Felix she does not mention.
I tell her about the painter Vaublin, what little is known of him. She listens, large-eyed, nodding faintly now and then, taking it all in or thinking of something else, I do not know which. Perhaps I am talking to myself, telling myself the same story all over again. Listen –
Who does not know, if only from postcards or the lids of superior chocolates boxes, these scenes suffused with tenderness and melancholy that yet have something harsh in them, something almost inhuman? Le monde d’or is one of those handful of timeless images that seem to have been hanging forever in the gallery of the mind. There is something mysterious here beyond the inherent mysteriousness of art itself. I look at this picture, I cannot help it, in a spirit of shamefaced interrogation, asking, What does it mean, what are they doing, these engimatic figures frozen forever on the point of departure, what is this atmosphere of portentousness without apparent portent? There is no meaning, of course, only a profound and inexplicable significance; why is that not enough for me? Art imitates nature not by mimesis but by achieving for itself a natural objectivity, I of all people should know that. Yet in this picture there seems to be a kind of valour in operation, a kind of tight-lipped, admirable fortitude, as if the painter knows something that he will not divulge, whether to deprive us or to spare us is uncertain. Such stillness; though the scene moves there is no movement; in this twilit glade the helpless tumbling of things through time has come to a halt: what other painter before or after has managed to illustrate this fundamental paradox of art with such profound yet playful artistry? These creatures will not die, even if they have never lived. They are wonderfully detailed figurines, animate yet frozen in immobility: I think of the little manikins on a music-box, or in one of those old town-hall clocks, poised, waiting for the miniature music that will never start up, for the bronze bell that will not peal. It is the very stillness of their world that permits them to endure; if they stir they will die, will crumble into dust and leave nothing behind save a few scraps of brittle lace, a satin bow, a shoe buckle, a broken mandolin.
I admire the faint but ever-present air of concupiscence that pervades all of this artist’s work. Viewed from a certain angle these polite arcadian scenes can seem a riotous bacchanal. How lewdly his ladies look out at us, their ardent eyes shiny as marbles, their cheeks pinkly aglow as if from a gentle smacking. Even the props have something tumescent about them, these smooth pillars and thick, tall trees, these pendulous and smoothly rounded clouds, these mossy arbours from within which there seem to issue the sighs and soft laughter of breathless lovers. Even in Le monde d’or, apparently so chaste, so ethereal, a certain hectic air of expectancy bespeaks excesses remembered or to come. The figure of Pierrot is suggestively androgynous, the blonde woman walking away on the arm of the old man — who himself has a touch of the roué — wears a wearily knowing air, while the two boys, those pallid, slightly ravaged putti, seem to have seen more things than they should. Even the little girl with the braided hair who leads the lady by the hand has the aura of a fledgling Justine or Juliette, a potential victim in whom old men might repose dark dreams of tender abuse. And then there is that smirking Harlequin astride his anthropomorphic donkey: what sights he seems to have seen, what things he knows!
I pause to record an infestation of flies, minute, glittering black creatures with disproportionately large yet impossibly delicate wings shaped like sycamore seeds. I think they must be newly hatched. What is a blow-fly? That is what I thought when I saw them: blow-flies. Is there something dead around here that has not yet begun to stink? I cannot discover where they are coming from; they just appear in the light of the lamp, attracted by the warmth, I suppose, and fly up against the bulb and then drop stunned on the table and flop about groggily until I sweep them away with my sleeve. They have got into my papers, too, I lift a page and find them squashed flat there, tiny black and crimson bursts of blossom stuck with wing-petals. It is eerie, even a bit alarming, yet I am almost charmed. It is like something out of the Bible. What does it portend? I have become superstitious, the result no doubt of living for so long with ghosts. Down here in the underworld things give the uncanny impression of being other things, all these Pierrots and Colombines in their black masks, and even flies, looked at in a certain light, can seem celestial messengers. When they first began to appear I did not feel repugnance, only a sort of pleased surprise. I sat for a long time watching them, head on hand, lost to myself and inanely smiling, like one of those bewhiskered dreamers fluttered about by fairies in a Victorian engraving. I know that the reality they inhabit is different from mine, that for them this world they have blundered into is all struggle and pain and sudden, inexplicable fire — they are only flies after all, and I am only I — yet as they rise and fall, fluttering in the light, they might be a host of shining seraphim come to comfort me.
Today in my reading I chanced upon another jeweclass="underline" Hard beside the woe of the world, and often upon its volcanic soil, man has laid out his little garden of happiness. Yes, you have guessed it, I have taken up gardening, even in the shadow of my ruins. It is a relaxation from the rigours of scholarship. (Scholarship!) But no, no, it is more than that. Out here among these greens, in this clement weather, I have the irresistible sensation of being in touch with something, some authentic, fundamental thing, to which a part of me I had thought atrophied responds as if to a healing and invigorating balm. So many things I have missed in my life; there are moments, rare and brief, when I think it might not be too late after all to experience at least some of them. My needs are modest; a spell of husbandry will do, for now. (Later will there come the tree of knowledge, Eve, the fatal apple, and all the rest of it, Cain included?) Perhaps I shall make a little statue of myself and grind it up and mix it with the clay, as the philosopher so charmingly recommends, and that way come to live again through these growing things.
I found down at the side of the house the remains of what must once have been a kitchen garden. Everything was choked with weeds and scutch grass, but the outlines of bed and drill were still there. I cleared the ground and found good black soil and put in vegetables — runner beans, mainly, I’m afraid, for I love their scarlet flowers. Already the first fruits have appeared (shall I hear the voice of the turtle, too?). I cannot express the excitement I felt when these tender seedlings began to come up. They were so fragile and yet so tenacious, so — so valiant. I have a great fondness for the stunted things, the runts, the ones that fail to flower and yet refuse to die, or are beaten down by the wind and still put out blossoms on the fallen stems. I have the notion, foolish, I know, that it is because of me that they cling on, that my ministrations, no, simply my presence gives them heart somehow, and makes them live. Who or what would there be to notice their struggles if I did not come out and walk among them every day? It must mean something, being here. I am the agent of individuation: in me they find their singularity. I planted them in neat rows, just so, and gave each one its space; without me only the madness of mere growth. Not a sparrow shall fall but I … how does it go? I have forgotten the quotation, the misquotation. Just as well, I am getting carried away; next thing I shall be hearing voices. It is just that there are days when, like Rameau’s nephew, I have to reflect: it is an affliction that must run its course.