City of Contradictions

Stone townhouses whose pastel hues and intricate wrought-iron balconies testify to the wealth of those who built them. Side-walks peopled with men, women and children with backs straight and chins high like proud poodles--step lightly and with a certain disdain over cobblestones weathered by the centuries. Tree-lined boulevards whose flanks feature ornate fountains and sculptures carved by only the most famous of artisans.

This is Paris--one of the remaining bastions of old-fashioned, aristocratic elitism, a city redolent of old world arrogance. Paris, after all, is the home of haute couture, of the most ornate and breath-taking architecture found anywhere, of the world's finest (and also most expensive) wines.

But recently Paris has also gained renown for something diametrically opposed to this aristocratic image--the resurgence of socialism in Western Europe. With the victory of Lionel Jospin in France's 1997 elections, the French socialists came back into power.

In those elections, most Parisians demonstrated through their vote a concern for the poor, a desire for equality and, by implication, an indifference toward what money can buy. But through their lifestyles, Parisians make a much different statement: image, both in the appearance of being well-to-do and in matters of personal style, is of the utmost importance.

I cannot help but wonder if this apparent paradox is what makes Paris the city it is--the haunt of young lovers, professional dreamers and artists--those who treasure the beauty that luxury creates but still harbor unrealistic hopes that it can be achieved without what they would call the sacrifice of social well-being.

Paris and its inhabitants seem to spurn the traditional, anxious to show the world that they can find a new way to live, built on beauty, style, elegance--and ultimate equality. Have they succeeded? In the answer to that simple question lies the elixir of Paris that places some in its thrall and repels others.

Without a doubt, the Parisians know and practice the art of style and fine living--and they have done so from the days of Louis XIV, the Sun King who ruled from his sumptuously decorated new palace at Versailles.

Along the city's broad boulevards lined with exquisite edifices, waiters balancing silver trays of champagne and espresso cups bustle among outdoor tables set under tasseled awnings, tipped at just the right angle. One after the other appear countless fashionable boutiques selling Givenchy, Christian Dior or one of France's many other high-profile designers, perfumeries into which saunter ladies who would be at home in the pages of Vogue magazine and hair salons whose attendants dawdle at the door with an insouciance that Marlon Brando would envy. Even the chestnut trees on the elegant Champs-Elysees hang their branches with the same grace and premeditated beauty that the children of Paris are trained to admire and emulate from an early age.

This Parisian sophistication and sense of aesthetics continues to attract painters, dreamers and tourists as it has for centuries. But in the new France that brought us Liberte, Egalite et Fraternite, these vestiges of the older aristocratic days are more than a little surprising among those who advocate "social justice" at all costs. Would the leaders of the French revolution be pleased to learn that, near the Place de la Concorde, where they beheaded Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI for their decadence and officially ended the absolute rule of the monarchy, there now stands one of the most expensive hotels in the world, the Hotel Crillon?

Now, more than 200 years after the French guillotine beheaded the king, France, like most of Europe, has socialized health care that purports to provide quality treatment for citizens of all means. And the government still controls much of the telecommunications, electricity and other basic industries.

Claude Allegre, minister of education, is enacting changes to the high school regime, aimed at recognizing the needs of students of different talents and different socio-economic backgrounds in a system that has been one of the most elitist in the world. Historically both the government and the government-owned businesses were run by a small cadre of men who graduated from the elite Grandes Ecoles, survivors of the relentless winnowing that characterized French education since the days of Napoleon.

These are admirable developments (at least in the eyes of those who still believe socialism can succeed). But they are somehow incongruous in a country where the national beverage is champagne (or perhaps a fine red wine) and the average citizen more concerned with appearances and cuisine than politics.

And so today Paris remains suspended in limbo between its two identities, on the one hand the world center of fashion and finery, of grace and grandeur and, on the other, a beacon of hope for socialist ideals.

Those who know the French say they will never abandon their lifestyle--they are partial to their wines, their designers and their inalienable right to a certain of level arrogance derived from their position as the leading experts on how to live the good life. Nor will they relinquish their dreams of social equality--a political socialism in name although less so in spirit.

The city will continue to thrive on its unique paradox--a purely Parisian blend that with its mystery attracts foreign observation but, as the French would have it, repeals foreigners from getting too close or understanding too much.

Jenny E. Heller'01, a philosophy and French concentrator in Lowell House, is working this summer for the Los Angeles Times in Paris.