PA R I S / R O YA U M O N T | 1 0  p . m .

Royaumont Hash-Up
Rustum Kozain

For two weeks during July 1994, I was one of six aspirant black South
African writers on a fiction workshop with Denis Hirson, a South African
writer by then established in Paris for more than twenty years. The
other writers were Joan Baker, Sipho Mahlobo, Isaac Mogotsi, Roshila
Nair and Mango Tshabango. Sponsored in its entirety (travel, accommo­
dation, stipend) by the French Ministry of Culture, the workshop
included five or so days in Paris – staying with Parisian families, doing
readings at two bookshops. But the main part – the workshop proper –
took place at Royaumont Abbey, close to a small village thirty-plus
kilometres north of Paris.
Royaumont Abbey (l’Abbaye Royale de Royaumont ) was a Cistercian
abbey built during the thirteenth century under the patronage of
Louis XIV, who was also a frequent visitor there. Legend has it that the
king used to ‘attend’ Mass by sitting at a window that looked in on the
church from an adjacent first-floor room sharing a wall with the abbey
church, most probably a room that was part of the king’s suite (and the
very room in which we conducted our daily workshops). Following the
outbreak of revolution in 1789, however, the monks gradually abandoned
the place.
In 1791, according to the Royaumont Foundation’s website, a certain
Marquis of Travanet bought the abbey and installed a cotton mill in
the refectory. Needing stone for the mill workers’ quarters, and in an
era when people did not care much for Gothic architecture any more,

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