PARIS by Julian Green, translated from...

PARIS by Julian Green, translated from the French by J. A. Underwood (Marion Boyars: $13.95; 153 pp., illustrated). Julian Green’s exquisitely written memoir juxtaposes images of small churches, streets and squares with broad gray-blue skies in an elegiac evocation of Paris. Walking by the familiar church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, Green compares its pillars to “kings engrossed in dreams of greatness, they scorn the sad modern anxiety of which I have my share and make me, unawares, a gift of some of the peace they hold within them.” Green’s atmospheric descriptions recapture the eloquent cadences of the best 19th-Century prose, and leave the reader longing to catch the next flight to Paris, using this handsome bilingual edition to practice his French en route.