Montparnasse
Poets and artists are
nearly always poor. Young ones very poor.
Time was when they couldn’t even afford to live in the
Quartier Latin, but had to find cheap lodgings near the rubbish dump.
Inspiration for poets and
artists is supposed to come from the nine Muses, who lived on Mount Parnassus in
Ancient Greece.
Which is
how the tallest of the rubbish-heaps came to be known as Montparnasse.
Even into this century, by
which time the hill in question had a railway station on top, Montparnasse was
where writers and artists gathered.
Now the area has been dug over and a new complex
built.
The station is
underground now, so there can be no repetition of the moment in the 1890s when a
train failed to stop, went through the buffers,
across the platform, through the stationmaster’s
office and came to rest hanging out of the window six floors above the street.
Nobody was hurt.
Above
ground is a shopping centre, a large residential development of the most
criminal ugliness,
and
an office block 656 feet high, called the Tour du Maine, with quite a view from
the 56th floor.
The
shopping centre has branches of Galeries Lafayette, and other famous stores. The
third basement, level with the metro, has a swimming bath with three pools.
