The second installment of "Thinking of Paris," a humanist's Parisian walk.
"Places of Paris": A Look into the Depths of Residents

Professor Jeong Su-bok, who uses his 'aesthetic reason' to present his own unique writing style, talks about the aesthetics of urban space by combining the 'memories' of the past that come to mind while walking through Paris with the 'imagination' that allows him to dream of another world beyond the daily life unfolding before his eyes.
The author, who has lived in Paris for over 15 years, focuses on sixteen of the city's many places and presents to readers the multiple layers of meaning they contain.

The places in Paris that the author presents are seen from the perspective of a resident, not a tourist.
In today's urban reality, where "non-places" that are merely functional places, such as 24-hour convenience stores, marts, gas stations, Starbucks, and McDonald's, are increasing, while true "places" such as buildings, bridges, and alleyways that evoke old memories and constitute the identity of a place are gradually disappearing, the author's in-depth perspective on places delivers a meaningful message.


In this book, which features over 350 places ranging from ornate squares to humble alleyways and over 350 people including poets, painters, revolutionaries, and thinkers, readers walk through the places of Paris and uncover the layers of meaning that are not easily visible to the public. The author's work makes us reflect not only on the 'meaning of place' but also on the 'meaning of life'.
As the author says, “Life leaves behind memories, and places are the homes where memories live.”

French anthropologist Marc Augé defined urban spaces with such meaning and unique feeling as 'places.'
Not all places are ‘places’.
So, he named the uniformly designed, useful but meaningless spaces that can be seen everywhere, such as gas stations, McDonald's, and 24-hour convenience stores, 'non-places', meaning places that are not 'places'.
If places are spaces that speak to us, evoke memories, enrich our emotions, and provide artistic inspiration, then non-places are spaces of survival and daily life that satisfy our needs and desires.
The more a city of memories has meaningful 'places' that preserve its long history, the more it inspires artistic inspiration.
Such urban places offer inspiration, joy, rest and peace.
In a place, a conversation with space takes place, but in a non-place, space only feels clichéd and disconnected.
If you live in a space where there is no 'place' and only functional 'non-places' created out of necessity, your life becomes bleak and harsh, and you feel anxious and chased without realizing it.
So, the saying that walking around a city makes you feel good implies that the chemical combination of 'serendipity' and 'place' easily occurs.
The public 'places' of the city become my own places, places meaningful to my life, through the alchemy of memory and imagination.
---“Opening the Book,” 12-13

The Eiffel Tower is an object of observation, but at the same time it is the subject of observation or the place of observation.
The Eiffel Tower is a strange object that can be both subject and object, active and passive.
The Eiffel Tower is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Paris, along with Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre Museum, and the Pompidou Center.
But unlike other places, the Eiffel Tower is an empty museum.
There are so many things to see at the Louvre and the Pompidou Center.
Although Notre Dame Cathedral is not an art museum, it has quite a lot to see.
The Eiffel Tower, made of iron, has very little to show inside, yet reveals more than any other place.
---「Seeing and Climbing the Eiffel Tower Differently」, 49

The main argument of those who opposed the construction of the Eiffel Tower was that it went against traditional aesthetic standards and had no specific purpose.
It is irrational to spend a huge amount of money to build a structure that is both aesthetically ugly and completely useless just to commemorate a one-time event.
Even if it were a work of art, spending a huge amount of money to build a useless monumental tower could not have been in line with the pragmatic rationality of the bourgeoisie at the time.
So even Gustave Eiffel, who designed and built the tower, had to argue for the tower's usefulness against the arguments of opponents.
As an engineer, he argued that the Eiffel Tower could be used for wind resistance experiments, aerodynamic experiments, studies on the resistance of metals, studies on changes in human physiology depending on height, wireless engineering research, information and communication research, and weather observation.
In the 20th century, the Eiffel Tower was actually used for that purpose.
But the value of the Eiffel Tower is of a nature that cannot be measured by such rational uses.
The most important function of the Eiffel Tower is to inspire the imagination of Parisians, French people, and people around the world, and to help them regain a purity that has been lost to the world.
The top of the Eiffel Tower reminds me of the moment of awe I felt as a child, when I would sit on my father or older brother's neck and see a vast world I had never seen before.
The Eiffel Tower brings back childhood memories and makes everyone dream of soaring vertically into the sky.
That is the great usefulness of the seemingly useless Eiffel Tower.
"Seeing and Climbing the Eiffel Tower Differently," pp. 67-68

Paris began on the Ile de la Cité floating on the Seine River.
If you open a map of Paris, you will see the Île de la Cité in the center of the map.
So it is no coincidence that the first bridge connecting Paris' Left and Right Banks was built at the western end of the Île de la Cité, which resembles a giant Y turned on its side.
So the name of the bridge is 'Pont Neuf'.
It means 'newly built bridge'.
Since then, 35 more bridges have been built over the Seine River that flows through Paris, and the Pont d'Eau de la Reine is the oldest bridge.
Built on the Île de la Cité in the heart of Paris, the Pont Neuf is located in the heart of Paris.
Louis-Sébastien Mercier, who studied Parisian customs by walking around the city on the eve of the 18th-century revolution, said, “The Pont Neuf is like the heart of the human body, the center of all movement and circulation.”
So, crossing the Pont Neuf is like entering the heart of Paris.
---“Crossing the Bridge over the Seine,” pp. 87–88

Rue des Menilmontant is similar to Rue de Belleville in that it is a hill that rises from south to north.
However, while the Rue de Belleville is bustling with people and shops are lined up, the Rue de Menilmontant has a relatively calm feel with closed shops visible here and there.
Perhaps that is why Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote “Reveries of a Solitary Walker,” enjoyed walking along the Menilmontant hill about 20 years before the French Revolution.
According to the second section of the book, "Walks," on Thursday, October 24, 1776, Rousseau was walking near Haute-Born, which connects Belleville and Menilmontant.
That day, Rousseau encountered a huge Danish dog and was attacked by it, losing consciousness and collapsing.
He describes his state of mental confusion at the time as follows:

Someone asked me where I live.
I was speechless at that moment.
I thought about where I had been.
Someone told me I was in Haute-Born.
Those words sounded to me like they were on Mount Atlas.

It is well known that Rousseau walked along the Menilmontant route, but it is less well known that Montaigne also walked along the Menilmontant route before him.
But strangely enough, both of them were bitten by dogs while walking along the Menilmontan hill.
Anecdotes like this may have contributed to people's perception of this area as a 'dangerous area'.
---"In Search of a 'Dangerous' Neighborhood in Northeastern Paris," 154-55

Death makes us think about life.
Because human life is finite, we have no choice but to make efforts to live a meaningful life.
If I could live indefinitely, I could experience all kinds of lives.
But since we only have one chance to live a limited amount of time, less than a hundred years, the question of the meaning of life arises.
The city packages the stark reality of finite life.
Therefore, it is common for graveyards for the dead who have left this world and gone to the other world to be located in the outskirts of the city, where they are not easily visible.
But that's not the case in Paris.
In Paris, the cemeteries for the dead are located alongside the spaces of the living.
The cemeteries of Paris, spaces of death within the spaces of life, remind us of the finiteness of life.
In Western tradition, scholars would keep a skull next to them in their studies to study, perhaps because the skull, symbolizing death, served as a warning to achieve meaningful academic achievements within a limited time.
---「Pilgrimage to Montparnasse Cemetery」, 163-67

The city is a symbol of infinite mobility.
The city is a space of freedom where anonymity is guaranteed.
“The air of the city makes us free.” So it seems natural that prisons, which symbolize restraint, the opposite of freedom, are far from everyday living spaces.
〔… … 〕 But in the middle of Paris, a prison stands proudly.
It is a 19th century legacy that remains in the 21st century.
If you exit the Denfert-Rochereau metro station, a transportation hub in the 14th arrondissement, and continue walking along Arago Street, you will find a high wall, about 20 meters high, that continues for a long time.
This wall, built by mixing stones with cement, gives off an old-fashioned feel.
At the very top of the wall, sharp metal blades that look like daggers are stuck in every space.
The last floor of the building inside the wall is visible, and the small glass windows are covered with iron bars.
Anyone who sees it will recognize it as a prison.
---“Wandering Around the Prison of Santé,” 191

Crossing the Boulevard Raspail from the building where Picasso's studio was located, you will find the Rue de Campagne Premiere.
When I first heard the name of the street 'Campagne Premiere', I interpreted it in a somewhat romantic way as 'the first countryside'.
However, when I looked it up in a dictionary of Parisian street names, I found that it had a rather aggressive meaning of 'first battle' (Campaigne has both 'countryside' and 'battle').
This alley is just an ordinary Parisian alleyway with nothing special about it if you just pass by.
〔… … 〕 To me, this alley was just an alley I had to pass through to get to the Luxembourg Gardens.
But as I began to travel this road more often, I became familiar with it, and the signs that I had not seen at first began to speak to me.
So I started paying attention to the symbols I saw and the sounds I heard.
And then I realized that this insignificant, ordinary alleyway was a storehouse of meaning, filled with countless symbols.
So walking this path provides an opportunity for a semiotic stroll, discovering and interpreting hidden signs.
What appeared to be an ordinary street with nothing new on the surface was actually covered with a thick layer of meaning.
---“Semiotics of the Rue de Campagne Premiere,” 237–38

A while ago, after seeing an exhibition of Italian film director Federico Fellini at the Jeu de Paume, I turned left to go down to the Tuileries Garden, and a stone tablet that I hadn't seen before on the wall of the Jeu de Paume building caught my eye.
It was a newly installed stone slab.
There was a record of the activities of Rose Valland, a Jeu-de-Foum art conservator under Nazi rule between 1940 and 1944.
At the time, the Nazis were storing and classifying works of art stolen from French art dealers and private collectors in the Jeu de Paume and transporting them to Germany. Rose Valland went to work every day, risking her life if discovered, and meticulously recorded the whereabouts of the works being transported to Germany.
Her records were crucial in bringing back to France 4,000 to 5,000 works that had been smuggled out of Germany after the war.
---「A Winter Night's Walk through the Tuileries Gardens」, 378

This book is about a place, but it inevitably includes stories of people who are intertwined with that place.
How could there not be stories of people living in places in the city that people created to live together?
So my Paris series is a story about the space called Paris, but at the same time, it is also a story about the people who live in Paris.
I am a sociologist, but I explored literary writing in this book.
I tried to become the soul of a poet and the mind of a novelist.
This book is neither a poem nor a novel.
However, the book also has poetic moments and novelistic stories scattered throughout.
If poetry is a condensed verbal expression of inspiration that surges at a certain moment, this book is filled with moments of heightened emotion and aesthetic experience felt in specific places in Paris.
A novel tells the story of people living intertwined with each other in a specific time and place.
The Paris stories I wrote are not novels, but there are novel-like stories scattered here and there.

---“Closing the Book,” 387