Breakdown of Après avoir quitté le silence de la bibliothèque, le bruit de la rue lui paraît très fort.
Questions & Answers about Après avoir quitté le silence de la bibliothèque, le bruit de la rue lui paraît très fort.
In French, when you use après followed by a verb, you normally use:
- après + infinitif passé (past infinitive): après avoir quitté
- or après que + subject + verb: après qu’il a quitté
« Après quitter » is incorrect in standard French.
Here:
- après avoir quitté literally: after having left
- It emphasizes that the action of leaving is completed before what comes next.
- This structure is used when the subject of avoir quitté is the same as the subject of the main verb (paraît).
You could say « Après qu’il a quitté le silence… », but it’s longer and more formal. The infinitive construction is very common and natural.
French uses être only with:
- most movement / reflexive verbs (aller, venir, partir, se lever, etc.)
- all reflexive verbs (se laver, se coucher, etc.)
But quitter is a transitive verb (“to leave something/someone”), so it always forms its compound tenses with avoir, never with être:
- j’ai quitté la maison
- après avoir quitté la maison
- il avait quitté la ville
So « après avoir quitté » is the correct form.
No, it stays quitté, without extra e or s, because:
- Agreement with the past participle (with avoir) only happens if the direct object comes before the participle.
- Here, the direct object (le silence de la bibliothèque) comes after:
après avoir quitté le silence…
So there is no agreement:
- après avoir quitté le silence
- après avoir quitté la maison
- après avoir quitté les bibliothèques
In all these examples, quitté does not change.
« Le silence de la bibliothèque » literally means “the silence of the library”, i.e. the quiet atmosphere that exists in the library.
If you said:
- Après avoir quitté la bibliothèque…
→ Focus on leaving the place.
With:
- Après avoir quitté le silence de la bibliothèque…
→ Focus on leaving the quietness, the silence that characterizes the library.
So the writer is contrasting silence vs noise, not just one physical place vs another.
Both are possible, but they don’t emphasize the same thing.
- le bruit de la rue = “the noise of the street,” meaning the noise coming from / typical of the street; it highlights the sound itself.
- la rue bruyante = “the noisy street”; here the subject is the street, with bruyante as its quality.
Since the sentence later says « lui paraît très fort », it makes sense for the subject to be “the noise” rather than “the street”:
- Le bruit de la rue lui paraît très fort.
= The noise seems very loud to him/her.
This keeps the focus on noise vs silence.
Because:
- rue is feminine: la rue
- de + la → de la
So:
- le bruit de la rue = the noise of the street
« du rue » would be de + le, but that’s only used with masculine nouns (e.g. du jardin, du musée).
« de rue » would normally sound incomplete here; you need the article to specify a particular place (the street in general, or the street you’re talking about).
« Lui » is an indirect object pronoun meaning “to him” / “to her”.
In the sentence:
- Le bruit de la rue = subject
- lui = indirect object (“to him/her”)
- paraît = verb
- très fort = complement (adjective)
Word order in French with object pronouns is:
- [subject] + [object pronoun] + [verb]
So:
- Le bruit de la rue lui paraît très fort.
= The noise of the street seems very loud to him/her.
You cannot say « Le bruit de la rue paraît lui très fort »; the pronoun must go before the verb in this kind of simple sentence.
Yes, you could say:
- Le bruit de la rue lui semble très fort.
In this context:
- paraître and sembler are very close in meaning: to seem / to appear.
- Both express a subjective impression, not an objective measurement.
Subtle nuance:
- sembler is slightly more common and neutral.
- paraître can sound a bit more literary or descriptive, but it’s still very normal everyday French.
Both are correct here; it’s mostly a stylistic choice.
The adjective must agree with the noun it describes.
- The adjective fort / forte here describes le bruit (noise).
- le bruit is masculine singular.
- So the adjective must be masculine singular → fort.
Examples:
- le bruit est fort
- la musique est forte
- des bruits très forts
You could say:
- Le bruit de la rue lui paraît très bruyant. (not wrong, but less usual)
However, in practice:
- fort (for a sound) = loud (volume, intensity)
- bruyant = noisy, describes something that produces a lot of noise (a place, person, machine, etc.)
So we more naturally say:
- un bruit fort (a loud noise)
- une rue bruyante (a noisy street)
Here we are directly evaluating the noise, so fort is the more idiomatic choice.
Yes, but it changes the nuance:
Après être sorti de la bibliothèque, le bruit de la rue lui paraît très fort.
= After leaving (going out of) the library, the street noise seems very loud to him/her.
→ Focus on physically leaving the place.Après avoir quitté le silence de la bibliothèque, le bruit de la rue lui paraît très fort.
→ Focus on leaving the silence, the atmosphere, not just the building.
Grammatically, both are fine. The original phrasing is more vivid and contrasts silence with noise.
The structure:
- après + infinitif passé (après avoir quitté)
expresses “after having done X”.
It only shows the time relationship between two actions:
- Action A: quitter le silence (leaving the silence) → completed first
- Action B: le bruit lui paraît fort (the noise seems loud) → happens after
Using the present for paraît can describe:
- a general truth / habitual situation:
Whenever he leaves the silence of the library, the street noise seems very loud to him. - or a vivid present in a narrative.
So the present tense is natural, and après avoir quitté is sufficient to show that the leaving happens before the perception of the noise.