Les Père Lachaise- Individual draft

The coexistence of life with death

Death is permanent. Dead individuals are lost forever. But the mark they leave behind eternally remains.

Under the white stone of his ornament of death, rests peacefully the ninety years old Felix Ziem. Architect at first, his magical hand moving over the canvas hypnotized his viewers. From A Cove with a Sailboat, to View of Istanbul, his intervention in the artistic field blessed the world. Sadly, all of this came to an end, as his death couldn’t go against the law of nature – nothing could stop the whitening of his hair and the carving of wrinkles on his skin. Death was just a foreseeing acknowledgement for him, but also something he was constantly reminded of. «Memento Mori», Chassignet would say in one of his famous poems about death, as no matter what, end of life is written in every human’s destiny.

Ziem was a citizen of an era, an influencer of an era, and a ninety years old man of an era. Since 1911, a wave of events and innovations, of discoveries and explorations, happened in the world above. From the World War I, the World War II, and the Cold War, to the evolution of art, sciences, and technology, chapters of events have been regularly written in the archives of the world. About ten generations of old people stepped on the ground covering his deteriorating corpse, and about ten generations of old people had never experienced death at their time. How strange would appear this futuristic world to Ziem, as he was exposed during his last days to the “Belle Epoque” of France, which took place before the World War I. How strange would it be for him to resurrect in today’s era, seeing at the Pere Lachaise cemetery people using smartphones, people talking about topics completely different from the ones of his time, people dressing with completely new and odd outfits to him, the view of a city that he can now barely recognize – having the feeling of being forever old.

This is the cycle of life, as everything is being renovated with time. Among Pere Lachaise cemetery’s growing magnificent trees and discreet greenery, generations of old people – like Ziem – with different perspectives about death wander in. Some of them are trapped in a dark and macabre depression because their time is coming soon, or because they nostalgically remember their lost loved ones. Others comfort themselves by savoring every moment life offers them, or even ignore it and enjoy their time in this beautiful cemetery instead. Predominantly, they all take a seat on one of Pere Lachaise’s green wooden benches or slowly step on its rocky highways.

In this amalgam of trees, fallen leaves, symbolic buildings, and various tombs, death is not the only one sheltered. While dead people are buried under grass and soil, the living inhabits the surface. That is to say that there’s a coexistence of death with its paradoxical peer: life. Plant stems, trees, leaves, insects, animals, and even generation of people who frequent this place are continually being renewed. Pere Lachaise cemetery is not a mere container of corpses and graves, but a vivid place of frequentations, a layering of two contradictory societies: the living, and the death underneath.

Both contribute symbiotically to the making of this cemetery as an archive of the past, as a memoir; while the living pay homage to the dead with gifts or prayers, the dead is a mark of eras and historical events.

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