summers in paradise

Simone Signoret said that nostalgia is no longer what it used to be. You only have to imagine the actress Sarah Bernhardt and her friends walking along the cliffs of Belle-Île and sunbathing on its beaches to feel the relentless passage of time and the longing for a time that is now a distant memory. The presence of the legendary actress floated over this island of Brittany when I spent a month of August there in the early 1980s. I frequently went to the Pointe des Poulains, a promontory in the north of Belle-Île, where there were an abandoned fort in a visible state of ruins. It was the place where Sarah Bernhardt, who had acquired that mansion in 1894, had spent her summers. Several decades ago, the local authorities rehabilitated the building and decided to turn it into a museum to remember the presence of the queen of theater, as her contemporaries knew her. . The old two-story fort is located 300 meters from a lighthouse, from which you descend along a path towards Sarah Bernhardt’s house, a kind of island within the island, surrounded by the ocean. The actress, whose intonation of voice captivated her viewers, spent her summers there until the last years of her life. She died in Paris in 1924 and is buried in a pantheon in Père Lachaise, where flowers are never lacking. She confessed that the place she loved most in this world was that fort on Belle-Île to which she traveled at the end of June to stay until the first days of September. There she spent hours looking at the sea, organized parties with her friends and lovers. , excursions around the island and walked to Sauzon, a neighboring village, to buy fish. He was especially attracted to the nearby cliffs of La Apothicaire, where sea erosion had created strange and capricious figures. Artists and politicians The island had become fashionable in 1882, when the railway reached Quiberon. Hundreds of people crossed the 14 kilometers that separate this town from Belle-Île on a ferry. One of those who made that journey was Claude Monet, fascinated by “savagery” and landscapes. At the end of the 19th century, this 17-kilometre-long island was an enclave frequented by Parisian artists and politicians. Sarah Bernhardt discovered Belle-Île thanks to Georges Clairin, a painter friend of hers, who would be one of the regular presences in those summers of wine and roses in which the actress had become a legend. Another of the regular visitors was Reynaldo Hahn, composer and confidant of Marcel Proust, one of the diva’s most devoted admirers. It is still said that no one has been able to interpret the dramas of classical French theater like her. Although the fishermen were suspicious at first of her arrival, they soon began to adore an actress who cultivated mystery and scandalized her intimate life. In 1911, strong storms hit Belle-Île and plunged its inhabitants into poverty. Sarah organized a charity function in Paris to help them and donated money for their families. When she died, the islanders covered the Pointe des Poulains fort with camellias. It is easy to imagine Sarah sheltering in the shadow cast by the lighthouse while listening to the roar of the waves against the rocks and watching the sun descend towards the sea horizon. It was his favorite place, the place where he felt safe from a world that surrendered at his feet, but where he never felt comfortable.

#summers #paradise