Afternoon with the dead at Père-Lachaise

Hello everyone! Nice to see you here again. Let me tell you about my little Monday adventure...

It started off with a google search. I have decided to start challenging myself to do things directly after school, so that I don't get home and melt into my bed for the rest of the day. I have also been looking for free.99 things to do in Paris since my monthly budget is exiting my bank account a little more quickly than I would like it to. A list from google revealed this gem: the Père Lachaise cemetery. Bonus, it was only a 15 minute metro ride away from school. The French have a gloriously convenient tradition of putting metro stations right next to major landmarks, in this case the most-visited necropolis in the world.

Very quickly I realized that the free price tag actually did come with a price: my time and patience. The only map of the cemetery available was digital, with small dots for prominent graves. The graveyard is beautifully somber, the graves of prominent figures mixed with family plots and ancient, withering tombstones overgrown with ivy. I made my way to the first few places with difficulty, and upon struggling to find Edith Piaf for 15 minutes I asked a lovely passerby in my best French if she knew where to go. She wanted to go to the same place, so we headed there together.

Her name is Carol, and she's from Brazil. She's visiting for two weeks. I need to remember to ask her what her skincare routine is, because at 30 years old she looked my age. Carol used to work for the Brazilian government as the head of tourism in her district. She had heaps of stories about her brothers and the amazon and generally funny things that happen when you work for the government. Her English was impeccable. We spent the entire rest of our time together roaming the cemetery together, and her excellent navigation skills proved to very useful. Carol is relaxed, funny, and very bright. Her detective skills helped us find Maria Callas in a hall of commemorative plaques.

Here's a rundown of the graves we found, with brief biographies for each:

Maria Callas (1923-1977): a famed Greek-American soprano widely considered to be one of the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century, known for her bel canto technique. She famously "lost her voice" a few years prior to her death (diaphragmatic strain). Her dramatic weight loss during her career prompted Rome's Panatella Mills pasta company to claim that she lost it by eating their "physiologic pasta", resulting in a lawsuit. She died of a heart attack.

Edith Piaf (1915-1963): one of France's most beloved singers of the cabaret and modern "chanson" genres. She is lovingly referred to as "little sparrow" and regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Edith grew up in poverty; conjunctivitis and ear infections left her blind and deaf for most of her childhood, and she was discovered while busking on the street. She collapsed on stage during her last tour, reportedly because she wanted to sing until the day she died, because once she could no longer sing, her life was over.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900): an Irish poet and playwright responsible for major works such as Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). He was also known for his wit, his flamboyance, and his trials and jail sentence for homosexual acts. He died of meningitis.

Frederich Chopin (1810-1849): A Polish composer and virtuoso pianist whose works are considered a hallmark of the Romantic period. He wrote primarily for solo piano, and his works (particularly the 24 nocturnes) were known for expressing poetic genius without the use of words, regularly drawing tears from his audiences. He had a longstanding romantic relationship with the French feminist novelist George Sand (a woman), and died a tragically early death at the age of 39 from tuberculosis of the lungs and larynx.

Thierry Mugler: A prolific French fashion designer and couturier, known for his use of corsetry and hyperfeminine, alien-like shapes. A former bodybuilder turned ballet-dancer, Mugler rejected the notion that haute couture should be prim and proper, leading to some of his most groundbreaking designs and perfumes. He designed signature looks for Michael Jackson, Madonna, Grace Jones, David Bowie and Diana Ross.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922): a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu. He was known for his insight into women and the love of men for women (which he himself experienced for the many female originals of his heroines) and was among the greatest novelists in the fields of both heterosexual and homosexual love. He was known to have a condition called "nervous asthma" throughout his life an eventually died of pneumonia and a pulmonary abscess.

Elizaveta Stroganova: a wealthy Russian heiress with the largest and most lavish tomb in pere lachaise. Given that her name already sounds like an extravagant pasta dish, it figures that her tomb should reflect that.

That's all for today! byeee :)Read more