Miroir d'Eau

Sara Mohr

FR 450

Miroir d’Eau

            When you’re confused about a word someone is using in another language, it’s probably due to one of three reasons: you don’t know the word at all, you can’t understand the speaker’s accent, or you’re thinking of a word with the same pronunciation that doesn’t make sense in that context.  My first experience, and henceforth confusion, with the word quai, however, stemmed from my purposeful avoidance of the word queue.

            In French, many words are composed of silent letters or string upon string of vowel sounds.  I had read the word queue, meaning “tail,” many times, and I even know it’s a word people use in England.  But I have avoided saying it out loud because I don’t know how “-ueue” works off of each other; “oe” makes a different sound, and even a different letter in French, so what happens with “ue?”  From this point, I made the assumption that any word that began with “q” that I didn’t know could possibly be the word queue.  One of my first weeks in Bordeaux, some friends from my French class invited me to meet them that evening at the Quai.  I looked puzzled and said “doesn’t that mean tail?  I’m meeting you at the tail?”  They informed me that quai is a different word than queue and showed me on a map.  The Quais of Bordeaux are streets that run parallel to the left bank of the river, and have nothing to do with tails.  To make the matter more embarrassing, this actually a word in English, more typically spelled “quay.”  However, I didn’t look up a definition until I started writing this essay, and just assumed that it was a nebulous word in French with no equivalent in English.

            Merriam-Webster.com defines a quay as “a structure built on the land next to a river, lake, or ocean that is used as a place for boats to stop for loading and unloading freight and passengers” (“Quay”).  According to an article by Comelli, back in the day, the Quais of Bordeaux were busy with transportation of goods, immigration, and general business-doing.  However, as the ports became more autonomous and placed in better locations for said autonomy, the lively activities were moved to the city center leaving the Quais empty and abandoned by 1987.  Access to the riverbank was limited, and the nearby neighborhoods developed a negative image (Comelli 4).

            According to the same article by Comelli, the renovation of the Quais to their current state was due to the spirit of patrimonialisation.  Unlike quai, patrimonialisation is actually a nebulous French word with no real English equivalent.  It is a relatively new word, and I have been unable to find an official translation.  A forum on wordreference.com takes a stab, giving translations such as “the making of heritage, including identification, preservation, etc,” “heritage industry,” “conferring upon objects a heritage status,” and “heritagization” (Anaissiana).  Regardless, patrimonialisation is being seen recently all over Bordeaux, as well as other cities and countries.  Conservation is without doubt a big piece of this, but the question that Di Méo poses in his 2007 article is: what state do we preserve it in?  An original, repaired, identifiable state?  Or as an active heritage, usable for the current society and transformable for the future?  He states that there is no end to this question because one can envision many solutions (Di Méo 13).

            The solution that urban landscape artist Michel Courajoud chose for the Quais of Bordeaux when they were renovated in the 90s, was to give an equilibrium between “mineral” and “vegetal” to the area.  This changed the Quais into a space welcoming families during the day and groups of young people at night; as well as distinguishing it from Place de la Victoire or Place de Pey-Berland, which have no green space whatsoever (Comelli 4-5).  The most impressive and dominating of the features of the Quais is the Miroir d’Eau, completed in July of 2006.  The Miroir d’Eau spans 3,452 square meters of granite and is stocked by a reservoir of 800 cubic meters of water (Bordeaux).  The mirror effect, created by a two centimeter layer of water, is disturbed every 15 minutes by a mist shooting up to two meters into the air creating a fog effect.  It was designed by the fountaineer Jean-Max Llorca, who is said to have taken inspiration from the natural phenomenon of the flooding of St. Marco (Cormelli 6-7).

            While the Miroir d’Eau is further than I usually stray during the day time, it is generally where my friends and I meet up at night.  As it turns out, my confusion with quai was unnecessary, as we always meet specifically at the Miroir d’Eau and no other portion of the Quais.  We usually meet around 10 or 11 at night, which leaves only twenty-somethings like us to play around in the fountain, and no little toddlers in swimsuits pretending it’s a splash pad.  Sometimes there’s musicians or breakdancers, or larger gatherings of tourists or Erasmus or university students like ourselves.  There are almost always people running the length of the Garonne or biking home on the V-club bikes after the tram ends for the night.  It is a very convenient meeting place, since there’s only one and it’s surrounded by flat land so your friends can’t be hidden behind buildings or statues, as happens more often than you’d think in Place de la Victoire.  The Miroir d’Eau is elevated with stairs encasing every side, providing a very suitable seating area, with plenty of room for everyone.  I give props to M. Llorca for that, since it would not be nearly as comfortable on only one level.

            The only question that remains for me is: how did the Bordelais get along without the Miroir d’Eau for so long?  Where did they meet up before they crossed the river to go to an Anthropology party?  Where did they play Flunky Ball?  I heard a rumor that it never snows in Bordeaux, and I plan to be out on the Miroir until I leave, even if I have to wear 12 scarves.

Works Cited

Anaissiana.  (2006, Sep 19).  Patrimonialisation.  Message posted to

http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/patrimonialisation.239777/

Bordeaux.  Miroir d’Eau.  Web.  23 Oct. 2015.  http://www.bordeaux.fr/

Comelli, Cécilia.  “Jour et Nuit:  Une Géographie Inversée de la Pratique des Quais à Bordeaux.” 

Culture and Local Governance 2.2 (2010): 1-15.  Web.  <hal-00991095>.

Di Méo, Guy.  “Processus de Patrimonialisation et construction des Territoires.”  Patrimoine et

Industrie en Poitou-Charentes:  Connaître pour Valoriser.  Poitiers-Châtellerault, France, 2007.  1-19. Web. <halshs-00281934>.

“Quay.” Merriam Webster Online, Merriam Webster, n.d.  Web.  23 Oct. 2015.