In Paris’s 20th arrondissement, there is a park, of sorts, where the city’s greatest revolutionaries go to rot. Some are the real deal: On May 28, 1871, over a hundred Communards were shot dead right here as dreams of a Socialist utopia crumbled around them. Other legends were made not on barricades, but on the stage—or the page. Oscar Wilde, for example, reposes beneath a hulking deity whose iconoclastic castration, back in 1961, did little to restrain pilgrims seeking to smear red lips across his stony physique. Proust’s is a surprisingly succinct slab—simple, black, nonchalant—while Apollinaire’s is a rusticated obelisk, phallic and craggy, branded with the ghost of a cross. The women’s quarters are more modest: It is hard to imagine Isadora Duncan, arms outstretched and tunic flying, confined to such a small stone plaque; Colette fairs a little better, her red-veined resting place the size of a cushy twin bed. The avant-garde is dead, and it is buried in Père Lachaise. Related Articles Wind your way back through gravelly paths and you’ll see a …