There was much French in this article, showing that the author assumed that the reader has some if not decent knowledge of both the language and culture. This made the article quite confusing to readers who do not have an understanding of the French and their history. The lack of sufficient translations for quotes, names of paintings, names of writings etc gave me few clues to what the author wants to bring up. I mean, how many of us knew that the saint lundi (pg 57) refers to the celebration of half a day of break due to vast drinking in the previous night? For me, the most confusing part of the article was all the description of places, names of buildings and roads.
Back to the topic. From what I understand from the article, the author made a case for how and why Haussmannization was hated by his contemporaries. There were cries of despair for the Paris lost, such as “What is it we are losing, by God? Everything!” by Sardou’s elderly haberdasher. There were theories of conspiracies that claimed that it was an act of suppression (of revolutions), enriching the unscrupulous (“It was all favors, kickbacks, and corruption…” pg 43), and “shut[ting] away the poorer classes somewhere else” (pg 45).
In particular, Sardou’s Genevoix voiced sarcasm and contempt for the new city in his claim “I applaud it heartily---and beg leave to think it fortunate that God himself was ignorant of this marvelous municipal system, and did not choose to arrange the trees in the forest in rows…with all the stars above in two straight lines.” (pg 42) The absurdity of this scenario painted by Sardou left the readers thinking what is it about “all shapes and sizes”(pg 42) that we see beauty in. What is it about rows of trees and lines of stars that is so detestable?
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