Having just returned this past week from taking Centenary students to Paris, where I celebrated the 20th anniversary of my “Americans in Paris:  The Quest for the Good Life” May Module, it’s natural to reflect a bit about “Why Paris?” and what is “The Good Life?” and why have I done this since 2002 (with a respite under Covid)?    

The title above (though not actually stated by Audrey Hepburn in the film Sabrina as popular culture tends to assert) is a pretty good answer to “Why Paris?” And it’s a sentiment that undergirds Centenary taking its first-year students to Paris in August for their introduction to college life and beyond.  But why is it a good idea? 

For me, Paris embodies the core values and habits of being that characterize the “good life” that a Centenary liberal arts education might offer you – if you learn to embrace it and if you take advantage of it.  So:  what core values and what habits of being?

Above all, Paris is about celebrating and coming to understand human accomplishments; for me, the most civilized human accomplishments:  good food, (all) the arts, religion, history, science, and education, to name a few. The great cities of the European world tend to exhibit this too:  London has the British Museum and St. Paul’s Cathedral; Berlin has its Philharmonie and its Museum of Technology; Rome has its Colosseum and the Vatican (and really good gelato). 

But Paris is different.  So many important sites are centrally located, within easy walking distance from Notre Dame Cathedral, literally the center of Paris (and France) culturally and spiritually.  As the 19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire understood, Paris is perfect for the flâneur, his concept of one who strolls leisurely in the city, observing and absorbing all the sensual and intellectual delights that it offers. Paris offers nourishment for the body and the soul that is imminently accessible on a human scale.  London, Berlin, Rome seem more spread out, less cohesive (though Rome comes close).  

In the front of Notre Dame (underground) are Roman ruins from 2000 years ago; a 3-4 minute walk gets you to Saint-Chapelle (a 13th-century royal chapel with superb stained glass constructed to house Christ’s Crown of Thorns) and the Conciergerie (originally part of the medieval royal palace on the Île de la Cité where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned during the French Revolution).  Exit the Conciergerie and you see across the river Seine the Hôtel de Ville, Paris’s magnificent city hall, first built in the 16th century, and only a five minute walk away.  Literally around the corner from the Hôtel de Ville is the Marais, the Renaissance district centered around the elegant 17th century Place des Vosges, a royal square where Victor Hugo later lived.  Now it’s one of Paris’s most historic and hippest neighborhoods.   All of this can be experienced in an easy morning walk.

What a walk like this through Paris gives you (and there are many such walks in Paris) is historical and cultural perspective, the same broad point of view and approach to the complexity of life that a Centenary education should give you.  You learn that the beautiful (Notre Dame; Saint-Chapelle) and the violent (the French Revolution; the Paris Commune) are both part of the human experience.  You learn that spirituality (beautiful Parisian churches) and reason (the Sorbonne; the Collège de France) can - potentially - go hand in hand.  You learn that manners (greeting everyone with a “Bonjour, Madame” or “Monsieur”) and memory (the French memorialize everything) teach a society how to be stable and appreciate the relationship of the past with the present and the future. 

My own love affair with Paris started when I was an undergraduate, spending my junior year in England.  On the first day of my first trip to Paris, I tried to enter an exhibit of the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch at the Orangerie.  At the entrance I realized I didn’t have enough francs for the admission (this was before credit cards!).  As I walked away dejectedly, I heard someone yelling behind me.  As I turned, I saw the woman taking tickets waving to me to come in.  She admitted me, without asking for any money.  As I passed her, she said:  “Vous êtes un étudiant américain. Vous devez voir cette exposition.“  (You are an American student; you need to see this exhibit.)

She was right.   I fell in love with Munch’s paintings that day.  And I still have the poster from that exhibition.  And I fell in love with Paris that day, for believing in me, for believing in the importance of art and culture to shape the world, for believing that sometimes human decency and generosity should override rules and regulations and the cost of admission. 

Dr. Jefferson Hendricks

Dr. Hendricks neglected to turn in a bio and headshot to the Congo. Therefore, as former Editor-in-Chief, it is my privilege to do it for him: Dr. Hendricks is a professor in--and current chair of--the English Department. He graduated from Centenary before the internet was invented and returned to work here while cellphones were still the size of bricks.

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