The Cemetery at old Treboul

Travelling in Brittany, we find ourselves, quite by chance, staying at a small hotel once popular with Picasso, Apollinaire, Christopher Wood, Max Jacob and other artistic free spirits. It is called the Ty Mad and it stands in the quartier of old Treboul near Douarnenez.

It is not difficult to understand the appeal. The Ty Mad is an ivy clad stone built house in the Breton style, with balconies which on two sides overlook wide expanses of sea. Inside it is stylishly old fashioned, and it has enclosed gardens with an air of contemplative quietness.

The building was once, we discover, the presbytery the chapel of St Jean, some thirty metres further down the road, but for most of the last century it was a hotel. A placard by the church commemorates the many local fishermen whose lives were lost in the great storms of 1937.

The quartier of Treboul occupies a vantage point over this stretch of rocky coastline.  At the corner of the chapel, at the start of the cliff path walk towards the port of Douarnenez, there is a sculpture of Max Jacob, a double image, one of Max Jacob the worldly artist, friend of Picasso who frequented Montmartre and Montparnasse, a second of Max Jacob the Jewish mystic  who converted to Catholicism.

To the left, as you begin the cliff walk, is a small bay which is the perfect idyll of childhood seaside dreams. The colour of the sand is the colour you would choose from your schoolroom palette, the colour of imagination, the warmest of pure warm yellow, and on this hot August day, the waves lap in invitingly from a blue sparkling sea.

But almost immediately, you notice, above and to the right, the cemetery. Bound by a steep wall, it curves around the crown of the hillside, and, with its massed crosses, dominates the view completely. If the crosses were swords, it would seem that the army of the church militant were gathered here, in tight formation, bristling with intent, and utterly uncompromising.

The path winds on until at last the cemetery disappears. To the left, schools of tiny sail-boats make their way out of the harbour, excited children being taught, like their ancestors, the rudimentary crafts of the sea. Then, across the bay, the romantically named Tristran Island comes into view, before we reach the town and the harbour busy with sailing boats and pleasure craft of all descriptions, its small funfair and abundance of restaurants and creperies.

But returning, it is the cemetery which once again insists on being noticed, detracting the attention from all else. Was it placed here, I wonder, so that those who made their living or came by their death at sea might, as it were, reflect in restful detachment over the familiar vast element below – or is it there silently to proclaim the triumph of the cross over worldly vanities and the treacheries of nature? One way or another, there is, perhaps, a kind of balance: the sea and the land, the earth and the spirit, the changing and the timeless.

We return, at the end of our walk to the statue of Max Jacob, and read, in the small print carved beneath, that he died not amidst the gaiety of Paris, nor, like many of the occupants of Treboul`s cemetery, at the mercy of the sea, but in a Nazi Concentration Camp. It is a detail which snatches away from the passing tourist any inclination to invest death with any sense of poetry or harmony.