On Alice Danchokh’s book, Stories from a Missing Suitcase. Myths of the Cote d’Azur / Cultural Essays (Moscow: U Nikitskikh Vorot, 2025. 304 pages)
By Alexander Senkevich
Who is the writer or the journalist who has not written about the sunny and fertile south-eastern Mediterranean coast of France, stretching from Marseille to the Italian border! For many people this land is luminous and healing. This is why it’s called the French Riviera, the Cote d’Azur.
The starting point for the emergence of the cult of this stunning region of France was the 1887 novel La Cote d’Azur by Stephen Liegeard, a virtually forgotten French novelist and poet.
Soon other Western authors would glorify this land near the Mediterranean Sea. The most popular novels among readers would be Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hello Sadness by Francoise Sagan and The Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway.
A new book about one of the top attractions in the world, published this year under the mysterious title Stories from a Missing Suitcase. Myths of Cote d’Azur, written by Alice Danchokh, is a combination of scientific, educational and literary narratives. The blend of these genres has led to a striking result. Once you start reading this book, you can’t tear yourself away from it.
Its magnetic effect on the reader was explained by the scientist and author Vasily Zubakin: «The genre of this book is elusive, almost unprecedented. These are an intellectual and cultural travelogue, a warm and inspired history with geography, and a series of essays on the signs and geniuses of the place… This is why I take Alice Danchokh’s new book as a remedy to boost immunity and a panacea for a bad mood. It is filled with large doses of sun, sea and beauty; personal stories are intertwined with the history of the Cote d’Azur; it is replete with characters – from the flower seller at a market in Nice to Alexander II, from Herzen to Cocteau, from Garibaldi to Somerset Maugham… Reading at one stretch within a day can cause an acute desire to leave off everything and fly to the Cote d’Azur straight away.»
On reading the Introduction that precedes the ensuing stories, you assume that this book has a detective background. This idea is confirmed by the loss of their suitcase full of fashionable clothes that have not yet been worn. Alice Danchokh’s narrative commences precisely with this unpleasant event. Many years ago she accompanied her husband to an important symposium in Monaco. They boarded another plane at Brussels Airport. On arrival at the Cote d’Azur, it appeared that they had lost a suitcase…
I thought that the loss was not a mere accident, and it preceded a twisted detective story. After reading chapter 1, The Birth of a Myth, I realised that the «missing suitcase» was a metaphor.
«To overcome time do not stand still!»
In Story 1, Alice Danchokh relates how, thanks to what and to whom about 190 miles of the rugged Mediterranean coast gained fame. It appears that myths and legends have elevated it to this extreme height. Like an experienced guide, Alice Danchokh page by page takes the reader through the wilds of history, flavouring her narrative with various myths. She introduces the reader not only to historic sites and local legends, but also to prominent figures who lived on the Cote d’Azur at different times and whose deeds are remembered to this day. As for history, it is also unusual– mythologized. And the author is convinced that «all self-respecting myths have roots in Ancient Greece and Rome.»
Alice Danchokh draws our attention to the fact that the Ancient Greeks were the first to take a fancy to this region. She highlights an important circumstance that prompted the Greeks to look further ahead: «They had so much that they desperately needed to sell their surpluses. To sell their goods they paved trade routes and set up trading centres along all the coasts neighbouring Greece. Thus the powerful colony of Massalia (now Marseille) appeared on the Mediterranean, along with smaller ones – Antipolis (Antibes), Nicaea (Nice) and others in local harbours in convenient locations. Not only did they want to sail the seas, but also to move freely by land separated from their motherland.»
However, the Greeks ignored the main danger: the Ligurians, the Celts and other tribes who attacked the trading caravans of foreigners passing near their settlements.
Whatever it was, the Greeks were unable to accomplish what they had intended and hoped for. Then they turned to Rome for help. It could easily pacify the tribes of the Ligurians, the Celts, etc. The Romans readily agreed, seeing for themselves a huge benefit in the future. Having gained a foothold in the lands of these tribes, they called them to order. The result of Roman help was staggering.
I will quote from the text of Alice Danchokh’s book again: «I never tire of admiring the Romans and their thorough approaches to achieving their goals and objectives; I am especially impressed by their love of building. Before the Greeks and the tribes knew it, a straight road passed by them, connecting Rome with its possessions in Spain. Along the road standard cities appeared, protected by high walls, and then everything else.
“Two best preserved Roman towns on the Cote d’Azur are Cemenelum (the Cimiez neighbourhood of Nice) and Frejus. Their ruins are awe-inspiring to every traveller. Even today the architectural remains show the wisdom of Roman urban development: an amphitheatre, an arena, a circus – for entertainment and gatherings; a gymnasium – for the education of worthy citizens; a pantheon – for strengthening faith; an aqueduct and baths – for everybody, as well as housing, a brothel, pavements for chariots, etc.”
Alice Danchokh had remarkable qualities of the mind and the soul that, unfortunately, have become rare in our pragmatic times. Victoria Peshkova, the author of the Preface to the book, noted this feature of her personality: «There are people who have a rare gift for warming up not only their close ones, but also those far away – that is, everyone who finds themselves in their field of attraction, brightening the drear and gloom of everyday life. Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov called them ‘bearers of an atom of the sun.’ And Alice Danchokh is certainly one of them… And we, exhausted by endless stress, turn to those who are able to share the positive, convincing us that in life, for all its contradictions, there are sunny sides, and teaching us to rejoice in any of its gifts, even though modest.»
Alice Danchokh recently formulated her motto of a meaningful and inspired life in a talk with the journalists Natalia Dronina and Vladimir Kupriyanov: «To overcome time do not stand still!»
I will return to the starting point of Alice Danchokh’s book. The attire from the lost suitcase corresponded to the location and level of the international meeting. Clearly, such events are not limited to speeches of its participants and altercations between them. It was the same this time. Its organisers included the following events in the programme, far from the issues discussed: a gala dinner on the occasion of the end of the symposium and an evening visit to the casino in Monte Carlo.
This is what Alice Danchokh tells readers about this: «As a devoted James Bond fan, repeatedly I was mentally next to the super-agent when the dealer uttered the famous phrase: ‘Place your bets, gentlemen!’ And, of course, I knew how important it was for the appearance of those present to correspond to these words. This is why my most elegant summer dress was put into a new suitcase that flew out of Sheremetyevo Airport with the tag ‘Moscow–Nice.’ Next to the dress there were other things needed for a comfortable stay at a prestigious resort. My husband’s tuxedo, which he had just bought, was very good for going out in the evening too. We could have looked great in them if they had reached Nice.»
Nevertheless, Marina Tsvetaeva was right to say that «the most precious thing in life and poetry is what was frustrated.» To put it bluntly, everyday troubles in the lives of creative people awaken imagination and stimulate fancy. It may be rare, but it still happens that a spark of God present in these people ignites into a powerful flame.
I presume that Alice Danchokh didn’t accept Marina Tsvetaeva’s wise oxymoron straight away, but after some time. It was then that her book about the missing suitcase and the myths of the Cote d’Azur appeared. It consists of eighteen chapters, or stories. The number eighteen is no coincidence: it implies the esoteric nature of the narrative.
According to numerology, people who are protected by the sacred number eighteen are rich and have leadership abilities. They are bold and decisive in their actions. Besides, they are ambitious and attain their goals against all the odds. They have a meaningful and deep understanding of life. Those who are protected by this sacred number always make reasonable decisions. With their strong energy, they do not forget to take care of others. In general, they live in full harmony with the surrounding world and its inhabitants.
“Myth is a lie that becomes a truth”
Chapter 1 is called The Birth of a Myth. It would be apt to recall the statement of the French writer, artist and film director Jean Cocteau: «History is the truth that becomes a lie. A myth is a lie that becomes the truth.»
Maxim Gorky’s conclusion is of no less interest: «When nature deprived man of the ability to walk on all fours, it gave him the ideal as a staff! And since then, he has been unconsciously, instinctively striving for the best – ever higher!»
Alice Danchokh quotes a phrase from Alexander Kuprin’s essay Azure Shores: «Everything lies on the Cote d’Azur. Roman ruins alone don’t lie.» Then she adds what else, apart from the ruins, the Romans and the Greeks left for posterity. A lot of necessary and useful things, especially for human health and a comfortable lifestyle. So, the Romans built aqueducts and roads, and planted thousands of coniferous trees all over the Cote d’Azur. Mostly umbrella pines. As Alice Danchokh notes, «Under the great Roman Emperors they fed the soldiers with delicious seeds of their fruits.» The Greeks preferred the common fig tree to the umbrella pines.
From the book readers will learn a lot of interesting facts about the culinary delights of that era, some of them have survived to this day. For instance, the garum seasoning, which «improved the taste of all Roman dishes, including goose pate and desserts.» I will add that it is still the case. An outsider will be shocked to discover what this seasoning was made from. Alice Danchokh writes: «Garum is nothing but a product of fermentation of fatty sea fish entails.»
Another culinary speciality is the bouillabaisse fish soup – the king of local cuisine. About a dozen species of fresh fish and seafood are used for its preparation. The best bouillabaisse is when there is «sea scorpionfish» among its fish: a bright red fish with bulging eyes and long spines in the dorsal fin.
Regarding bouillabaisse, Alice Danchokh quotes Alexander Kuprin again: «Bouillabaisse is the most brutal dish in the world. It consists of fish, lobster, red pepper, vinegar, tomatoes, oil of Provence, and all sorts of stuff that makes you feel as if a dynamite cartridge had been put into your mouth and ignited.»
Despite her undisguised antipathy to this dish, Alice Danchokh showed profound knowledge of the history of France. She took the reader back to 1834 and told a curious story about how thanks to the UK Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham and bouillabaisse the French city of Cannes came into being.
The Lord Chancellor was travelling to Italy on business, but before reaching Nice he was stopped by local authorities due to the cholera epidemic. The book says: «Lord Brougham was not discouraged. He remembered how the day before in the fishing village of Cannes on the shore of a picturesque bay he had been treated to fish soup and local wine. Brougham had enjoyed both so much that he did not stay in Cannes for two months of quarantine, but for thirty-four years.»
He came to love this corner of Paradise. It was with his appearance that the mythologization and even the sacralization of the Cote d’Azur began. But, as we know, any fantastic events are preceded by purely mundane ones.
Alice Danchokh describes these events in their chronological sequence: «Between Cannes and Frejus Brougham built himself a villa resembling a palace, naming it ‘Eleonore-Louise’ in honour of his daughter and made it his winter residence, where he lived till his death. Representatives of London’s high society enjoyed visiting Brougham in winter. They liked to stay by the sunny sea, and many of them, following the example of Henry Brougham, acquired property, or rather, made up their residence on the outskirts of the then poor fishing village. Today the aristocratic British settlement is the most prestigious area of the city of Cannes.»
As Alice Danchokh notes, «two years after the death of the famous Briton, the local authorities decided to pay tribute to the creator of the Cannes myth and unveiled a monument, albeit modest, to the bouillabaisse lover.»
After the fall of Rome, the age of serenity was over. The confusion caused by the change of authorities began. Robbers, pirates, adventurers, and invaders were superseded by the Genoese, the Piedmontese, the Spaniards, the Saracens, the French, and Papal troops. The Saracens were the cruellest of all and committed monstrous atrocities. This is what Alice Danchokh writes about them: «For a century, they terrorised the entire south-eastern coast, suddenly attacking inhabitants from the sea. Those who resisted were murdered with extreme brutality, the others were robbed and enslaved. There was a special hunt for beautiful women, whom they sold in slave markets.»
That troubled period is reflected in the legend of the brave Catherine Segurane. The author takes us back to 1543, when the troops of the French King Francis I, with Ottoman support, besieged Nice. They managed to thoroughly loot the villages around it, but in the end they failed when they faced resistance from the local populace. Women came to the men’s aid, armed with household items. Segurane held a washing roller made of durable olive wood. It proved to be more terrifying to the enemies than a faceted mace of bronze. Legend has it that she knocked down the enemy standard-bearer with this roller and finally finished him off, leaning on the defeated foe and blocking his air access with her extremely big breasts.
It is obvious that Catherine Segurane’s feat deserves to be immortalized in plastic form. Centuries later – on 25 November 1923, St Catherine’s feast – this long-awaited event took place. Money for the monument was raised through crowdfunding. As a result, a marble bas-relief depicting this brave woman appeared on a wall of the dilapidated castle in Nice.
Alice Danchokh was disappointed with this memorial: «The authors of the bas-relief unsuccessfully copied the Liberty Leading the People by the artist Delacroix. Not only did they fail to convey the pathos of the moment, but they also hypocritically covered the heroine’s bare breasts, and she looks too petty and ordinary.»
The mess of heinous crimes against the Côte d’Azur populace caused by the change of the authorities ended in 1860, when the Royal House of Savoy ceded Nice to France, and Napoleon III held a referendum on the ownership of the Côte d’Azur and won.
The event that drastically changed the attitude of the Western world towards Nice took place in the 1760s and was personified in the image of the Scotsman Tobias George Smollett, a writer and physician who appeared in it. His famous novels include The Adventures of Roderick Random, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle and The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker. It should also be added that one of the central streets of Nice is named after him.
Alice Danchokh gives the reason for the appearance of the forty-two-year-old Smollett in Nice in the spring of 1763: a pulmonary disease. Back then, the Cote d’Azur was not a well-known health resort yet. Daily bathing of an unknown foreigner in the cold waters of the bay shocked people walking along the shore. The swimmer was reckoned as a madman who needed to be isolated in a mental hospital. This opinion was shared by local physicians. They believed that such water procedures would lead the arrogant Scot to a deplorable end.
Meanwhile, Smollett did not lose heart, and in his letters from Nice to his friends and acquaintances, praising Nice and its surroundings to the skies, he reported that he was feeling better and better every day. And, most importantly, then he wrote a book about his practice of curative hardening and published it in 1766 under the title Travels Through France and Italy.
To describe Nice’s healing air and the evidence of its effectiveness in the treatment of many diseases, Smollett used lavish colours and arguments. No wonder that Tobias Smollett, as Alice Danchokh rightly notes, «with his sea bathing exercises and their descriptions ‘laid the first stone’ in the building of the resort of Nice, which became one of the European health resorts in the nineteenth century. After a centuries-long break, balneotherapy became fashionable again.»
So, let’s return to the literary classics, which are closer to us in time than Tobias Smollett. For example, to Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Unlike his Scottish colleague, he did not express great enthusiasm for Nice and its surroundings, but he nevertheless showed some objectivity in his judgements about them, as evidenced by his letters to his relatives. Here is what he wrote to his sister Maria Pavlovna Chekhova in a letter dated 25 September (7 October) 1897: «It is warm in Nice; the sea is charming, there are palm trees and eucalyptus trees; but the trouble is that local mosquitoes bite: if one of them bites you, you’ll have a bump for three days.»
However, the next letter to his sister from Nice dated 29 September (11 October) of the same year contains no complaints: «Nice is warm and does not even smell of autumn.»
Chekhov’s letter from Nice dated 29 September (11 October) 1897, sent to the playwright, analyst and journalist Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin; his close friend who made Chekhov’s name widely known), is quite emotional.
Here is an excerpt from this letter: «In Nice I live in a Russian boarding house. My room is quite spacious, with windows facing south, with a fitted carpet, with a bed like Cleopatra’s, and with a lavatory; breakfasts and dinners prepared by the Russian cook (borscht and pies) are as plentiful as in the Hotel Vendome, and just as delicious. I pay eleven francs a day. It’s warm here; even in the evenings it doesn’t feel like autumn. The sea is gentle and affecting. The Promenade des Anglais is overgrown with greenery and shines in the sun: in the morning I sit in the shade there reading a newspaper. I walk a lot. I met Maxim Kovalevsky, a former Moscow professor who was dismissed under paragraph 3 (The Code of Criminal and Correctional Penalties of 1885. – A. S.). He is a tall, stout, lively and good-natured man. He eats much, jokes much, and works much – and he’s easy and fun to be with. His laugh is booming and infectious. <…> There is also the artist Jacobi, who calls Grigorovich a scoundrel and a rogue, Aivazovsky a bastard, Stasov an idiot, and so forth. The day before yesterday Kovalevsky, Jacobi, and I dined together and laughed until our stomachs hurt, to the servants’ great amazement. I often eat oysters.»
From Story 1 readers learn that such a relaxed life in nature not only leads to euphoria, when patches of sunlight waltz in front of you, but also to unexpected death. It is usually called an accident.
Percy Bish Shelley, who came to the Italian Riviera with his friend George Gordon Byron, drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in 1822, before turning thirty. And Byron didn’t outlive his friend by much: he died of malaria, having come to Greece to fight for the freedom of the fraternal people against the Ottoman yoke.
The world-famous French architect Le Corbusier drowned in the same waters. According to Alice Danchokh, «he had a small and very original house in the town of Roquebrune, close to Monaco, and he took long daily swims.» You can’t foresee everything. Especially when what you are passionate about becomes a habit.
The author of the book also mentions the absurd monument at Nice airport. A strange figure appears in front of you, moulded «from huge pieces and blocks of featureless dirty grey stone or concrete, entangled with barbed wire.» Alice Danchokh suggests replacing this mediocre improvisation with a monument to the poet and prose writer Stephen Liegeard and, in the meantime, putting up a sign: «Welcome to Mythland – the Cote d’Azur» next to the ugly conglomeration at Nice Airport!
Story 2 is dedicated to the Principality of Monaco: the smallest and most populous country in the world. This is an operetta and relative state, according to Alice Danchokh, «as if it were a state, prestige, business, entertainment with pleasure, a beautiful life… Here one show is followed by another: Formula 1, a yacht fair, sports tournaments, charity balls and dinners, academic and economic congresses, expensive weddings, anniversaries, and parties that gather people of all kinds and ages. Everyone here involuntarily participates in vanity fair, glam and illusory well-being, which is often based on dubious machinations.»
In Monaco quite ordinary human needs are clothed in operetta robes. Besides, it is the place in the world where the temptation of games of chance and indulgence in the basic instincts underlie local business.
The reader will learn a lot about the history of this tiny state and its princes, about Princess Grace and Roger Moore, who played James Bond.
Story 2 ends on a sad note: «It is so boring in this mythical Paradise, where homegrown successful businessmen’s abandoned wives with children and abandoned mistresses live! But it’s safe and convenient to travel to the golden mirage of the Cote d’Azur.»
