Paris in 2011: Pere Lachaise Cemetery

PV 4. Pere Lachaise Cemetery

Hussey tells the story of Heloise and Abelard on his pages 58-63. He starts out setting my teeth on edge by twice calling it a “legend.” But then he redeems himself by telling the story factually, showing that the actual story is a rich one, and only its later embellishments and reinterpretations are legends.

He is critical of Abelard at one point, where he rightly accuses him of being driven by his ego to try and hide his secret marriage to Heloise by sending her away to a convent. It is his way of hiding the fact of his new relationship, to be able to keep working as an instructor at the university, which is a religious vocation, and requires celibacy.

Heloise’s father interprets this, maybe with some basis, as his trying to “get rid” of his daughter, and calls on some unsavory characters to come and emasculate Abelard with a sharp blade. They are caught and themselves emasculated, a bloody revenge: justice in those times. The father was an important man, and not so punished: justice in those times.

Hussey praises the attitude Heloise displays toward women in her letter in response to Abelard’s long and at times self-pitying description of his life’s troubles. To his observation that women ought to strive for sainthood by way of excluding the pleasures of this world, she responds famously with this line that Hussey approvingly cites on his page 62:

’And if the name of wife appears more sacred and more valid’ . . . ‘sweeter to me is ever the word friend, or, if thou not be ashamed, concubine or whore.’

Hussey rightly observes that this radical sentence

“daringly invoked sexuality as the engine of love;”

. . . . Right on.

That is the part of Hussey’s book that made me want to go back to the Pere Lachaise cemetery, not Hussey’s mentioning the horror that ended the Commune there.

I decided that the thing to do this visit was attempt to get a better photo of the alleged graves of Eloise and Abelard. I tell their love story with photos in one place, and in a book review in another. I was never satisfied with the photos, however, and tried to do better this time.

Their grave is plot 17 of the 7th division. It is easy to reach by following the street named after my favorite red-headed daughter, Rachel.

As you get closer to their monument, it is a nice sight:

Ugly metal buttresses holding the old structure together on the Abelard side of the monument left only the Heloise side photogenic.

I can see now why my photos were never very good: the angle allowed by the monument and its surrounding monuments takes away the better views, and this is about as good as it gets. Sorry.

On my way out the cemetery by way of the northeastern entrance, I passed by this grave that reminded me of two things easily overlooked: (1) this is a working cemetery, and (2) life can be short, witnessed by children’s markers placed on this large grave marker to pay respect to one of their fallen siblings.

This feels more touching than a historical grave, actually, but only because it is more immediate in time, it is now, and we do not know the pathos behind the cheerful, colorful, children’s markers at all, we can only imagine.

This cemetery is a place with many wonderful views: a last look back at the Abelard and Heloise monument: