TRANSLATION:

Artists against the Eiffel Tower

The following petition is currently circulating and garnering signatures throughout Paris:

To Monsieur Alphand

Dear Sir and Fellow Countryman,

We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects, passionate devotees of the beauty, until now intact, of Paris, come before you to protest with all our might and all our indignation in the name of disregarded French taste, in the name of threatened French art and history, against the erection, in the very heart of our capital, of the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower, which public mockery, often tinged with common sense and a spirit of justice, has already christened the "Tower of Babel".

Without succumbing to chauvinistic fervor, we have the right to proclaim aloud that Paris is the unrivaled city in the world. Above its streets, along its broadened boulevards, beside its admirable quays, amidst its magnificent promenades, rise the most noble monuments human genius has given birth to. The soul of France, progenitor of masterpieces, shines resplendently through this august flowering of stone. Italy, Germany, Flanders—so justly proud of their artistic heritage—possess nothing comparable to ours, and from all corners of the universe, Paris attracts curiosity and admiration. Shall we permit the profanation of all this legacy? Is the city of Paris to associate itself any longer with the bizarre, commercial imaginings of a machine builder, thereby irreparably disfiguring and dishonoring itself? For the Eiffel Tower, which even mercantile America would not want, is—doubt it not—the dishonor of Paris. Everyone feels it, everyone says it, everyone is deeply afflicted by it, and we are but a faint echo of universal opinion, so legitimately alarmed. Finally, when foreigners come to visit our Exhibition, they will cry out, astonished: "What! Is this the horror that the French have found to give us... an idea of their much-vaunted taste?" And they will be right to mock us, because the Paris of sublimely Gothic architecture, the Paris of Jean Goujon, of Germain Pilon, of Puget, of Rude, of Barye, and others, will have become the Paris of Monsieur Eiffel.

To grasp what we are saying, one need only imagine for a moment a vertiginously ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic blackened smokestack, crushing beneath its grimy barbaric mass Notre-Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of the Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all our monuments humiliated, all our architecture belittled, poised to vanish in this ghastly dream. And for twenty years we shall see stretching, like a blot of ink, the hateful shadow of this odious column of bolted sheet metal over the entire city, still quivering with the genius of so many centuries.

The honor of defending Paris once more falls to you, sir and dear compatriot—you who love our city so dearly, who have embellished it so much, and who so often shielded it from bureaucratic ravages and industrial vandalism. We entrust to you the cause of Paris, knowing that you will bring to bear all the energy and eloquence befitting an artist such as yourself, one who reveres what is beautiful, what is great, and what is just. Should our appeal go unheard, should your arguments not be listened to, should Paris obstinately persist in the idea of dishonoring Paris, at least we shall have made heard a protest that honors us.

The following have already signed:

E. Meissonier, Ch. Gounod, Charles Garnier, Robert Fleury, Victorien Sardou, Edouard Pailleron, H. Géroôme, L. Bonnat, W. Bouguereau, Jean Gigoux, G. Boulanger, J.-E. Leneveu, Eug. Guillaume, A. Wolff, Ch. Questel, A. Dumas, François Coppée, Leconte de Lisle, Daumet, Français, Sully-Prudhomme, Elie Delanay, E. Vaudremer, E. Bertrand, G.-J. Thomas, François, Henriquel, A. Lenoir, G. Jacquet, Goubie, E. Duez, de Saint-Marceaux, G. Courtois, P.-A.-J. Dagnan-Bouveret, J. Wencker, L. Doucet, Guy de Maupassant, Henri Amic, Ch. Grandmaison, François Bournand, Ch. Baude, Jules Lefebvre, A. Mercier, Cheviron, Albert Jullien, André Legrand, Limbo, etc. etc.