At the Sorbonne in May '98
I went for the first time to Paris in May '97, on my twenty-third birthday, as a senior at the Theatre Studies Department of the University of Athens, to be interviewed, along with my close college classmate and friend, Vassilis Noulas, as part of the admissions process for the Sorbonne Paris III graduate program. We both got in, so the following spring, the end of our first academic year as graduate students at the Sorbonne coincided with the 30-year anniversary since May '68.
Youth frisson, student fever: to have housing at the “Cité U” (Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris), to be going to school in the 5th arrondissement, to be avidly devouring movies, museums and theatre, to be reading (ok, sometimes maybe only skimming through) books and magazines, to be trying all cafés from Saint-Germain-des-Prés to the Bastille (and at night, “Buddha Bar”, that's another story).
May '68 was – is – mythical anyway; but now, May '98 – my very own first grad student Parisian May – seems equally mythical: we didn't have Internet, we didn't have a TV, we didn't have cell phones, we didn't even have landlines! The landline at the “Fondation” (La Fondation Hellénique, the Hellenic “house”) was a unique object per floor, precious and cherished, and the legendary, right out of a Polanski movie concierge/operator Madame Pratt would call you on your intercom (“Telephone pour vous”) so that you would get out into the hallway and rush to the much-desired, communally shared apparatus that was ringing (I was privileged, my dorm room was right next to it).
The digression about communication conditions reminiscent of Khrushchev-era Soviet apartments is employed to underline the misty allure that enveloped notions, persons and, yes, revolutions, before the times when, simply by touching (or commanding) a screen, images and words flow instantly in front of you. Back then, we had to make an effort in order to catch the features in question – catch the specific France Culture radio show at the moment it aired or look for the specific Nouvel Observateur issue. But it is also the readiness to be allured, to succumb to the power of imagination: the black-and-white imagery is so seductive that I have come to think of Daniel Cohn-Bendit as a cross between a friend of my parents' and a grad-school classmate of mine (both false, of course).
Spaces for ideas
This May I'm reminiscing on all that having just watched at a screening at MoMA the Soviet Revolutionary Committee film documentary The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927), and as I'm walking towards Columbia.
I never hid my “stuckness” with university spaces: it was love at first sight with Columbia campus the instant I set foot on the brick-paved College walkway, as a, yet again, grad student in 2005. My former MFA School of the Arts classmates make fun of me: “You're still there?!” With my husband (whom, incidentally, I met in the dorm laundry room), we lived on campus, inside the Gothic tower of Union Theological Seminary, for a whole twelve years (and even when we moved out, we went nearby). Even when I will have abandoned this vain city, my “office” will always be Obama's bench, against the backdrop of the Low Memorial Library dome, and I will be forever “seated” in the armchairs of the, radiant in its glass and metal splendor, Lerner Hall, with a view to the magnificent trees behind the Pulitzer Hall. Universities are spaces for ideas, but the spaces are also part of the university's idea – the pillars and the chandeliers and the magnolias and the cherry tress become part of the World of Ideas.
I arrive at the black iron Gate on 116th & Broadway. Padlocked, and guarded by police. On the beloved brick-paved sidewalk, a poster has fallen. This revolution's heroine is less glamorous than the Nouvelle Vague-worthy “red” Danny: six-year-old Palestinian Hind, a war victim who, trapped inside a car with already dead members of her family, was left to perish, in spite of rescue appeals to Israeli authorities.
The question to Alma Mater
I've read that among the negotiation proposals offered by the university administration to the protesting students was the future planning of educational programs for Gaza children. I “turn” - virtually, since the statue is nearby, but I'm not allowed to approach it – to the wise Alma Mater (who, with her arms harmonically stretched out, had always seemed to me like a depiction of the scales of justice), and I ask the bronze spiritual nurse whether the reparation proposal through pedagogical support “in the future” seems to her like a fair counterbalance for the systematic, unprecedented extermination of thousands of children today.
“Wrongs are wrongs in whosoever's name they may be committed.” Ironically, the phrase that comes to mind is uttered by the lips of the Jewish hero of the prophetic anti-Nazi 1938 play Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, whose Greek premiere I had the honor to direct (KET Theatre, Athens, 2014).
In this materialized world of ideas, meritocracy and freedom are attainable, as I can testify through my humble personal experience, since my (Russian) husband and I, both immigrants, entered Columbia land while not only not knowing anyone, but also as newcomers from another continent to study what we loved. Our very life was determined by this Gate, which did not simply open wide for us, but continues to host us.
I am awaiting the reply of the owl that's “hiding” in the classical figure's chiton. “In Lumine Tuo Videbimus Lumen” is Columbia's motto.
This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print) on May 18, 2024.
It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com.
Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη έκδοση) στις 18 Μαΐου 2024.
Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com.
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