2023-11-28 19:14:56
EDITED – Friday November 17, 2023, during a “feasibility test” carried out by municipal services before the Olympic Games, Paris town hall dismantled four of the emblematic second-hand booksellers’ boxes on the banks of the Seine. They had been there for fifty years. Three hours later, they were put back in place.
???????? During a feasibility test before the Olympic Games, the Paris town hall dismantled last evening four of the second-hand booksellers’ boxes, emblematic of the banks of the Seine in the capital #AFP #AFPTV ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/pzxCrabFG6
— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) November 18, 2023
The operation caused consternation and sadness among second-hand booksellers. Concerns too. Michel Bouetard, general secretary of the second-hand booksellers’ association, declared: “As we usually say: what the floods of 1910, the Occupation and Napoleon III failed to do, the Olympic Games will perhaps succeed in doing: make us disappear! No, I’m not going to cry. But it’s a shame, it’s stupid. It’s really a suffering that they impose on us that is not necessary. Because boxes are… how shall I put this? Yes: second-hand booksellers are as fragile as their boxes.”
Seller of one of the four boxes which were the subject of the test, Jean-Guy Penchenat adds: “The problem is that we won’t be able to work for a month or two afterwards. Because they are not going to reinstall the boxes the next day. We didn’t have to remove books from the center of Paris for people to live well. So they can have fun and see the boats go by. The books could stay there. Especially since we could even, to our extent, participate in the party.”
The second-hand booksellers’ concerns are well-founded. The Paris Police Prefecture is demanding the dismantling of 600 boxes out of 900 before the opening ceremony of the Games.
Why remove these symbols of Paris and not others? By chance, say, the Obelisk, the July Column or those of Buren, for example?
No joke: second-hand booksellers cannot harm the safety of people or property during the Games. And as Mr. Bouetard rightly says, they in no way hide the quays of the Seine, and they will therefore not disturb the tourists who come to attend the Games, who – we can validly assert this – will regret not being able to take advantage of one of the most emblematic symbols of the capital, included in the inventory of French intangible cultural heritage in 2019.
Parisian second-hand booksellers appeared in the surrounding area in the 16th century. In 1649, a regulation prohibited book displays on the Pont-Neuf in order to avoid parallel markets which made it possible to circumvent censorship.
The emblematic symbol of Paris which most obstructs the view and absolutely everything in the capital is the Montparnasse Tower built between 1969 and 1973. Remove that too or dismantle the Eiffel Tower, built in 1889! For that matter…
And above all, both by nature and by destination, second-hand bookstores are much less likely to bother tourists than… rats!
For those who still had a doubt, with this new manifestation of its desire to harm it, they have confirmation of the drama that the capital since it has Anne Hidalgo as mayor, Paris, a thousand-year-old city which, before being the prey of incompetence, unsanitary and lack of taste, shone on humanity with the then fully deserved title of “most beautiful city in the world.
And, with the dismantling of these boxes, it also deprives the Seine of its unique specificity described by Blaise Cendrars in Bourlinguer : “The Seine is the only river in the world that flows between two rows of books.”
Shame on you !
#Paris #losing #soul #puts #box