1965. The statue
an original of the sculptor Léopold Bernstamm, inaugurated on October 20, 1907 near the Saint-Laurent church, was removed in 1941 under the Vichy regime to melt his 380 kg of green bronze.
Mister Gustave Flaubert.
"We meet only when we bump into each other and each carrying his torn bowel in his hands accuses the other who picks up his own." -Gustave Flaubert-
Urban collages on the square - Spring / Summer 2016
"His titles" in the trees
"God's finger sticks everywhere." -Gustave Flaubert / Dictionary of preconceived ideas-
"The author in his work must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere." -Gustave Flaubert / Letter-
"We spend the best of our life to say "It's too early" and then "It's too late"." -Gustave Flaubert / Letter-
"Nothing has given me more contempt for success than considering at what price one gets it." -Gustave Flaubert / Correspondence-
"We live very well without knowing ourselves, let alone without being known to others." -Gustave Flaubert-
... " when the place is dressed in rainy colors " ...
"The weak places of a book must be better written than the others." -Gustave Flaubert-
"The most beautiful works are those where there is the least material." -Gustave Flaubert-
View on Notre-Dame cathedral from the Carmes' square
Titre Écriture
Between the Croix de Pierre district and Place Beauvoisine.
Beauvoisine originates from the name Beauvais , "Beauvaisine street" because it was the axis to take the direction of Beauvais from the city center.
Many half-timbered houses, bourgeois residences & mansions show the opulent past of this district. When the bourgeoisie families left it for places they considered worthier of their rank - the modernity of the time no longer corresponding to their needs-the residences of the Beauvoisine district were converted into popular housing while the craftsmen installed their workshops in the interior courtyards.
A popular atmosphere that gave the neighborhood a different face.
The arrival of the tram in the city suddenly changed the "village", the landscape. No more horses & harnesses in private yards which no longer had the same appeal for the bourgeoisie who lived in this district.
If these interior courtyards are now private, it is always a pleasure when one of them is open, one can then admire from the street the architectural "wealth" of yesteryear & imagine the village as the Beauvoisine neighborhood was back then.
We also find in the district the Natural History Museum and the Departmental Museum of Antiquities as well as the hotel of Learned Societies , headquarters of the Academy of Sciences, Fine Arts and Arts of Rouen and of the Free Emulation Society of Seine-Maritime .
In the shade of a porch.
Hospital Street
Detail -Hospital Street-
At the intersection of Ganterie and Beauvoisine streets
"A hedge between neighbors preserves friendship." -French proverb-
"Choosing your neighbors is more important than choosing your home." -Chinese proverb-
"In the time of the bourgeoisie" Beauvoisine District
Hospital street
"Village" Hospital street
... in the detail of "Beauvoisin" ...
"The Fountain of the Crosses" -Crossroads of the Crosses-
"Don't have neighbors if you want to live in peace with them." -Alphonse Karr-
"Well in his house that from his neighbors is loved" -French proverb-
"Such a philosopher loves the Tartars, to be excused from loving his neighbors" -Jean-Jacques Rousseau / Emile or Education-
"We have far fewer neighbors in a town than in a village." -Jean-Marie Gourio / The Great Café of The Short Counter-
"Beautiful" -a porch left open-
"If my beard burns, the neighbors come and light their pipes to it ." -Turkish proverb-
"Don't call for help at night. You could wake up your neighbors." -Stanislas Lem-
"The beginning of hygiene is hating the microbes of neighbors." -Rejean Ducharme / The Winter of Strength-
"Man who is proud of his virtue often becomes a scourge for his neighbors." -Gandhi / Letters to the Ashram-
"We are more apprehensive about our neighbours' opinion than our own." -Marc-Aurelius / Thoughts for myself...-
"Books, too, are neighbors - dream neighbors, who only come to your house when you call them, and leave as soon as you don't want to see them." -Amélie Nothomb / The Catilinaires-
... " It smells good inPoterne street" ...
-In April 2017-
"You have only one life, use it to make the one of your neighbors lighter." -Félix Leclerc-
"A nation is a society united by illusions about its ancestors, and by the common hatred of its neighbors." -William Inge-
"Neighbours: Trying to get services from them without costing anything." -Gustave Flaubert / Dictionary of preconceived ideas-
"Why are we in the world, if not to amuse our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?" -Jane Austen / Pride and Prejudice-
"Flaubert is still there"
Imposing, majestic in the middle of this bare square in winter
Respect, Mr. Flaubert!
Still alive
"When youth rub shoulders with History"
Camille Saint-Saëns College
I will not tell stories about the history of this building from which remains this superb original porch, imposing even if eroded by time. The college website had the rich idea of creating a page dedicated to the history of this priory which has now become a college. Click here to read its origins.
I wonder if the students realize how lucky they are to study in such a building, to hear the slats cracking under their feet. Are they interested in its past or do they only think when the bell will ring and that they can finally flee this place?! They will certainly think of it nostalgically when they will be adults.
Of course, this college has not frozen in time and modernity rubs shoulders with the old with more or less happiness. Between the charm of old architecture and this modern white block attached to the priory to become one, my choice is made: the builders of yesteryear had gold in their hands and flourishing ideas in their heads!
The porch of Camille Saint-Saens College
And in ancient French, it gives ...?!
Hospital Street
Its name comes from the King's Hospital founded in the "13th century", where the fathers of the Oratory were established from 1635.
"At the drugstore bookstore, he still manages to talk with a girl ... who is barely fancied." -The Thinking Rose (1971) / Jean-Louis Curtis-
"A city ends up being a person." - Victor Hugo / Me, love, woman -
"Like a mother, a hometown can't be replaced." -Albert Memmi / The Salt Statue -
"If everyone was sweeping in front of their door, how clean the city would be!" - Russian proverb -
"The city allows you to see without being seen and to be seen without seeing." - Serge Daney / Cinés Cities -
"The city is like children, it sleeps with the lamp on." -Jacques Savoie / The Prince's Reef -
The Crosse fountain
Historically, it was the second fountain in the city of Rouen after that of the Gros-Horloge. Its name is taken from a badge with a stick on a sign of a house located just next to it.
"The ocean does not wait after the water of the fountains." -Moroccan proverbs-
It is dark: here rises higher the voice of the gushing fountains: and my soul, too, is a gushing fountain. -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche/So spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885) -
"The afternoon light illuminates the bamboos, the fountains babble deliciously, the sigh of the pines whispers in our kettle. Let us dream of the ephemeral and let ourselves wander in the beautiful madness of things." -Okakura Kakuzo/The Book of Tea (1976) -
"It does a great job for feverish people to see paintings depicting fountains, rivers and waterfalls. If someone, at night, cannot find sleep, let him begin to contemplate sources and sleep will come." -Leon Battista Alberti-
It's not just details
"Does a name always need to mean something?" -Lewis Carroll -
"A set is a great dramatic feeling." - Louis Jouvet -
"Isn't the décor the indispensable complement to the work?" - André Antoine / Small dictionary of theatre -
"When you can't change the world, you have to change the scenery." - Daniel Pennac / The Little Merchant of Prose -
It was Jesus who invented the advertisement, with his famous slogan intended to attract crowds: 'The parable is free' -Marc Escayrol/Mots et Grumots (2003)-
"I love advertising Advertising I like these tubes That excite me When they sing This or that product Which one wonders how We lived before him?" -Charles Trenet/I love advertising (1922) -
Arsins street
You can see the Hospital Street in the background.
"You must not, you will never have to get used to seeing men die like flies, as they do in our streets today, and as they have always done since Athens the plague was given its name." -Albert Camus/Exhortation to The Doctors of the Plague (1941)-
"Every ray of sunshine at the crossroads of two streets makes me want to look for a corner of shade to love it, every stone fountain to splash it, every door to hide there." -Michel Bussi/I must have dreamed too hard (2019)-
Love is like that, slang is like that, the streets are like that, the sonnets are like that, the five o'clock morning sky is like that. Friendship, on the other hand, is not like that. In friendship, you're never alone." -Roberto Bolano/Amuleto (2008)-
"Like most hackers, he is consumed by his anonymity. Working in the shadows torments them, they would like to scream at the whole world who they are, show how great they are, but they can't. These individuals don't take to the streets, they don't break windows, they act behind their screens, anonymous and much more dangerous." -Franck Thilliez/Luca (2019)-
"We must take advantage of the disappearance of the spirit of revolution to bring back the spirit of progress! We must take advantage of calm to restore peace, not only peace in the streets, but true peace, definitive peace, peace made in minds and hearts! In a word, the defeat of demagoguery must be the victory of the people!" -Victor Hugo/Speech to the Legislative Assembly, July 9, 1849-
"Right now, in the streets, the open spaces, the metro, the amphis, millions of novels are written in the heads, chapter after chapter, erased, taken over and all die, to be realized or not ." -Annie Ernaux/Girl Memory-
"Is it age, I wonder, that makes us attach ourselves to familiar places, to those we know best? Is it the memory of the years that have passed away and the beings we once loved so much that holds us there and makes them so dear to us? Yes, she mused, at least as far as I am concerned." -Barbara Taylor Bradford/Hold on to your dream-
I need to understand the names of the streets that often have a historical explanation or pay tribute to famous people for various reasons.
Am I obsessive, victim of a tic or a ocd? Three at a time?
When I do research and find no explanation, it annoys me, without reason I admit it but I remain convinced that these common names are not assigned in a trivial way. So I do research as it is the case for Arsins street.
The dictionary definition is as follows: " ( old French "arsin": fire, burn ). Punishment frequently applied in France in the Middle Ages and which consisted in burning the house of the condemned ."
Ultimately, a very nice street today but where it was not good to live in the Middle Ages ...
Bourgeoisie
"I've always found the sculpture boring, but at least the bronzes look like something, while the marble busts still look like a cemetery." -Ernest Hemingway/Farewell to Arms (1929) -
"It is not possible that a sculpture, a music that gives an emotion that one feels higher, purer, truer, does not correspond to a certain spiritual reality, or life would have no meaning." -Marcel Proust/In Search of Lost Time, The Prisoner (1923) -
"The least you can ask from a sculpture is that it doesn't move." -Salvador Dali/The Cheated of Old Modern Art -
"Vine leaf: Emblem of virility in the art of sculpture." -Gustave Flaubert/Dictionary of Preconceived Ideas (1913)-
"It's spring on Poterne street !"
"The flowers cover the mantle of spring. I walk around declaiming with emotion... Hundreds of flowers bloom and make heaven and earth pure. Their perfume reaches my bed. Is it an ephemeral dream?" -Ikkyu / Hisashi Sakaguchi-
"Winter is the link between two springs. Old age is the link between two generations." -A life to give birth to / Marie de Hennezel-
"Man is the worker of spring, of life, of the seed sown and of the furrow dug, and not the livid creditor of the past." -Complete works / Victor Hugo-
"Oh! how much I used to pay attention to the seasons of the year! I welcomed the arrival of spring: I longed after autumn. But there is now neither summer nor winter, since, filled with happiness, the wing of Love shelters me and an eternal spring hovers around me." -Epigrams/ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe-
"The dandelion is a bit like life. In the spring, it symbolizes the hope of renewal and carries us. But its bitterness reminds us how hard life can be sometimes and that it is better to season it if you want to enjoy it." -To drink and eat / Guillaume Long-
"Great Spring Ball. The music of his name. All lips are suspended. Like a lost garden that we have just found. Even more beautiful than before. And even more alive. Great Spring Ball. This air runs through the streams and streets of the city. It's the refrain of the blood from his popular veins." -Great Spring Ball - Charms of London /Jacques Prévert-
"Perhaps at the end of the day, it's Jacques who's right, spring will come back one day"" -Children of Freedom / Marc Levy-
"It is an April day the preferred month of troubadours because the nights are short and the air light, the sap begins to swell the branches and, in the buds, all the promises of spring burst out." -Alienor d'Aquitaine / Régine Pernoud-
"Spring has come, my beautiful, It is the month of blessed lovers; And the bird, satining its wing, says verses at the edge of the nest." -Villanelle / Theophile Gautier-
"The Hospital street shows up in April ..."
I love bikes... especially without anyone on it...
An old building that would need a renovation.
What's behind ?...
Where will you take me?! ...
Ganterie Street
Hotel du Vieux Carré 34 Ganterie Street 76000 Rouen
"How long is it, fifty years? Rose wondered, lying in that hotel bed where she couldn't sleep. How do you calculate the time that passes without losing your mind?" -Mary Aline Mynors Farmar, known as Mary WesleyRose/ Sainte-nitouche -
"Rule: If you visit this section called The Palais Des Chattes, it is wise to go with a hotel guide who is paid to ensure that nothing will happen to you, even though an experienced person can go there alone safely." -Jack Vance/The Cadwal Chronicles (1987-1992) -
"For a long time I could not afford to be beautiful and fresh; now that I have them, I'm making up for it. You'd see me right now on the balcony of my pretty hotel, like Heidi in her mountain." -La Daronne / Hannelore Cayre-
Chain Street
"Shared joy grows." -Massa Makan Diabaté / The Lieutenant of Kouta-
"For joy, a thousand pains." -French proverb-
At the corner of Poterne and Ganterie streets
"Like poetry, sculpture or painting, life has its precious masterpieces." -Oscar Wilde / The Portrait of Dorian Gray-
"The language of sculpture is a pretentious nothingness if it is not composed of words of love and poetry." -Ossip Zadkine-
I like it when my gaze is caught by a detail on a house, a not-so-trivial detail that goes back a long way in our History. I think of the little story of these men who have spent hours shaping a work that has crossed the ages, without imagining that in the future, a person like me would admire their work at the bend of a walk. It is magic.