Of public transportation, my host family, and poetry.

Here's one of my favorite anecdotes from my time in Paris because it incorporates two things very dear to my heart:

(1) public transportation and
(2) 19th century Romantic poetry, specifically Mon Rêve familier by Paul Verlaine

A year ago I took French 340, an introduction to French literature, which I then TA'd for last semester. I really loved the class and the material we covered. Some of my favorite works we read were the Romantic poems of Verlaine and the first-class enfant terrible Arthur Rimbaud.

My first run-in with Verlaine in Paris was with my friend Théo, the grandson of Nannick, my host mom. Théo was good enough to recite some French poetry to me after dinner one night, and after a moving rendition of Rimbaud's Le Dormeur du Val, began:

"Je fais souvent ce rêve étrange et pénétrant
D'une femme inconnue, et que j'aime et qui m'aime..."

It was Mon Rêve familier! If you can speak or read French, just read those lines aloud and let them caress your tongue. Beautiful sonority, delightful to the lips and the ears.

Okay, fast-forward a few days. I'm riding home on the metro, reading some Dostoevsky, when I look up at an advertisement and see:
The entire first stanza of the poem!

How classy are the French? Great Romantic poetry on public transportation.