Sunday, September 30, 2012

In American cities and urban centers of  Intellectual life a new and growing awareness of global issues were infused into everyday views from France since the roaring 20s.  The Left Bank / Montparnasse became so popular that many drop out of either college or from teaching to make a trip to the French cafes and cabarets of this section of Paris, France.  Here too was the first time where eager visitors who happened to drop by while visiting other areas of Paris were introduced to new ideas.   Manu stayed as long termed residence, apartment tenants, which once the money ran out many could not wait to communicate to America what they learned and have become as  a result.

There were others who came from Argentina, Brazil, Japan, England, and Moscow --- mostly of the loyalist of the Czar fleeing for their lives - to find what was new.  Left Bank is still attracting those who want similar experiences in order to shape their lives and the lives of others.

There is an addition consequence of what was happening and is still happening is historically denoted by the knowledge that the core leadership which led the French resistance against the German occipation of both France and Paris came for the Intellectual core of the Left Bank of Paris.


its counterpart Montmartre, Montparnasse became famous at the beginning of the 20th century, referred to as les Années Folles (the Crazy Years), when it was the heart of intellectual and artistic life in Paris. From 1910 to the start of World War II, Paris' artistic circles migrated to Montparnasse, an alternative to the Montmartre district which had been the intellectual breeding ground for the previous generation of artists. The Paris of Zola, Manet, France, Degas, Fauré, a group that had assembled more on the basis of status affinity than actual artistic tastes, indulging in the refinements of Dandyism, was at the opposite end of the economic, social, and political spectrum from the gritty, tough-talking, die-hard, emigrant artists that peopled Montparnasse.