by Jean Echenoz
After the operation, when Ravel regains consciousness for a moment, they think he has pulled through. He takes some nourishment, calls for Édouard, then asks to see a lady. They ask him which lady, suggesting names to him that he’s unable to articulate. Ida Rubinstein? He gestures, no, pointing toward the floor. Hélène Jourdan-Morhange? No, he indicates. Marguerite Long? Not her at all, he signs through the same gesture. Lower, he says finally. Lower. They understand at last, and send for Mme Révelot. He goes back to sleep, he dies ten days later; they clothe his body in black tails, white vest, wing collar, white bow tie, pale gloves; he leaves no will, no image on film, not a single recording of his voice.
NOTES FROM THE TRANSLATOR
1. Hélène Jourdan-Morhange: A violinist, to whom Ravel dedicated his Sonata for Violin and Cello.
2. Orane Demazis: The actress who played Fanny in Marcel Pagnol’s film trilogy set in 1930s Marseilles (Marius, 1931; Fanny, 1932; César, 1936).
3. Jacques de Zogheb: A writer in whose home Ravel met such literary figures as Colette, Paul Morand, and Jacques de Lacretelle.
4. Marcelle Gérar: The singer to whom Ravel dedicated Ronsard à son âme.
Madeleine Grey: A noted interpreter of songs by Kurt Weill, De Falla, Villa-Lobos, and many others. Madeleine Grey premiered numerous works by Fauré and Milhaud, as well as Ravel’s Chansons madécasses and Deux mélodies hébraïques.
5. The SS Cap Arcona: A German luxury ocean liner of the Hamburg–South America line. Launched in 1927, she was taken over by the German Navy in 1940. On April 26, 1945, loaded with prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp, she was sent into the Bay of Lübeck, where she was to be scuttled in an attempt to destroy evidence of the atrocities at the camp. On May 3, 1945, although she hoisted the white ensign, the Cap Arcona was among several ships sunk in four separate attacks by RAF planes. Many survivors were shot by SS troops, while others were machine-gunned by British pilots.
6. Gerry Mulligan: One of the most versatile musicians in American jazz, a composer and arranger best known for his baritone saxophone playing.
7. Prix de Rome: A French scholarship created under the reign of Louis XIV that sent promising painters, sculptors, and architects to study in Rome. Musicians were allowed to compete after 1803. Ravel attempted five times to win the prize, and the scandal of “the Ravel Affair,” his last failure in 1905, when he was favored to win, led to the reorganization of the administration at the Paris Conservatory.
8. Ronsard à son âme (Ronsard to his soul): A late Ravel song created for a late Ronsard poem, for voice and piano.
A son Ame
To His Soul
Amelette Ronsardelette,
Wee soul of mine, O Ronsardling,
Mignonnelette doucelette,
Thou fair, thou dulcet tiny thing,
Treschere hostesse de mon corps,
Dearest companion of my flesh,
Tu descens là bas foiblette,
Thou descendest now a weakling
Pasle, maigrelette, seulette,
Pallid, sole, and shriveling,
Dans le froid Royaume des mors:
To the cold Kingdom of death:
Toutesfois simple, sans remors
Simple yet, and sans remorse
De meurtre, poison, ou rancune,
For murder, poison, or rancors,
Méprisant faueurs et tresors
Treasure and favor thou despisèd
Tant enuiez par la commune.
Which the common man so prizèd.
Passant, i’ay dit, suy ta fortune
Traveler, hark, on thy fate wing
Ne trouble mon repos, ie dors.
And leave me be, here slumbering.
(Translation by Gilles Mourier)
9. Maurice Delage: One of Ravel’s pupils and a distinguished composer. He and his wife Nelly were lifelong friends of Ravel’s.
Roland-Manuel: Roland Alexis Manuel Léoy, Belgian by birth, French composer and critic, stepson of Mme Fernand Dreyfus. Introduced to Ravel in 1911 by Erik Satie, he became Ravel’s pupil and close friend.
10. Elie Robert Schmitz: A French pianist who lived much of his life in the United States. In 1920 he founded the Franco-American Society in New York, which became famous in 1923 under the name Pro Musica. The Pro Musica Society sponsored the first visits to America by Ravel, Bartók, and Respighi. It was Schmitz who conducted the premiere of Boléro for a dance recital by Ida Rubinstein.
11. Bolette Natanson: The daughter of Alexandre Natanson, one of the founders of the influential literary and artistic journal La Revue blanche. Bolette Natanson was one of the foremost designers in Paris in the 1940s.
12. Vincent Scotto: A French songwriter and composer of operettas and film music. Many of his songs were performed by Maurice Chevalier, Josephine Baker, and Edith Piaf.
Noël-Noël: A cabaret singer and songwriter.
Jean Tranchant: A popular cabaret singer.
13. René Kerdyck: A poet and writer whose works were published in very limited deluxe editions. He also wrote ballets, including Beach, presented in 1933 by Leonide Massine, performed by the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo with décor by Raoul Dufy.
Pierre-Octave Ferroud: A French composer and critic.
Manuel Rosenthal: A pupil and friend of Ravel’s, a conductor and composer who became best known for his lighter pieces, such as the ballet Gaïté Parisienne, based on the work of Jacques Offenbach. He was the longest-surviving close associate of Ravel, of whom he noted that the composer’s most remarkable human quality was that “he never lied in his whole life, neither to his art, nor to his friends, nor to his enemies.”
14. Ida Lvovna Rubinstein: A wealthy Belle Epoque beauty and an important figure in the arts during the first half of the century. Although she first appeared onstage in the Russian ballets by Diaghilev and studied with Sarah Bernhardt, Rubinstein was a mediocre dancer who carefully shaped her career by appearing as a dancer, mime artist, or actress in plays and ballets she commissioned from many of the leading artists of her day, including d’Annunzio, Debussy, Stravinsky, Gide, and Honegger.
15. Gustave Samazeuilh: A minor composer of vocal and instrumental works who was better known as a critic and translator. He had a house in Ciboure, where he befriended Ravel during the composer’s summer holidays.
Marie Gaudin: Along with her sister Jane, the recipient of many letters from Ravel in which he shared his private thoughts and feelings. The Gaudins lived in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and Ravel enjoyed a lifelong friendship with various members of the family. Marie and Jane’s brother Edmond, who owned a car, would drive Ravel around the Basque country and to San Sebastián for the bullfights. Their brothers Pierre and Pascal both died during the First World War, and Ravel dedicated the “Rigaudon” section of his Le Tombeau de Couperin to them.
Joaquin Nin: A Cuban pianist and composer who was instrumental in renewing interest in the Argentine tango. He was the father of the writer Anaïs Nin and the concert pianist Joaquin Nin-Culmell.
16. La Madelon: A popular song about a cheerful and good-hearted waitress in a little country inn. The darling of lonely soldiers, Madelon refuses all their offers of marriage because she is too busy serving wine to the entire regiment.
17. Marguerite Long: France’s foremost woman pianist during the first half of the twentieth century, who enjoyed an international career as a soloist and teacher. She premiered the Piano Concerto in G Major and Le Tombeau de Couperin, which last contained a section dedicated by Ravel to her husband, who was killed in the First World War.
18. Jeanne d’Arc: “Valentine, I will never compose my Jeanne d’Arc—that opera is there in my head, I hear it but I will never ever write it, it’s over, I can no longer write my music.” (Ravel in a letter to Valentine Hugo, November 1933.)
19. Robert Casadesus: A French pianist and composer who shared the concert stage with Ravel in England, France, and Spain. His recorded performances of Ravel’s music are still highly prize
d. Renowned for his classical technique, he often performed with his wife, Gaby, and occasionally with both Gaby and their son, Jean.
20. Marcial Lalanda: The inventor of the mariposa, or “butterfly”: a series of passes made by the torero with the cape over his shoulders, facing the bull and drawing him on by waving alternate sides of the cape, imitating the flight of a butterfly. In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway writes of him, “As a complete, scientific torero he is the best there is in Spain.”
Enrique Torres: In Hemingway’s opinion, one of “the finest artists with the cape the ring has known.”
Nicanor Villalta: “As awkward looking as a praying mantis any time he draws a difficult bull” because of his great height, according to Hemingway, but “everything he does he does bravely and everything he does he does in his own way.”
In the Spanish press, the comments after the name of a matador or novillero refer, in order, to his performances with his first bull, second bull, and so on. Comments in order of precedence range from two symbolic ears and the tail (when the bull is pardoned for bravery); two ears and the tail; two ears; one ear; a turn around the ring; a standing ovation; hearty applause; salutations; polite applause; silence; whistles; vigorous protest. There can also be division of opinions on the part of the crowd.
21. Minotaure: A largely surrealist-oriented Parisian publication (1933–1939) that helped bring recognition to artists such as Roberto Matta, Alberto Giacometti, Paul Delvaux, and Hans Bellmer.
22. Valentine Hugo: A French artist, the wife of Jean Hugo, who was the great-grandson of Victor Hugo. She collaborated with her husband on ballet designs, including Jean Cocteau’s Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel (1921) and was the foremost illustrator of the poetry of Paul Éluard. Between 1930 and 1936, she was actively involved in the surrealist movement.
23. Paul Dukas: The composer of the infamous Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
Charles Koechlin: A French composer who studied with Gabriel Fauré and strongly influenced Darius Milhaud, and whose distinguished teaching career brought him such pupils as Francis Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre.
Other Novels by Jean Echenoz from The New Press
BIG BLONDES
Translated by Mark Polizzotti
Renowned singer Gloire Stella has mysteriously disappeared from the public eye. When a television documentary producer tries to track her down, Gloire goes on the run. Big Blondes chronicles her flight in a darkly comedic tour de force that probes our universal obsession with fame, taking a satiric yet chilling look at television stardom.
978-1-56584-340-0 (hc)
978-1-56584-447-6 (pb)
I’M GONE
Translated by Mark Polizzotti
Winner of the Prix Goncourt, this is the deceptively simple tale of a Parisian art dealer who abandons his wife and career to pursue a memorably pathetic international crime caper.
978-1-56584-628-9 (hc)
978-1-56584-746-0 (pb)
THE PIANO
Translated by Mark Polizzotti
A critically acclaimed bestseller in France, Piano tells the story of Max Delmarc, a famous concert pianist with two problems: the first, severe stage fright for which the second, alcohol, is the only cure. In this unparalleled comedy we journey with Max from the trials of his everyday life, to his untimely death, and on into the afterlife.
978-1-56584-871-9 (hc)
Other French fiction titles from The New Press
MAKING LOVE
Jean-Philippe Toussaint
TRANSLATED BY LINDA COVERDALE
Making Love is an original and daring retelling of a classic theme: the end of an affair. Following a couple’s final days together in Japan, the novel explores the frustration of two lovers trying to break up with each other while on vacation, even as they go on a wild and intimate ramble through the streets of Tokyo.
978-1-56584-853-5 (hc)
PIG TALES
Marie Darrieussecq
TRANSLATED BY LINDA COVERDALE
Pig Tales is the story of a young woman who slowly metamorphoses into . . . a pig. What happens to her next overturns all our ideas about relationships between man, woman, and beast in a stunning fable of political and sexual corruption.
978-1-56584-361-5 (hc)
978-1-56584-442-1 (pb)
THE TROLLEY
Claude Simon
TRANSLATED BY RICHARD HOWARD
From the perch of a wheeled hospital bed, our narrator recalls the trolley that took him to and from school every morning of his childhood—passing back and forth between vine-covered hills, the shore, and the gradually modernizing town. When the past and present collide, the story becomes a fugue of memory that has delighted critics and made the book an immediate bestseller in France.
978-1-56584-734-7 (hc)
978-1-56584-857-3 (pb)