Walking up the the street in Chartres, heading for the cathedral, you turn a corner, and come upon this face: Jean Moulin, a hero of the French Resistance. After unifying its main networks, he became its first President, just a couple of months before being captured by the occupying force, and tortured before his death in 1943. In Chartres, he is remembered. The street art there is amazing. There is so much of it. And it’s really good.
Of course, the city is best-known for its cathedral, which holds so much history, going back to the pre-Christian sacred site that was here before. For one thing, it’s the only church building I’ve come across that’s not oriented east-west. Chartres cathedral faces the rising sun at summer solstice, like Stonehenge.
While staying in Chartres, we visited the Proust museum in nearby Illiers-Combray. With Proust, we enter the extraordinarily detailed world of Marcel’s personal history. And with it, his sense that all other people are strangers to us: for each, our own mind the only one we can truly know. I dip into the monumental work, off and on. To get a sense of the sweep of the whole, I’m indebted to Kenneth Sinclair’s and his novel, Vu, which I’m proud to be publishing this coming December. He devotes almost a chapter to Proust.
Then we drove to Giverny to visit Monet’s famous garden. The water lilies had finished flowering, but so much else was in bloom. I read that Monet saw his garden as his greatest achievement. Visiting his house, and perching a few minutes on the one chair you can sit down on, I took in the generous table in his dining room imagining the animated conversations that must have taken place there. Everything’s painted yellow. A happy colour! We may only be able to see inside our own minds. But we can also journey convivially alongside others to share the joy of life, when we get the chance. I have no doubt that Jean Moulin did, when he still could.
Gillian PB
Gillian Paschkes-Bell
Editor, Pantolwen Press
Pantolwen Press is a publishing house bringing out a small number of high quality books
PUBLICATIONS TO DATE
The Seaborne and The Priestʼs Wife by A G Rivett
first books of the time-slip fantasy, the Isle Fincara Trilogy
PUBLICATIONS PENDING
Vu an experimental novel by Kenneth Sinclair
The Shareg by A G Rivett
Heart Explosions the poems of Barbara Loveland
Gillian is also working on her own novel.
