Parisian Sketches (Dedalus European Classics) by Joris-Karl Huysmans & Brendan King

Author:Joris-Karl Huysmans & Brendan King [Huysmans, Joris-Karl & King, Brendan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Classics, Short Stories & Anthologies, Short Stories, Contemporary Fiction
ISBN: 9781907650192
Amazon: B008UYGSWC
Publisher: Dedalus Limited
Published: 2012-10-22T22:00:00+00:00

VIEW FROM THE RAMPARTS OF NORTH PARIS

From the top of the ramparts you can make out the wonderful and awesome sight of the plains that lie below, worn-out at the foot of the city.

On the horizon, against the sky, tall brick chimneys, round and square, vomit billows of soot into the clouds, while a little further down, barely passing over the flat roofs of workshops covered in bituminised felt and sheet-metal, whistling jets of white steam escape from thin aluminium flue-pipes.

This denuded zone stretches out, swollen with hillocks on which gangs of kids are flying kites made of old newspapers and decorated with the colour pictures that advertisers dole out in shop doorways and at the the ends of bridges.

Near huts whose pale red tiles border limpid lakes of glazed roofs, monumental horsecarts raise their chained shafts to the sky, sheltering here a working-class romance, there a maternal scene in which a child avidly sucks on a dried-up breast. Further off, a goat grazes, tied to a stake; a man sleeps, lying on his back, his eyes hidden by his cap; a seated woman slowly massages her worn-out feet.

A great silence descends over the plain as the rumble of Paris dies out little by little and the noise from distant factories now reaches you but falteringly. Sometimes, however, like a horrible complaint, you can hear the dull, raucous whistle of trains from the Gare du Nord as they pass, hidden by an embankment planted with acacias and ash trees.

Finally, in the distance, in the far distance, a large white road climbs a hill and loses itself in the sky, its summit crowned by a billow of dust, like a cloud stirred up by an invisible horse-drawn cart, hidden by the curve of the earth.

Towards dusk, when soot-laden clouds roll across the dying day, the landscape becomes boundless and gloomy again; factories become indecisive contours, masses of ink blots against a livid sky; the women and children have all gone home, the plain seems bigger now as, alone in the dusty road, a beggar, the ‘hobo’ as the street urchins call him, returns to his bed for the night, sweating, exhausted, done in, leaning heavily to one side, sucking his long-empty pipe, followed by his dogs, fantastic, improbable-looking dogs of multifarious bastardies, forlorn dogs accustomed, like their master, to all kinds of famine and every variety of flea.

And it’s then, especially then, that the doleful charm of the suburbs makes itself felt; it’s especially then that the all-powerful beauty of nature is resplendent, because the landscape is in perfect accord with the profound distress of the families who people it.

Created incomplete, in anticipation of the role that man will assign to her, nature looks to her master for his final, finishing touches: sumptuous buildings that embellish the appearance of quartiers inhabited by the rich; cottages that dot a blithe and restful countryside scene with blotches of butter-yellow and cool white; Parcs-Monceau that are as tarted-up as the women who parade in

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