Abstract: In the wake of a scandal where Giraudoux was criticized for being a shallow writer, more interested in foreign countries than France, in 1923 he composed a “Prière sur la tour Eiffel,” a text which reappeared in 1924 in Juliette au pays des hommes. The Eiffel Tower allowed him to evoke Paris, a spiritual and moral territory as opposed to a physical space. The text moves from Paris as seen from above down to Giraudoux before ending with a proclamation of his vocation as a writer. The tower is a pretext for discovering Paris, and the tower and Paris pretexts for self-discovery.
