THE QUARTIRR LATIN: NEW STYLE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1295, 25 November 1911, Page 9

THE QUARTIRR LATIN: NEW STYLE.

After a day or two of the razzlo-daralo along the grand boulevards, you go to tho Quartfer Latin to recuperate," says the "International" in an article showing the new spirit which now animates the old Latin Quarter of Paris.

lho Latin quarter is actuallv the most tranquil and most restful district in Paris correspondingly approximately to New lorks borough of Brooklyn. Of cour-'e the students cut up uon- and then, but then students cut up now and then in nearly every city whero they gather. As a matter of fact, the primrose path of dalliance can bo trodden more fantastically in almost any other section ot the French capital than in the Latin Quarter, which is now, to all intents and purposes, the centre of Parisian intellectual life. The Sorhonne, the Col-' lego de France, in which Bergson lectures, the Luxembourg Museum, the Poiitheon. and many other educational institutions are there, and tho rising school of writers, the cerivains d'avant garde, nave made the district their headquarters. Mr. Alvan F. Snnborn. the wril»r and author of 'Paris and the Social Uevolu..tioii/ tells me that_tlic_Latin-.Ouarter.. has been credited with much of the Bohemian glory that war really achieved by the studios, the garrets. Hie cabaret* .fend, the Grub Streets of Montmartro. A generation a«sn the rnunz sculptors, painters, musicians, and Iterators pursued their career in a succession of three stens Their student days were spent in the Latin Quarter, where work was abundant and scarcn. They then graduated to the Faubourg Jfontmnrfre, where they toiled to secure a foothold in their resnoctive professions. A cruel tradition required them to give local colour to the neighbourhood by nosing indifferently as Hohoniians, anarchists, socialists, or' Apaches, and their social nosition was always of questionabel strength until thev had contracted one of those indisnensnblo alliances with tho fair sex. described as unions libres. When, by dint of assiduous efforts in these directions, thev eventually 'arrived.' they east off their threadbare poses, visited a bath and a harbor, pensioner! thrir lady comrades, married, and moved to a fashionable neighbourbond near the Kois dc Boulogne in tho lf.Hi arron(!iss»tnent.

"Nearly :ill the leading dramatists, men of letters, artists, actors, and actresses of modern Paris have passed through Monttnartre. and so manv of them have taken up residences in the ICth district that Parisian wass speak of contemporary French literntnre nnd nrt as the literature and art of the sixteenth. The old generation of struieling Montmartyr? bas not been renlaced bv o new one., however. In late years, chean with a low contempt for "cnteel Rolwiianism hnve invaded the Faubourg nnd extinguished the old irlamonr. until nothing remains of the old-time Montmnrtro but tho dirt and the smell. Meanwbile. ths younrrer set of writers whom Paris is said to be eagerly awaiting are reaching maturity the cultured firmness of tho Quartier Latin."