André Dérain
André Dérain
The Dutchman, named Janssen, led Croniamantal to the region of Aix, where there was a house which the people of the neighborhood called le Chateau. Le Chateau had nothing lordly about it other than its name and was nothing but a vast domicile having a dairy and a stable.
Mr. Janssen possessed a modest income and lived alone in this dwelling which he had bought in order to live in solitude, a suddenly broken off betrothal having rendered him rather hypochondriac. He devoted all his energies now to the education of the son of Macarée and Vierselin Tigoboth: Croniamantal, heir of the old name of des Ygrées.
The Dutchman, Janssen, had travelled much. He spoke all the languages of Europe, Arabian, and Turkish, not to mention Hebrew and other dead languages. His speech was as clear as his blue eyes. He soon made the friendship of several scholars of Aix whom he would visit from time to time and he corresponded with many foreign scientists.
When Croniamantal was six years of age, Mr. Janssen would often take him to the country. Croniamantal came to love these lessons along the paths of wooded hills. Mr. Janssen would often stop and show Croniamantal the birds hopping about or butterflies pursuing each other and fluttering together among the wild rose-bushes. He would say that love reigned over all of Nature. They would also go out on moonlit nights and the master would explain to his pupil the hidden destinies of the heavenly bodies, their regular course, and their effects upon the life of man.
Croniamantal never forgot how one moonlit night his master led him to a field at the edge of a forest; the grass bubbled with milky light. Fireflies fluttered around them; their phosphorescent and jagged lights gave the site a strange aspect. The master called the attention of his disciple to the sweetness of this May night.
"Learn," he said, "learn to know all of Nature and to love her. Let her be your veritable nurse, whose salutary mammals are the moon and the hills."
Croniamantal was thirteen years of age at this time and his mind was quite ripe. He listened attentively to Mr. Janssen's words.
"I have always lived in her, but I must say, lived badly, for one should not live without human love as companion. Do not forget that all is a sign of love in Nature. I, alas! am damned for not having observed this law whose demands nothing can withstand."
"What," said Croniamantal, "you, my teacher, who know so many sciences did not recognize this law which every country lout and even the animals, the vegetables, and inert matter observe?"
"Happy child who at your age can put such questions!" said Mr. Janssen. "I have always known that law, from which no human being should rebel. But there are some luckless men destined never to know the joys of love. That often happens to poets and scientists. Their souls are vagabond; I am always conscious of existences preceding my own. This knowledge has never stirred any but the sterile bodies of scientists. (You should not be astonished in the least at what I say.) Whole races respect animals and proclaim the principle of metempsychosis, a most worthy belief, self-evident but fantastical, since it takes no account of lost forms and of their inevitable dispersion. Their worship should have extended to the vegetable kingdom and to minerals. For what is the dust of roads but the ashes of the dead? It is true that the Ancients did not concede life to inert matter. But rabbis believed that the same soul inhabited the body of Adam, Moses and David. In fact, the name, Adam, is composed in Hebrew of the letters Aleph, Daleth and Mem, the first letters of the three names. Your soul like mine, inhabited other human forms, other animals, or was dispersed and will continue so after your death, since all things must serve again. For perhaps there is nothing new any more, and creation has ceased, perhaps... I affirm that I have not desired love, but I swear that I would not begin such a life over again. I have mortified my flesh and suffered severe punishment. I should like your life to be happy."
Croniamantal's master made him devote most of his time to the sciences, keeping him au courant with all recent inventions. He also instructed the boy in Latin and Greek. They often read the Eclogues of Virgil or translated Theocritus in an olive grove. Croniamantal had learned a very pure French, but his master taught him in Latin. He also taught him Italian, and at an early age Croniamantal received the poems of Petrarch, who became one of his favorite poets. Mr. Janssen also taught Croniamantal English, and made him familiar with Shakespeare. Above all he gave the boy a taste for old French authors. Among the French poets he admired chiefly Villon, Ronsard and his pléiade, Racine and La Fontaine. He also made him read translations of Cervantes and of Goethe. On his advice, Croniamantal read the romances of chivalry which might have made part of the library of Don Quixote. They developed in Croniamantal an unquenchable thirst for experiment and perilous love adventures; he devoted himself to fencing and to horseback riding; at the age of fifteen he declared to anyone who came to visit them that he had decided to become a celebrated and peerless cavalier, and already he dreamed of a mistress.
Croniamantal was, at this time, a handsome youth, thin and straight. The girls at the village fêtes, when he touched them lightly, would stifle little bursts of laughter and redden, lowering their eyes under his regard. Habituated to poetic forms, his mind thought of love as a conquest. Thoughts of Boccacio, his natural daring, his education, everything disposed him to take the final step.
One May day, he went out for a long ride. It was morning, everything was still fresh. The dew hung from the flowers of the hedges, and on either side of the road stretched the fields of olive trees whose gray leaves trembled gently in the sea breeze and compared agreeably with the blue sky. He arrived at a place where the road was being mended. The road menders, handsome boys in bright colored caps, worked lazily, singing the while, and stopping occasionally to drink from their flasks. Croniamantal thought that these handsome fellows had sweethearts. It is thus that they call a lover in that country. The boys say "my sweetheart," the girls, "my sweetheart," and in fact they are both sweet in that lovely country. Croniamantal's heart leaped and his whole being, exalted by the springtime and the riding, cried for love.
At a turn in the road, an apparition increased his trouble. He arrived close to a little bridge thrown across a river which cut the road. The place was isolated, and across the hedges and the trunks of poplars, he saw two beautiful girls bathing, quite naked. One was in the water and held herself up by a branch. He admired her brown arms and abundant beauties, hardly concealed by the water. The other, standing on the bank, dried herself after her bath and exposed ravishing lines and graces which inflamed the heart of Croniamantal; he decided to join them and mingle in their pleasures. Unluckily, he perceived in the branches of a neighboring tree two youths spying on this prey. Holding their breath and watching the least movements of the bathers, they did not see the equestrian, who, laughing uproariously, threw his horse into a gallop and cried aloud as he crossed the little bridge.
The sun had risen almost to its zenith and was now darting its dreadful rays. An ardent thirst added itself to the amorous inquietudes of Croniamantal. The sight of a farm along the road brought him unspeakable joy. He arrived at a little orchard whose blossoming trees made a lovely sight. It was a little wood, rose and white with the cherry and peach blossoms. On the fence linen was drying and he had the pleasure of seeing a charming peasant girl of about sixteen, at work washing clothes in a vat in the shadow of a fig-tree that had just begun to bloom. Not having noticed his arrival, she continued to accomplish her domestic function which he found noble; for, his imagination full of memories of antiquity, he compared her to Nausica. Descending from his horse he approached and contemplated the young girl with ravishment. He looked at her back. Her folded up skirt discovered a well made leg in a very white stocking. Her body moved in a manner that was pleasantly exciting because of the efforts occasioned by the soaping. Her sleeves were rolled up and he observed her pretty brown plump arms, which enchanted him.
I have always loved beautiful arms particularly. There are people who attach great importance to the perfection of the foot. I admit that they touch me too, but the arm is to my mind that which should be most perfect in woman. It is always in motion, one always has one's eye upon it. One might say that it is the veritable organ of the graces, and that by its deft movements, it is the veritable arm of Love, since when curved, this delicate arm resembles a bow, and when extended, the arrow thereof.
This was also Croniamantal's point of view. He was thinking of this, when his horse, who suddenly remembered that it was the habitual hour for being fed, began to whinny. At once the young girl turned and showed surprise at seeing a stranger regarding her from above the fence. She blushed and only seemed the more charming. Her dusky skin attested to the Moorish blood that flowed in her veins. Croniamantal asked her for food and drink. With much good grace this sweet girl did have him enter the house and served him a rude repast. With some milk, eggs, and black bread, his thirst and his hunger were soon sated. In the meantime, he questioned his young hostess, in the hope of finding an opportunity for paying her gallant compliments. He learned that her name was Mariette, and that her parents had gone to the neighboring town to sell vegetables; her brother was working on the road. This family lived happily on the products of the orchard and the barnyard.
At this moment, her parents, fine looking peasants, returned, and there was Croniamantal already in love with Mariette, quite disappointed. He paid the mother for the meal, and went off, after having given Mariette a long look which she did not return, but he had the satisfaction of seeing her blush as she turned away.
He mounted his horse and took the road to his house. Being for the first time in his life, sad for love, he found extreme melancholy in this same countryside which he had previously traversed. The sun had dropped low over the horizon. The grey leaves of the olive trees seemed as sad as himself. The shadows stretched out like waves. The river where he had seen the bathers was abandoned. The lapping of the water became unbearable for him, like a mockery. He threw his horse into a gallop. Then there was the dusk, lights appearing in the distance. Then night came; he slowed up his horse and abandoned himself to a disordered revelry. The sloping road was bordered with cypresses, and it was thus, somnolent with the night and with love, that Croniamantal pursued his melancholy way.
* * *
His master soon noticed in the days that followed that he gave no more attention to the studies to which he had been wont to apply himself with such diligence. He divined that this disgust came of love.
His respect was mingled with a little scorn because Mariette was nothing but a simple peasant girl.
The end of September had been reached, and one day Mr. Janssen led Croniamantal out under the laden olive trees in the orchard and censured his disciple for his passion, the latter hearkening to his reproaches with ruddy embarrassment. The first winds of autumn complained in the fields and Croniamantal, very sad and much ashamed, lost forever his desire to see again the pretty Mariette and kept nothing but the memory of her.
* * *
And so Croniamantal attained his majority.
A disease of the heart which was discovered in him led to his dismissal by the military authorities. Soon after, his guardian died suddenly, leaving him by will the little which he possessed. And after having sold the house calledle Chateau, Croniamantal went to Paris to give himself freely to his taste for literature; he had been for some time past composing poems secretly and accumulating them in an old cigar-box.
In the early days of the year 1911, a young man who was very badly dressed went running up the rue Houdon. His extremely mobile countenance seemed to be filled with joy and anxiety by turns. His eyes devoured all that they saw and when his eyelids snapped shut quickly like jaws, they gulped in the universe, which renewed itself incessantly by the mere operation of him who ran. He imagined to the tiniest details the enormous worlds pastured in himself. The clamour and the thunder of Paris burst from afar and about the young man, who stopped, and panted like some criminal who has been too long pursued and is ready to surrender himself. This clamour, this noise indicated clearly that his enemies were about to track him like a thief. His mouth and his gaze expressed the ruse he was employing, and walking slowly now, he took refuge in his memory, and went forward, while all the forces of his destiny and of his consciousness retarded the time when the truth should appear of that which is, that which was, and of that which is to be.
The young man entered a one story house. On the open door was a placard:
Entrance to the Studios
He followed a corridor where it was so dark and so cold that he had the feeling of having died, and with all his will, clenching his fists and gritting his teeth he began to take eternity to bits. Then suddenly he was conscious again of the motion of time whose seconds, hammered by a clock, fell like pieces of broken glass, while life flowed in him again with the renewed passage of time. But as he stopped to rap at a door, his heart beat more strongly again, for fear of finding no one home.
He rapped at the door and cried:
"It is I, Croniamantal!"
And behind the door the heavy steps of a man who seemed tired, or carried too weighty a burden, came slowly, and as the door opened there took place in the sudden light the creation of two beings and their instant marriage.
In the studio, which looked like a barn, an innumerable herd flowed in dispersion: they were the sleeping pictures, and the herdsman who tended them smiled at his friend. Upon a carpenter's table piles of yellow books could be likened to mounds of butter. And pushing back the ill-joined door, the wind brought in unknown beings who complained with little cries in the name of all the sorrows. All the wolves of distress howled behind the door ready to devour the flock, the herdsman and his friend, in order to prepare in their place the foundations for the NEW CITY. But in the studio there were joys of all colours. A great window opened the whole north side and nothing could be seen but the whole blue sky, the song of a woman. Croniamantal took off his coat which fell to the floor like the corpse of a drowned man, and sitting on the divan he gazed for a long time at the new canvas placed on the support. Dressed in a blue wrap, barefooted, the painter also regarded the picture in which two women remembered themselves in a glacial mist.
The studio contained another fatal object, a large piece of broken mirror hooked to the wall. It was a dead and soundless sea, standing on end, and at the bottom of which a false life animated what did not exist. Thus, confronting Art, there is the appearance of Art, against which men are not sufficiently on their guard, and which pulls them to earth when Art has raised them to the heights. Croniamantal bent over in a sitting posture, leaned his fore-arms on his knees, and turned his eyes from the painting to a placard thrown on the floor on which was painted the following announcement:
I AM AT THE BAR—The Bird of Benin
He read and re-read this sentence while the Bird of Benin contemplated his picture, approaching it and withdrawing from it, his head at all angles. Finally he turned towards Croniamantal and said:
"I saw the woman for you last night."
"Who is she?" asked Croniamantal.
"I do not know, I saw her but I do not know her. She is a really young girl, as you like them. She has the sombre and child-like face of those who are destined to cause suffering. And despite all the grace of her hands that straighten in order to repel, she lacks that nobility which poets could not love because it would prevent their being miserable. I have seen the woman for you, I tell you. She is both beauty and ugliness; she is like everything that we love nowadays. And she must have the taste of the laurel leaf."
But Croniamantal, who was not listening to him, interrupted at this point to say:
"Yesterday I wrote my last poem in regular verses:
Well,
Hell![6]
and my last poem in irregular verses (take care that in the second stanza the word wench is taken in its less reputable meaning):
PROSPECTUS FOR A NEW MEDICINE
Why did Hjalmar returnThe tankard of beaten silver lay void,The stars of the eveningBecame the stars of the morningReciprocallyThe sorceress of the forest of HruloëPrepared her repastShe was an eater of horse-fleshBut he was notMai Mai ramaho nia nia.Then the stars of the morningBecame again the stars of the eveningAnd reciprocallyThey cried—In the name of MaröeWench of ArnamoerAnd of his favorite zoöphytePrepare the drink of the gods—Certainly noble warriorMai Mai ramaho nia nia.She took the sunAnd plunged him into the seaAs housewivesDip a ham in gravyBut alas! the salmons voraciousHave devoured the drowned sunAnd have made themselves wigsWith his beamsMai Mai ramaho nia nia.She took the moon and did her all with bandsAs they do with the illustrious deadAnd with little childrenAnd then in the light of the only starsThe eternal onesShe made a concoction of sea-brineThe euphorbiaceans of Norwegian resinAnd the mucous of AlfesTo make a drink for the godsMai Mai ramaho nia nia.He died like the sunAnd the sorceress perched at the top of a fir pineHeard until eveningThe rumours of the great winds engulfed in the phialAnd the lying scaldas swear to thisMai Mai ramaho nia nia.
Croniamantal was silent for an instant and then added:
"I shall from now on write only poetry free from all restrictions even that of language.[7]
"Listen, old man!"
MAHEVIDANOMIRENANOCALIPNODITOCEXTARTINAP # v.s.A. Z.Telephone: 33-122 Pan : PanOeaoiiiioKTiniiiiiiiiiiii
"Your last line, my poor Croniamantal," said the Bird of Benin, "is a simple plagiarism from Fr.nc.s J.mm.s."
"That is not true," said Croniamantal. "But I shall compose no more pure poetry. That is what I have come to, through your fault. I want to write plays."
"You had better go to see the young woman of whom I spoke to you. She knows you and seems to be crazy about you. You will find her in the Meudon woods next Thursday at a place that I shall designate. You will recognize her by the skipping rope that she will hold in her hand. Her name is Tristouse Ballerinette."
"Very well," said Croniamantal, "I shall go to see Ballerinette and shall sleep with her, but above all I want to go to the theatres to offer my play, Ieximal Jelimite, which I wrote in your studio last year while eating lemons."
"Do what you want, my friend," said the Bird of Benin, "but do not forget Tristouse Ballerinette, the woman of your future."
"Well said," said Croniamantal. "But I want to roar to you once more the plot of Ieximal Jelimite. Listen:
"A man buys a newspaper on the seashore. From the garden of a house at one side emerges a soldier whose hands are electric bulbs. A giant 10 feet tall descends from a tree. He shakes the newspaper vendor, who is of plaster and who in falling breaks to bits. At this moment a judge arrives. With strokes of a razor he kills everybody, while a leg which passes hopping crushes the judge with a kick in the nose, and sings a pretty little song."
"How wonderful!" said the Bird of Benin. "I shall paint the decoration, you have promised me that."
"That goes without saying," answered Croniamantal.[8]
On the following day Croniamantal went to The Theatre, which was meeting at Monsieur Pingu's, the financier. Croniamantal succeeded in gaining entry by bribing the doorman and the butler. He entered boldly the hall where The Theatre, its satellites, its stool-pigeons and its hired thugs were gathered.
CRONIAMANTAL
Ladies and Gentlemen of THE THEATRE, I have come to read you my play entitledIeximal Jelimite.
THE THEATRE
Good gracious, wait a minute, young man, until you have been informed about our methods of procedure. You are here in the midst of our actors, our authors, our critics and our spectators. Listen attentively and don't even speak.
CRONIAMANTAL
Gentlemen, I thank you for the cordial reception that you give me and I shall profit, I am sure, of all that I hear.
THE ACTOR
My rôles have slowly withered like the rosesBut mother, I love my metempsychosesO seats of proteus and their metamorphoses
AN OLD STAGE MANAGER
Do you remember, Madame! One snowy night of 1832, a lost stranger knocked at the door of a villa situated on the road leading from Chanteboun to Sorrento...
THE CRITIC
Nowadays, for a play to be successful it is important that it should not be signed by its author.
THE TRAINER TO HIS BEAR
Roll about in the sweet peasPlay dead... suckle...Dance the polka... now the mazurka...
CHORUS OF DRINKERS
Juice o' the grapeRuddy liquorLet us drink drinkIf we may
CHORUS OF EATERS
Horde of gluttonsThere's no moreA crumb leftIn the plate
DRINKERS
Bloated headsDrink o drinkThe juice o' the grape
R.D.RD K.PL.NG, THE ACTOR, THE ACTRESS,THE AUTHORS(To the spectators)Pay! Pay! Pay! Pay! Pay! Pay! Pay!
THE PROMPTER
The theatre, my dear brothers, is a school for scandal, it is a place of perdition for the soul and the body. According to the testimony of the stage carpenters everything is faked in the theatre. Witches older than Morgane come there to pose as little girls of fifteen years.
How much blood is spilt in a melodrama! I say truthfully, though it be false, this blood will be upon the heads of the children of the authors, the actors, the directors, and the spectators, unto the seventh generation.Ne mater suam, the little girls used to say to their mothers. Nowadays they ask: "Are we going to the theatre tonight?"
I tell you frankly my friends. There are few shows which do not endanger the soul. Outside of the spectacle of nature I know of nothing that one may witness without fear. This last spectacle is Gallic and healthy, my dear friends. The sound dilates the glands, chases Satan from the stinking shades where he lies and thus the Fathers come in from the desert to exorcise themselves.
THE MOTHER OF AN ACTRESS
Are you p..., Charlotte?
THE ACTRESS
No, mama, I am roasting.
M. MAURICE BOISSARD
We have with us today the entrails of a mother!
AN AUTHOR WHO HAS A PLAY ACCEPTED BY THE COMEDIE-FRANÇAISE
My friend, you do not look very confident today. I am going to explain the meaning of several words from the theatrical vocabulary. Listen attentively and remember them if you can.
Acheron(ch hard)—A river of Hades, not of hell.
Artists(two types)—Is never used except in speaking of a comedian or a comedienne.
Brother—Avoid using this substantive together with "little." The adjective "young" is more proper.
NOTA BENE—This phrase does not apply to operettas.
"High Life"—This very French expression is translated in English as "fashionable people."
Liaisons—They are always dangerous in the theatre.
Papa—Two negatives are equal to an affirmative.
Cooked Potatoes—(never used in the singular)—A crudity that is deleterious to the stomach.
Tut-tut—This worn expression...
Would you like to have some titles for plays also? They are very important in order to succeed. Here are some sure ones:
THE CONTOUR;The Circumference; THE CONDOR;Hurry up Harry; THE TOWER;Louise, your shirt is coming out; STEP ALONG;The Mysterious Bar; HUNDREDTH TO THE RIGHT;The Magician; THE GUELF;I am going to kill you; MY PRINCE;The Artichoke; THE SCHOOL FOR LAWYERS;The Torch-bearer!
Good-bye, sir, don't thank me.
A GREAT CRITIC
Gentlemen, I have come to give you a report of the triumph, last night. Are you ready? I begin:
GRIT AND GRIP
A play in three acts by Messrs. Julien Tandis, Jean de la Fente, Prosper Mordus and Mmes Nathalie de l'Angoumois, Jane Fontaine and the countess M. Des Etangs, etc. Sets by Messrs. Alfred Mone, Leon Minie, Al. de Lemere. Costumes by Jeanette, hats by Wilhelmine, properties by the MacTead Company, phonographs by Hernstein and Company, sanitary napkins by Van Feuler Brothers.
I recall the captive who dared to p... before Sesostris. I never saw a more poignant scene than this from the play of Messrs, and Mmes etc. I must speak of the scene which made such a great hit at the opening night and in which the financier Prominoff bursts into a fit of rage against the coroner.
The play, which was very good, otherwise, did not accomplish all that was expected of it. The courtesan wife who feathers her nest out of the green old age of a vulgar brewer, remains, however, an unforgettable and touching figure which leaves in the shadow that of Cleopatra and Mme de Pompadour. M. Layol is an excellent comedian. He acted the father of a family in every sense of the expression. Mlle Jeannine Letrou, a young star of tomorrow, has very pretty legs. But the real revelation was Mme Perdreau whose sensitive nature we know so well. She acted the scene of the reconciliation with the most perfect naturalism. In short a great evening and prospects for a hundred night run.[9]
THE THEATRE
Young man we are going to give some subjects for plays. If they were signed by famous names we would play them, but they are masterpieces by unknowns which were given to us and which we are generously turning over to you because of your nice face.
PLAY WITH A THESIS—The prince of San Meco finds a louse on his wife's head and makes a scene. The princess has not slept with the viscount of Dendelope for the past six months. The couple make a scene before the viscount, who, not having slept with anyone but the princess and Mme Lafoulue, wife of a Secretary of State, causes the ministry to fall and overwhelms Mme Lafoulue with his scorn.
Mme Lafoulue makes a scene with her husband. Everything becomes clear, however, when Monsieur Bibier, the Deputy, arrives. He scratches his head. He is stripped. He accuses his electors of being lousy. Finally everything is in order once more. Title:Parliamentarism.
COMEDY OF MANNERS—Isabelle Lefaucheux promises her husband that she will be faithful to him. Then she remembers that she has promised the same thing to Jules, the boy who works in their store. She suffers from not being able to grant her faith and her love.
However, Lefaucheux fires Jules. This event precipitates a dramatic triumph of love, and we soon find Isabelle cashier in a department store where Jules is salesman. Title:Isabelle Lefaucheux.
HISTORICAL PLAY—The famous novelist Stendhal is the ringleader of a Bonapartist plot which ends in the heroic death of a young singer during a presentation ofDon Juanat the Scala Theatre in Milan. Since Stendhal had hidden his identity under a pseudonym, he withdraws from the affair admirably. Grand marches, procession of historical personages.
OPERA—Buridan's ass hesitates to satisfy his hunger and his thirst. The she-ass of Balaam prophesies that the ass will die. The golden ass comes, eats and drinks. The Wild-Ass's-Skin comes and displays his nudity to this asinine herd. Passing by, Sancho's ass thinks that he can prove his robustness by carrying off the child, but the traitor, Melo, warns the Genius of la Fontaine. He proclaims his jealousy and beats the golden ass. Metamorphoses. The Prince and the Infant make their entrance on horseback. The King abdicates in their favor.
PATRIOTIC PLAY—The Swedish government lays suit against the French Government for manufacturing an imitation of "Swedish matches." In the last act they exhume the remains of an alchemist of the XIVth Century who invented these matches, at La Ferté-Gaucher, a village in France, not far from Paris.
COMEDY——
The handsome chauffeurCried to his neighborIf you will show me your salonI wilt show you my kitchen.
Here is enough to nourish a whole career of playwriting, sir.
M. LACOUFF, SCHOLAR
Young man, it is also important to know theatrical anecdotes; they help to fill out the conversation of a young dramatic author; here are a few:
Frederick the Great was accustomed to having his court actresses whipped before each presentation. He believed that flagellation communicated a rosy tint to their skin which was not without its charm.
At the court of the Grand Turk, theBourgeois Gentilhommewas being played, but in order to adapt it to the taste of the environment themamamouchibecame a Knight of the Garter.[10]
Cecile Vestris, while returning to Mayence, one day, had her carriage held up by the famous Rhenish bandit Schinderhans. She rallied her spirits against this ill-fortune and danced for Schinderhans in the hall of a roadside tavern.
Ibsen was sleeping one time with a young Spanish lady who cried out at the proper moment:
"Now!... now!... Mr. Dramatist!"
An erudite actor admitted to me that he had liked only one statue in all his life:The Squatting Scribe, sculptured by an Egyptian, long before Jesus-Christ, and which he saw in the Louvre. But they are beginning to talk much less of Scribe, and yet he still reigns over the theatre.
THE THEATRE
Do not forget the final scene, nor the words at the end, nor the fact that the more crust you have the more you shine, nor that a number that is cited must end in 7 or 3 in order to seem accurate; nor not to lend money to anybody who says: "I have five acts at the Odéon," or "I have three acts at the Comédie-Française," nor to say carelessly: "If you want some free passes, I have so many of them, that I am obliged to give them to my concierge;" that doesn't lead to anything.
A young man at this point made good the occasion to come and sing with equivocal gestures and a lascivious air, some childish and entrancing songs.
M. PINGU
What juice, sir!
M. LACOUFF
Juice of the hat?
M. PINGU
No-no! I am mistaken. What a fluid!
He trembles like the paunch of an archbishop.
M. LACOUFF
Use the proper word, not your paunch.
M. PINGU
What a joy, sir, what a joy! It would soften a crocodile to tears and would please a scholar as well as a financier.
CRONIAMANTAL
Good-bye, gentlemen, I am your devoted servant. With your permission I will return in a few days. I feel that my play is not in proper shape yet.
André Dérain
André Dérain
On a spring morning, Croniamantal, following the instructions of the Bird of Benin, reached the Meudon woods and stretched himself out in the shade of a tree whose branches hung very low.
CRONIAMANTAL
God I am tired, not of walking but of being alone. I am thirsty—not for wine, hydromel or beer, but for water, fresh water from that lovely wood where the grass and the trees are rose at every dawn, but where no spring arrests the progress of the parched traveller. The walk has sharpened my appetite; I am hungry, though not for the flesh nor for fruit, but for bread, good solid bread, swollen like mammals, bread, round as the moon and gilded as she.
He arose then. He went deep into the woods and came to the clearing, where he was to meet Tristouse Ballerinette. The damsel had not yet arrived. Croniamantal longed for a fountain and his imagination, or perhaps some sorcerer's talent in himself which he had never suspected, caused a limpid water suddenly to flow among the grass.
Croniamantal flung himself down and drank avidly, when he heard the voice of a woman singing far off:
Dondidondaine'Tis the shepherdess beloved of the kingWho has gone to the fountainDondidondaineIn the dewy fields, all blossomingTo the fountainBut here comes CroquemitaineTo the fountainAnd Hickorydock! advance no further.
CRONIAMANTAL
Dost thou think already of her who sings? Thou laughest dully in this clearing. Dost thou believe that she has been rounded like a round table for the equality of men and weeks? Thou knowest well, the days do not resemble each other.
About the round table, the good are no longer equal; one has the sun in his face, it dazzles him and soon quits him for his neighbor. Another has his shadow before him. All are good, and good thou art thyself, but they are no more equal than the day and the night.
THE VOICE
CroquemitaineWears the rose and the lilacThe king rides off—Hello Germaine—CroquemitaineThou wilt come back again
CRONIAMANTAL
The voices of women are always ironical. Is the weather always fair? Someone is already damned instead of me. It is nice in the deep woods. Hearken no longer to the voice of woman! Ask! Ask!
THE VOICE
—Hello GermaineI come to love between thine arms—Ah! Sire, our cow is full—Really Germaine—Your servant also, I believe.
CRONIAMANTAL
She who sings in order to lure me will be ignorant as I, and dancing with lassitudes.
THE VOICE
The cow is fullWhen autumn comes she'll calveFarewell my king DondidondaineThe cow is fullAnd my heart empty without thee
Croniamantal stands on the tip of his toes to see if he can perceive through the branches the so-beloved who comes.
THE VOICE
DondidondaineBut when will come my CroquemitaineAt the fountain it is very coldDondidondaineAfter the winter I shall be less cold.
In the clearing there appeared a young girl, svelte and brunette. Her countenance was sombre and starred with roving eyes like birds of bright plumage. Her sparse but short hair left her neck bare; her hair was tousled and dark, and by the skipping rope which she carried, Croniamantal recognized her to be Tristouse Ballerinette.
CRONIAMANTAL
No further, child with bare arms! I shall come to you myself. Someone has just hushed under the pines and will be able to overhear us.
TRISTOUSE
This one is surely the issue of an egg, like Castor and Pollax. I recall how my mother, who was very foolish, used to talk to me about them of long evenings. The hunter of serpent's eggs, son of the serpent himself,—I am afraid of those old memories.
CRONIAMANTAL
Have no fear, woman of the naked arms. Stay with me. My lips are filled with kisses. Here, here. I lay them on thy brow, on thy hair. I caress thy hair with its ancient perfume. I caress thy hairs which intertwine like the worms on the bodies of the dead. O death, o death, hairy with worms. I have kisses on my lips. Here, here they are, on thy hands, on thy neck, on thine eyes, thine eyes. I have lips full of kisses, here, here, burning like a fever, sustained to enchant thee, kisses, mad kisses, on the ear, the temple, the cheek. Feel my embraces, bend under the effort of my arm, be languid, be languid. I have kisses upon my lips, here, here, mad ones, upon thine eyes, upon thy neck, upon thy brow, upon thy youth, I longed so to love thee, this spring day when there are no more blossoms on the branches which prepare themselves to bear fruit.
TRISTOUSE
Leave me, go away. Those who move each other are happy, but I do not love you. You frighten me. However, do not despair, o poet. Listen, this is my best advice: Go away!
CRONIAMANTAL
Alas! Alas! To leave again, to wander unto the oceanic limits, through the brush, the evergreen, in the scum, in the mud, the dust, across the forests, the prairies, the plantations, and the very happy gardens.
TRISTOUSE
Go away. Go away, far from the antique perfume of my hair, o thou who belongest to me.
And Croniamantal went off without turning his head once; he could be seen for a long time through the branches, and then his voice could be heard growing fainter and fainter as he disappeared from view.
CRONIAMANTAL
Traveller without a stick, pilgrim without staff and poet without a writing pad, I am more powerless than all other men, I own nothing more and I know nothing...
And his voice no longer reached Tristouse Ballerinette who was admiring her image in the pool.
In another age monks cultivated the forest of Malverne.
MONKS
The sun declines slowly, and blessing thee, O Lord; we are going to sleep in the monastery so that the dawn may find us in the forest.
THE FOREST OF MALVERNE
Every day, every day, flights of anguished birds see their nests crushed and their eggs broken when the trees sway with shaking branches.
THE BIRDS
It is the happy hour of twilight when the girls and boys come to roll on the grass. And all of them have kisses that want to fall like over-ripe fruit or like the egg when it is about to be laid. Do you see them there, do you see them dance, muse, haunt, chant from dusk to the dawn, his pale sister?
A RED-HAIRED MONK
(In the middle of the Cortège)
I am afraid to live and I should like to die. Convulsions of earth. Labor! O lost time...
THE BIRDS
Gay! Gay! the broken eggsThe ready-made omelette cooked on a downy fireHere! Here!Take to the rightTurn to the leftStraight aheadBehind the fallen oakThere and everywhere.
CRONIAMANTAL
(In another age, near the Forest of Malverne and a little before the passage of the monks.)
The winds disperse before me, the forests fall away and become a wide track with corpses here and there. The travellers meet with too many corpses for some time, with garrulous corpses.
THE RED-HAIRED MONK
I don't want to work any more, I want to dream and pray.
He sleeps, his face turned to the sky, on the road bordered with willows of the color of mist.
The night had come with the moonlight. Croniamantal saw the monks bent over the nonchalant bodies of their brothers. Then he heard a little plaint, a feeble cry that died in a last sigh. And slowly they passed in Indian file before Croniamantal, who was hidden behind a clump of willows.
THE GLORIDE FOREST
I should love to send this man astray amid the spectres that float among the bubbles. But he flees toward the times that come, and whither he is already arrived.
The banging of distant doors changes into the sound of trains in motion. A large, grassy track, barred by trunks and fenced with enormous joined stones. Life commits suicide. A path that people follow. They never tire. Subways where the air is poisoned. Corpses. Voices call Croniamantal. He runs, he runs, he descends.
* * *
In the lovely woods, Tristouse promenaded meditating.
TRISTOUSE
My heart is sad without thee, Croniamantal. I loved thee without knowing it. All is green. All is green above my head and beneath my feet. I have lost him whom I loved. I must search this way and that way, here and yonder. And among them all I shall surely find someone who will please me.
Returned from other times, Croniamantal cried out at sight of Tristouse and the fountain again:
CRONIAMANTAL
Goddess! who art thou? Where is thine eternal form?
TRISTOUSE
Oh, there he is again, handsomer than ever... Listen, o poet. I belong to thee, henceforth.
Without looking at Tristouse, Croniamantal bent over the pool.
CRONIAMANTAL
I love fountains, they are beautiful symbols of immortality when they never run dry. This one has never run dry. And I seek a divinity, but I desire her to appear eternal to me. And my fountain has never run dry.
He knelt and prayed to the fountain, while Tristouse, all in tears, lamented.
O poet, adorest thou the fountain? O Lord, return my lover to me! Come to me! I know such lovely songs.
CRONIAMANTAL
The fountain hath its murmur.
TRISTOUSE
Very well, then! Sleep with thy cold lover, let her drown thee! But if thou livest, thou belongest to me and thou shalt obey me.
She was gone, and throughout the forest of twittering birds, the fountain flowed and murmured, while there arose the voice of Croniamantal who wept and whose tears mingled with the worshipped flood.
CRONIAMANTAL
O fountain! Thou who springest like a staunchless blood. Thou who art cold as marble, but living, transparent and fluid. Thou, ever renewed and ever the same. Thou who makest living thy verdant banks, I love thee. Thou art my unrivalled goddess. Thou quenchest my thirst. Thou purifiest me. Thou murmurest to me thine eternal song which rocks me to sleep in the evenings.
THE FOUNTAIN
At the bottom of my little bed full of an Orient of gems, I hear thee with contentment, o poet whom I have enchanted. I recall Avallon where we might have lived, thou as the King Fisher and I awaiting thee under the apple trees. O islands of apple trees. But I am happy in my precious little bed. These amethysts are sweet to my gaze. This lapis-lazuli is more blue than a fair sky. This malachite represents to me a prairie. Sardonyx, onyx, agate, rock-crystal, you shall scintillate tonight, for I will give a feast in honor of my lover. I shall come alone as befits a virgin. The power of my lover has already been manifested and his gifts are sweet to my soul. He has given me his eyes all in tears, two adorable fountains, sweet tributaries of my stream.
CRONIAMANTAL
O fecund fountain, thy waters resemble thy hair. Thy flowers are born about thee and we shall love each other always.
Nothing could be heard but the song of birds and the rustling of leaves, and at times the plashing of a bird playing in the water.
A dandy appeared in the little wood: It was Paponat the Algerian. He approached the fountain dancing.
CRONIAMANTAL
I know you. You are Paponat who studied in the Orient.
PAPONAT
Himself. O poet of the Occident, I come to visit you. I have learned of your enchantment, but I hear that it is not yet too late to converse with you. How humid it is here! It is not at all surprising that your voice is harsh, and you will certainly need a medicament to clear it. I approached you dancing. Is there no way of saving you from the situation in which you have placed yourself.
CRONIAMANTAL
Bah! But tell me who taught you to dance.
PAPONAT
The angels themselves were my dancing masters.
CRONIAMANTAL
The good or the bad angels? But no matter. I have had enough of all the dances, save one which the Greeks callkordax.
PAPONAT
You are gay, Croniamantal, we shall be able to amuse ourselves. I am glad I came here. I love gaiety. I am happy!
And Paponat, his bright eyes profoundly whirling, rubbed his hands gleefully.
CRONIAMANTAL
You look like me!
PAPONAT
Not much. I am happy to live, while you die beside the fountain.
CRONIAMANTAL
But the happiness which you proclaim, do you not forget it? and forget mine? You resemble me! The happy man rubs his hands. Smell them. What do they smell like?
PAPONAT
The odour of death.
CRONIAMANTAL
Ha! ha! ha! The happy man has the same odour as death! Rub your hands. What difference between the happy man and the corpse! I am also happy, although I don't want to rub my hands. Be happy, rub your hands. Be happy! again! Now do you know it, the odour of happiness?
PAPONAT
Farewell. If you make no case for the living, there is no way of talking to you.
And as Paponat disappeared into the night where glittered the innumerable eyes of the celestial animals of impalpable flesh, Croniamantal rose suddenly thinking to himself: "Well—enough of the beauties of Nature and of the thoughts she evokes. I know enough about that for a long time; we had better return to Paris and try to find that exquisite little Tristouse who loves me madly."
Paponat who came back that night from the Meudon woods where he had gone in search of adventure arrived just in time to take the last boat. He had the good luck to run into Tristouse Ballerinette there.
"How are you, young lady?" he asked. "I just saw your lover, Croniamantal, in the woods. He is on the verge of going mad."
"My lover?" said Tristouse. "He is not my lover."
"He is said to be. At least they have been saying he is, in our literary and artistic circles, ever since yesterday."
"They can say whatever they want," said Tristouse firmly. "Anyway I shall have nothing to be ashamed about in such a lover. Is he not handsome and has he not a great talent?"
"You are right. But my, what a pretty hat you have, and what a pretty dress! I am very much interested in the fashions."
"You are always very elegant, Mr. Paponat. Give me the address of your tailor and I shall tell Croniamantal about it."
"Quite useless, he would not use it," said Paponat laughing. "But tell me now, what are the women wearing this year? I have just come from Italy and I am not in touch with things. Please tell me all about it."
"This year," began Tristouse, "the modes are very bizarre and familiar, simple and yet full of fantasy. All material belonging to the different processes of Nature may now enter into the composition of a woman's costume. I have seen a robe made of cork. It was certainly as good as the charming evening gowns of towel which created such a rage at premieres. A great couturier is thinking of launching tailor-made costumes of the backs of old books, bound in calf. Charming! All literary women will want to wear it, and one can approach them and whisper into their ears under the guise of reading the titles of the books. Fish-skeletons are also worn much with hats. You may see delightful young girls, very often, wearing cloaks à la Saint-Jacques de Compostelle; their costume, so it is said, is starred with Saint Jacques shells. Porcelain, stone work and china have suddenly taken an important place in the sartorial art. These materials are worn in belts, on hat-pins, etc.; I have had the good luck to see an adorable reticule all made of the glass eyes that oculists use. Feathers are used not only to decorate hats with, but shoes, gloves, and next year they will even be used with umbrellas. Shoes are being made of Venetian glass and hats out of Bohemian crystal. Not to mention oil-painted gowns, highly colored woolens, and robes bizarrely spotted with ink. In the Spring many will wear dresses made of puffed gold leaf, with pleasant shapes, giving lightness and distinction. Our aviatrices will wear nothing else. For the races there will be the hat made of toy balloons, about twenty at a time being used, giving a luxuriant effect, and very diverting explosions from time to time. The mussel-shell will be worn on slippers. And note that they are beginning to dress with living animals. I met a woman who wore on her hat at least twenty birds; canaries, goldfinches, robins, held by a string tied to their feet, all singing at the top of their voices and flapping their wings. The head-dress of an ambassadress, ever since the last Neuilly fair is made up of a coil of about thirty snakes. 'For whom are those snakes that hiss overhead?' asked the little Romanian attaché with his Dacian accent, who was supposed to be quite a ladies' man. I forgot to tell you that last Wednesday I saw a lady on the boulevards with a ruff having little mirrors laid together and pasted to the material. In the sunlight the effect was sumptuous. One might have thought it a gold mine on a promenade. Later it began to rain and the lady resembled a silver mine. Nutshells make pretty buttons, especially if they are interspersed with filberts. A robe embroidered with coffee grains, cloves, cloves of garlic, onions, and bunches of raisins, is proper to wear when visiting. Fashion is becoming practical and no longer spurns any object, but ennobles all. It does for these things what romanticists do with words."
"Thank you," said Paponat, "you have given me a great deal of information and told it charmingly."
"You are too kind," replied Tristouse.
Six months passed. For the last five Tristouse Ballerinette had been the mistress of Croniamantal, whom she loved passionately for eight days. In exchange for this love, the lyrical youth had rendered her glorious and immortal forever by celebrating her in marvellous poems.
"I was unknown," she mused, "and now he has made me illustrious among all the living.
"I was thought ugly because of my thinness, my large mouth, my bad teeth, my irregular features, my crooked nose. Now I am beautiful and all men tell me so. They mocked at my clumsy and jerky gait, at my sharp elbows which, when I walked, moved like the feet of geese.
"What miracles are born of the love of a poet! But how heavily a poet's love weighs! What sorrows accompany it, what silences to endure! Now that the miracle has been accomplished, I am beautiful and renowned. Croniamantal is ugly, he has wasted his property in a short time; he is poor, lacking in elegance, no longer gay; the slightest of his gestures make him a hundred enemies.
"I love him no longer. I need him no longer, my admirers are enough for me. I shall rid me of him gradually. But that is going to be very annoying. Either I must go away, or he must disappear, so that he doesn't bother me, and so that he isn't able to reproach me."
And after eight days, Tristouse became the mistress of Paponat, although still seeing Croniamantal, whom she treated more and more coldly. The less she came to see him, the more desperately he cared for her. When she did not come at all, he spent hours in front of the house she lived in in the hope of seeing her come out, and if by chance she did, he would escape like a thief, fearing that she might accuse him of spying on her.
* * *
It was by running around after Tristouse Bailerinette that Croniamantal continued his literary education.
One day as he was wandering about Paris, he suddenly found himself at the Seine. He crossed a bridge and walked for some time, when suddenly perceiving before him M. François Coppée, Croniamantal regretted that this passerby was dead. But there is nothing against talking with the dead, and the encounter passed off very pleasantly.
"Come," thought Croniamantal, "to a passerby he would appear to be nothing but a passerby, and the very author of thePasserby.[11]He is a clever and spiritual rhymester, with some feeling for reality. Let us speak to him about rhyme."
The poet of thePasserbywas smoking a dark cigarette. He was dressed in black, his visage black; he stood bizarrely on a high stone, and Croniamantal saw quite easily by his pensive air that he was composing verses. He came alongside of him and after having greeted him, said brusquely:
"Dear master, how sombre you seem."
He replied courteously.
"It is because my statue is of bronze. That exposes me constantly to scorn. Thus the other day."
Passing by one day the negro Sam MacVeaSeeing I was the blacker, sat down and muttered:'Yea.'
"See how adroit those lines are. Did you notice how well the couplet I just recited for you rhymes for the eye."
"Indeed," said Croniamantal, "for it is pronouncedSam MacVee, likeShakespeer."
"Well here is something that comes off better," continued the statue:
Passing by one day the negro Sam MacVeaChristened this tablet with a flask of eau-de-vie.
"There is a bit of refinement that ought to appeal to you. It is therime riche, the perfect rhyme to delight the ear."
"You certainly enlighten me on the rhyme," said Croniamantal. "I am very happy, dear master, to have met you in passing by."
"It is my first success," replied the metallic poet. "But I have just composed a little poem bearing the same title: it is about a gentleman who passes by.The Passerby, across the corridor of a railroad coach; he perceives a charming lady with whom, instead of going only to Brussels, he stops at the Dutch frontier:
They passed at least eight days at RosendaelHe tasted the ideal, she the realIn all things, it chanced, their ways differed,It was from veritable Love they suffered.
"I call your attention to the last two lines, which through rhyming somewhat imperfectly contain a subtle dissonance, which is further emphasized by the fact of their being morbidly feminine rhymes."
"Dear master," exclaimed Croniamantal, "speak to me of vers libre."
"Long live liberty!" cried the bronze statue.
And having saluted him, Croniamantal went his way looking for Tristouse.
* * *
On another day Croniamantal was walking along the boulevards. Tristouse had missed an appointment with him, and he hoped to find her in a tea room where she sometimes went with her friends. He turned the corner of the rue Le Peletier, when a gentleman, dressed in a pearl-grey cape, accosted him, saying:
"Sir, I am going to reform literature. I have found a superb subject: it is about the sensations of a well bred young bachelor who permits an improper sound to escape in an assemblage of ladies and young people of good family."
Croniamantal was properly amazed at the novelty of the subject, but understood at once how much it would take to test the sensibilities of the author.
Croniamantal fled... A lady stepped on his feet. She was also an authoress, and did not neglect to inform him that this incident would furnish him with a subject of fresh and delicate character.
Croniamantal took to his heels and reached the Pont des Saint Pères where three people were disputing over the subject of a novel and begged him to decide who was right; it was about the case of an officer.
"Fine subject," cried Croniamantal.
"Listen," said his neighbor, a bearded man, "I claim that the subject is too new and too unusual for the present day public."
And the third man explained that it was about an officer of a restaurant company, the man who held office, who presided over the soiled dishes...
Croniamantal did not reply to them but made off to visit an old cook who wrote verse, and at whose place he hoped to find Tristouse at tea time. Tristouse was not there, but Croniamantal was hugely entertained by the mistress of the house who declaimed some poems to him.
It was a poetry that was full of profundity, and in which words had a new meaning entirely. Thusarchipelwas only used in the sense ofpapier buvard.[12]
* * *
Some time later, the rich Paponat, proud of being the lover of the renowned Tristouse, and desirous of not losing her, for she did him honor, decided to take his mistress for a trip through Central Europe.
"Fine," said Tristouse, "but we will not travel as lovers, for even though you are nice to me, I don't love you enough, or at least I force myself to the point of not loving you. We shall travel as two friends, and I shall dress up as a young man; my hair is rather short, and I have often been told that I have the air of a handsome young man."
"Very well," said Paponat, "and since we both are in need of repose we shall make our retreat in Moravia in a convent of Brünn where my uncle, the prior of Crepontois, retired after the expulsion of the monks. It is one of the richest and finest convents in the world. I shall present you as one of my friends, and have no fear, we shall be taken for lovers just the same."
"That suits me," said Tristouse, "for I love to pass for that which I am not. We leave tomorrow."
Croniamantal went perfectly mad upon hearing of the departure of Tristouse. But at this time he began to become famous, and as his poetical repute waxed so did his vogue as a dramatist.
The theatres played his plays and the crowd applauded his name, but at the same moment the enemies of poets and poetry were increasing in number and growing in audacious hatred.
He only became more and more sorrowful, his soul shrinking within his enfeebled body.
When he learned of the departure of Tristouse he did not protest, but simply asked the concierge if she knew the destination of the voyage.
"All that I know," said the woman, "is that she has gone to Central Europe."
"Very well," said Croniamantal, and returning to his quarters he gathered up the several thousand francs he still possessed and took the train for Germany at the Gare du Nord.
On the following day, Christmas eve, the train was engulfed in the enormous terminal of Cologne. Croniamantal, carrying a little valise, descended last from his third-class coach.
On the platform of the opposite track the red cap of the station master, the spiked helmets of policemen, and the silk hats of high functionaries indicated that an important person was awaited by the next train. And to be sure Croniamantal heard a little old man, with quick gestures, explaining to his fat wife who gaped with astonishment at the spiked helmets, the red cap, and the silk hats:
"Krupp... Essen... No orders... Italy."
Croniamantal followed the crowd of passengers who had come in on his train. He walked behind two girls, who must have been pigeon-toed, so much did their gait resemble that of the goose. They kept their hands concealed under short cloaks; the head of the first one was covered with a small black hat, from which there dangled a bouquet of blue roses, as well as some straight, black feathers, with the stem trimmed except at the tip, which trembled as if with cold. The hat of the other girl was of a soft, almost brilliant felt, an enormous knot of satinette shrouding her with ridicule. They were probably two servant maids out of a job, for they were pounced upon at the exit by a group of strait-laced and ugly ladies wearing the ribbon of the Catholic Society for the Protection of Young Girls. The ladies of the Protestant Society for the same purpose stood a little further off. Croniamantal following behind a stout man with a short, hard and russet beard, dressed in green, descended the stairway that led to the vestibule of the station.
Outside he saluted the Dome, solitary in the midst of the irregular square which it filled with its bulk. The station heaped its modern mass close to the huge cathedral. Hotels spread their signs in hybrid languages and appeared to hold their respectful distance from the gothic colossus. Croniamantal sniffed the odour of the town for a long time. He seemed to be disappointed.