In the late 19th century, the skyline of Paris was forever altered with the completion of the Eiffel Tower. While today it stands as a beacon for tourists and a symbol of the city’s romantic allure, its initial reception was anything but warm, particularly among the city’s elite artists and intellectuals. Among the tower’s most ardent critics was the master of the short story, Guy de Maupassant, whose unique form of protest was to dine daily at the tower’s base—an anecdote that has intrigued and amused cultural scholars and enthusiasts alike.
Guy de Maupassant, a famed French writer known for his sharp wit and mastery of the short story, harbored a disdain for the Eiffel Tower so deep that it dictated his luncheon plans. Reports tell of Maupassant frequenting one of the tower’s restaurants not for the cuisine but because it was “the one place in Paris where he couldn’t see” the offending structure. His displeasure with the tower’s design was a sentiment echoed by many of his contemporaries who saw it as a blight on the city’s classical beauty. This collective of Parisian artists and writers, including notables such as Charles Gounod, Alexandre Dumas, fils, and Charles Garnier, were appalled by what they perceived as an industrial eyesore in their belle époque city.
Their protest took a more formal shape with a published letter on February 14, 1887. “Protest against the tower of Monsieur Eiffel”: We come, we writers, painters, sculptors, architects, passionate lovers of the -up to now- intact beauty of Paris, to protest with all our strength and all our indignation, in the name of the underestimated taste of the French, in the name of the threatened French art and history, against the erection, in the very heart of our capital, of the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower, which the malignancy of the public, often imprinted with a good sense and the spirit for justice, has already baptized with the name “Tower of Babel”. Maupassant and forty-six other literary and artistic notables attached their names to this letter, decrying the tower’s construction. Despite their fervent objections, the Eiffel Tower defiantly rose above the Parisian landscape, reaching completion in 1889.
Relevant articles:
– Guy de Maupassant
– The-Tower-of-Babel-Gustave-Eiffel-and-the-creation-of-modernity, October 6. 2010