How will Mme de Breyves be able to tolerate going back to Paris, where he will not be returning until January? What will she do in the meantime? What will she do, what will he do afterwards?
Twenty times over I have been ready to leave for Biarritz and bring back M. de Laléande. The consequences might well be dreadful; but there is no point asking her, she will not permit it. But I am so saddened to see her delicate forehead being beaten from within and almost broken by the merciless blows of that inexplicable love. It gives her whole life an anguished rhythm. Often she imagines that he is about to arrive in Trouville, and will come up to her and tell her he loves her. She can see him: his eyes are shining. He talks to her with that expressionless, dreamlike voice that forbids us to believe while at the same time forcing us to listen. It is him. He is saying to her those words that make us delirious, even though we never hear them except in a dream, when we see shining in them, so heart-meltingly, the divine and trustful smile of destinies that are conjoined. Whereupon, the feeling that the two worlds, that of reality and that of her desire, run in parallel, and that it is just as impossible for them to meet as it is impossible for a shadow to coincide with the body that has cast it, awakens her. Then, remembering that minute near the cloakroom when his elbow brushed against hers, when he offered her that body which she could now be holding tight to hers if she had only wanted to, if she had only known, and which is now for ever distant, she feels cries of despair and rebellion resounding through her entire body like those one hears on sinking ships. If, when out walking on the beach or in the woods, she allows herself gently to yield to the pleasure of contemplation or reverie, no, not even that – to a sweet smell, or a song brought to her indistinctly by the breeze, making her forget for a moment her pain, then she suddenly feels, striking deep into her heart, an agonizing wound, and above the waves or the leaves, in the uncertain distance of the sylvan or marine horizon, she perceives the evanescent image of her invisible and ever-present victor who, his eyes shining through the clouds as on the day he offered himself to her, takes flight, bearing the quiver from which he has just sent yet one more arrow winging its way towards her.
– July 1893
Portraits of Painters and Musicians*
Portraits of Painters
Aelbert Cuyp
Cuyp, a setting sun dissolved in limpid air –
A ripple of grey wood pigeons, as if through water –
A damp golden haze, a halo for ox or birch,
Blue incense of fine days – smoke on the slopes –
Or gleam of stagnant marsh in the empty sky.
Cavaliers are ready, a pink plume in their hats;
Hands dangle down; the chill air makes their skin
Turn pink, and gently lifts their fine blond curls,
And, tempted by the hot fields and cool rills –
Their noise leaves undisturbed the herd of oxen
Dreaming in the mist of pale gold and repose –
They trot off, to breathe in those deep moments.
Paulus Potter
The mournful gloom of skies a uniform grey,
Made even sadder by rare patches of blue –
Filtering down onto the frozen plains
The warm tears of a foreign-seeming sun…
Potter, melancholy mood of sombre plains
That stretch out endlessly, joyless and dull,
The hamlet and the trees that shed no shade,
The scrubby gardens where no flower grows.
A ploughman drags his buckets home; his mare,
Sickly, resigned, disquieted, full of dreams
And anxious thoughts, lifting her thoughtful head,
Snuffles and sniffs and smells the whistling wind.
Antoine Watteau
The dusk applies make-up to trees and faces,
In its blue coat, beneath its dubious mask;
A scatter of kisses falls on weary lips…
The vague grows fond now, and the near grows far.
The masquerade is sad and distant too,
Love’s movements now seem forced, with their sad charm.
A poet’s whim – or lover’s wise precaution,
Since love must be adorned with expert skill –
Behold: a ship, a picnic, silence, song.
Anthony Van Dyck
Heart’s gentle pride, and noble grace of things
That shine in eyes, in velvet and in woods,
The lofty language of a posture’s pose
– Hereditary pride of kings and ladies! –
You triumph, Van Dyck, prince of tranquil gestures,
In all the lovely things that will soon die,
In every lovely hand that can still open,
And unawares – who cares? – gives you the palm!
The horsemen halt, beneath the pines and near
The waves equally calm and near to tears –
Such royal children, grave already and splendid,
Resigned in dress, with brave-plumed hats and jewels
In which there weeps – as water through the flames –
The bitterness of tears that fill their souls
Too haughty to shed tears from open eyes;
And you, oh precious stroller, above all,
In pale-blue shirt, one hand perched on your hip
(The other holds a fruit just plucked and leafy),
I dream, but do not grasp, your eyes and gestures:
Standing in alert repose in that dark shelter,
Oh wise young Richmond* – charming madman too?
I come to you again: around your neck
A sapphire shines as quietly as your gaze.
Portraits of Musicians
Chopin
O Chopin, sea of sighs and tears and sobs,
The butterflies wing their restless way across you,
Playing on sadness, or dancing on the waves.
You dream, love, suffer, cry, console and charm
And cradle, and between each pain you bring
Dizzy and sweet oblivion at your whim
Like butterflies that dart from flower to flower;
Your joy is then in league with all your sorrow:
The torrid pain leaves us athirst for tears.
O pale and gentle friend of moon and waves,
Prince of despair or grand seigneur betrayed,
Your exultation grows, more palely beautiful,
As the sunlight floods into your sickroom, which
Weeps through its smiles and grieves to see the sun
Smile with regret and shed its tears for Hope!
Gluck
Temple to love, to friendship and to courage
Which a marquise erected in her English
Gardens, where many a Watteau cupid bends
Its bow and takes wild aim at noble hearts.
But the German artist – she would have dreamt of him
On Cnidus!* – grave and deep sculpted the gods
And lovers, plain and bold, there on the frieze:
Hercules has his pyre in Armida’s gardens!*
The dancers’ heels no longer kick the path
Where eyes now dust and smiles now blotted out
Muffle our steps and make the distance blue;
The harpsichord is cracked or silent now.
But your mute cry, Admetus, Iphigenia,
Still terrifies us, proffered by your body
And, vanquished by Orpheus, scorned by Alcestis too,*
The Styx without masts or sky – where your genius anchored.
And Gluck like Alcestis has overcome by Love
The death that conquers every age’s foibles;
He stands erect, august temple to courage
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On the ruins of the little shrine to Love.
Schumann
From the old friendly garden where you are made welcome,
You hear boys and nests whistling in the hedgerows,
Lovers weary of long journeys and wounds.
Schumann, wistful soldier, unsatisfied by war.
The cheerful breeze – a flock of doves goes by –
Fills the great walnut’s shade with jasmine sweet,
The child reads the future from the flickering flames,
The cloud or wind speaks to your heart of tombs.
Once your tears flowed to the cries of the carnival
Or mingled gently with the bitter victory
Whose crazed momentum still shudders in your memory;
You may as well weep for good – she has betrayed you.
Towards Cologne the Rhine’s sacred waters flow.
Ah, how gaily you sang on its banks, on holidays!
But now, broken and sorrowful, you sleep…
Tears rain down in the fitful gleam of darkness.
A dream (she lives, though dead, and the ingrate
Keeps faith); your hopes bloom fresh, his crime has crumbled
To dust… A lightning flash sears you awake:
Again its lash, as if for the first time…
Flow on, give balm, parading to the drums,
Be lovely… Schumann! Friend of souls and flowers,
Between the banks of joy, the waves of pain,
O holy river, garden fond, fresh, faithful,
Where moon and lilies kiss, and swallows too:
Army arrayed; dream, child; and, woman, weep.
Mozart
There’s an Italian girl in the Bavarian prince’s arms
(His sad and frozen eyes gleam at her softness!).
In his chilly gardens he holds tight to his heart
Her darkness-ripened breasts whose light he sucks.
His tender German soul – how deep its sigh! –
Enjoys at last the lazy pleasures of love,
And he grants to hands too weak to hold it fast
The radiant hope of his enchanted head.
Cherubino, Don Giovanni!* Remember to forget
The flowers and sweet perfumes, all trampled, scattered
(But the tears flow on) from the gardens of Andalusia
To the tombs of Tuscany – blown by the winds!
In the German park where the mists gather like problems,
The Italian girl is still Queen of the Night.*
Her breathing is a sweet and witty aria
And her Magic Flute lovingly tongues,
In the shadow still warm from the fine day’s farewell,
The cool of sherbet, kisses and the sky.
The Confession of a Young Woman
The desires of the senses drag you hither and thither, but once their hour is past, what do you bring back? Remorse of conscience and dissipation of spirit. You set out in joy and you often return in sadness, and the pleasures of evening sadden the next morning. Thus the joys of the senses caress us at first, but in the end they wound and kill.
– The Imitation of Christ, I, 18
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Through the oblivion sought in drunken pleasures
There wafts, more sweet and virginal, heaven-sent,
The lilac with its melancholy scent.*
– Henri de Régnier
At last my deliverance is drawing near. I admit it: I was clumsy, I didn’t shoot straight, I almost missed myself. Of course, it would have been better to die at the first shot, but in any case they weren’t able to extract the bullet and then my heart started to behave erratically. It can’t be long now. And yet – a week! It might last a whole week! And during that time I won’t be able to do anything but strive to grasp the whole horrible chain of circumstances. If I were not so weak, if I had enough willpower to get out of bed and go away, I would like to die at Les Oublis, in the grounds where I spent all my summers until the age of fifteen. No place is more full of my mother, so much did her presence, and even more her absence, impregnate it with her whole person. Is not absence, for anyone who loves, the most certain, the most efficacious, the most vivacious, the most indestructible and the most faithful of presences?
My mother would take me to Les Oublis at the end of April, leaving after two days, spending another two days there in the middle of May, then coming to fetch me in the last week in June. Her stays, so short, were the sweetest and yet cruellest things. During those two days she would lavish on me an affection of which she was usually very chary, as she was trying to make me tougher and to calm my unhealthy over-sensitivity. On the two evenings she spent at Les Oublis, she would come and say goodnight to me in my bed, an old habit she had otherwise given up, since it gave me too much pleasure and too much pain; I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep, since I kept calling her back to say goodnight to me all over again, eventually not daring to do so any more, but feeling all the more passionately my need for her, and constantly inventing new pretexts – my burning pillow that needed turning over, my frozen feet that she alone would be able to warm up in her hands… So many sweet moments were made even sweeter because I felt these were the moments at which my mother was really herself, and that her habitual frigidity must be something she imposed on herself with an effort. The day on which she set off again – a day of despair when I would cling to her skirts all the way to the train compartment, begging her to take me with her to Paris – I could clearly distinguish what was sincere from what was feigned: the sadness evident behind her cheerful, cross rebukes at my “silly, ridiculous” sadness that she was trying to teach me to overcome, but which she shared. I can still feel the emotion I felt on one of those days of departure (that precise emotion, intact and unaffected by its painful return today), one of those days of departure when I made the welcome discovery of her tenderness, so similar and superior to mine. As with all discoveries, I had had an inkling of it before, but the facts seemed so often to tell against it! My sweetest impressions are those of the years when she returned to Les Oublis, having been summoned there because I was ill. Not only was she paying me an extra visit that I had not been expecting, but, above all, on those occasions she was nothing but the gentleness and tenderness that she lavished on me at length, without dissimulation or constraint. Even then, when that gentleness and tenderness had not been made even more gentle and tender by the thought that one day they would no longer be there for me, they counted for so much that the charm of convalescence always filled me with mortal sadness: the day approached on which I would again be well enough for my mother to leave, and until then I was not poorly enough for her to reassume the sternness and unyielding sense of justice that she had previously shown.
One day, the uncles with whom I lived at Les Oublis had kept concealed from me the fact that my mother was about to arrive, since a young cousin had come to spend a few hours with me, and I would not have paid him enough attention if I had been filled with the joyful anguish of that expectation. This little secret was perhaps the first of the circumstances independent of my will that helped to foster all the predispositions towards evil that, like all children of my age (and in those days no more than them), I bore within me. This young cousin who was fifteen – I was fourteen – was already extremely prone to vice and taught me things that immediately made me shudder with remorse and pleasure. In listening to him, in letting his hands stroke mine, I tasted a joy poisoned at its very source; soon I found the strength to leave him, and I ran off into the grounds filled with a mad desire for my mother, whom I knew to be – alas! – in Paris; I called out to her everywhere, in spite of myself, up and down the paths of the park. Suddenly, walking past an arbour, I spotted her on a bench, smiling and opening her arms for me. She lifted her veil to kiss me, I flung myself at her cheeks, bursting
into tears; I wept for a long time, telling her all those nasty things that only the ignorance of my age could allow me to tell her and that she contrived to listen to with divine patience, without understanding them, but diminishing their importance with her kindness and thereby taking a load off my conscience. It grew lighter and lighter, this load; my crushed, humiliated soul rose, ever lighter and ever more powerful, overflowing so much that I was pure soul. A divine sweetness radiated from my mother and from my restored innocence. I immediately smelt under my nostrils an odour just as pure and just as fresh. It was a lilac tree, a branch of which, hidden by my mother’s parasol, had already blossomed and was invisibly filling the air with its balm. High in the trees, the birds were singing with all their strength. Higher up, between the treetops, the sky was of a blue so deep that it seemed but the entrance of a heaven into which it would be possible endlessly to rise. I kissed my mother. Never again did I experience the sweetness I then found in that kiss. She left the next day, and that departure was crueller than all those which had preceded it. As well as joy, it seemed to me as if the strength and the support that I needed, now that I had sinned for the first time, were abandoning me.
All these separations taught me in spite of myself that one day the irreparable would happen, even though never at that time did I seriously envisage the possibility of surviving my mother. I was resolved to kill myself the minute she died. Later on, absence taught me even more bitter lessons: that one gets used to absence, and that the greatest diminishment of self, the most humiliating form of suffering, consists in realizing that it no longer causes you any suffering. These lessons were in any case to be shown as false by subsequent events. Above all, right now, I am thinking back to the little garden where I would have my breakfast with my mother and where there were innumerable pansies. They had always seemed somewhat sad to me, as grave as emblems, but gentle and velvety, often mauve, sometimes violet, almost black, with gracious and mysterious yellow images, some of them entirely white and frail in their innocence. I pick them all now, in my memory, those pansies; their sadness has increased the more I have come to understand it, and the gentleness of their velvety down has disappeared for good.
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