St Petersburg, Russia - L’Hermitage

L’Hermitage is incorrect.  It’s not French, it’s Russian, The Hermitage (derived from the word ‘hermit’ and meaning a place of solitude) but I find that I have to say it with a French accent and use an improper French article. 

L’Hermitage. 

I can’t help myself.    L’Hermitage.  Perhaps because almost two centuries ago, the last time I was here I came as a guest of the Queen, Catherine the Great.   I certainly was from France and since I was a guest of the Czarina’s I’m sure I was nobility, but probably not because all of France’s nobility had been executed some years prior.  Perhaps I was the wife of one of Napoleon’s generals who was spying for the Russians.  Maybe. 

Or maybe I was the daughter of a nobleman who had escaped the guillotine and brought us here.  I was nothing more than a child when I first arrived in Russia and as I grew I was something of a curiosity, a young French girl, the last of France’s nobility now living in exile here in Russia.  And since the winter palace was modeled after Versailles, perhaps we were the icing on the cake that the Russian’s couldn’t eat either.  The Czarina allowed us an apartment there in the palace, there are more than 1,000 rooms, she had plenty of space for us, for me her novelty, the little French pastry that I was.  Perhaps.  

I am collapsing my history, folding one event into another, anything I can do to place myself there.  Anything I can to satisfy the yearning in my gut for this place…for sometime long ago that feels better to me than now.  How strange it feels to not belong in a time and space and even more so to find history more comfortable, but even still I cannot settle on a time nor place that feels most correct.

And all the photos I took of L’Hermitage are of the floors and doors and ceilings.  The art is of no interest to me now.  The Picassos, the Rembrandts, the Michelangelos, I take it in but quickly pass it by feeling only moved by the floors, the doors, the ceilings.   

For me there is a certain kind of comfort I found in the exits at L’Hermitage, it’s as if I was always hoping to escape.   And maybe the floors and ceilings are so appealing because from the floor all you can see is the ceiling.  And maybe when my father insisted I marry that man, when even Catherine also demanded I marry that grotesque general, even when they knew I loved another, perhaps I tried to escape L’Hermitage, the place of solitude, and perhaps I was dragged by my wrists to my wedding, across the cool mosaic floors, skidding along brilliantly polished parquet woods of tans and browns.  And from the floor all I could see was the ceiling, bottoms of chandeliers, the mighty pillars of Atlas that held the second story up.    And maybe by the time I was dragged through those 1,000 rooms maybe I was so exhausted, so worn thin that I just gave up and married that grotesque general.

Which makes complete sense to me, this whole past I’ve made up.  It’s never just easy with me, there’s always bound to be a “no, I won’t, you can’t make me” resistance.   

And even without all the drama from the last time I was here Russia doesn’t feel completely safe to me.  Maybe it’s the hesitation, a hunger for more.  It’s crumbling walls and dirty streets and tired worn people.  Even the friendly and kind behind their smiles their souls seem worn thin.  But I’ve barely had enough time to know for sure. 

 L’Hermitage has 1,000 rooms and they say if you were to give every object in the museum 1 minute’s worth of attention it would take you 11 years to get through all of the exhibits. 

I need more time.    I’m sure there’s more than what is merely on the surface.