Jacques Tati, Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, Val-de-Marne (94), France

One of my favorite movie directors is Jacques Tati, so I was delighted to discover, quite by chance as I was coming away from Rabelais's tower, some models based on Tati's Mon oncle. The reason, I later found out through Googling, was because the movie was filmed here.

A few years ago I read that in a poster Tati's pipe, in politically correct genuflection, had been airbrushed into a children's model windmill, so it's pleasing to see no such nonsense here, and that the dog is holding the man's pipe for him.

Passerelle Léopold Sédar Senghor, 1st/7th arrondissements, Paris, France: Literary Île-de-France #37

The original name for this bridge was Pont de Solferino.

However, on the centenary of the birth of the Senegalese poet, who was the president of Senegal for twenty years, it was renamed the Passerelle Léopold Sédar Senghor.

A curious thing about the bridge is the custom of lovers leaving locks there with their names, and there must be several hundreds of these locks along the bridge.

But this is not a new phenomenon and exists in several other countries. Love padlocks, or love locks can, for example, be found on the Ponte Milvio in Rome, a custom which is attributed to Federico Moccia's book Ho volgia di te (I Want You), which was later turned into a movie.

Most of them are written on with highlighter.

Many are presumably been there a long time from the rust on them.

And some couples make the effort to have them engraved.

Returning to Senghor, to the south-east of Paris, at St-Maur-Des-Fossés in Val-de-Marne, is Avenue Léopold Sédar Senghor, where there is even a quotation:

'J'AI RÊVÉ D'UN MONDE DE SOLEIL

DANS LA FRATERNITÉ DE MES FRÈRES

AU YEUX BLEUES

LÉOPOLD SÉDAR SENGHOR

ÉCRIVAIN ET HOMME POLITIQUE

SÉNÉGALAIS 1906—2001'

Rabelais at Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, Val-de-Marne (94), France: Literary Île-de-France #34

The so-called 'Tour Rabelais' ('Rabelais's Tower') in Parc de l'Abbaye in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés was built between 1358 and 1360 as an important fortification point of the abbey during the Hundred Years' War (`1337—1453).

Rabelais (1483(?)—1553) was the private secretary of Cardinal Jean du Bellay, the first dean of the secularized St-Maur-des-Fossés abbey in 1533. He was one of the canons and stayed here in 1536, 1537, and 1550, finishing writing his Quart Livre (Fourth Book here. He would have stayed in one of the abbey lodges and the castle built pour the cardinal by Philibert Delorme, but not in this tower.

My François Rabelais posts:
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François Rabelais in Seuilly
Rabelais in Meudon-sur-Seine
Rabelais at Saint-Maur-des-Fossés

Raymond Radiguet and Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, Val-de-Marne (94), France: Literary Île-de-France #8

Raymond Radiguet lived a mere 20 years, from 1903 to 1923.  He is noted for his short 1923 novel Le Diable au corps (translated as The Devil in the Flesh), and his second, Le bal du Comte d'Orgel, was published the year after his death.

Due to his youth, comparisons have been made with Rimbaud and Sagan, and much more recently with the 19-year-old Marien Defalvard, whose first novel Du temps qu'on existait was published last month and the maturity of his writing greeted with some amazement.

But returning to Radiguet, this plaque was not easy to photo: it's very shiny and the sun was directly on it, so my silhouette is reflected in it.

'RAYMOND RADIGUET

1903 - 1923

NÉ A SAINT MAUR

HABITA CETTE MAISON

DE 1914 À 1923'

'RAYMOND RADIGUET
1903 - 1923
BORN IN ST MAUR
LIVED IN THIS HOUSE
FROM 1914 TO 1923'

Radiguet's former home in St Maur.