Scraps

by Michel Leiris

  It seemed natural to me that a champion should be equipped with all the military and civic virtues, and it was also part of his function to be—after the fashion of men like Ader (with his bat airplane on view at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers) or Santos-Dumont (with his “Demoiselle” or “Libellule,” tried out, I believe, at Bagatelle)—an inventor capable of constructing machines like the tricycle-bird-engine and the sliding lightning-conductor just as we ourselves were also capable of having our little inventions: automobile-chairs in the rue Michel-Ange consisting of dining-room chairs which we laid flat on the floor and climbed upon, sending them forward by means of jolts imparted by the action of our feet resting on the uprights of the chair back and of our hands clutching the two horizontal bars which were the forward legs of the chair thus lying on its back; Viroflay automobiles made of old packing cases painted with Ripolin enamel paint (and one in yellow and red, like the Spanish flag), the whole thing carried by two old pairs of wheels; an ironing board which, in the same house, we slid noisily down the steps of the inside staircase, when we wanted to play shipwreck. Unlike the superman of today’s American comics* the heroes of the childish mythology with which I covered the pages of several notebooks were not demigods and even less all-around athletes: neither the greatest, nor the most vigorous, they were simply courageous, loyal, intelligent, skillful, and by virtue of these advantages, not so much of body as of heart and mind, they managed to triumph in everything they undertook. Their primary quality, however, the one that for me had almost the meaning of a test, was a love and a knowledge of the sport of racing, as though their ardor and mastery in this privileged domain were the surest sign of their merit.

  To accord so much importance to the masterly exercise of a certain form of horsemanship is not in itself apt to be surprising: experts in physical education and military preparation are forever expatiating about the benefits of bodily training, a promise of good health and asceticism indispensable to the formation of character; furthermore, an abundant literature presents athleticism as a schooling of energy and the practice of team games as developing a sense of solidarity, a sense of self-effacement before a common interest, in other words: a spirit of sacrifice. It is nonetheless true that my choice of the jockey as prototype of the individual whom sports turns into an accomplished man may seem amusing: there is no question of self-forgetfulness with horse races, where the competition is essentially of an individual order, and it is, in addition, imprudent to expect of someone whose profession consists of riding thoroughbreds that he remain alien to all schemes involving money, since the pari-mutuel is the very basis of horse racing. There was certainly a good deal of childishness in my devout attitude toward the jockeys, as well as the need to find a moral justification for what captivated me, unless, much more simply, I immediately regarded as a representation of the Good whatever I found captivating.

  “Celebration of courage,” “celebration of the stout-hearted”: it is thus that the toreador in Carmen—the one who, we are told, will soon achieve “the glory of men like Montés and Pepe Hillo”—sings the corrida, in his famous great aria. Even though horse races are not fights but “races” in the ordinary sense of the term and one can’t speak of “struggles” in connection with them except in a metaphorical sense, it was with expressions of this sort that I myself could have sung of feats of horse riding, particularly those that occurred in the steeplechases, trials that seemed to demand of the horsemen more virile ability than was required by the flat races. In the latter, there were no hard obstacles such as the one represented, at Auteuil, for example, by the water jump next to the stands near which, when we chanced to go to the “public enclosure,” we liked to position ourselves in order to delight in the spectacle of the horses clearing the tall, thick hedge and then the very broad stream beyond which it was uncertain, for each of the jumpers, whether he would land on terra firma again. Experience, however, showed us that despite the risks inherent in these thrilling circuits our predictions were more likely to be confirmed when they bore on obstacle races and we deduced from this that unlike those run, as at Longchamp, on a level track, they were more or less free from the perfidies that so often render the wisdom of the bettors ineffectual.

  The slender, closely shaved gnomes leaning over their horses’ necks did not all, therefore, impress us to the same degree: our preference was for the steeplechasing jockeys because the steeplechases seemed to us not only more moving and more spectacular, but characterized by a greater morality; certainly, also, because it was easier to construct a heroic myth about men who jumped streams, gates, and hedges, whose collarbones were often broken, or who even suffered the same fate as the jockey Boon, who died of a skull fracture after he fell at the last hedge during the last race of the day (and perhaps of the season) as he was riding for the last time, being about to retire. However, this preference was not entirely undiscriminating: I have mentioned the detestation we felt for Georges Parfrement (a detestation similar to that which one feels, in school, for the class grind, and so wholehearted that we booed him one day as we watched him return to the weighing-in after a fall, bareheaded and hobbling); as for most of his colleagues, we were definitely indifferent to them, the existence of these supernumeraries confined to names we had read—unconnected with any anecdote—the only ones conferring any substance on their bearers being those which, possessing a strong British flavor, struck us as exotic; on the other hand, certain experts in flat racing were endowed, in our eyes, for obscure reasons I will not even try to fathom, with considerable prestige (Maurice Barat, for example, who raced in the colors of the Baron de Rothschild and whom, later, during the 1914-18 war, I was proud to rub elbows with in a small bar in the rue d’Antin also frequented by the former boxing champion Marcel Moreau and the great ace Navarre shortly before the latter’s career ended suddenly with his famous automobile run through the streets of Paris, going full speed and trying to crush policemen even on the sidewalks). Finally, those of the steeplechasing jockeys whom we held to be the greatest scarcely appeared to us otherwise than embellished with a halo of saintliness: boldness, self-control joined with a perfect simplicity of manners, a sporting spirit implying a hatred of fraud and a good camaraderie, these were the exemplary qualities we recognized in them. I tend nowadays to attribute similar virtues—moral in the highest sense—to everyone I admire, particularly to men I regard as “authentic” poets or artists. But I definitely think that, now as in earlier times, it is not to a Good such as that preached in catechism and other edifying books that I attach these virtues; esteeming them to the degree that they are associated with activities that captivate me and are the product of persons in themselves fascinating—either in boots and jackets or without any special attributes—I don’t treat them as moral virtues properly speaking but, much more, as proof that the true summits have been attained and that one can allow oneself to be dazzled without compunction, as guarantee that this is in fact the most accomplished art (since it is not sophisticated), as the signature, in sum, apposed to a work of very great style. If, in place of the “great jockey”—at once the most conscientious, the most intelligent, and the one able to win his races in the most beautiful manner—I have come to revere the “genius,” creator of enchantments and complete man, of whom it is difficult to admit that he is not the best and the most perspicacious, whatever his faults and his mistakes may really be, the distance I have gone in passing from one to the other of these personages is not very great: of course there is little relation between their activities, but in my eyes they cut the same figure, the second differing from the first only because he presents himself in a more nuanced form and not with the summary distinctness habitual to epic heroes.

  Having formed for ourselves a pantheon of jockeys—Sauval, Alec Carter (of whom, once the war came, we learned with interest that he was mobilized in an artillery regiment), W. Head, Lancaster, Barat, and perhaps two or three others, a sort of central system around which gravitated less important s
tars—we were quite naturally led, my brother and I, to identify ourselves in our games, even in our daily life, with certain of these horsemen, who seemed to us to represent such a brilliant segment of humanity. It fell to my brother and the boys older than I who shared our pastimes to play the roles of the stars of the first magnitude; I, younger than they, had to be more modest and played the part, most often, of characters less conspicuous or almost beginners, without its even occurring to me to dispute my elders’ monopoly. Nash Turner, a jockey already on his way downhill who generally rode in flat races but sometimes also in steeplechases (a fact which made him, despite his small number of rides and, consequently, victories, a sort of all-around jockey), had a surprising first name—that “Nash,” so close to “Nat” of Nat Pinkerton, the famous American detective, but as though crushed, finally, like a curse which one secretly champs down on without letting it spring from one’s mouth; these were the two reasons why, during a certain period, it was Nash Turner’s cast-off clothing I liked to put on. As for George Mitchell, who was then beginning to become known as a steeplechasing jockey, he was distinguished by a patronymic more or less identical to my own first name; he was a young jockey and this, joined to the resemblance between the names, created the conditions favorable for an identification whose reasonableness seemed to us beyond question and which, in fact, was more consistent and more enduring than the preceding one.

  Thus abandoning the great leading parts to the older boys and lending myself to this abandonment with good grace, for want of assertive spirit or, perhaps, because it confirmed my status as the younger boy, which was satisfying for me because the more a child one is the fewer responsibilities one has and the wider margin one feels between oneself and the man one will certainly have to become someday—an enviable position, however avid one may be to see oneself taken seriously and however impatient to enjoy certain of the prerogatives that belong to adults—I very early became accustomed, not to contenting myself with playing a walk-on part (too humiliating a situation), but to striving for no more than the role of second.

  An emperor is “more” than a king (and this is why, for a time, I was an imperialist), a major general “more” than a brigadier, a count “more” than a viscount. Like most children—and like too many grownups—I attached an extreme importance to hierarchy, whether of a military, political, or social order. Well before I played at entering the skin of one of the jockeys I ranked immediately below the greatest, I amused myself—like all boys—with games of mock battles, and it was agreed that I had the rank of commander in chief, one of my brothers or other partners occupying the more elevated position of President of the Republic or Minister of War. For nothing in the world would I have wished to be a simple soldier, and one of the forms of teasing that I resented most keenly, of all those of which I was a victim on the part of the older boys, consisted in “reducing me to the ranks”: to imagine myself in the posture of a man whose stripes are torn off, then his buttons, previously unstitched and now holding only by a thread, to find myself stripped of my dignity as commander of armies by those whose complicity was indispensable if I was to believe myself invested with such a function, made me cry and dance with rage. Apart from these instances of bullying, it was understood, once and for all, that I was neither a president nor a minister, but that the rank of commander in chief was the one that fell to me by all rights; entirely satisfied by this rank, I regarded as normal the fact that the highest positions remained inaccessible to me.

  The challenger rather than the champion, the unacknowledged talent rather than the well-established fame, the pupil of great ability rather than the head of the class, the right-hand man without whom the leader would be lost rather than that leader himself: a preference, in sum, for the individual who (whether still a beginner or too little concerned with honors, even too nonchalant) does not occupy the place he deserves or for the distinguished figure situated in a high rank but some distance from the top. It is tempting to see this preference as a sign—or a prefiguration—of a romantic scorn for what the bourgeois regard as a crowning achievement; doesn’t it seem, in fact, to be the logical counterpart of a repugnance for what is finished, perfect, as closed as an egg or as closed as a life to which death has come and apposed its initials (a thing now given, forever defined, and to which nothing can be added, from which nothing can be taken away)? But such an interpretation of oneself by oneself, which urges romanticism, has some likelihood of being tainted by it: no one can flatter himself (even in his innermost being) that he is a romantic without his assertion—containing the avowal of a tendancy to idealize—becoming suspect to him as long as he is willing to reflect on it in good faith. If I am to explain this repugnance I believed I detected in myself, wouldn’t it be better, therefore—dismissing at least temporarily any idea of implicit revolt against common ambitions and admitting the possibility of a more prosaic interpretation—to try to discover what part might have been played (here as in many other areas) by weakness pure and simple?

  To prefer the person who is not yet, or is not altogether, to the person who is, may signify that—where oneself is concerned—one would rather not take a certain step so as to keep a reserve in front of one, for after the finishing line one would thus have crossed, life would be played out and death would become the only place one could henceforth come to rest; it may signify, on the level of a child’s life, that one resists entering the category already occupied by one’s elders because it contains greater perils of all sorts and because once there, one will no longer be able to count on the same indulgence nor employ, as a shield, the right of the smallest to be protected or, at the very least, spared; it may signify, lastly, that, without seeking to struggle, one resigns oneself to being a mere underling and that if one admires the challenger—far from seeing him as someone who resembles one—it is much less because he is a man still in a subordinate position than because of the courage he has (but which one does not have oneself) to attack the strongest.

  A certain need to feel protected, to put myself under some wing is probably one of my most consistent traits. If I have so often aspired, in various forms, to be second—in the sense of the one who comes immediately after the first and in the sense of the one who seconds—the reason for this can’t be merely that I have too wretched an idea of myself to bid for first place in any area whatsoever, the second therefore becoming the most brilliant that I can, if really necessary, apply for; if I show a moderation on this subject that may certainly be relative but is hardly in keeping with the very high value I set upon prestige, it also seems to me that (until further investigation) there is no need to question a lack of energy so complete that I would limit my ambitions in advance—with a sort of wisdom or, rather, tepidity—to the pursuit of goals felt to be not absolutely beyond my reach with some help from chance and capable of being attained without my confronting any insurmountable danger or imposing on myself a quantity of difficulties that would make my undertaking, if not the quest for a chimera, at least a heroic labor. Without proof to the contrary, it seems to me inconceivable to explain solely by these negative reasons my lack of excess in aspirations which belong to the domain of childish dreams and ought as a consequence to testify to a smaller concern for their capacity to be realized practically; I am convinced that my dream would, quite properly, have known no boundaries if proper limits had not been assigned to it from the beginning by a positive factor.

  The desire that a margin be retained and the comfort I feel if someone whom I situate above me is willing to trust me are illustrated by two facts which I noted long ago on the slips of paper that are like official records of the observations or experiences I’m comparing here in order to derive from them laws from which there will in the end emerge—unless I pack it all in, exasperated by so many procedures, counterprocedures, detours, returns, and standstills—the golden rule I should choose (or should have chosen) to preside over my game. The hatred that I have now for the very finest hotels, those that in the langu
age of tourist guides and printed advertisements are known as “luxury hotels”; the pleasure I took, after hearing Offenbach’s comic opera when I was twelve or so, in identifying with Nicklausse, Hoffmann’s faithful friend and confidant, instead of with Jules Barbier’s actual hero (Barbier being the librettist responsible, in whole or in part, for the texts of many of those lyric operas that were as instructive for me as the Bible stories were for others)—these are the two facts that seemed to me, on a certain day in the past which I can’t remember now, worthy of being captured and which today I must examine in order to find, in them, both a usable meaning and a shared characteristic.

  The luxury hotel is what is called a palace, reserved in principle for a rich clientele. Even if it is in good taste and nothing in its decor strives exaggeratedly after an effect, it exudes money and security. To live there means that one represents monetarily le “dessus du panier” [the pick of the basket, the cream of the crop], that one ranks oneself in a class of pretentious people whose code one must clearly adopt (if only in appearance) and its argot too, if necessary, during the time, at least, of this residence. I am, it goes without saying, nowhere near being an ascetic disdainful of his comforts, but the fact is that I’ve never felt really easy in any of these arrogant structures, so vast that one is lost in them and with amenities so perfected that the very absence of defects is a defect, because it provokes a feeling of disturbance, as do the overly groomed appearance, the overly polished language, and the too meticulously refined manners in an individual with whom circumstance would make it desirable to have a little human contact. In these hotels, where the staff and the packaging are equally terribly impeccable, I confess also that I am prey to an anguish stemming from my timidity: it seems to me—a worry well known to those whose skin is never washed of the bad opinion they have of themselves—that I am being watched from all sides and that not only the living eyes but even the walls are prepared to register each of my possible blunders. I am at once unhappy about publicly classifying myself among the privileged (something I am ashamed of vis-à-vis the plebs outside) and (with respect to the patricians inside) unhappy to expose myself to the possible scorn of these same privileged people or to the scorn of their henchmen, the overly well schooled servants. If I prefer good hotels to those of too grandiose a category—except when the latter are completely outmoded and derive from that a charm comparable to the charm of a beach or resort out of season—it is, therefore, not so much in order to reserve a margin for myself with respect to the future (to be able to say to myself that perhaps some day I will be in a position to stay at a princely establishment, a possibility of later promotion thus being open to me) but is, rather, if indeed there is any opening at all, because I need to have available to me a margin of another kind: the kind that allows one some elbow room and which is very precisely the margin of imperfection thanks to which things, both living and livable, have a healthier flavor and can be tasted without any constraint with relation to anyone at all. Naturally I have a lively desire to accede to the enjoyment of what seems to me perfect, but I am afraid of it too: perfect spells finished, which means without hope, and it is true, especially, that in the midst of perfection—in dealings with “perfect” people—what nonetheless separates us from them in such diverse ways (as we scorn them for a self-importance that is proof of stupidity and they reciprocate this scorn on a different level) can only be experienced with an irony of which—discovering that we are sensitive to the scorn of people we scorn and, because of this, scorning ourselves—we are the first object.