Nocturnal Paris by Restif de la Bretonne

The aim of this study is to investigate the nocturnal urban world that Restif de la Bretonne depicted in the second half of the 18th century when Paris became the centre of European cultural life. Louis Sebastian Mercier and Restif de la Bretonne are the two authors that more than any others dedicated their lives and their works to Paris and the costumes of its urban life, and their work is the basis of a literary journey that reaches us. Restif, in particular, can be considered, a sort of sociologist, who scientifically analyses the facts from the inside, becoming an active part of the story. With his novel Les Nuits de Paris ou le Spectateur Nocturne, published in several volumes between 1788 and 1794, Restif inspired several writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. By reading his extensive chronicle of Parisian nights we can not only taste the atmosphere of that vanished Paris, but we can also find a source of inspiration for our time, for our contemporary urban life.

‘The poor and the well-to-do lived side by side in the same street’

An account of the Marais in its earliest days and during the time when it was the Paris headquarters of the nobility. The medieval coexistence of the splendiferous and the noisome is evoked, and the importance of the area for later literary figures such as Scarron and Madame de Sévigné is examined along with the work of the two great chroniclers of pre-Revolutionary Paris, Restif de la Bretonne and Louis-Sébastien Mercier – respectively voyeur and flâneur extraordinaire. Restif speaks warmly of a group of Jewish families he encountered, whereas Mercier, writing in the year before the Revolution, views the neighbourhood as a dismally staid backwater – a portent of the decline that lay in store.

Managua, Salsa City y Noche de piedras

La cité, la cita, die Stadt, the city, ha sido, desde sus inicios, desde los primeros trazos de Vitrubio, la raíz explorativa de la novela, bien se trate de Petronio, de Restif de la Bretonne o Sebastien Mercier, arco voltaico que ya nos introduce en la ciudad como tal preludiando Los misterios de París de Eugene Sue, La Fille au yeux d’or de Balzac, uno de los más extraordinarios textos que he leído sobre el despertar de una ciudad, una ciudad con puertas, como era el París que el gran novelista todavía logra incorporar a La Comedia Humana. Vasto y apasionado tema: el corazón de la novela misma. Esa ciudad que el exiliado Constantinos Petros Cavafis había cantado con nostalgia sentimental e irredimible, y que Henry.