Nature Stories (9781590175682)
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JULES RENARD (1864–1910) was a French novelist, playwright, and diarist who divided his time between Paris and the Burgundian countryside for most of his life. He described his lonely childhood growing up in a cold bourgeois family in the autobiographical novel Poil de carotte (Carrot Top). Though educated to be a teacher, the young Renard moved to Paris where he took up with an actress of the Comédie-Française and was introduced into the city’s most prestigious literary salons. His marriage in 1888 to Marie Morneau brought him a large dowry and allowed him to devote himself to life as an homme de lettres and to found the literary review Mercure de France. For the rest of his short life Renard would spend the warmer months in Chitry, where like his father before him he became mayor. In Paris he lived the life of a member of the Académie Goncourt and counted among his friends Alphonse Daudet, Edmond de Goncourt, Anatole France, Paul Claudel, and Sarah Bernhardt. In addition to Poil de carotte and Histoires naturelles, Renard is best known for his five-volume Journal, cited as an influence by authors as diverse as W. Somerset Maugham, Susan Sontag, Donald Barthelme, and Samuel Beckett. Among his other works are Le plaisir de rompre, L’écornifleur, and Huit jours à la campagne.
DOUGLAS PARMÉE (1914–2008) was a lecturer in modern languages at Cambridge and a Lifetime Fellow of Queens’ College. He translated many works of classic and contemporary literature from French, Italian, and German, receiving the the Scott Moncrieff Prize for French translation in 1976. NYRB Classics publishes his translations of The Child by Jules Vallès and Afloat by Guy de Maupassant and in 2011 will publish his translation of Irretrievable by Theodor Fontane.
NATURE STORIES
JULES RENARD
Translated from the French
and with an introduction by
DOUGLAS PARMÉE
Illustrated by
PIERRE BONNARD
NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS
New York
CONTENTS
Cover
Biographical Notes
Title Page
Introduction
Nature Stories
LYING IN WAIT
HUNTING FOR PICTURES
THE HEN
COCKS
DUCKS
TURKEYS
PIGEONS
THE PEACOCK
THE SWAN
ONE DOG
TWO DOGS
DÉDÈCHE HAS DIED
THE CAT
FLIES
THE COW
THE DEATH OF BRUNETTE
THE OX
THE BULL
THE MARE
THE HORSE
THE DONKEY
THE PIG
THE PIG AND HIS PEARLS
THE NANNY GOAT
THE BILLY GOAT
TWO RABBITS
THE HARE
THE LIZARD
THE GREEN LIZARD
THE GRASS SNAKE
THE WEASEL
THE HEDGEHOG
THE SNAKE
THE WORM
FROGS
THE TOAD
THE GRASSHOPPER
THE CRICKET
THE COCKROACH
THE GLOWWORM
THE SPIDER
THE MAY BUG
ANTS
THE SNAIL
A SUNRISE
THE CATERPILLAR
THE BUTTERFLY
THE WASP
THE FLEA
THE DRAGONFLY
THE SQUIRREL
THE MOUSE
MONKEYS
THE STAG
THE GUDGEON
THE PIKE
THE WHALE
FISH
THE GARDEN
POPPIES
THE VINE
BATS
THE BIRDLESS CAGE
A CANARY
THE FINCH
THE BULLFINCHES’ NEST
THE SPARROW
THE SWALLOWS
THE MAGPIE
THE BLACKBIRD
THE GOLDEN ORIOLE
THE PARROT
THE LARK
THE KINGFISHER
THE HAWK
THE WAGTAIL
PARTRIDGES
THE WOODCOCK
A FAMILY OF TREES
THE END OF THE SHOOTING SEASON
THE NEW MOON
THE WOOD
RAIN
THE FURIOUS DOG
AUTUMN LEAVES
Copyright and More Information
INTRODUCTION
JULES RENARD HAD, like Goethe’s Faust, two souls: the first was that of a country boy, the second, that of a city slicker; but, unlike Faust, Jules had the good fortune to be able to reconcile both: he happily led the double life summed up in the last of his “Autumn Leaves.”
The country boy stemmed from a long line of country stock. His father had been a farmer’s boy and became a small peasant farmer. Jules was raised in the little town of Chitry, which may be roughly described as situated in the heart of nowhere, the Nièvre, a land of craggy rocks and forest, superb walking—and shooting—country. The largest city, Nevers, is some 160 kilometers to the south of Paris. And though Jules in his Paris days occasionally spoke disparagingly of his native heath, he later came to realize how passionately he loved it. From an early age, his eyes were filled with images and his ears could hear the music of birds and animals, from the farmyard and the wild wooded countryside.
His father was no mere country bumpkin: he had spent time in Paris, had attended evening classes and even read the comedies of Beaumarchais. He had also been elected mayor of Chitry. When Jules showed early promise of intellectual interests, he encouraged him to foster them and sent him to live in Nevers, which had a lycée. Jules proved to be a very competent classicist, and it is no surprise to learn that in later years, in addition to Virgil and Homer, there was on his bookshelves an edition, annotated by Jules, of the pastoral poet Theocritus.
Jules was not a good examinee, and having failed part of the school-leaving examination, the baccalauréat, he was sent to Paris, where he successfully became a bachelier. The die was cast: Paris had seduced him. And he had also realized that neither his gifts nor his inclination lay in the usual progression from bachelier to a higher qualification to become a teacher. He knew what he wanted to be: a writer.
He started by becoming a theatergoer, a passion that was to endure throughout his life. He was a striking-looking young man, with red hair, like the protagonist of his best known and still most read novel, Poil de carotte. This red hair and its owner caught the eye of an actress, who played minor roles at the Comédie-Française. She took him under her wing—that is, into her bed—and tried to launch him into Paris literary life.
Beginnings are difficult and a little journalism, a short story or two, and a few months of private tutoring meant that he was barely making a rather precarious living: he needed money and Fortune smiled on him. He met, wooed, and endeared himself to a seventeen-year-old girl, proposed, and was accepted by her and by her mother (whom he quickly grew to dislike). They were married in 1888. We need not doubt his affection for his wife—they remained together for the rest of his short life and had children—but his affection was surely not weakened by the amount of her dowry: the very considerable sum, or prospective sum, of 300,000 francs. A dot which should insure against debt. His wife proved a most helpful, indeed essential stabilizing factor for the rest of his life, a devoted wife and mother.
There were two important results of his marriage. The following year, they went to Chitry, where they spent nine months and where their first child was born: in this retour au pays natal, Jules had discovered his roots in his rural upbringing. The second major consequence was that, on his r
eturn to Paris, he now had enough money to become the main shareholder in the syndicate of founders of the prestigious Mercure de France: he had acquired a source of income and an outlet for his works.
There was one final decisive moment for Renard: in 1896, he established a more permanent residence for country living in a very large eighteenth-century presbytery in the small village of Chaumot, virtually a suburb of Chitry. The pattern of his life had been set: a hectic and successful literary and social life in Paris, usually during the colder months; the warmer months, often from April until September or October, in Chaumot. His house in Chaumot was called La Gloriette, the name he gives his wife in Histoires naturelles.
His long stays at La Gloriette were far from pure holidays. He became involved in municipal affairs, took part in local politics, and in 1904, like his father before him, was elected mayor of Chitry. He proved to be a most conscientious official—even making speeches at annual prize ceremonies in local schools. He took advantage, of course, of such contacts to study even more closely the local inhabitants, whom he wrote about in many little articles, first published separately in periodicals and later gathered into single volumes of short tales about village and country life, including not only humans but woods and birds and beasts, wild or domestic, unscrupulously borrowing from them to provide material for his Histoires naturelles; he had a keen sense of economy.
His other life in Paris was completely different and far more prodigal. After becoming a major shareholder of the Mercure de France, he never looked back. Prose works of every sort—short novels, short stories, journalistic articles in periodicals and newspapers—poured from his pen and were finding publishers, not only in the review he’d co-founded. His greatest and lifelong passion was, however, still the theater, where he spent night after night. Many of his stories were turned into plays, a common practice of the time: Poil de carotte proved an enormous success on the stage and, much later, became an outstanding film.
In Paris, Renard led a hyperactive social life in literary circles. He met and knew everybody who was anybody and, inevitably, many who were nobodies: his first novels dealt very roughly with such people. He was, in his early Paris years, renowned and feared for his blunt speaking and unceremonious treatment of anyone he considered to be a fraud—as in every large city, Paris was full of them. He gained the reputation of being a man you had to take care not to offend or even displease—a manner of behavior which age and success gradually mollified.
A short list of his Parisian friends and acquaintances would include such names as Alphonse Daudet, Edmond de Goncourt, Maurice Barrès, Anatole France, Edmond Rostand, Paul Claudel, and many other writers known today only to French literary critics; but we must not forget the actress Sarah Bernhardt. His friends were not only purely literary; he knew the prominent left-wing politicians Jean Jaurès and Léon Blum, and he had strong socialist leanings himself. He was a keen supporter of Dreyfus when the conservative military establishment found this Jewish officer guilty of leaking military secrets to a potential enemy—an injustice which it took many years to redress. Among later and today better-known writers, Renard knew André Gide and Paul Valéry—we must hope that he did not talk of French poetry with the former: Renard’s favorite French author and poet was Victor Hugo. He adored Hugo’s work and used the title of one of his best collections of poetry, Les Feuilles d’automne, for one of his own pieces; he even gave public lectures on him. Gide on the other hand, once asked who was France’s greatest poet, replied: “Victor Hugo, hélas.”
Let us dispatch Renard the Parisian: he was very vain and anxious to become a celebrity, and he succeeded. In 1900, he was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor—a decoration to which he jokingly refers in one of his Histoires naturelles. He never made it to the French Academy but, more appropriately, in 1906, he was elected to the Académie Goncourt, a literary academy set up, with funds bequeathed by Edmond de Goncourt, as a rival to the French Academy. To be awarded the annual Prix Goncourt is still considered likely to boost the sales of a work.
Examples of Histoires naturelles can be read early in Renard’s work, scattered in newspapers and periodicals, but the first collected edition of them appeared in 1896. An immediate success, it was followed by several other editions, usually enlarged. Toulouse-Lautrec and, later, in 1904, Pierre Bonnard both illustrated editions of them. It was, after Poil de carotte, the work which Renard himself thought his best and most readers of Renard will agree with him.
Histoires naturelles is a unique work: its subject is Nature—animals, including humans, with a little vegetation, many trees, though the humble potato and other vegetables make amusing appearances. Nothing of this originality and consistency had been published since La Fontaine, and Renard’s Histoires are more wide-ranging and less moralizing, although a moral does emerge: everything that has life and grows is in the hands of Nature and is to be respected; every animal, and humans are animals, is an individual; and Renard’s animals not only can feel, they can speak—one species, the swallow, can even, in a group, write Hebrew.... He has observed them in very close detail, their appearance and their movements, the sounds they make. They fascinate him and he makes them fascinating to his reader.
The length of the passages ranges from a couple of lines or less (one or two are contained in three or four words) to several pages—brevity may be the soul of wit, of which there is certainly plenty, but humor takes rather longer (for example, “Partridges”).
Many are either portraits, usually succinct, sometimes verging on caricature, or narratives, some also very short—he can tell a story in a few words—but many are quite long. Many involve human animals and their attitudes towards other animals, others invite comparisons between humans and animals. A few, amongst the most fanciful, are in dialogue form. Any moralizing is done not explicitly but by implication. Renard’s purpose is to show that we are all, rather oddly, interrelated and that variety is the spice of life.
A large number of different species of animal appear; the largest group is birds, often domestic and familiar, though his choice of detail frequently throws an unfamiliar and often funny light on them. Other birds are wild, less well-known, and like humans, equally individual.
Apart from birds, Renard’s animals are largely domestic, usually from the farmyard—in Chaumot he was surrounded by farmyards. He clearly has a soft spot for dogs, hunting dogs in particular, though one of his most tender tales is about a pet dog. Dogs are far nicer than cats, which he thinks are cruel and selfish. He shows a high regard and great affection for horses, even old nags; his own horse is depicted not only as his friend but, even though willing and obedient, as having a mind and a will of his own; a horse is very individualistic and donkeys even more so. Renard also takes us to the zoo to show us caged or otherwise imprisoned wild animals who are suffering.
Both his portraits and his narrative contain a great variety of tone, often quirky and funny, sometimes sad, but any hint of tragedy is turned into tragicomedy. He has a very sharp eye, at times malicious (his animals aren’t angels), at others kindly—he rehabilitates not only the bat but the much maligned pig: Why don’t we clean him up, if we find him filthy? His readers are invited to share various moods: they smile, they are forced to think, to be ashamed, to feel mitigated pain and sorrow.
Particularly interesting—and somewhat ambiguous—is his attitude towards the controversial issue of “field sports,” fishing and shooting. Renard’s longest section is about partridges—he regularly and enthusiastically went out shooting them in Chitry; he then slowly makes us aware that since animals are individuals, they should, as such, be treated decently. But he doesn’t give up shooting, and the punishment he suggests for himself is purely fanciful.
Renard has the great gift of facing his readers with something unexpected; everywhere, we find ourselves being surprised, even bewildered; and he can produce clever last words. We put down his book with the feeling that we know more, not only about animals and the author but
also about human nature. We have learned that no species is an island; we are all cousins and it is our duty, and should be our pleasure, to behave decently to one another. And Renard has made his lesson consistently amusing. We have also been moved, though his constant sense of humor has largely protected us from sentimentality. What a happy coincidence that a renard is that sly and guileful animal the fox, which he surely would never have hunted.
This translation contains most of the Histoires naturelles in the 1909 Fayard edition, plus a few borrowed from elsewhere—Renard himself borrowed widely from his own works to put them into his Histoires naturelles. The stories omitted include some which rely on puns, for which he clearly had a liking; almost always puns are untranslatable into a foreign language: it was a great sacrifice to be forced to abandon the blackbird—merle—when he obviously intended the final word to be read as Merde! (Shit!). Certain allusive stories that would baffle the English-speaking reader have had to be left out; some of the other stories are mystifying enough.
This English version is for the elusive “general reader,” for animal lovers whose interest extends beyond their pet kitten, for readers who enjoy having their legs pulled, who enjoy reading gently and thoughtfully, sipping and chuckling, not gulping and guffawing. A bedside book—very few of these tales will give you nightmares but quite a few may keep you awake, reading on. You are watching a very personal and playful, even occasionally nonsensical, Carnival of the Animals, including not only humans but plants; they all have a life of their own. Nature Stories is an open and amusing invitation to join the club of those who believe in the “pathetic fallacy.” And there is a “message” for the reader of today:
A poor life this, if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
—D.P.
NATURE STORIES
LYING IN WAIT
THE MAN WITH THE GUN is sitting beside a tree; the barrel is resting on one of its branches. He’s listening as the wood falls asleep; the trees begin to take on human shape. The great peace of nightfall steals into his heart.