Twilight of the Belle Epoque
Page 48
19. Carter, Marcel Proust, 367.
20. Carter, Marcel Proust, 392.
21. Picasso’s art dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, later said that with Cubism, “the artist painted several aspects of the object simultaneously—the theory of the space-time continuum—according to several angles of vision, and even projected onto it his own personal vision” (Flanner, Men and Monuments, 147).
22. In 1884, the International Prime Meridian Conference standardized time worldwide, creating twenty-four time zones, with the longitude of Greenwich, England, as zero degrees longitude.
23. Carter, Marcel Proust, 789, 773–74.
24. Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah (Vol. 4, In Search of Lost Time), 416–17.
25. Proust was “fascinated by airplanes” as early as 1909 (Carter, Proustian Quest, 183).
26. In fairness to the unbelievers, it should be noted that the Wrights had been notoriously publicity-shy, afraid that others would steal their technology. Instead of public demonstrations and other corroborations, the Wrights had focused on getting patents and contracts.
27. Kessler, 24 October 1908, in Journey to the Abyss, 470.
28. Barillé, Coty, 112.
29. Barrilé, Coty, 119.
30. According to Berlanstein, the “value of inherited property [in Paris] in 1911 was six times that of 1847” (Working People of Paris, 35).
31. For more on Hénard, see Wolf, Eugène Hénard and the Beginning of Urbanism in Paris, 1900–1914.
32. See chapter 9.
33. Mugnier, 4 December 1908, in Journal, 174.
34. Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 10.
11 Idyll (1909)
Selected sources for this chapter: Steegmuller, Cocteau; Cocteau, Souvenir Portraits; Butler, Rodin; Champigneulle, Rodin; Kessler, Journey to the Abyss; Spurling, Unknown Matisse; Spurling, Matisse the Master; Barr, Matisse; Matisse, Mattisse on Art; Flanner, Men and Monuments; Danchev, Georges Braque; Edward F. Fry, Cubism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Richardson, Life of Picasso: The Cubist Rebel; Gertrude Stein, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; Isadora Duncan, My Life; Kurth, Isadora; Cossart, Food of Love; Scheijen, Diaghilev; Stephen Walsh, Stravinsky: A Creative Spring; Russia and France, 1882–1934 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Gold and Fizdale, Misia; Carter, Marcel Proust; Caroline Potter, Nadia and Lili Boulanger (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2006); Debussy, Debussy Letters; Lockspeiser, Debussy, vol. 2; Nichols, Life of Debussy; Nichols and Smith, Claude Debussy; Ravel, Ravel Reader; Orenstein, Ravel; Murphy, Military Aircraft; Ferdinand Collin, Parmi les précurseurs du ciel (Paris: J. Peyronnet, 1948); Eileen F. Lebow, Before Amelia: Women Pilots in the Early Days of Aviation (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2002); Williams, Last Great Frenchman; Watson, Georges Clemenceau; Mayeur and Rebérioux, Third Republic from Its Origins to the Great War; Winock, Belle Epoque; Ghislain de Diesbach, L’Abbé Mugnier: Le confesseur du tout-Paris (Paris: Perrin, 2003); Mugnier, Journal.
1. Probably 1909, although Cocteau is difficult to pin down on dates.
2. Many of these have since been repurchased or reconstructed.
3. Cocteau, Souvenir Portraits, 126–27.
4. See chapter 7.
5. Steegmuller, Cocteau, 36.
6. Butler, Rodin, 461.
7. Kessler, 9 October 1909, in Journey to the Abyss, 494–95.
8. Kessler, 12 October 1909, in Journey to the Abyss, 495–96.
9. Kessler, 21 August 1904, in Journey to the Abyss, 323.
10. Kessler, 25 August 1904, Journey to the Abyss, 325.
11. Matisse, Matisse on Art, 37–43.
12. Matisse, Matisse on Art, 42. In the same essay, Matisse also wrote: “Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements at the painter’s command to express his feelings” (Matisse on Art, 38).
13. Picasso’s art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, quoted in Flanner, Men and Monuments, 138.
14. Edward F. Fry, Cubism, 13.
15. He also rejected the Impressionism that preceded them both: “It is not possible for me to copy nature in a servile way,” he wrote, regarding Impressionism. “I am forced to interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture” (Matisse on Art, 40).
16. Spurling, Matisse the Master, 36.
17. Richardson, Life of Picasso: The Cubist Rebel, 105.
18. Flanner, Men and Monuments, 134–35.
19. Flanner, Men and Monuments, 134–35, 74.
20. Richardson, Life of Picasso: The Cubist Rebel, 101. Kahnweiler promptly decided to give a one-man show of Braque’s work, which thereby became the first Cubist exhibition, elevating Kahnweiler to the role of standard-bearer for the new movement.
21. Gertrude Stein, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 58.
22. It now is located in the gardens of the Musée Rodin.
23. Butler, Rodin, 453.
24. Isadora Duncan, My Life, 202.
25. Isadora Duncan, My Life, 205, 209–10.
26. Isadora Duncan, My Life, 211, 212.
27. Scheijen, Diaghilev, 173. Although by 1912, Diaghilev already found Duncan old-fashioned. The Ballets Russes, he said, needed to “search for new trends in movement, but one that will circumvent Isadora Duncan, who doesn’t appear to be old-fashioned simply because her talent is so forceful” (Kurth, Isadora, 248).
28. Walsh, Stravinsky, A Creative Spring, 132.
29. Anna de Noailles quoted in Scheijen, Diaghilev, 183.
30. Carter, Marcel Proust, 491.
31. She returned to the Ballets Russes after two weeks, at the end of her own tour.
32. Scheijen, Diaghilev, 187. This story has been repeated in endless variations. Isadora did not believe in marriage, and repeatedly refused Paris Singer’s marriage proposals. Some stories simply have her proposing to bear Nijinsky’s child.
33. Steegmuller, Cocteau, 71.
34. Steegmuller, Cocteau, 73.
35. Ernest Boulanger, an opera composer who spent much of his career as a singing teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, was more than forty years older than his wife and died in 1900 at the age of eighty-five.
36. Potter, Nadia and Lili Boulanger, 8.
37. Debussy to Durand, 18 July 1909; Debussy to Laloy, 30 July 1909, both in Debussy Letters, 206, 210.
38. Debussy quoted in Lockspeiser, Debussy, 2:170.
39. Ravel to Mme René de Saint-Marceaux, 27 June 1909, in Ravel Reader, 107.
40. Ravel to Charles Koechlin, 16 January 1909, in Ravel Reader, 102.
41. Nichols, Life of Debussy, 107; Nichols and Smith, Claude Debussy, 153.
42. Debussy to Jacques Durand, 18 May 1909; Debussy to his parents, 23 May 1909, both in Debussy Letters, 199, 200.
43. Debussy to André Caplet, 20 July 1909, in Debussy Letters, 208.
44. According to Debussy biographer Roger Nichols, “the evidence suggests” that this may have been the first sign of the cancer that would kill him nine years later (Nichols, Life of Debussy, 119).
45. Lebow, Before Amelia, 14.
46. Williams, Last Great Frenchman, 217.
47. Lockspeiser, Debussy, 2:110–11.
48. “From the beginning of 1907 to the autumn of 1908 there was hardly a socialist or anarchist group or trade union in which motions were not passed denigrating [Clemenceau] and rejoicing in his imminent hanging” (Mayeur and Rebérioux, Third Republic from Its Origins to the Great War, 264).
49. Diesbach, L’Abbé Mugnier, 166.
50. Diesbach, L’Abbé Mugnier, 168.
51. Mugnier, 25 August 1909, Journal, 184.
52. Mugnier, 23 October 1909, Journal, 186.
53. Mugnier, 1 November 1909, Journal, 187.
12 Deep Waters (1910)
Selected sources for this chapter: Jeffrey H. Jackson, Paris und
er Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Berton and Ossadzow, Fulgence Bienvenüe; Ravel, Ravel Reader; Carter, Marcel Proust; Wildenstein, Monet, vol. 1; Orenstein, Ravel; Spurling, Matisse the Master; Rhodes, Louis Renault; Monet, Monet by Himself; Diesbach, L’Abbé Mugnier; Mugnier, Journal; Quinn, Marie Curie; Eve Curie, Madame Curie; André Langevin, Paul Langevin, mon père: L’homme et l’oeuvre (Paris: Les Editeurs Français Réunis, 1971); Debussy, Debussy Letters; Nichols, Life of Debussy; Walsh, Stravinsky: A Creative Spring; Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography (New York: Norton, 1998); Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Memories and Commentaries (New York: Faber and Faber, 2002); Scheijen, Diaghilev; Lysiane Sarah Bernhardt and Dix, Sarah Bernhardt; Steegmuller, Cocteau; Cossart, Food of Love; Gold and Fizdale, Misia; Kessler, Journey to the Abyss; Lockspeiser, Debussy, vol. 2; Proust, Selected Letters, vol. 2; Proust, Selected Letters, vol. 3; Gold and Fizdale, Divine Sarah; Bessy and Duca, Georges Méliès; Butler, Rodin; Wineapple, Sister Brother; Isadora Duncan, My Life; Kurth, Isadora; Flanner, Men and Monuments; Olivier, Picasso and His Friends; Danchev, Georges Braque; Barr, Matisse; Richardson, Life of Picasso: The Cubist Rebel; Mayeur and Rebérioux, Third Republic from Its Origins to the Great War; Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel; Williams, Last Great Frenchman.
1. For more on the 1910 flood and its aftermath, see Jackson, Paris under Water.
2. He remains, even though the bridge has been rebuilt above him.
3. Marie Ravel to Maurice Ravel, 27 January 1910, in Ravel, Ravel Reader, 109.
4. Proust would later suffer from the methods used to dry out and disinfect his building, which worsened his asthma attacks, as well as from the noise caused by the building repairs (Carter, Marcel Proust, 489).
5. Mirbeau to Monet, in Wildenstein, Monet, 1:391–92.
6. Orenstein, Ravel, 60.
7. Monet to Paul Durand-Ruel, 10 February 1910, in Monet by Himself, 242–43.
8. Monet to Paul Durand-Ruel, 15 April 1910, in Monet by Himself, 243.
9. 13 August 1910, Journal, 190.
10. 19 August 1910, Journal, 191.
11. André Langevin, Paul Langevin, mon père, 63.
12. Quinn, Marie Curie, 262, 263.
13. Debussy to Jacques Durand, 8 July 1910, in Debussy Letters, 220.
14. Debussy to Jacques Durand, 8 July 1910, in Debussy Letters, 220. See also Debussy to Georges Hartmann, 14 July 1898 (Debussy Letters, 98), in which Debussy despaired of “the barriers erected by law to separate those who strive for their own kind of happiness”; and Debussy to Lilly Texier, 3 July 1899 (Debussy Letters, 105–6), in which Debussy told her that they should never demean their love “with those constricting little rules fit only for nonentities.”
15. Debussy to Chouchou, 2 December 1910, in Debussy Letters, 229.
16. Debussy to Jacques Durand, 4 December 1910, in Debussy Letters, 231.
17. Stravinsky, Autobiography, 30.
18. Stravinsky, Autobiography, 30.
19. Stravinsky and Craft, Memories and Commentaries, 77.
20. Kessler, 9 June 1910, in Journey to the Abyss, 500.
21. Steegmuller, Cocteau, 83; also, in a somewhat different translation, in Scheijen, Diaghilev, 201.
22. Stravinsky and Craft, Memories and Commentaries, 77.
23. Stravinsky and Craft, Memories and Commentaries, 78.
24. Debussy to Jacques Durand, 8 July 1910; Debussy to Robert Godet, 18 December 1911, both in Debussy Letters, 221, 250.
25. Nichols, Life of Debussy, 134.
26. Stravinsky and Craft, Memories and Commentaries, 78.
27. Lysiane Bernhardt and Marion Dix, Sarah Bernhardt, 194–95.
28. Many of Méliès’s films were two hundred and four hundred meters long rather than the more usual twenty to thirty meters. During this period Méliès even produced a so-called fantasy based on the Dreyfus Affair, in ten films of twenty meters each, including the “Suicide du Colonel Henry” (Bessy and Duca, Georges Méliès, 51, 52, 54).
29. Ravel to Michel D. Calvocoressi, 3 May 1910, in Ravel Reader, 116.
30. Proust went to Cabourg while his apartment “was echoing with the noise of hammer and saw” (Proust to Maurice Duplay, [shortly before 8 September 1910], in Proust, Selected Letters, 3:16–17).
31. Wineapple, Sister Brother, 299.
32. Isadora Duncan, My Life, 215. Duncan’s dahabeah, or houseboat, included a Steinway piano and an English pianist who entertained her and Singer each evening with recitals of Bach and Beethoven.
33. Isadora Duncan, My Life, 216.
34. Isadora Duncan, My Life, 169.
35. Flanner, Men and Monuments, 140.
36. Braque later said that Matisse “had found his own truth for himself, and . . . altogether missed out on what we were doing” (Flanner, Men and Monuments, 143–44).
37. Olivier, Picasso and His Friends, 154.
38. Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 16.
39. Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 17. The Constable was the supreme commander of the French armies during the monarchy.
40. Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 19.
41. Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 13.
42. Lockspeiser, Debussy, 2:110.
43. Count Harry Kessler collaborated with the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal on the libretto for The Rosenkavalier, although Hofmannsthal was initially reluctant to acknowledge Kessler’s role (Journey to the Abyss, 376, 503).
44. Diesbach, L’Abbé Mugnier, 207. Given the diametrically different personalities and politics of Barrès and Anna de Noailles, it seemed an unlikely liaison from the start.
45. Mugnier, 1 December 1910, Journal, 197.
46. Mugnier, 22 November and 6 December 1910, Journal, 196, 200.
13 Between Heaven and Hell (1911)
Selected sources for this chapter: Carter, Marcel Proust; Proust, Selected Letters, vol. 3; Gold and Fizdale, Misia; Crespelle, La vie quotidienne à Montmartre au temps de Picasso; Nichols, Life of Debussy; Debussy, Debussy Letters; Quinn, Marie Curie; Eve Curie, Madame Curie; André Langevin, Paul Langevin, mon père; Mayeur and Rebérioux, Third Republic from Its Origins to the Great War; Murphy, Military Aircraft; Bertaut, Paris, 1870–1935; Kessler, Journey to the Abyss; Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel; Williams, Last Great Frenchman; Shattuck, Banquet Years; Olivier, Loving Picasso; Richardson, Life of Picasso: The Cubist Rebel; Milton Esterow, The Art Stealers (New York: Macmillan, 1966); Marc Chagall, My Life, trans. Elizabeth Abbott (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994); Jackie Wullschläger, Chagall: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 2008); Voisin, Men, Women and 10,000 Kites; Valérie Bougault, Paris, Montparnasse: The Heyday of Modern Art, 1910–1940 (Paris: Editions Pierre Terrail, 1997); Scheijen, Diaghilev; Walsh, Stravinsky: A Creative Spring; Stravinsky and Craft, Memories and Commentaries; Stravinsky, Autobiography; Sert, Misia and the Muses; Orledge, Satie Remembered; Myers, Erik Satie; Gillmor, Erik Satie; Ravel, Ravel Reader; Orenstein, Ravel; Isadora Duncan, My Life; Kurth, Isadora; Poiret, King of Fashion; André Salmon, Souvenirs sans fin (1903–1940) (Paris: Gallimard, 2004); Spurling, Matisse the Master; Barr, Matisse; Wineapple, Sister Brother; Brinnin, Third Rose; Gertrude Stein, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress (Normal, Ill.: Dalkey Archive Press, 1995); Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein on Picasso, ed. Edward Burns (New York: Liveright, 1970); Butler, Rodin; Camille Saint-Saëns, Camille Saint-Saëns on Music and Musicians, ed. and trans. Roger Nichols (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Steegmuller, Cocteau; Monet, Monet by Himself; Wildenstein, Monet, vol. 1; Cocteau, Souvenir Portraits.
1. Proust to Lucien Daudet, 10 January 1911, in Proust, Selected Letters, 3:27.
2. Nichols, Life of Debussy, 137. See also Debussy, Debussy Letters, 240n3.
3. Quinn, Marie Curie, 27
7.
4. Quinn, Marie Curie, 278.
5. The Academy of Sciences is one of five academies in the Institut de France.
6. In Eve Curie, Madame Curie, 277.
7. Quinn, Marie Curie, 317. Langevin’s son later wrote: “The xenophobes, the antifeminists, and the ultra-nationalists of the era organized a hateful campaign against Marie Curie and my father, whose baseness I insist on underlining” (André Langevin, Paul Langevin, mon père, 13).
8. Quinn, Marie Curie, 328, 329–30.
9. Paul Langevin was an attentive father, says his son André, taking them to museums, concerts, the theater, and on hikes around Paris—and eventually farther afield (Paul Langevin, mon père, 63).
10. Kessler, 28 November 1910, in Journey to the Abyss, 502.
11. Bertaut, Paris, 1870–1935, 230.
12. Kessler, 9 September 1911, Journey to the Abyss, 561.
13. Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 19.
14. Olivier, Loving Picasso, 275. As foreigners, both Picasso and Apollinaire were justifiably afraid of being deported.
15. Voisin, Men, Women, and 10,000 Kites, 128.
16. Bougault, Paris, Montparnasse, 41.
17. In his memoirs, Chagall incorrectly dates his arrival as 1910. Private correspondence more accurately dates his departure from Russia and arrival in Paris (see Wullschläger, Chagall).
18. Chagall, My Life, 107.
19. Chagall, My Life, 103.
20. Chagall, My Life, 113.
21. Chagall, My Life, 104–5.
22. Chagall, My Life, 106.
23. Stravinsky, Autobiography, 31, 32.
24. Walsh, Stravinsky: A Creative Spring, 163.
25. Stravinsky and Craft, Memories and Commentaries, 83.
26. Stravinsky quoted in Orledge, Satie Remembered, 105.
27. Ravel, Ravel Reader, 122n3.
28. Myers, Erik Satie, 42.
29. “That [Debussy’s upcoming concert] is something I owe to you. Thanks.” (Erik Satie to Ravel, 4 March 1911, in Ravel, Ravel Reader, 121).
30. Gillmor, Erik Satie, 144, and Myers, Erik Satie, 43.
31. 16 March 1911, unsigned interview in The Musical Leader, in Ravel, Ravel Reader, 410.