New refreshing delivery from Cahiers Haut-Marnais. Lakes, ponds, rivers, canals: the liquid element is omnipresent in the department, territory of sources. The uses of water throughout history fully justified the association devoting a special issue to it.
This 136-page issue constitutes an extension of an exhibition offered at the Departmental Archives between December 2022 and June 2023. As Elisabeth Charron, director of the Archives, recalls in the preamble, water – the Marne, the canal – appears as “the spine” of the department which, thanks to the Pays de Langres, represents a “water tower for the whole of France”. Alain Catherinet. Blandine Vue, Benoît Chauvin, Philippe Savouret, Jacques Ricour, Annie Massy and Laura Bour are the authors of the various contributions to this publication naturally entitled “Haute-Marne au fil de l'eau”.
The Balesmes tunnel
A rather original subject is proposed by Philippe Ménager, academic in Dijon: it is the influence of the canal Between Champagne and Burgundy in the work of Georges Simenon. The Burgundian historian underlines that from 1928, the famous Belgian writer and his wife traveled by boat through the French canals, and in particular that which crosses the Haute-Marne. During this journey, Simenon was particularly struck by the passage under the Balesmes tunnel, which he was to evoke in “Le cartetier de la Providence”, one of his first novels featuring the famous commissioner Maigret. “It was during this cruise in 1928 [que Simenon] invented the character of the pipe-smoking commissioner who would ensure his posterity”concludes Philippe Ménager, author of a study devoted to “Burgundy Canals, history of heritage”, in 2009.
LF
“Haute-Marne along the water”, number 313 of Cahiers Haut-Marne. Available in particular from the Departmental Archives.
