Paris Fluctuat...Ford Madox Ford's Urban Psychogeography
Résumé
Though he was born in London, Ford reported that he would never regard that city as his own and dismissed the idea of having come 'back to London' when he did return, as if the English metropolis knew not him. Paris was linked to the ebb and flow of Ford's affects and emotions and to his artistic ventures. The ups and downs of the writer's mindscape inscribe the persistence of the Parisian urbanscape in the essays. Working from the premises of psychogeography, from Guy Debord to Will Self, this chapter investigates Ford's Paris as an impressionist cityscape. Indeed, if the geography of Paris remains the same, the mental images change and Ford shows how impressions from childhood are superimposed on the adult's, with the Left Bank consistently standing for a whole continent. Invariants do persist across the years, such as the subjective image of the impassable cleft separating the Left Bank from the Quartier de l'Etoile, like two brain hemispheres. In the last resort, Paris is lived as a text, or palimpsest, affording a thorough artistic experience. Therefore this chapter attempts to read Ford's Paris through a kaleidoscope of his writings.
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