Born in a cellar and living in a garret. That was how Samuel Foote
summed up the lifestyle of an author. It was not unrealistic, because
over the centuries, many a poet, writer and painter did spend their
lives, or the better part of their lives, in a garret or comparable
conditions.

Not all of them became famous, but the number of those who did is
large enough to induce the impression that claustrophobic living
conditions do stimulate creativity.

Specially worth-mentioning are the garrets of Paris, where struggling
artists occupied the chamber de bonne (maid's room), with hardly any
standing space left by the table and the mattress.

They have acquired a romantic aura, because writers who entered better
times and shifted to more comfortable lodgings, forever carried a
nostalgia for the years of struggle with which the cramped room was
inextricably associated.

The bad news is that these art-inspiring garrets of Paris may now pass
into history. New rules have come into effect, requiring landlords to
improve space and facilities in the 170,000 attic dwellings in the
city, occupied mainly by students now but perhaps some aspiring
artists as well.

The plebeian lifestyle has always been a major source of inspiration,
so much so that some artists and writers clung to it even when it was
no longer necessary.  Smelly surroundings, broken taps and discoloured
walls generate a sense of tragedy.

The lonely inmate turns into a tragic figure in his own imagination,
and pours his heart out on canvas or paper as his revenge on a
heartless world.

He may even turn into a snob, and look upon the rest of the world with
pity, for his own heart is full of joy. Even the ailing and the
suffering can develop a form of snobbery, as Aldous Huxley had once
said. Not on such a scale or in exactly the same form, but the
Parisian garret has its counterparts elsewhere.

The messbaris of Kolkata nursed many artistic talents in the first
half of the last century. Bibhuti Bhusan Bandopadhyay taught in a
school, lived in a boarding house and capitalised on that phase of his
life in Anubartan, a famous novel.

Humorist Sibram Chakravarty spent a lifetime in another and made it
famous.  Perhaps the average writer today can afford a better standard
of living which, some critics contend, has something to do with the
drop in the standards of their writing.

However, it is saddening to learn that history has claimed the garrets
of Paris, in one of which lived the saddest figure of them all -
Sidney Carton.
