Goals What you'll be able to do
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to…
- 📜 Read and understand short poems about travel.
- 🌍 Recognise iconic places evoked in poetry (Moscow, Ephesus, Seville, the Pacific).
- 🇫🇷 Know two French poet-travellers: Blaise Cendrars and Valery Larbaud.
- ✍️ Write your own poetic text about a city or a place you love.
- 🏛️ Discover the Guimet Museum in Paris and French Orientalism.
Discover ✒️ First look
For many French writers, travel is a raw material of poetry: the moment you leave your home town, you become someone else. Here are two famous extracts about faraway cities, memory and youth.
En ce temps-là, j'étais en mon adolescence
J'avais à peine seize ans et je ne me souvenais déjà plus de mon enfance
J'étais à 16 000 lieues du lieu de ma naissance
J'étais à Moscou, dans la ville des mille et trois clochers et des sept gares
Et je n'avais pas assez des sept gares et des mille et trois tours
Car mon adolescence était si ardente et si folle
Que mon cœur, tour à tour, brûlait comme le temple d'Éphèse ou comme la Place Rouge de Moscou quand le soleil se couche.
Des villes ! et encore des villes !
J'ai des souvenirs de villes comme on a des souvenirs d'amours.
À quoi bon en parler ? Il m'arrive parfois,
Le matin, de rêver que j'y suis là, un beau matin de printemps.
Et un matin je m'éveille avec un désir de voyage.
[…] Oh ! qu'il me soit donné, encore une fois,
De revoir quelques endroits aimés…
La place du Pacifique, à Séville…
🗺️ The places evoked
📖 A few expressions worth keeping
- À quoi bon + inf. ? = "what's the point of…?" (À quoi bon écrire ? À quoi bon tous ces efforts ?) "what's the point of…?"
- Il m'arrive (parfois) de + inf. = "I sometimes happen to…" (Il m'arrive de rêver de Séville.) "I sometimes find myself…"
- Qu'il me soit donné de + inf. = "may I be granted the chance to…" — a literary subjunctive, equivalent to formal English "may it be given to me to…" (Qu'il me soit donné de revoir Séville !) "may I once again…" (poetic)
- Tour à tour = "in turn", "one after the other", "alternately". (Mon cœur brûlait tour à tour comme A ou comme B.) "in turn, alternately"
Exercise 1 — A reading break A pause to read
Answer the questions on the two poems.
- a. What common theme do the two texts share?
- b. In which country is Moscow?
- c. In which country is Seville?
- d. How old was Cendrars in his poem?
- e. Tick the themes developed in the texts:
Vocabulary Words to remember
✒️ Poetry & literature
💜 Emotion & memory
🏙️ Cities & landmarks
Read & learn Closer reading
Exercise 2 — Themes in detail Close reading
In the two poems, identify:
- a. The words that evoke place:
- b. The words that evoke time:
- c. The words that evoke emotion:
📚 4. Travel writing
Talk with your partner:
- Do you read travel writing or adventure books?
- Do you know any poets or writers who write about travel? Who? (Cendrars, Larbaud, Le Clézio, Bouvier, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, Robert Macfarlane, Pico Iyer…)
- When you travel abroad, do you read books about the country?
- When you travel, do you keep a journal or take notes?
- After a trip, do you make a photo album or write a blog?
Speak · And you? 🗣️ Speaking
With your partner, describe a place (a neighbourhood, a village, a city, an island, a country) that you once discovered and that is especially dear to you. Tell the story of your first encounter with this place and explain why it captivated you.
💡 Tools to reuse from this unit:
- The imparfait (≈ "was -ing / used to") + passé composé (≈ present perfect / simple past) to narrate (L29-30).
- Time markers (d'abord, ensuite, plus tard… = first, then, later…) (L30).
- Object pronouns to avoid repetition (L31).
- Poetic phrases: j'avais à peine X ans / mon cœur brûlait comme… / il m'arrive de rêver de…
Write · Everyone's a poet! ✍️ Your turn to write
Do you have a very particular memory of a place (a city, a village, an island, a country)? Tell us, in the style of Blaise Cendrars, the story of your first encounter with that special place. You might win, like Natalia, a trip to Paris!
« En ce temps-là, j'étais petite
J'avais à peine 8 ans et je ne me souvenais déjà plus
de mes premières années
J'étais à des kilomètres de chez moi
J'étais à New York, dans la ville des mille jaunes et des clubs de jazz
Et je n'avais pas assez des clubs de jazz et des mille jaunes
Car mon émotion était si grande et si forte
Que mon cœur, tour à tour, brûlait comme la Tour Eiffel
ou comme la Tour Eiffel de Paris quand elle s'illumine. »
— Natalia, 18, Ecuador
✍️ Your turn — write your poem Write your own
Write your own poetic text (100-150 words) about a place you love. You can borrow Natalia's structure: « En ce temps-là, j'étais… / J'avais à peine X ans… / J'étais à… / Mon cœur tour à tour brûlait comme… ». The AI will give feedback 🤖.
The Guimet Museum 🏛️ France's fascination with Asia
🌏 French Orientalism
Since the 18th century, French writers and artists have been fascinated by Asia. Voltaire and Diderot admired the China of Confucius; in the 19th century, the Impressionist painters (Monet, Degas) drew inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints; in the 20th, Cendrars and Henri Michaux travelled in order to write.
🏛️ The Guimet Museum — founded in 1889
The Musée national des arts asiatiques — Guimet, founded by the industrialist Émile Guimet in Lyon (1879) and moved to Paris (1889), is one of the largest museums of Asian art in the world, with over 50,000 works covering India, Tibet, Nepal, China, Japan, Korea, Cambodia, Indonesia, Afghanistan…
🎒 Three great French travel writers
- Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961) — Swiss-French, compulsive traveller. Le Transsibérien, Bourlinguer. « Quand on aime, il faut partir. » ("When you love, you must leave.")
- Henri Michaux (1899-1984) — Belgian, wrote in French. Un barbare en Asie (1933), written after travelling through India, China and Japan.
- Nicolas Bouvier (1929-1998) — Swiss. L'usage du monde (1963 — translated as The Way of the World) recounts his Fiat 500 trip from Geneva to India.
- Sylvain Tesson (1972-) — contemporary. Dans les forêts de Sibérie (Consolations of the Forest), La Panthère des neiges (The Art of Patience, Prix Renaudot 2019).
🌐 A quick comparison
Anglophone literature has its own great tradition of travel writing — think Robert Louis Stevenson, Bruce Chatwin (In Patagonia), Paul Theroux (The Great Railway Bazaar), Jan Morris, Pico Iyer, or Robert Macfarlane. The French tradition leans a little more into lyrical evocation of faraway cities and inner emotion, whereas English-language travel writing often centres on landscape, encounter and reportage. Both share a common longing — the nostalgia of travel.