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Black Republic of Letters

Note - Exposition Universelle 1889

The Paris Universal Exposition of 1889 was a world's fair that took place in the city from May to October of that year. It attracted millions of visitors from around the world and famously inaugurated the Eiffel Tower. Learn more about Expo 1889.

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"Fantasist Chronicle" Translation:

"How sad you are!" a good friend of mine said to me a few days ago. "What's the matter? Did something annoying happen to you, so that you, who is always so gay, should have such a piteous face?"

"Yes, I'm sad, unenthusiastic, regretful. You ask me why? The reason is very simple, it's because I am currently in Paris. Yes, I, Parisian in my soul, born in Paris, having always lived in Paris, adoring Paris, I am almost sick because I am here now."

In fact, is it not September? The middle of the vacation? In a period when no one wants to do anything but go take deep breaths of the air of the countryside? The scattering is general, there is no place where one does not encounter a Parisian; there is no dell, however overlooked it might be, that has not become a retreat for one of them. Some go do more or less perilous ascents of the Alps, others go to spread their happiness and laughter on the Pyrenees; as for the beaches of Normandy, they are a general rendezvous.

Moreover, I cannot refrain from comparing our great capital to an immense apartment whose inhabitants, who we will imagine as a large and happy family, are absent; the furniture is covered, the curtains are closed, there is no life inside; only one of its members, all alone, is there at the moment; one room is enough for him; when he passes by the closed doors where normally he hears the laughter of little children, in the grand hall where meals are so joyous in the winter and where now nothing moves, he can't help feeling a pang in his heart. Paris at this time is producing the same effect in me as this big empty house.

Yesterday, I was looking for a distraction on the promenade and chance led my steps into that deserted quarter (which no one thinks about anymore) called Invalides, Champ-de-Mars, and where, less than a year ago, our brilliant exposition took place.

At that time no one spoke of anything but IT, of the exposition, which was attracting so many thousands of individuals; from all the corners of the world, people flocked toward it; today, no more. Don't think I am saying that it should have gone on longer, no, but in spite of myself I can't help thinking about that little riddle that young children on school benches are always entertaining themselves with, and which consists of punching a number of different shaped holes in a line along a sheet of paper. The solution (which I hardly dare to offer) is that the days come one after the other but don't look anything alike. Indeed, what a difference between August 1889 and August 1890. One year ago, what life in this vicinity, what animation! Every day one hundred, every day two hundred thousand people wandered through, mixing their gaiety, their laughter, their cries of admiration at the imposing spectacle, at the thundering manifestations of human activity.

In two years a village was built, the most picturesque in the world, enclosing so many wonders, that it would take a lifetime to admire their prodigious and intelligent results, to rapturously observe the countless difficulties vanquished by the energy of mankind, by his tireless patience and his genius.

Reflecting on these things, I arrived at the foot of that Eiffel Tower, that giant full of boldness and originality, striking witness to the labour of human thought; I was thinking about the bustling around her the year before, much more than any anthill, of these tiny people who were rushing around her feet, sometimes looking up to her haughty head, crowned with a giant tricolour flag. The weather was grey, clouds were quickly brushing her summit, and in her current isolation, sombre against a sombre sky, she seemed to lament her triumph of the previous summer, lament that that era had already passed... and I was just like her.

Emile Germain

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Expo 1889 image