Les cimetières

Père-Lachaise, the biggest cemetery in Paris, is also one of its most-frequented tourist attractions. I used to think that it was odd that a place so personal and relatively sacred could be co-opted for such a banal purpose, but I’m definitely not above going to see all my favorite dead celebrities. Although there are many better ways to get to know them, there certainly isn’t an easier way to get close to them physically. And while I’d much prefer to stand next to Oscar Wilde than stand on top of him, I’ll take what I can get. Plus, cemeteries are generally pretty. I love a good cemetery.

Still, their double purpose can be really awkward.

This week I went to Cimetière Montparnasse, conveniently located close to my study-abroad center where I’ve been taking crash French courses for the past week. A map by the gate pointed out the sites of various famed corpses: Baudelaire, Brancusi, Sartre, Saint-Säens. I mentally noted their placements and began to search, attempting to look like someone with a lot of respect for the dead who happened to be holding a camera.

Immediately, I encountered some problems. As soon as I stepped away from the map, I forgot where anything was. I went back to the map. I memorized. I walked five feet away. I forgot. At that point, I thought I would just walk around and look at all the gravestones until I found ones I was looking for. Forget that: there appeared to be no organizational principle to the cemetery system, and many of the graves weren’t visible from the paths, meaning I would have to climb over various tombstones to see all the names. Even I’m not that gauche.

My next strategy was to look for graves with lots of stuff on them. I had read that Serge Gainsbourg’s grave was covered in mementos from admirers; that can’t be hard to spot, I figured. I looked for graves with heaps of flowers; other people milling around it was a plus. Upon seeing one, I eagerly ran up to it.

The thing is, unlike Père Lachaise, Montparnasse is an active cemetery. This means if a grave has a lot of flowers on it, it might be because someone famous is buried there. However, it might also mean that the person just died and the people milling around are mourning their recent loss. After crashing quite a few wakes in my blissful search for Guy de Maupassant, I abandoned this technique. I hated myself. I was disillusioned with people. Who did we think we were? How dare we turn such a personal locale into a place for our perverse desires to run wild?

Upon leaving, I finally found one of the graves I had been looking for: Satre and Simone de Beauvoir, who are buried together (it was right next to the map where I had been standing for so long). I approached it and saw all the trinkets people had left on the grave, from the romantic (heaps of flowers, candles) to the trivial (metro tickets) to the inexplicable (multiple plastic mugs shaped in the hollowed-out head of Pluto the cartoon dog). Then there were the notes.

Sartre, Je t’aime et je suis née 10 ans après ta mort. –Chloe et Livia. Simone, je ne t’ai pas encore lu, mais il me reste toute la vie pour le faire.

(Sartre, I love you and I was born 10 years after you died. – Chloe and Livia. Simone, I haven’t read you yet, but I have the rest of my life to do it.)

Seeing them made me realize: there are tourists and there are mourners. But there are other visitors in the cemetery: the inspired.