In Montparnasse between the wars Kiki ‘Queen of Montparnasse’ danced and sang; Prévert created Baptiste there; Desnos travelled astrally then woke to harvest the crop; painters – Kisling Pascin Foujita Modigliani Derain and others – laboured and partied there; Bronia came from Holland destined to meet Radiguet Cocteau’s Boy Wonder; later she would marry René Clair; Satie opened umbrellas there always hoping for rain. There are triumphs infatuations liaisons marriages deaths. As the Carousel of Montparnasse turns John Watson deftly notes its music – like Anton Walbrook in La Ronde or Jean Renoir in Les Enfants du Paradis. The octave ‘at once same and different like a waterfall’ suggests the verse form as unvarying as Ravel’s Bolero and orchestrated in two thousand tetrameters
