The Death of Picasso

by Guy Davenport

—I see what you’re thinking. The primitive in his imagination, his globes of light and angels and geometrical heaven, can be found in poets and mystics, in Balzac and Baudelaire. Do you want primitive thought to be subsumed in the enlightened mind?

  —Is there an enlightened mind?

  —Leonardo, Locke, Voltaire, Aristotle.

  —Darwin, the two Humboldts, Montaigne, none of whom built villages that are poems of symbols and ideas, like my Kanaka.

  Peyrony smeared the rain on his legs, pulling his shorts back as far as they would wad.

  —Your Labbé and the kid with the English hair obeyed your signals when they clearly thought they were cockeyed. In football you accept all the unnecessary strain and fatigue of going through hopeless plays, like when I tear off after a man I know is faster than I, for the satisfaction of knowing that I did my damndest, eh? You accept it when Beyssac makes an end run and scores, when it was I, I alone, who set up the play. You accept the referee’s idiot rulings. You try to protest and Raimondou, the shit, shouts me down. He was eighteen and I was twenty-five, and he was wrong and I was right, but I was already learning the truth of what Goethe said: an injustice is preferable to disorder.

  —Myth, my dear Lucien, is not a narrative. It is life itself, the way a people live.

  Peyrony tried to wash his face with rain from the grass.

  —You’re merely rearranging the mud, Robinet said. It makes you look as wild as a savage, a nice savage. Are you listening to a word I’m saying?

  —Goethe the football player.

  —It’s in the hour and a half of the game that I know myself, you understand? I have to face all over again that I’m short of wind, that I let the ball get away from me, that I can’t kick straight half the time. I also know that I’m in a concentration of awesome power, a power that’s an electricity or the gift of a daimon, the mystery of form. It isn’t constant, it comes and goes, without reason or rule. My legs on the field scythe down all the hours of the rest of the day. I feel like a god, I feel reborn and new-made, and know all over again that the body has a soul of its own, independent of the other.

  Lévy-Bruhl and Pastor Leenhardt came to the walk along the playing fields where they could see boys resting in groups as colorful as signal flags on a ship.

  —The word is the thing, Pastor Leenhardt said, or the word and thing are so inextricably together that the thing is sacred, as the word is, too. A man’s word, his yes or no, is the man. A liar is his lie.

  —How we participate, Lévy-Bruhl said, stopping to thrust his hands into his pockets, how does not matter, for there are endless ways of participating. Surely the deepest participation is entirely symbolic, invisible, unmeasurable. I’m thinking of identity under differences, my Jewishness, your Protestant grounding. Neither of us ostensibly participates in French culture in my sense, and yet, keeping the remark between ourselves, we are French culture.

  They could see boys straying from the fields, getting up from their bivouac, stretching tall, pulling up socks, shaking hands.

  —You will find, I think, Pastor Leenhardt was saying, that all thought among primitives, and perhaps everywhere, begins with a perception of beauty.

  —You mean form, symmetry, a coherence of pattern. The light is even lovelier after the rain.

  —The past to the Kanaka is old light. The light in which the ancestors grew yams and made the villages into words.

  —How many autumns will an old man see? asks a Japanese poet.

  —Twilight in New Caledonia is only half an hour. Even so, it is understood to be in four movements. The first is when a dark blue appears in the grass, night’s first step. The second is when field mice awake and begin to come out of their burrows. The third is when the shadows are dark and rich and the gods can move about in them unseen. The fourth is night itself, when one cannot see the boundaries of the sacred places and there is no blame for not knowing that your foot is on the grass of the sanctuaries.

  BELINDA’S WORLD TOUR

  A little girl, hustled into her pram by an officious nurse, discovered halfway home from the park that her doll Belinda had been left behind. The nurse had finished her gossip with the nurse who minced with one hand on her hip, and had had a good look at the grenadiers in creaking boots who strolled in the park to eye and give smiling nods to the nurses. She had posted a letter and sniffed at various people. Lizaveta had tried to talk to a little boy who spoke only a soft gibberish, had kissed and been kissed by a large dog.

  And Belinda had been left behind. They went back and looked for her in all the places they had been. The nurse was in a state. Lizaveta howled. Her father and mother were at a loss to comfort her, as this was the first tragedy of her life and she was indulging all its possibilities. Her grief was the more terrible in that they had a guest to tea, Herr Doktor Kafka of the Assicurazioni Generali, Prague office.

  —Dear Lizaveta! Herr Kafka said. You are so very unhappy that I am going to tell you something that was going to be a surprise. Belinda did not have time to tell you herself. While you were not looking, she met a little boy her own age, perhaps a doll, perhaps a little boy, I couldn’t quite tell, who invited her to go with him around the world. But he was leaving immediately. There was no time to dally. She had to make up her mind then and there. Such things happen. Dolls, you know, are born in department stores, and have a more advanced knowledge than those of us who are brought to houses by storks. We have such a limited knowledge of things. Belinda did, in her haste, ask me to tell you that she would write, daily, and that she would have told you of her sudden plans if she had been able to find you in time.

  Lizaveta stared.

  But the very next day there was a postcard for her in the mail. She had never had a postcard before. On its picture side was London Bridge, and on the other lots of writing which her mother read to her, and her father, again, when he came home for dinner.

  Dear Lizaveta: We came to London by balloon. Oh, how exciting it is to float over mountains, rivers, and cities with my friend Rudolf, who had packed a lunch of cherries and jam. The English are very strange. Their clothes cover all of them, even their heads, where the buttons go right up into their hats, with button holes, so to speak, to look out of, and a kind of sleeve for their very large noses. They all carry umbrellas, as it rains constantly, and long poles to poke their way through the fog. They live on muffins and tea. I have seen the King in a carriage drawn by forty horses, stepping with precision to a drum. More later. Your loving doll, Belinda.

  Dear Lizaveta: We came to Scotland by train. It went through a tunnel all the way from London to Edinburgh, so dark that all the passengers were issued lanterns to read The Times by. The Scots all wear kilts, and dance to the bagpipe, and eat porridge which they cook in kettles the size of our bathtub. Rudolf and I have had a picnic in a meadow full of sheep. There are bandits everywhere. Most of the people in Edinburgh are lawyers, and their families live in apartments around the courtrooms. More later. Your loving friend, Belinda.

  Dear Lizaveta: From Scotland we have traveled by steam packet to the Faeroe Islands, in the North Sea. The people here are all fisherfolk and belong to a religion called The Plymouth Brothers, so that when they aren’t out in boats hauling in nets full of herring, they are in church singing hymns. The whole island rings with music. Not a single tree grows here, and the houses have rocks on their roofs, to keep the wind from blowing them away. When we said we were from Prague, they had never heard of it, and asked if it were on the moon. Can you imagine! This card will be slow getting there, as the mail boat comes but once a month. Your loving companion, Belinda.

  Dear Lizaveta: Here we are in Copenhagen, staying with a nice gentleman named Hans Christian Andersen. He lives next door to another nice gentleman named Søren Kierkegaard. They take Rudolf and me to a park that’s wholly for children and dolls, called Tivoli. You can see what it looks like by turning over this card. Every afternoon at 4 little boys dressed in red (and they are all blond and have big blue eyes) m
arch through Tivoli, and around and around it, beating drums and playing fifes. The harbor is the home of several mermaids. They are very shy and you have to be very patient and stand still a long time to see them. The Danes are melancholy and drink lots of coffee and read only serious books. I saw a book in a shop with the title How To Be Sure As To What Is And What Isn’t. And The Doll’s Guide To Existentialism; If This, Then What? And You Are More Miserable Than You Think You Are. In haste, Belinda.

  Dear Lizaveta: The church bells here in St. Petersburg ring all day and all night long. Rudolf fears that our hearing will be affected. It snows all year round. There’s a samovar in every streetcar. They read serious books here, too. Their favorite author is Count Tolstoy, who is one of his own peasants (they say this distresses his wife), and who eats only beets, though he adds an onion at Passover. We can’t read a word of the shop signs. Some of the letters are backwards. The men have bushy beards and look like bears. The women keep their hands in muffs. Your shivering friend, Belinda.

  Dear Lizaveta: We have crossed Siberia in a sled over the snow, and now we are on Sakhalin Island, staying with a very nice and gentle man whose name is Anton Chekhov. He lives in Moscow, but is here writing a book about this strange northern place where the mosquitoes are the size of parrots and all the people are in jail for disobeying their parents and taking things that didn’t belong to them. The Russians are very strict. Mr. Chekhov pointed out to us a man who is serving a thousand years for not saying Gesundheit when the Czar sneezed in his hearing. It is all very sad. Mr. Chekhov is going to do something about it all, he says. He has a cat name of Pussinka who is anxious to return to Moscow and doesn’t like Sakhalin Island at all, at all. Your loving friend, Belinda.

  Dear Lizaveta: Japan! Oh, Japan! Rudolf and I have bought kimonos and roll about in a rickshaw, delighting in views of Fujiyama (a blue mountain with snow on top) through wisteria blossoms and cherry orchards and bridges that make a hump rather than lie flat. The Japanese drink tea in tiny cups. The women have tall hairdos in which they have stuck yellow sticks. Everybody stops what they are doing ten times a day to write a poem. These poems, which are very short, are about crickets and seeing Fujiyama through the wash on the line and about feeling lonely when the moon is full. We are very popular, as the Japanese like novelty. Excitedly, Belinda.

  Dear Lizaveta: Here we are in China. That’s the long wall on the other side of the card. The emperor is a little boy who wears a dress the color of paprika. He lives in a palace the size of Prague, with a thousand servants. To get from his nursery to his throne he has a chair between two poles, and is carried. Five doctors look at his poo-poo when he makes it. Sorry to be vulgar, but what’s the point of travel if you don’t learn how different people are outside Prague? Answer me that. The Chinese eat with two sticks and slurp their soup. Their hair is tied in pigtails. The whole country smells of ginger, and they say plog for Prague. All day long firecrackers, firecrackers, firecrackers! Your affectionate Belinda.

  Dear Lizaveta: We have sailed to Tahiti in a clipper ship. This island is all pink and green, and the people are brown and lazy. The women are very beautiful, with long black hair and pretty black eyes. The children scamper up palm trees like monkeys and wear not a stitch of clothes. We have met a Frenchman name of Gauguin, who paints pictures of the Tahitians, and another Frenchman named Pierre Loti, who wears a fez and reads the European newspapers in the café all day and says that Tahiti is Romantic. What Rudolf and I say is that it’s very hot and decidedly uncivilized. Have I said that Rudolf is of the royal family? He’s a good sport, but he has his limits. There are no streets here! Romantically, Belinda.

  Well! dear Lizaveta, San Francisco! Oh my! There are streets here, all uphill, and with gold prospectors and their donkeys on them. There are saloons with swinging doors, and Flora Dora girls dancing inside. Everybody plays Oh Suzanna! on their banjos (everybody has one) and everywhere you see Choctaws in blankets and cowboys with six-shooters and Chinese and Mexicans and Esquimaux and Mormons. All the houses are of wood, with fancy carved trimmings, and the gentry sit on their front porches and read political newspapers. Anybody in America can run for any public office whatever, so that the mayor of San Francisco is a Jewish tailor and his councilmen are a Red Indian, a Japanese gardener, a British earl, a Samoan cook, and a woman Presbyterian preacher. We have met a Scotsman name of Robert Louis Stevenson, who took us to see an Italian opera. Yours ever, Belinda.

  Dear Lizaveta: I’m writing this in a stagecoach crossing the Wild West. We have seen many Indian villages of teepees, and thousands of buffalo. It took hours to get down one side of the Grand Canyon, across its floor (the river is shallow and we rolled right across, splashing) and up the other side. The Indians wear colorful blankets and have a feather stuck in their hair. Earlier today we saw the United States Cavalry riding along with the American flag. They were singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and were all very handsome. It will make me seasick to write more, as we’re going as fast as a train. Dizzily, Belinda.

  Dear Lizaveta: We have been to Chicago, which is on one of the Great Lakes, and crossed the Mississippi, which is so wide you can’t see across it, only paddle-steamers in the middle, loaded with bales of cotton. We have seen utopias of Quakers and Shakers and Mennonites, who live just as they want to in this free country. There is no king, only a Congress which sits in Washington and couldn’t care less what the people do. I have seen one of these Congressmen. He was fat (three chins, I assure you) and offered Rudolf and me a dollar each if we would vote for him. When we said we were from Prague, he said he hoped we’d start a war, as war is good for business. On to New York! In haste, your loving Belinda.

  Dear Lizaveta: How things turn out! Rudolf and I are married! Oh yes, at Niagara Falls, where you stand in line, couple after couple, and get married by a Protestant minister, a rabbi, or a priest, take your choice. Then you get in a barrel (what fun!) and ride over the falls—you bounce and bounce at the bottom—and rent a honeymoon cabin, of which there are hundreds around the falls, each with a happy husband and wife billing and cooing. I know from your parents that my sister in the department store has come to live with you and be your doll. Rudolf and I are going to the Argentine. You must come visit our ranch. I will remember you forever. Mrs. Rudolph Hapsburg und Porzelan (your Belinda).

  THE MESSENGERS

  His cabin at the Jungborn Spa in the Harz Mountains had large windows without curtains or shutters and a glass door so that sunlight fell in on all fours after its abrupt journey through space, home at last. Some pipe-smoking architect in knickerbockers who had seen English country cottages in The Studio had fused a Mon Repos with Jugendstil in its rectilinear and functional mode and come up with this many-windowed shoe box, perhaps with the help of an elf and a Marxist agronomist. He had never before had a house all to himself.

  A naked idealist was already pushing a pamphlet under the door. An army of geese was making its way into the meadow.

  His visions of Naturheilkunde were largely from Náš Skautík, the sun-gilded youth in which, awash with air and light, springing from rock to rock across streams, hatcheting saplings and roping them into structures with the genius of beavers, made him feel like Ivan Ilych envying rude health.

  But the pamphleteer, whom he could see continuing along the dirt road, bowlegged, was bald and round-shouldered, and an elephant’s tail would have fitted right in on his behind.

  Would a household god set up shop in this cabin? Wouldn’t its reek of sawn pine and shellac and the chemical aroma of the linoleum be uncongenial to a lar who for thousands of years was used to rising dough, peasants’ stockings, and wine?

  Outside, July. He could see the vast roof of the pensione over the trees. The cabins were set romantically along the leafy roads, or tucked into dells and glades.

  The pamphlet was about vegetarianism and the diffusion of Mind throughout Nature. Just so.

  Now for patience. It was impatience that got us thrown out of the Garden, an
d impatience keeps us from returning. Air and light and peace of soul were why he was here. Carrot juice and lectures. Presumably his effects were safe in his suitcase on the folding trestle at the foot of the bed. He laid out his toothbrush and comb beside the pitcher and basin. The household god, named Mildew or Jug Ears, must have noted him by this time, peeping from round the chamber pot or from inside the lamp. There was no key to the cabin.

  Once, when there was a choice of being kings or messengers, we, being children, chose to be messengers, arms and legs flying as we romped from castle to castle. We got the messages wrong as like as not, or forgot them, or fell asleep in the forest while kings died of anxiety.

  Bathing drawers. He would go out to the meadow, where he could see a man reading two books at once, in bathing drawers. Everybody else that he could see was nude.

  And there, as he drew them on, watching him with an innocent smile, was the household god, its cap respectfully in its hands.

  —My name is Beeswax, it said. I am going to sleep in your shoe. What is your name?

  —My name? Why it’s Amschel. I mean, Franz. By the world I am Franz Kafka.

  —A kavka is a jackdaw.

  —A grackle. Graculus, in Latin a blackbird.

  —Yes.

  Max was used to conversations between chairs in letters and would not challenge a household god in a cabin at a nudist health spa.

  —Max Brod, my best friend, will like hearing about you. He and I have been travelling together. We visited Goethe’s house. I dreamed that night of a rabbit in a Sicilian garden. I am here to breathe all the fresh air I can and to bathe in sunlight. So I’m going out now, to the meadow.

  —Yes, I will look at your things. If you should chance upon a garden, I would like a turnip. The buttons on your shoes are particularly interesting.

  From the people he met along the road he got sweet smiles or analytical stares. Walking and dawdling was apparently part of the therapy. Some were as white as he, some pink, some brown. On a path into the meadow a gentleman wearing only a pince-nez and a knotted handkerchief on his bald head referred to its narrowness as these Dardanelles. He heard talk of Steiner and rhythmic awakenings.