The Shape Of A City

The most original book of Julien Gracq’s later output is about Nantes. It begins with a quotation from Baudelaire that Gracq repeats and distorts: ＂The shape of a city, as we all know, changes more quickly than the mortal heart.＂ Nantes, still haunted by Andre Breton, Jacques Vache, and Rimbaud behind them, is reconstructed from a remembered image in which the Lycee Clemenceau occupies the center. Pathos filtered through humor guides the author as he writes of a child’s experience of the hierarchy of urban spaces: the radial avenues walked during school recreation periods, the districts between these axes, the waterways, and the relationship of Nantes to the hinterlands that surround it.