Immortals

First performance Fantastic symphonies 27-year-old Hector Berlioz, on December 5, 1830 in Paris, was listened to by Chopin, Liszt, Paganini, Dimas Ott, Heine, Victor Hugo, Georges Sand, Théophile Gauthier, Alfred de Vigny... Now, together with Berlioz, some of them rest at the Montmartre cemetery in Paris, opened five years after the aforementioned musical "event of the season".

photo: d. Jakovljevic

"Silent bones and singing stones" are not far from Pigalle and "Moulin Rose", where I guess not even the stones are silent. Léo Delibes is also buried there, as well as Jacques Offenbach, whose tombstone is the work of Charles Garnier, designer of the Paris Opera.

We descend to the cemetery from the Sacre Coeur church, across the plateau named after the singer Dalida; there is also her bust (some delia signed on her bronze cleavage!). Millions of records sold and fans were not much to be happy about. She killed herself, and was buried nearby, in the Montmartre cemetery.

Here also rests Heinrich Heine, a poet of small pearl verses about spring, death and love, but also a sarcastic rebel, hater of the authorities of his Germany. He died in Paris in 1856. He rested, our people say: seriously ill, he spent eight years at his grave on a mattress.

Emile Zola, the writer, also rested in Montmartre Nane, Germinal and the famous open letter I accuse with which he defended Alfred Dreyfus. Zola's body was transferred to the Pantheon.

Stendhal's is not. On the monument is his real name - A. Henri Beyle, and in parentheses is the pseudonym under which he became famous: Stendhal. He chose the epitaph himself: he changed Caesar's "I came, I saw, I conquered" into "he wrote, he loved, he lived" - in that order.

The monument of the cursed poet Lortreamon is not to be sought, although he deserved it: he rests in a mass grave. An immigrant from Uruguay, he made a "lightning rise in French literature and remained as a foreign luminous body without its axis" (M. Karaulac). He died at the age of 24, it is not known how.

The Goncourt brothers, Edmond and Gilles, were also buried in Montmartre. They were writers, but are better known for the award that bears their name; it was received, among others, by Proust, Malraux, Simon de Beauvoir, Amin Malouf, Houellebecq...

We also saw the family tomb of Georges Fedot, whose A bug in the ear the longest-running show of our JDP.

Alexander Dima Son, by chance or not, is buried near Marie Diplessis, the lady with the camellias, the heroine of his eponymous and most famous work. His literary work began with a collection of poems, but he sold only 14 copies, and I bought the rest and burned them. His fame was brought to him by the story of the courtesan Marguerite Gauthier (in the operatic version, Traviati, Violetta Valeri). Her name was Alfonsina Plesi, but she added the noble "di" to her surname and replaced tailoring with the oldest trade, thereby entering high society. There was always a bouquet of camellias in her theater box - or so it says in the novel. She was buried as Marie Diplesis (she was 23 years old), and on a small monument is her portrait with a camellia tucked into her cleavage. Unlike hers, Dima's eternal house causes a slight chill: under a stone canopy lies a petrified man with crossed arms and bare feet, in life size...

But our growing up was marked by Aleksandar Dima Otac (The three musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo...), and he rests among the greatest, in the Pantheon.

Here are also the graves of several painters: Edgar Degas, who drew horses and ballerinas, and his contemporary Gustave Moreau, who looked for his motives in the Bible. On the wall around the cemetery there is a plaque with the name of Jean-Honore Fragonard ("great master of color"), and not far away two other artistic souls - actors Sascha Guitry and Jean-Claude Brialle. Inscribed in the history of art even though she was not an artist, Madame Recamier is also in Montmartre. Many have portrayed her, and the most famous painting, the one on the sofa, is now in the Louvre.

The god of the game, Vaclav Nijinsky came to Paris from St. Petersburg, played with the most famous - Anna Pavlova and Isidora Duncan, but spent half his life in a psychiatric clinic. His career lasted only four years - still enough for them to never forget him. In her Petrushka costume, she sits on her tombstone, next to a few stones and a fresh strawberry, as if she had just picked it.

There are twenty thousand graves in Montmartre. Here are: Ludmila Cerina, ballerina, writer and actress; François Truffaut (it is enough to say the new wave and 400 shots); the founder of Dadaism, Francis Picabia, profligate in creativity and life, but the "Columbus of art"...

A copy of Michelangelo's Moses is on the grave of a banker. The philanthropist and patron - it is written on the monument - was declared the sole heir by the Pasteur Institute.

I'm sorry I didn't see the monument to Théophile Gauthier, the founder of the route lar pur lar, who recommended himself to me by writing a book about Constantinople, my favorite city, where he (the lucky man) stayed for 70 days.

I both regret and do not regret that the road did not lead me to the grave where Charles Sanson lies. Occupation: Executioner. He executed 2.918 people, including Louis XVI. His son had the honor of executing Marie Antoinette, because his ancestors and descendants, including his grandson, were the last in the family whose members were beheading - they were just doing their job.

Due to material reasons, the great Joseph Roth was not buried in Montmartre, but somewhere on the outskirts, "far from the Paris he loved, very far from the Ukraine where he was born."