Paris, of which the American Waldo Emerson said had been built for the whole world, this « daughter », « friend », « wife », with a countenance that « always delights »i is a dream meeting place for an international encounter regarding woman who does not exist. Paris – feminine, belonging to no one – exists beyond « the materiality of its walls »ii. Does it not also suit the WAP’s Great Online International ? Conversation which will take place in a year’s time It is this plural city, suspended between two shores, that poets, artists, songwriters, historians and city planners have tried to capture. Let’s take a chance and go in search of this elusive place that is the Paris of the woman who does not exist.
i Quoted by Pierre Citron, La Poésie de Paris dans la littérature française de Rousseau à Baudelaire, t. 2, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, p. 198.
ii Dominique Kalifa, Paris, une histoire érotique d’Offenbach aux Sixties, Paris, Éditions Payot & Rivages, 2018, p. 10.