The road to Francisco
Francisco Varela passed away 20 years ago today.
For those who don’t know him, I envy you: there’s a lot to learn and discover. For those familiar with his work and persona, I hope the few lines that follow will resonate.
Francisco in his last office in Paris, La Salpêtrière University-Hospital (credit).
The following account is very partial and certainly particular. I am not trying to capture all the memories and moments that left me with enduring impressions. I am not even trying to pay tribute to his contributions to cognitive and vision neuroscience, AI & cybernetics, epistemology, the convergence of Western and Buddhist traditions on the nature of mind & consciousness—I am not the best qualified for that, and many have already done justice to his influence in these and a few other fields. In the end, what better tribute than a school named after you?
When our paths crossed, I was a junior graduate trainee in the research centre that hosted the last incarnation of his lab—on the campus of La Pitié-Salpêrière University-Hospital in Paris, circa 1994-98. I was not a member of his group, but always felt welcome. His office was immediately next to the small open space I shared with his graduate fellows, who became lifelong friends and neuroscientists, like Jean-Philippe Lachaux, Eugenio Rodriguez, Antoine Lutz and Diego Cosmelli. Francisco and his luminary visitors had to walk through our space to get to his office, and in so doing, he would often make sure we were well fed and in good spirits.
Francisco was all charm and intelligence, which was charismatic to many and may have been irritating to a few. There is footage out there showing him sitting under a tree (the Tree of Knowledge?) in the late afternoon of a warm countryside, addressing without notes a crowd of mesmerized spirits. I am cautious and aware of gurus in science and elsewhere. In my opinion, Francisco simply enjoyed in equal proportions the attention and the gregarious company that are propitious to intellectual exchanges. The following clip is another example of a younger Francisco doing what he did best (1983).
I will segue and digress along memory lane to tell a short, simple story in pictures that was inspired by my last trip to Paris a couple of years ago. I walked the cobbled streets of La Salpêtrière with the intention to say hello again to Francisco and other (not always as benevolent) spirits and ghosts.
The first thing you notice when approaching the La Salpêtrière campus via St-Marcel boulevard is this massive statue of Philippe Pinel, with an intriguing subtext marked on the plinth: “Bienfaiteur des aliénés / Benefactor of the insane”.
Pinel indeed contributed to the slow evolution of mental healthcare at the turn of the 19th century. This was still a time when La Salpêtrière functioned as an hospice/prison for many disfranchised female groups: orphans, prostitutes, the mentally ill, epileptics. They were all considered somehow as alienated, as if they had been aliens to themselves and to others. As a matter of fact, from about 1850 until the 1950’s, psychiatrists were called alienists in France.
There is also a sad connection with Quebec, where I now live. In the late 17th century, several hundreds of these women from La Salpêtrière’s hospice were forcibly sent to Quebec, to help populate and colonize the Nouvelle France, as it was known at the time. France lost Quebec to England eventually. Yet, I have met, unknowingly, many of these women’s descendants in the last 10 years I have lived in Montreal.
Another connection of Pinel with my current, our current actuality, is vaccination. Like Francisco, Pinel was one of these polymaths able to inspire and drive progress on multiple fronts in their field. Pinel contributed to the creation of the first inoculation clinic in Paris, where vaccination shots were premiered in 1800.
I don’t think Pinel’s contributions explain why he was wearing a flower necklace on the day of my visit. His statue was surrounded by a make-shift camp of recent migrants, who probably crossed the Mediterranean or the Balkans at the peril of their lives, and who still found the inner resources to cheer, honor or pray a figure of French history. Migrants and refugees as today’s aliens, in sum. Signs of the times…
A famous representation of Pinel liberating the « alienated women » of La Pitié-Salpêtrière.
It is hard to fathom the progress made only recently in how mental illness is perceived by us, the others, the supposedly sane. There is still, arguably, a very long way to go to further neuroscientific knowledge, promote social comprehension, improve access and support for patients and grow overall acceptance. But at least can we rejoice that La Salpêtrière hospital administrators do not hold annual “balls of the insane and epileptics” anymore, which they did entertain as fund raising events — meaning that people paid to watch these poor patients dance — until the end of the 19th century.
The hospital campus is both beautiful and intimidating, with a number of majestic and massive buildings several hundred years old, certainly not adapted to modern medicine.
“Beauty is what never tires the eye” said Franciso.
On that portion of cobbled street above, Agnès Varda shot the last scene of Cléo from 5 to 7, a beautifully poetic and existentialist movie, which follows Cléo and a possible pretender over a couple of hours on the first day of summer, in the ever sunshiny Paris of the early 1960’s. The scene is a backward traveling shot of the two protagonists along that street. During editing, Varda realized that the rails of the traveling cart were visible in one corner of the frame for only a brief moment. She went back to La Salpêtrière to reshoot the whole scene with the whole crew. That time, the rails did not make it into the frame, but the magic of the acting was gone, despite everyone’s best efforts. The original take staid in the picture.
Varda, Varela, Varda.
Cléo visits La Salpêtrière to see her doctor. She expects to hear about her latest test results, and we are inclined to believe it might not be good news.
Francisco’s tests came back pretty grim. He did get the opportunity to reshoot some of his scenes, so to speak, following a liver transplant, but eventually lost his long combat against hepatitis C. I don’t know whether he was treated at La Salpêtrière, but he did walk this cobbled street on his way to work, until the very end.
Behind Cléo, and following Francisco immediately after the vaulted passageway in the picture above, is one notable and intimidating La Salpêtrière building: the chapel.
The final architect was Bruant, of Invalides fame, who designed the building in 1670 based on the shape of the traditional Greek cross, yielding four distinct chapel areas. The whole thing is massive, big enough for 1,000 souls. The 4-chapel design was a convenient way to assign church attendees to either of the four well separated areas, based on their social rank.
When I worked there, the chapel was often used for art exhibits of all kinds, often of high quality and freely accessible to everyone regardless of social rank. I think I remember Francisco also appreciating the building. He often encouraged us to go and see whatever was on display. He was certainly appreciative of beauty in all things and people—flesh, hearts and minds.
A bit further down Francisco’s road is another intimidating building, calledThe Force (sic).
It’s also massive, with ridiculously small windows for such a large facade; basically a square-shaped bloc that I always thought was sagging into the ground, as if it wanted to disappear—for good reasons as we shall now see.
The building was used from circa 1680 as the main La Salpêtrière jailhouse for women. Some of the inmates were genuine female criminals, but others were women locked at the request of their husbands on the pretext of adultery, or simply after parents complained about their “lazy or rebellious” teenagers.
The building features several inside courtyards—one is called the Cour des Massacres and is pictured below.
In early September 1792, a confused rumor spreaded rapidly across Paris that the Austrian-Prussian army was about to enter the city. The rumor went that the enemy would free all inmates for them to join their ranks and defeat the nascent, fragile yet violently chaotic revolutionary regime.
Some French revolutionaries, wishing to anticipate and prevent such eventuality, bursted into the main prisons of the city, including La Salpêtrière, to preemptively identify the inmates the most susceptible of future obedience to the invaders. Hundreds were killed or raped, some were freed—all under the auspices of improvised tribunals or sheer arbitrariness.
Francisco also experienced the arbitrariness of blinded violence when he was forced to flee his beloved native country of Chile, after Allende was overturned by Pinochet’s coup in 1973.
Pinel became La Salpêtrière’s Chief Physician in 1795.
Not all buildings of La Salpêtrière witnessed such a dark history though.
The small Chaslin compound above was where Line Garnero (1955-2009; my PhD supervisor and dear friend) had her lab (yes, only a handful of small rooms on the last floor under the rooftop up there).
I like to believe this is where Charcot delivered his word-famous lessons of neurology that Freud attended. The windows of the shorter building in the middle look very much the same to me.
Across the street was the research centre’s home base, in the basement of a nondescript, modern clinical building. Today’s research units are folded into the Paris Brain Institute, designed by JM Wilmotte and erected only a few yards from there.
You’re now close to the end of my road to Francisco: take the small stairs down to the left, next to that bike. How glamorous public research can be, hey? In truth, fun times though, with great people and equipment. We were spoiled.
When Francisco moved in, the aesthete in him could just not live surrounded by meaningless concrete. The legend goes that he used some of his startup monies/personal funds to design and build a small garden made of bespoke brick flower pots, a minimalistic pergola, a wooden bench and that was it. Everybody in the lab wondered who this alien, this eccentric could be and what he meant by that gesture. We learned, to our intellectual ravishment and nourishment.
I am glad that Francisco’s garden is still there, going strong. Somebody must have adopted it, keeping that tempestuous, legacy road still open, and the end of it still welcoming.
As I pushed further down that road, this is what I found on the walls of La Salpêtrière’s palliative care centre. Signs of the times…
