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Office deTourisme
Place du Gl de Gaulle 06360 Eze France Tel : 33 (0) 4 93 41 26 00 Fax : 33 (0) 4 93 41 04 80 
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Office deTourisme
Place du Gl de Gaulle 06360 Eze France Tel : 33 (0) 4 93 41 26 00 Fax : 33 (0) 4 93 41 04 80
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Eze
and famous People
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Eze
and famous People
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| Frederic Nietzsche |
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Frederic
Nietzsche discovers the Riviera after a stay in Italy, in Rapallo
near Portofino in December 1883.This first stay will last until
the 20th April 1884. Follower of the theory of the climate, he notes
every day the weather scrupulously. " I will have here for
six winter months almost as many sunny days than in Genoa during
the whole year " he wrote. On the French Riviera, Nietzsche
will step over the Christian morals. " About the good and the
evil we made some suppositions but never know " maintain it
in "Thus spoke Zarathoustra".
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This
reference works in his work, he achieved it in Nice and even more
certainly in Eze (link with the path)
and it is during his second stay (December 1884 - April 1885)
that he will put a final point at it. During his following holidays
in Nice (October 1886-April 1887 and October 1887-April 1888),
the philosopher will not evoke any more Eze village in his correspondence
but it is very probable that he came back to take a rest.
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Bibliography
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Arthaud, (Christian), Paul (Eric L.), La Côte d'Azur des écrivains, Edisud, 1999, pp 140-144. Mille (Raoul), "La Terre tremble à Nice, Nietzsche reporter" et "Un philosophe dans la ville", Nice-Matin, 18 et 25 mars 2001. "Nietzsche", Magazine littéraire, Hors série n°3, 4e trimestre 2001. |
| Maurice Blanchot |
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Blanchot
is one of the most mysterious character of the French philosophers.
We have only three pictures of him as he always refused to
be filmed. His friends describe him as a tall man with blond
hair, skinny and sweet.
This refusal to appear in public correspond to his theory of the self effacement ( obliteration) of the author in front this writings. The privileged places of Blanchot are quite as rare : Quain in Burgundy, where he was born in 1907, Paris , and Eze where he owned a house since the 50's. At that time he turned to be 42 years old and started to be well know. This purchase coincide with his whish to hide from the crowd and the fame. |
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Located
on Bournou's Street, in the heart of the medieval village,
his residence opens on the vastness of the Mediterranean
sea.
Blanchot mentioned it in one of his works : " When I was living in Eze, in the small room (increased by a double prospect, one facing Corsica the other one facing Cap Ferrat and beyond) where I used to remain, there was hung on the wall the portrait (it is still there) of the one named " the unknown of the Seine ", a teenager with closed eyes but alive by a smile so nimble, so lucky, that one could believe that she had drowned in one moment of extreme happiness. Eze was the element release for the third Zarathoustra for Nietzsche. Nietzsche is in the centre of the work of Blanchot, as if the "superman" of the German philosopher had crossed a step moreover than the last man of Blanchot. Has Blanchot chosen Eze to find the Nietzsche thought and to measure him. |
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| Le Prince Guillaume de Suède |
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Line of descent
from the Empire Marshal Jean-Baptist Bernadotte, William of Sweden
(1884-1965), is the younger son of king Gustave v and Victoria
of Baden. Twenty four years old, he marries Maria Pavlovna of
Russia from which he will have an only son, Lennart in 1909. The
couple will divorce the day before the first world war in 1914.
In 1920, he visited our village probably in company of his father king Gustave V and in 1923 he bought a housing estate that he will call " Château Eza ".The prince didn't miss any occasion to express his affection to France and Eze. |
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Francophile,
William of Sweden leaves the Royal Court to benefit of the mildness
of living in a perched village of the Riviera. He publishes
several works, Black tales, Among the dwarfs and the gorillas…
But after the death of her companion in 1953, William of Sweden
left of his "house".
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| Zlatko Balokovic |
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Zatlo Balokovic
was born on March 21, 1895 in Zagreb. He began violin lessons
at years ten, and made such astounding progress in the next
three years that he was sent to Prague to continue his studies
at the prestigious Meisterschule.
He won the annual Austrian Staatspreis in 1913 and played with the Moscow Philharmonic orchestra. Soon afterwards he made tours in Europe, interrupted at Triestre by the First World War. Balokovic lived in Great Britain from 1920 to 1923 and in 1926 he married with Joyce Barden, grand daughter of Adlai Stevenson, vice president of the United-States. At this time, he bought a house in Eze-Village. Renovated and transformed, that dwelling is a Relais & Château renowned, La Chèvre d'Or. |
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Balokovic
and his wife shared their time between United States and Eze-Village.
During the Second World War, he became involved in many wartime
political efforts in relationship with Yugoslavia. With the
help of Adlai Stevenson, he argued the case of Tito's partisans
to the president Roosevelt.
In 1946, Balokovic returned to Yugoslavia as official representatives of the American Committee for Yugoslav Relief and makes a series of 36 concerts. Balokovic returns to Yugoslavia in 1954 where he is decorated by Tito of the Large Cross of the Yugoslav flag. Vis-à-vis to the Mediterranean, at the current site of the bar of La Chèvre d'Or, the musician repeated his concerts. |
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| Samuel Barlow |
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The 21st September 1982, the New York Times announced the death of Samuel Latham Barlow in New York. This composer very productive in the thirties and Forties stayed regularly in Eze village during nearly thirty years, from the beginning of the twenties until the fifties, in the Riquier house bought towards 1920/1923. Graduate of Harvard, he was one of the first foreigner being decorated with the Legion of Honour for his adaptation of "My friend Pierrot" in The Opera Comic. Thereafter he gives many concerts to support various causes. |
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From
the thirties, Barlow is divided between his residence of
Gramecy park in New York and his house in Eze. He taught
in many American and foreign school and wrote in Modern
Music, a review published by the league of American Composer.
Samuel Barlow composed an opera, six works for orchestra
and more than one half-dozen of extracts of chamber music.
His concerto Babar the small Elephant was created in 1938
in Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Leopold
Stokows.
His memory and
his bonds with Eze are always presents in the memory.
Of course some Ezasques, but also of many American tourists
anxious to see the places that inspired it. |
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| Le Colonel Balsan & Consuelo Van Der Bilt |
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Born in 1868
in Chateauroux, Jacques Balsan comes from a family of
industrialists which provides the French Army in uniform
from the Ist Empire and he was at the origin of cloth
"blue horizon" of the French Armies. Twenty
four years old, J Balsan travels the world to buy wool.
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| Robert Zellinger de Balkany & Marie-Gabrielle de Savoie |
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If
the name of the Balsan Castle is closely related to his
first owner, Jacques Balsan who made it build in 1921,
this splendid private property also belonged to Marie
Gabrielle of Savoy.
Born in 1940 in Naples, in Italy, but from Belgian nationality, Marie Gabrielle of Savoy is the daughter of Humbert II of Savoy, last king of Italy, and of Marie-Jose princess of Belgium. She leaves her country after the plebiscite of 1946 which established the republic. "I left to Portugal with my father. I started my studies there… In Madrid I made a scientific maturity, then I went to Geneva to my mother's " she related in 1987. She teaches not much time at the International School of Geneva. |
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June
21, 1969, she marries Robert Zellinger of Balkany, nine
years his elder of which she will have an only daughter.
Ezasques still remember the reception and the fireworks
given to this occasion in Eze. Until his divorce in
1990, Marie Gabrielle of Savoy will stay in Balsan Castle.
Attentive towards the villagers, they offered many gifts
to the village like for example a painting of the Raphael's
school that you can see in the church.
Her presence in Eze reminds us that our village and its surroundings belonged to the county of Savoy from 1388-1860. A detail of a painting in the church of Eze representing the village with the red banner and the white cross of Savoy. |
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| Francis Blanche |
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"
I dreamed my life/ eyes wide opened/ woke up/ when
it was winter/ snow was there/ the sky was grey/ the
wind was cold/ I didn't understand/ my nice April's
nights/ I dreamed about/ where were they/ I could
have cried/ satisfy me/ begin without me/ let me sleep/
…I was made for that…"
This poem, extract from "Mon oursin et moi" reveal another face of the actor and singer Francis Blanche. Beside the inspired humorist, we owe him the firsts telephone's jokes, and impertinent, he was co-writer of the movie "La grande bouffe", the man appears. |
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Son
and grandson of comedians, Francis Blanche is only
seventeen years old when he starts producing himself
in Parisian cabarets. His first song is a national
success, and at twenty years old, he writes lyrics
for Charles Trenet and then for Edith Piaf, the Jacques
brothers…676 songs in total. In 1945, he entertains
the first big humorist radio show. It is at this time
that he made advertising mixing absurd and puns: "
Miss! Don't buy Scottish clothes anymore. Scottish
yourself your clothes!"
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Also, at this time, he buys a house in Eze (link) where he invites others humorists like Jean-Marc Thibault, Dary Cowl … the jokes followed the pranks… In 1956, he receives the humour award. Then come the funny movies like "Les Tontons Flingueurs", "Les Barbouzes", …. In 1972, he publishes "Mon Oursin et moi". Francis Blanche then appears like a poet, giving a sensible and clear look over the humans and the things around him. He falls asleep in Paris in 1974 at the age of 53. Francis Blanche rests in Eze. His epitaph are the last verses of his poem: " Let me sleep, i was made for that…" |
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Bibliographie
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Blanche (Francis), Mon oursin et moi, Paris, JC Lattès, 1972, 144 p (poème p 37) Laville (Alain), "Francis Blanche : l'éternel rire d'Eze", Nice-Matin, août 2000. Encyclopédie Hachette. http://perso.wanadoo.fr/lelotusdeze/les_artistes.htm |
| Writers |
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The
panorama, the relief of Eze, with its perched
village at 429 meters above the sea, this mineral
jewel case, tormented and majestic, going down
in the sea by stages or in cliffs, allured, impressed,
and always impresses the anonymous or famous visitor.
Step by step, with the wire of the lines, the
vision of an almost hostile and savage nature
get lost in front of accessible landscapes, but
the emotion is still there.
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One
of the first feelings you have when you get
to Eze, you owe it to Madame
de Genlis, in 1780. Travelling in sedan
chair from Nice to Genoa, she praises "the
admirable situation ", of the village of
Eze and its ruins of the castle, but she get
scared of the narrowness of the cornices.
In her " letters of a traveller ", in 1968, obviously touched, George Sand lets appear, behind her admiration, a certain fear in front of the forces which modelled such a landscape. If twenty years later, under the flowered feather of Stephen Liégeard, prefect of the Maritime Alps, writer, poet and inventor of the " Cote d'azur " expression, Eze has all the attractions of a woman with her black blouse with golden laces and its diadem. For Jean Lorrain, on the other hand, the Eze's landscape, with their soft palette of colours, has the charm of Virgile's poetries. |
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In "ils s'aimaient", the nicean novelist Louis Nucera, through the history of Bastien and Florence, glorifies wild spaces of the large cornice, synonyms of freedom. here, Eze has got the smell of wild thyme… |
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Bibliography
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Cappati (Louis), Eze-Village, Paris, Albin Michel, 1950. Fighiera (Charles Alexandre), Eze, Nice Serre éditeur, 2000, 448p Liégeard (Stéphen), La Côte d'Azur, 1887, pp 342-345. Nucéra (Louis), Ils s'aimaient, Paris, Grasset, 1998. Sand (George), Nouvelles lettres d'un voyageur, IV : De Marseille à Menton, p 268-269. |
| Artists |
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The silhouette
of Eze village, with its houses fixed on its sugar loaf, dominated
by the ruins of medieval fortress, has not failed to charm the
artists. Some of them, just passing, draw it for the needs of
their lithography collections, or for a poster of the railroads
of the Belle
Époque.
Guided by the spirit of the place, others establishes themselves and find there the emotion needed to develop their art. |
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Such is the
case of Sevek (1918-1994). Student of the Art Academy of Vienna,
he worked then with the Austrian branch of the Metro Goldwin
Meyer, and posters of propaganda for the British Army. After
the war, we find him in Paris , where he joinedthe existentialist
circles. Eager to leave the capital, he goes to Eze trough Francis
Blanche in 1947.The charm of Eze and the influence of Pierre
Boulez's music will lead him, step by step, to give up with
the figurative art for the abstract one, attaching a growing
importance to the instant, with the temporality of the keys
and its breaks, its rythm.
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The work
of art of Fred Zeller (1912-2001) is one of a man engaged,
a reformer. To summerize in some lines his career is impossible
so much it is rich. In 1948, he retires in Eze village, and
two years later, he creates a local History Museum called
"The vault of the legends", where he recalls in
fifty paintings the history of Eze. Far from the academic
style which sied with history paintings, that of Zeller rather
evokes the comic book. Ancient resistant, familiar with the
trade-union fights, Zeller asserting his own vision of history,
his liberty as an artist, wished, by his actions, to call
into the question of the static concept, museums fixed on
themselves for alive museums. The vault of legends does not
exist anymore, but the topics of discussions are still of
actuality.
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Poet and
artist, that is what was George Doussot. He made himself known
with his childish scenes painted in a naive style, purified.
here, some school squares, there some children games. His
work, always bright with superimposed coloured plans opened
him the doors of publishing. He will carry out series of postcards
for the UNICEF, the Children Hospital of Philadelphia…
His paintings and sculptures are now exposed in France, but
also in Switzerland, and in the United States of America.
Nowadays,
Eze remains an active place of art and craft industry, where,
according to the creative emotion of their elders ones, painters
and craftsmen find an atmosphere favourable with creation. |
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Bibliography
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Vivre à Eze, n°5, été 1997 Site internet de Fred Zeller Cahiers d'art et d'amitié, 1950, n° spécial "Le Caveau des Légendes". http://perso.wanadoo.fr/lelotusdeze/ |
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Perched
on its rocks, Eze-village and Eze Seaside benefit of an huge
interest from personalities of the world of arts, politics,
show business, interest that nobody suspect inevitably with
the first access.
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Some people
have heard about the style of the medieval city, its picturesque
lanes and its restaurants. President Clinton made an impromptu
visit in October 2002. The tradition wants that Walt Disney,
regular customer of the restaurant of the Golden Goat, suggested
to create an hotel. At one time, it was not rare to see there
the Prince and the Princess of Monaco.
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Other
famous people live in Eze in full time or just for holiday.
Among theses hosts let us quote the Princess Antoinette of
Grimadi, sister of the Prince Rainier III of Monaco. In other
register, there are the famous pilot in the fifties Fangio,
but also the singer of the group U2, Bono. Dave Evans celebrated
his wedding in 2002 in the majestic framework of the exotic
garden. Among the guests this day there : Lenny Kravitz, Tina
Turner, Naomi Campbell, Qunicy Jones…
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