{"id":517,"date":"2010-08-23T10:10:08","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T10:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=517"},"modified":"2010-08-23T10:10:08","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T10:10:08","slug":"le-mont-st-michel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=517","title":{"rendered":"Le Mont St. Michel"},"content":{"rendered":"

The second reason why the blog has been quiet is that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been in France \u00e2\u20ac\u201c nearly nine days without any internet access whatsoever, which must be my longest non-on-line period for several years.<\/p>\n

We stayed in a g\u00c3\u00aete on a pig farm, of all places, in the C\u00c3\u00b4tes d\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Armor on the north coast of Brittany, fairly near to St. Brieuc. It was a lovely location \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the accommodation was quite modern but the farm was a slightly ramshackle collection of buildings and an almost stereotypical evocation of the rustic French rural idyll \u00e2\u20ac\u201c vegetables growing in the garden, ducks and geese by a pond, a goat by the farm entrance \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and I saw a farmer relieving himself against a courtyard wall on Sunday in full view of our front door.<\/p>\n

Not really very near St.Brieuc \u00e2\u20ac\u201c about 150 kilometres away and actually in Normandy \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is Mont St.Michel. I went there probably over 25 years ago and all I can remember is crowds and an abbey on the top \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the sort of sight that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve since thought is probably better seen from about five miles away and anything nearer tends to destroy the experience.<\/p>\n

From a distance it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably the closest actual modern structure to look anything like the mythical structures of romantic Arthurian legend \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the Isle of Avalon. Perhaps this stuck in my mind as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve written a reference to Avalon rising out of the waters in an early chapter of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Angel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

On returning after such a long time I had another serendipitous experience. We struggled up the steps to the abbey on the top of the mount just as the ticket office shut at 6pm. If we wanted to see the abbey then we had to come back later as there was a special evening opening starting at 7pm. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see why they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t keep the abbey open for the duration.<\/p>\n

So to kill time we went back down to the base of the mount which, for anyone who doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know the place, is about half a mile of one narrow street lined with hotels, restaurants, cr\u00c3\u00aaperies, gift shops and anything else designed to part tourists from all over the world from their money (the place was full of Americans and Japanese as well as the normal British, Belgians, Germans and Dutch that tend to visit other places in Normandy and Brittany.)<\/p>\n

Standing among these palaces of tat built into largely medieval stone buildings I was perversely reminded of visiting Disneyland (the mount itself looks very like Disney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Sleeping Beauty castle from a distance) and theme parks — particularly Legoland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s castle with the dragon rollercoaster.<\/p>\n

After buying extortionately priced ice-creams and looking at souvenir rubbish like snowstorms \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I actually saw boxes of the stuff being delivered to shops with \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMade in China\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in big letters on the side \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I was ready for a similar rip-off experience at the abbey.<\/p>\n

But I needn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have worried. Just ahead of us walking into the abbey was a jerky Scandinavian on his own who was photographic everything. As soon as he entered the first big room and then ran out again to grab a photo through the narrow door, which framed a woman playing a harpsichord.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d read something in the Rough Guide about the evening openings having music and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcinstallations\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 but I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t realise it was such an elegantly organised event that made superb use of the alternately vast and claustrophobic plain spaces of the abbey. Occasionally artworks and sculptures were arranged along the route \u00e2\u20ac\u201c making great use of atmospheric, coloured lighting. See the photo for an example of how a vaulted stone ceiling was lit from beneath and reflected into a pool of still water.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These were interspersed with other musicians \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a cellist playing a Bach piece, a flautist beautifully playing Gluck\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDance of the Blessed Spirits\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in a darkened crypt and, in an almost magical touch, as we climbed out of a crypt up a narrow stairway and emerged into the huge space of the abbey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nave, the emptiness was filled by the music of a harpist.<\/p>\n

To walk through the abbey with the art, music and lights was to luxuriate in the appeal to the senses of art, music, light within the feel and smell of a building that, in parts, dates back nearly a thousand years. It confounded my expectations and was a complete contrast to the touristy clatter below. I read in the guide book that only a third of the hordes even make their way up the mount to the abbey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s walls \u00e2\u20ac\u201c far fewer will have been so rapt by it as I was.<\/p>\n

There seemed to be something quite understatedly European about the use of art and classical music \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I know my German colleagues tend not to think of opera and classical music as somehow elitist \u00e2\u20ac\u201c until fairly recently \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcLast Night At the Proms\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 was broadcast live on German television.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to try and convey some of this non-self-conscious appreciation in The Angel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The second reason why the blog has been quiet is that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been in France \u00e2\u20ac\u201c nearly nine days without any internet access whatsoever, which must be my longest non-on-line period for several years. We stayed in a g\u00c3\u00aete on a pig farm, of all places, in the C\u00c3\u00b4tes d\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Armor on the north coast of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Le Mont St. Michel”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[135,422,419,418,260,336,420,421,131,399,417,423,416],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research","tag-artists","tag-brittany","tag-classical-music","tag-culture","tag-disneyland","tag-europe","tag-european-culture","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-holidays","tag-le-mont-st-michel","tag-pig-farms","tag-tourism"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":519,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions\/519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}