Sorokina, T. M. Paris of Baron Haussmann: the Capital On the Way From the City of Culture to the City of Civilization in the Mirror of Literature and Art

Abstract: The author of the article studies how radical transformation of one f the oldest cities in Europe and the capital of France, Paris, made by Baron Haussmann in the 1850’s – 1900’s, was refl ected in literature at XIX century (based on the example of Emile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, Viktor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire). The main idea of transformations was to turn the city as the centre of traditional culture into a progressive center of industrialized civilization. The purpose of the preset article is to trace back the connection between architectural replanning of the city and creation of new rules of a civilized social life as well as to study response to such transformations in art, particularly, in literature. Osman’s Paris was an example of total city replanning that was famous during the industrial age. Even though Osman destroyed many historical monuments and completely changed the atmosphere of Paris, today it is no doubt that he had a positive impact on the development of the city. Osman’s reforms led to creation of cultural dialectics that solved the confl ict between the new and the old. The initial rejection of transformations was replaced by the two tendencies: fi rstly, the old was valued again and the past was tried to be preserved and secondly, the new became part of everyday life, art and culture of that epoch.

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