A cemetery - different aspects
Labels :
André Breton,
Batignolles,
Cimitière des Batignolles,
Gaston Calmette,
Paris 17,
Paul Verlaine
This is about our local cemetery, Cimetière des Batignolles. It was opened in 1833, for the “locals”. It is not as full of tombs of well-known people as e.g. Père Lachaise, Montmartre, Montparnasse…, but I will revert to this.
It’s the fourth biggest of the totally twenty Paris cemeteries and has some 15 000 graves. It’s obvious that today the cemeteries within the city limits are not sufficient and that many of the larger ones now can be found in the suburbs. Also, the number of cremations in France has increased from close to zero to almost 30% the last 25 years. This is still a much lower percentage than in e.g. UK, Switzerland, Sweden… where cremations represent some 70-80%.
Somehow, this is linked to what struck me during my visit; the great number of abandoned graves, which however often are the ones where the most beautiful flowers, getting wild, are growing! I took some pictures also of those! Most of us are not anymore linked to anywhere and in any case, our family and friends are often elsewhere…
It’s the fourth biggest of the totally twenty Paris cemeteries and has some 15 000 graves. It’s obvious that today the cemeteries within the city limits are not sufficient and that many of the larger ones now can be found in the suburbs. Also, the number of cremations in France has increased from close to zero to almost 30% the last 25 years. This is still a much lower percentage than in e.g. UK, Switzerland, Sweden… where cremations represent some 70-80%.
Somehow, this is linked to what struck me during my visit; the great number of abandoned graves, which however often are the ones where the most beautiful flowers, getting wild, are growing! I took some pictures also of those! Most of us are not anymore linked to anywhere and in any case, our family and friends are often elsewhere…
To some of you, a few names of the local people buried here may say something: Paul Verlaine, one of the greatest French poets, Blaise Cendrars another poet, Edouard Veuillard, painter…You can also find the tomb of André Breton, the main founder of surrealism - linked to other writers and also painters like Salvador Dali. (André's grave is the one with an empty champagne bottle on it; someone drank to his health and then put a small flower in the bottle.) One small “anecdote”: When travelling in Mexico, Breton met Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo… and Trotsky, with whom he co-wrote a manifest.
The tomb you can see under a later built bridge is that of Gaston Calmette, boss of “le Figaro”, who was shot dead in 1914 by the wife of a French minister - a big scandal at that time. Gaston was the brother of Albert Calmette, who was the father of the BCG vaccine against tuberculoses and also developed the first snakes’ antivenin.
