Maintenant, ce qui frappe le plus, en remontant la rue des Couronnes, c'est sa césure, très nice. This is a separation between the naissance and the distinct regions. C'était là depuis le départ sans que j'y prête attention, déjà ça nous désignait. Ça survient juste après que la rue a croisé le tracé de la Petite Ceinture, the old line of train qui jadis effectuait the tour de Paris. The rue agrège des contrées étrangères l'une à l'autre with an indifférence docile, an arrogance désintéressée. Comme c'est étrange, c'est devenu parfaitement anodin. Les deux mondes s'ignorent, nul ne ensemble en souffrir. This is a new manner of life, separate. On n'avait jamais vu cela avant.
Vivre ensemble. Deux terms reliés d'un trait d'union venu souligner l'ironie du ratage d'une telle conjonction, deux terms ne se rendant aucun compte. The rue des Couronnes is one of its antichambres les plus captivantes. This is the laboratories that open the large separation. In the premiere of the paysage, the hauteurs, sévères and drues, grises and without attrait qui partent du boulevard. This is a recent relief, the cime de béton sorties de terre. A sol de bitume haché par des bands de verdure. A dalle de béton se propage autour de ces montagnes. The bars à chicha aux noms Américains et aux vitres fumées cadencent la monotonie à hauteur de sidewalk. Les habitants sont de petites mains, des employés et quelques commercials, des chômeurs, en provenance d'Afrique du Nord, d'Afrique sub-Saharienne. This is a montagnarde, souvent rude, mais dotée de all modern comfort. A contrée escarpée, an empilement méthodique d'humains et d'objets.
The gardens of Couronnes à la Place Henri-Krasucki, are in revanche a paysage of private avenues, d'immeubles de basse hauteur, de course cachées, arborées, de lierre et de vignevierge, de jardins même, où serpentent des lézards et clopinent des chats. Reliquat d'une époque lointaine, viticole, agricole ; d'un passé plus récent, d'ouvriers, d'ateliers. This is black and white, photographed by Willy Ronis. U.N Panoramic view of verandas of flowers and prints, with small échoppes, other books of paper, cantines of the quarter. C'est un pays connu, reconnu, imité, et désormais recherché. The choice of camper in the décor of the theater, the representatives of the professions of culture is in the old class of the world, which allows the possibility of being placed on the other side of the world, with a good conscience.
This visage-là de la France des grandes villes, répartition ordonnée de bourgeois and d'immigrés pauvres, is devenue la norme. On n'a pu décemment établir de poste-frontière, mais l'on sait pourtant que ce qui s'y passe, notamment au level du croisement with la rue Julien-Lacroix, revient exactement au même. This intersection mark the debut of a man's land, achevé aux alentours du bâtiment Troisième République de l'école maternelle (94, rue des Couronnes), où officially débute la seconde partie de la rue. Dans cet entre-deux, the visual contact is inévitable. The terrace of the Tunis Palace, which has an empire of chaises in green plastic, numbered 41, has a face in the cell of Floréal, au 43, is a neo-retro installation in the old walls of the Dupont cafe in 1905. An exclusive masculine issue The immigration to Tunisia is based on this and the child has a great face, this day, in the mixed battalions of young people, entrepreneurs enrich themselves with brunch for a trentaine d'Euros chaque dimanche. Ce que cohabitant signifie: des Mondes qui s'appréhendent dans une inexistence mutuelle, respectivement invisibles. Also briquet ne s'échange, also salut de la main. Il n'y a pas de correspondance à établir entre les clients, leurs centers d'intérêt, les prénoms de leurs enfants, leur manière de s'habiller, de manger ou de vivre. I can't help but notice the cabanes d'ouvriers on the rue de la Mare, just outside the Notre-Dame-de-la-Croix, at the level of the piétonne passerelle - not loin de là se trouvait la gare Ménilmontant du train de Petite Ceinture ; celle des fenêtres murées rue de Pali-Kao, immeubles déglingués, étendoirs aux fenêtres, hordes d'children pouilleux et parapets en ruine ; The history of the balustrades of the rue Vilin, rue à flanc de coteaux en forme de S inversé, devenue fantomatique au fil des années, rasée par les bulldozers en Mars 1982, quelques semaines avant ma naissance. Je ne me souviens pas de l'époque du terrain vague. I don't have any souvenirs about the escalators and the street Piat. Comme beaucoup de mes semblables, je ne me souviens pas du Belleville de Georges Perec, de la devanture du salon du coiffure de sa mère, morte en deportation en 1943, dont la titraille ("Coiffure de dames") s'est peu à peu estompée, avant d'être rasée. Je fais partie de la toute dernière vague d'arrivants. This is true, according to the researchers from the Fuglavík park, you are a tourist in the world that finishes and refuses to give a message to you when you arrive, with the advent of my eyes, a legitimate, unqualified quality, which is not satisfied with the references au passé. I don't have the right to drive my plain car in one direction, which means that this secession has already happened, and this is the first part. My eyes are like the windows before destruction, with the source pouring into preparation.
Solange Bied-Charrenton, L'acceptation (Stock, 2023).
Well, what strikes you most when you walk up the Rue des Couronnes is its caesura, which is very distinct. It's the division that creates two different worlds. It was there from the very beginning, without me even noticing it; it had already defined us. It happened shortly after the street crossed the route of the Petite Ceinture, the old railway line that once encircled Paris. The street aggregates mutually alien territories with a docile indifference, a disinterested arrogance. How strange, it has become completely harmless. The two worlds ignore each other; no one seems to suffer. It's a new way of living apart. We've never seen anything like it before.
Living together. Two concepts linked by a hyphen to underscore the irony of such a union's failure, two concepts that fail to perceive each other. Kronenstrasse is one of its most captivating anterooms. It is the open-air laboratory of the great division. In the first half of the landscape, there are these heights, austere and harsh, gray and unattractive, radiating from the boulevard. It is a new relief, concrete peaks sprouting from the earth. An asphalt surface fragmented by strips of greenery. A concrete slab spreads out around these mountains. Shisha bars with American names and smoky discs cadence the monotony at sidewalk level. The inhabitants are low-level workers, office workers, and a few traders, the unemployed, who come from North Africa, from sub-Saharan Africa. It is a life like in the mountains, often hard, but equipped with all modern amenities. A steep land, a methodical stacking of people and objects.
From the Kronengarten to Henri-Krasucki-Platz, however, it's a landscape of private roads, low-rise buildings, hidden courtyards with trees, ivy, and virgin vines, even gardens where lizards slither and cats prowl. Relics from a distant era of viticulture and agriculture; from a more recent past of workers and workshops. From a black-and-white yesterday, photographed by Willy Ronis. A delicate panorama with verandas in bloom in spring, with small shops, paperback stalls, and neighborhood canteens. It's a familiar, recognized, imitated, and now sought-after landscape. By choosing to camp out in this theatrical setting, representatives of cultural professions from a former middle class, now gentrified, buy themselves the opportunity to follow in their ancestors' footsteps and have a clear conscience.
This face of France in the big cities, an orderly distribution of bourgeoisie and poor immigrants, has become the norm. It wasn't possible to establish a border crossing, but everyone knows that what happens there, especially at the intersection with Rue Julien-Lacroix, is exactly the same. This intersection marks the beginning of a no-man's-land, completed around the Third Republic preschool building (94, rue des Couronnes), where the second part of the street officially begins. In this in-between space, eye contact is unavoidable. The terrace of the Tunis Palace, which spreads its realm of apple-green plastic chairs at number 41, is opposite the terrace of the Floréal at number 43, a neo-retro establishment housed within the walls of the former Café Dupont, founded in 1905. A group consisting exclusively of men of Tunisian descent, drinking tea and smoking shisha, faces off every day against mixed battalions of young Westerners, wealthy entrepreneurs who brunch every Sunday for around 30 euros. living together This means: worlds that understand each other as mutually non-existing or invisible. No lighters are exchanged and no hands are greeted. There are no similarities between the customers, their interests, their children's first names, their way of dressing, eating, or living. I barely knew the time of the workers' huts on the edge of the Rue de la Mare, just behind Notre-Dame-de-la-Croix, near the footbridge—not far from the Ménilmontant station of the Petite-Ceinture train; the time of the bricked-up windows in the Rue de Pali-Kao, dilapidated buildings, clotheslines in the windows, hordes of lice-ridden children, and crumbling parapets; the time of the railings in the Rue Vilin, a hillside street in the shape of an inverted S, which had become ghostly over the years and was bulldozed to the ground in March 1982, a few weeks before my birth. I can no longer remember the time of the empty wasteland, the terrain vague. I don't remember the Y-shaped staircases that led to the Rue Piat. Like many of my fellow human beings, I don't remember Georges Perec's Belleville, the shop window of his mother's hair salon, where she died during deportation in 1943, its title ("Coiffure de dames") gradually fading before it was torn down. I belong to the very last wave of arrivals. Therefore, like the mad researchers in Fuglavík Park, I am merely a tourist of the dying world, refusing to grant legitimacy, any independent quality to what is to come, to the schism unfolding before my eyes, that isn't saturated with references to the past. I have no right to complain, for I am blind, never truly suffering from this secession, since everything participates in it. My eyes are bricked up like the windows before the destruction for which they have, however, prepared themselves. 1
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- "In a Parisian bookstore, the Frenchwoman Aurore meets the Icelander Gestur. Their love is forged and then extinguished between the fjord of the whales and the streets of Belleville, between the attempt to build a family life and the extinguishing of feelings. Gestur, an archaeologist, scours the salt- and lava-scorched Icelandic soil in search of Viking graves. Aurora discovers cold, silent landscapes of unshakeable splendor, which would prefer to conceal the upheaval of a society that, within a few decades, has abandoned the Middle Ages. After the birth of their young son Erling, they live in a liminal space, neither lovers nor strangers, in the France of attacks and then the Yellow Vests, where a diffuse electricity and violence circulate, leading some to say that the country is unrecognizable. As stormy as it is tender, is L'Acceptation A love story that urges us to face reality. Guided by Aurore, a path unfolds through denial and fear, through melancholy and pure joy, at the expense of the image each person has of their country, their place, and love.” (Translation of the publisher's announcement.)>>>
