Finding James Joyce and light humour along the Boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris

The Boulevard Saint-Michel is the central axis of the Latin Quarter in Paris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

The Hotel Europe-Saint-Séverin, where we have been staying in Paris this week, is on the corner of rue St Séverin and The Boulevard Saint-Michel. The boulevard is the central axis of the Latin Quarter and marks the boundary between the 5th and 6th arrondissements. It has long been a centre of student life and activism, but tourism is also a major commercial focus of the street, where designer shops have gradually replaced many small bookshops.

The boulevard Saint-Michel is named in literature and song, from James Joyce’s Ulysses, Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage and Ernest Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises to Peter Sarstedt’s 1969 hit ‘Where do you go to my lovely?’

You live in a fancy apartment
Off the Boulevard St Michel
Where you keep your Rolling Stones records
And a friend of Sacha Distel, yes, you do

Could that ‘fancy apartment off the Boulevard Saint Michel’ have been on rue St Séverin, I found myself wondering in an idle moment this morning.

The boulevard Saint-Michel and the boulevard Saint-Germain were two important parts of Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s renovation of Paris on the Left Bank between 1853 and 1870.

Initially, the Boulevard Saint-Michel was known as the boulevard de Sébastopol Rive Gauche, but its name was changed in 1867. The name comes from the gate of the same name destroyed in 1679 and the later Saint-Michel market in the same area.

Many streets in the area disappeared when the Boulevard Saint-Michel was created, although rue St Séverin, where we have been staying, managed to survive.

The Boulevard Saint-Michel marks the boundary between the 5th and 6th arrondissements in Paris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

I laugh at the stories about the French politician Ferdinand Lop, who stood as a satirical candidate in many elections, and who once made an election promise to extend the Boulevard Saint-Michel to the sea. Asked at which end it would be extended, he answered with panache: ‘It will be extended to the sea at both ends.’

Ferdinand Lop (1891-1974) was a Jewish journalist, draughtsman, English language teacher at the Berlitz School, writer, poet and humourist. He was born Ferdinand Samuel Lop in Marseille on 10 October 1891, and was also known as Samuel Ferdinand-Lop.

Ferdinand Lop was one of three children of Joseph Lop, a prosperous ship chandler, and Benjamine Reine Montel (1871-1956) a schoolteacher in Marseille.

During World War I, Ferdinand relocated to the relative safety of Annecy, in the French Alps but continued to make speeches from a boat on the lake. His eccentric character and zany ideas have been attributed by some to a bout of Spanish flu in 1918.

Lop stood repeatedly as a satirical candidate for the French Presidency and for the Académie française. His humorous and satirical speeches won him a loyal cult following among university students in Paris. During the French Fourth Republic (1946-1958), he stood for election on his offbeat platform, Le Front Lopulaire, with promises that included:

• eliminating poverty after 10 pm;
• building a bridge 300 metres wide, to shelter vagrants;
• extending the roadstead of Brest to Montmartre;
• extending the Boulevard Saint-Michel to the sea – in both directions;
• installing a slide in the Place de la Sorbonne for students;
• nationalising brothels to give prostitutes the benefits of public servant status;
• reducing pregnancy from nine to seven months;
• installing moving pavements to make life easier for wanderers;
• providing a pension to the widow of the unknown soldier;
• relocating Paris to the countryside, for fresh air;
• removing the last coach from Paris métro trains.

Ferdinand Lop wrote numerous booklets, often with evocative titles, including Thoughts and aphorisms (1951), Pétain and history: What I would have said in my inaugural speech at the Académie française if I had been elected (1957), History of the Latin Quarter (1960-1963), Where is France going? (1961) and Antimaxims (1973).

Ferdinand Lop married Sonia Seligman, the daughter of a rabbi, on 18 January 1923 in Paris. He died on 29 October 1974 in Saint-Sébastien-de-Morsent, where he is buried.

One brother, George Lop, was a musician and director of the opera in Montpelier in the 1930s. He was an active Communist politically, and under the Vichy regime he was sent to an internment camp in the Pyrenees. His other brother, Alfred Lop (1898-1971), was a painter and art teacher in Paris. But he was ashamed to be identified with his brother Ferdinand and sold most of his paintings as Alfred Lop-Montel.

Ferdinand Lop promised to extend the Boulevard Saint-Michel ‘to the sea, at both ends’