Guy de Maupassant's grave at Montparnasse

Finding Jean

Essay and photos by Steve Honeywell

When my father was a young man on the campus of the University of Iowa, he saw the world's most beautiful woman. Leaning in to a friend, he remarked, "That's the girl I'm going to marry."

She was Jean Seberg. Like a lot of young women on the Iowa campus, Jean had pledged a sorority. Here she was placed in an alphabetical row with the other pledges. My father, with a little investigative work, figured out where Jean lived and got a job as a server. He paid special attention to one section of the table.

Jean left school after a couple of weeks. She'd been selected out of 18,000 hopefuls to star in Otto Preminger's "Saint Joan." So while she went to Paris, Dad turned his attention to Jean's pledge partner and alphabetical neighbor, Carol Skidmore, my mother.

As I prepared for a trip to Paris, Mom asked me to look up Jean and say hello. Mom remembered her not as the tempestuous star but as the simple Iowa girl. I told her I'd do my best.

These days, Jean Seberg's place is a 10-minute walk from the Edgar Quinet Metro stop. It's 200 feet or so inside the front gate of Montparnasse Cemetery.

European cemeteries have an advantage over American ones: they're older, and because of this have more interesting residents. There are two cemeteries of note in Paris. The first, Perè Lachaise, gets most of the attention because it houses Frederick Chopin, Oscar Wilde, and Jim Morrison. I prefer Montparnasse. It's smaller than Perè Lachaise, but at the same time, feels more open. Part of this openness comes from the road that cuts the cemetery in two.

In European cemeteries, the graves are almost on top of one another. In Montparnasse, almost all of the graves have large, above-ground sarcophagi packed so close together that moving between them is not unlike squeezing through a crowd. The rows of resting places go four, five, six deep. Finding someone in the third row means stepping over or on someone in the first two.

What also amazes me is that that space for new monuments still exists. There doesn't appear to be any available place that would fit the body of a cat, let alone an adult human, yet the guard at the front gate tells me that the cemetery is still far from full.

Napoleon planned Montparnasse. Back then, it was presumed that cemeteries were breeding grounds for disease, so the original plan was to place this site outside of the city limits of Paris. History doesn't record who actually laid out the design of the cemetery — if it was Napoleon, he may have been better at cemetery planning than empire management. Montparnasse is beautifully arranged, with wide, paved avenues and tall trees that border the graves. Between the rows of monuments are narrow footpaths that brush directly against the tombs.

Inside the front gate, a guard stands observing people coming in and out. I ask him if he has a map of the grounds I can use, not trusting my thick Paris guidebook to properly locate the people I wanted to visit. He nods and points to a small collection of papers. Fold-out maps. Armed with this and the guidebook that suggests interred notables, I set out to find some old friends.

Near the guard I find the first of many. Jean Paul Sartre and collaborator Simone de Beauvoir are a few steps inside the front gate. Sartre would be pleased by the unintentional irony of his final resting place. The author of No Exit is buried 30 feet from the way out.

Jean Seberg committed suicide at the end of August in 1979. She had been missing for more than a week, and her family and friends assumed the worst. Her body was found wrapped in a blanket in the back seat of her car not far from her apartment in Paris. She had been dead nearly 11 days. Sartre and de Beauvoir were among the many who attended her funeral. Her parents stayed in Iowa.

Baudelaire's grave

The paved road heads toward the outside wall and turns abruptly to the left. According to the map, Charles Baudelaire is buried somewhere around the corner. Ahead of me, a French couple walks hand-in-hand. He is carrying the same map from the front gate; she holds the same guidebook I have, a finger stuck between the pages. Around the corner, I am stumped at locating poor Baudelaire. I hunt in vain for him, pacing back and forth between rows of tombs. The woman notices my frustration and taps me on the shoulder, then points to a white column a few feet away. It's him. Unsure of the language barrier, I smile and say thank you. She returns the smile, and she and her husband wander off.

Baudelaire's writing was scandalous for its time, concentrating on themes of sex, death, and evil. He worshipped his mother and was in many ways terrorized by his step-father, Jaques Aupick. It is appropriate in a Baudelairean sense, then, that poor Charles is buried here, beneath the body of his step-father.

The road continues, running parallel to the outside wall. I pass a number of interesting tombs, some plain, others ornate, still others topped with replica statuary. In the distance is a large structure. Unconsciously, I walk toward it, drawn to it without knowing what it is.

The structure is all that is left of what once stood on the grounds of Montparnasse. It is the remains of a windmill that once served the Brothers of Charity monastery of that stood here. The land was given over to the government to assist in moving cemeteries out of Paris proper. Back then, Montparnasse was known as Cimetière du Sud, the southern cemetery. The mill is locked and chained.

I have told my father that I planned to visit Montparnasse. His reaction is difficult to gauge. Since bringing it up, he has relived some of his youthful infatuation with Jean Seberg, and like my mother, has asked me to get a picture of her grave. He endures his share of teasing at the hands of his children on this trip. At every dinner, my brother and sisters ask me if I've visited "Dad's girlfriend" yet. The joke, of course, is that Dad never really knew her; he just served her dinner. It was Mom who she was friends with. Had Jean become another suburban housewife, his own infatuation would be long forgotten.

Angel of Eternal Sleep

Near the center of the Grand Cimetière is a huge marble pillar. At the top stands the Génie du Sommeil Eternel, the Angel of Eternal Sleep. She looks toward the front entrance, casually observing those who wander among the tombs. According to the map, French singer and poet Serge Gainsbourg is buried nearby, but once again, I cannot find him. I tap a guard lightly on the shoulder and ask him to help. He smiles and says, "Ah, you are looking for dear Serge! He is right over here." We walk a few paces from the angel, and he points to a monument covered in flowers and photographs. I have missed it because it was right in front of me.

Gainsbourg was a controversial figure in his own right. His most famous contribution to the musical world was the song "Je t'aime…moi non plus." The song, which translates roughly as "I love you… me neither," features the simulated orgasm of his soon-to-be girlfriend, Jane Birkin. Brigitte Bardot did the part originally, but pulled out on the insistence of her husband. The song reached number one in the U.K. in 1969 and was cited specifically by the Vatican as offensive.

Gainsbourg's death in 1991 was a national tragedy. François Mitterand called him the generation's Baudelaire.