B.

Heavier than stones

Behind the scenes

Let's face it, it's not often you read about Paris and think of Christchurch.

But here's poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire back in the late 1850s...

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... contemplating the changing face of Paris (the warrens of the old city were coming down... 

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... and Baron Haussmann's new city of broad and orderly avenues was rising up)... 

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... and striking a note of mournfulness that wouldn't sound inappropriate in front of Christchurch's Provincial Council Buildings or the Barbadoes Street Basilica, where the 'stones of memory' are literally being numbered and carted off:

Paris is changing! but nothing within my melancholy
has shifted! New palaces, scaffolding, piles of stone
Old neighbourhoods – everything has become allegory for me
and my dear memories are heavier than stones.


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