Mornings at the Medici Fountain
by Jeffery N. Johnson
In the central niche of the Medici Fountain, Polyphemus, the fragile and frozen Greek giant in bronze, looks down to discover the lovers Acis and Galatea embracing within a hemicycle of flowing water. The lovers in white marble are unaware of the brute hovering above them, unaware of the wrath about to be unfolded. In an unforgiving act of jealous rage, the giant brings a stone down upon the mortal, Acis, killing him. His love, Galatea, descends back into the sea.
In the summer of 2003, I was often distracted by this static drama as I found the fountain and its dense green enclosure the ideal place in Paris to read. Public dwelling in America is a thing for groups of two or more. Sharing a table with only oneself is a thing of pity and mistrust, bordering on loitering, so it is no wonder France is a frequent destination for ex-patriot loners, introverts, and those who have difficulty escaping their own heads. Being alone in Paris is not only not frowned upon, but regarded as high order.
The fountain is tucked within Luxembourg Gardens, making it a park within a park, an oasis within an oasis, where one is doubly protected from the calamitous students of the Sorbonne and the bustle of the sixth arrondissement. The well-mannered denizens of the Medici form a kind of sleepy fellowship, where everyone seems to be either reading or napping between reads. Those who visit in pairs speak only in hushed tones. It is not uncommon for a painter to join the fellowship, always setting up their easel at the end of the canal, which provides the same protection from intrusion as an open book. The fountain became my living room that summer, my parlor, my den, my sacred space. The only interruptions were the occasional tourists ambling by to snap redundant photos, dutifully checking another box off the itinerary.
The space has a cloistered quality that has less to do with being a park than being a kind of theater, with Polyphemus commanding the stage. Flanking the narrow channel of water and crushed gravel side aisles are two impenetrable walls of ivy, seemingly held up by their own tangled density. Its opaqueness obliterates the surrounding city, yet doesn’t dispel the reality that an espresso can be had in a five-minute walk. The gilded ivy walls and high sycamore canopy direct all sight lines to Polyphemus, the reckless brute who I was slowly realizing reminded me of myself in more innocent times. Though I am not a giant, we once shared the same emotional plane.
The Medici Fountain was a sacred berth in my daily ritual that summer: read in the mornings, meandering walks in the afternoons, and my own meager attempts at writing in the evenings. But it was the morning ritual under the gaze of the mortified Polyphemus that gave me energy for the day. Thinking back to my reading list from that summer I distinctly recall William Styron’s “A Tidewater Morning,” and a book of Anis Nin’s silly erotica. I imagine these two stand out for a reason. Styron’s closing vignette, the title piece of his outstanding trio, should touch anyone who experienced great loss at a young age. I lost my father suddenly when I was sixteen-years-old, and the trauma at that age compelled me to grow up before I was ready. This new reality based on the fragility of life and a somber sense of responsibility was often counter-balanced by bouts of irrational behavior. Though Polyphemus’s parents, Posideon and Thoosa, a sea God and water nymph, survived his childhood, we can safely assume they were a dysfunctional lot. Polyphemus was trapped in a teenage intellect and the accompanying teenage irrationalities, and it was under his daily morning gaze and the musings of Styron that I recalled a time when I struggled with my own secret dead-end yearnings.
My tragedy opened one afternoon in high school, not long after I lost my father, when I walked in on my best friend just after an amorous encounter with a girl I (had) long coveted. She was buttoning her blouse and my friend was tucking in his tee-shirt, fly still unzipped, both flush and wearing expressions I did not recognize. My shock was misery unfurled, my exit swift. There is no memory of the next few hours, but I vividly recall the evening, stumbling down a two-lane road carrying a six-pack of Schlitz by the plastic lacing as the cans bounced off my leg. Public heartache is an ugly thing. I was breaking at least three laws: open container, littering, and—increasing in severity as each can was emptied—public intoxication. I was also breaking inside. In hindsight, it was the recent loss of a parent that had compounded the imagined loss of this girl I never had. It was both a blind crush and a tame version of Anis Nin’s lusty imagination. Nin’s work reminded me of my teenage naivete. In truth, if I had been with this girl I wouldn’t have even known what to do. It was the idea of “us” that was balm to my loss and a warm dreamlike filling of the sudden jagged hole in my life. I do not remember the outcome of my wanderings that evening but, as violence does not appear to be part of my makeup, I eventually made my way home. The second act of this adolescent drama played out a few months later when that same friend, then ex-friend, knocked on my door in a blubbering insufferable mess. He was seeking help, pity, a shoulder to cry on—God knows what, after intentionally crashing his Ford Bronco into an oak tree after having been dumped by the same girl. I may never have been on her radar, yet I deluded myself into the misery of a rejection that never happened. But my friend, who had connected with her in imagined and unimagined ways, was in a sorrier state than I had ever experienced. And perhaps his was the worse fate—to be sampled and given serious consideration before being unceremoniously cast aside. Fortunately, his lone act of violence was confined to himself, and the only permanent scar was the bruised bark of a tree. The evening for me amounted to an exorcism—the final curtain on a run of bad luck. So I settled into a new normal. All my covetousness was expelled and I moved on, or at least sideways, falling for other girls, albeit in a more measured intensity.
Mornings at the fountain were as close to bliss in my maturity as I can recall, which seems to run counter to being reminded of my youthful pains and foibles. But the fountain was an alchemy of reflection. That green theater and my stack of books transported me back to a time I had blotted out, to an age I didn’t understand and (which) was overdue for a visit. I mourned my father again—felt his presence in ways I couldn’t as a young man with a broken heart. And I felt for Polyphemus, despite his pending rage, and hoped for anyone whose life was so adrift.
In a recent return to Paris in 2018, I was eager to show my favorite room in the city to my family. We sailed toy boats in the Luxembourg Garden’s Grand Bassin and then sought out the theater fountain and its barbarous leading man. But I was lost as we approached, puzzled and annoyed that I couldn’t quite place the location from memory. Then I realized I was standing right next to it. I was looking for a dense green enclosure of ivy walls, but the fussy and overzealous Luxembourg gardeners had torn down the ivy and imposed their own second-rate order. Their solution to a problem that didn’t exist was a thinly draped garland of ivy with a stainless steel cable at its cold heart. The lazy strands had no more appeal than the crowd control queue at the entry to The Louvre. One’s vision could penetrate the fountain at any angle, so I was looking through it without even knowing I was there. The intimacy of the space was obliterated. My room was gone. I could actually see traffic fuming by on the nearest avenue. The sight line to the once majestic stage on which Polyphemus brooded was diminished. He was demoted in stature, now supporting cast, and no more relevant than any other marble or bronze statue in Paris, which are legion. Who would care in passing about this trite voyeur bent on obsession—this minor nephew of Zeus who was given so little space in the canon? Poor Polyphemus. How foolish he must feel all these years later, his longing faded with his stature, half blind for a woman he barely remembered. What futility, the coveting a woman who would have been poison in the long run. I want to call out to him, Nothing lasts, Polyphemus! Nothing lasts. The walls will never stop changing. Just pick up a book. Perhaps one day you‘ll prevail.
New visitors, having never experienced the theatrical version of the Medici Fountain, will no doubt find beauty in the simplistic space that remains, but I carry my early 21st century impression with great bias, when the Luxembourg gardeners and I had similar sensibilities. I guided my family through the fountain and spoke a few words as to why the place had so enraptured me. In closing I stopped short of invoking the words, “in the olden days.” It was then I felt the foolishness of the endeavor, thinking a moment in time might be relived in similar cheer. I should have known better than to be there. I should have left immediately once I saw what had become of it. The fellowship had disbanded. The tourists multiplied, and the fountain was indistinguishable from the surrounding park. My wife snapped a photo and my kids toed around with their hands in their pockets, sampling just a little more of the continuous stream of beauty that is Paris. With some regret, I turned my back on Polyphemus and guided my family out of the gardens, through the iron gates, and past the fast food joints on Rue Soufflot, where my memories, like Galatea, were shaken into the midst of the seas.