Leaning over him, the master observes him.
There are the two sons, face to face: the one who has so far only written Hugoesque verse, but perfectly Hugoesque, and whose destiny is toppling, because he has seen all the men of the Parnassus and suspects that to be poetry in person is not to be first in the Parnassus or anywhere else, that it cannot be ratified; because above all he realizes that poetry descends, like rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, it is a slope come tumbling down that leads you to a hotel in Brussels — or to Guernsey before the séance tables, sovereign, magic, charlatan: the slope goes to Guernsey, if you are very lucky. Before that slope he hesitates. There is the one son, and the other, leaning over him, the photographer, who knows he is important and does not really know why, who thinks it is because he is an artist — whereas he is a pure agent of Time, irresponsible and fatal as Monsieur de Paris. He looks at his model. He sees that the tie is crooked: he sees what color it is, which we do not know. The waistcoat is red or black, that will not show, the photo is black and white. He tells himself that soon the tie must be straightened; and then no, this young man is a poet, it is right for the ties of poets to be crooked. On the hat peg by the entrance the hats gleam in the darkness. Rimbaud says something, something obscene no doubt because they laugh, everything blurs, in their black clothes they move in a little sunlight, they are standing. With a single movement they are all there in the studio.
October falls through the glass roof, the light is strong and blue. Surely the wind has picked up outside, the sky is even larger. There are tall plants in pots, the light brightens and burns them as well, more slowly than it does the silver chlorides, but with the same passion. The enormous camera is waiting on its tripod, in its wagon bellows. And that cannon on its stand, exactly crowned by its cylinder: great gleaming pieces of yellow copper and black Bakelite fitted together. Then the platform, the stool, the dark cloth behind. Rimbaud is sitting where Baudelaire sat. The second fiddles against the wall are facing him, they are giving their opinions — each one is hoping that his is the opinion of a first fiddle. Carjat comes back with the plates, he has taken off his jacket. He uncaps the cylinder. He is under the black hood. Rimbaud has written Le Bateau ivre, as if he were going to die, that is where his thoughts turn, even if Le Bateau ivre is not exactly poetry, even if he has filed it as smooth as possible for the Parnassus, nevertheless, he has done it. The axis of his neck stiffens. The sky above fills with brass. The golden leaves slide over the shining glass. Between him and the armband, between him and the well, cascade the hundred lines of the Bateau ivre. He launches into the opening, he descends the impassible rivers, then he runs, then he dances; his lips do not move; his mother rises. She is leaning over the scrap of cloth, she has written the definitive hundred lines of the Parnassus, she sobs and falls, she rises again and triumphs. She sinks and rises like a cork in water. From under the black hood Carjat says to move his head a little, this way, then that way. He does as he is told, in the head that barely moves fall the impeccable stanzas, the impassible stanzas fall line over line, like waves, like the wind. The hemistichs topple, the syllables flow twelve by twelve over the country girl, she cries and laughs aloud. She has written that. She has brought down the Parnassus. The sky above is as grand as a father. For a long time Rimbaud has held his breath. Carjat shoots. The light rushes over the halides and burns them. At this moment Rimbaud longs for Europe.
Everyone knows that precise moment in October. Maybe it is the truth, in a soul and in a body; we see only the body. Everyone knows the disheveled hair, the possibly blue-white eyes, light as the day, that do not look at us but gaze over our left shoulder where Rimbaud sees a potted plant that is climbing toward October and burns up carbon, but for us, that gaze looks toward the future vigor, the future abdication, the future Passion, the Saison and Harar, the saw over the leg in Marseille; and for him no doubt as for us, that gaze is also on poetry, that conventional specter conventionally verified in the disheveled hair, the angelic oval face, the aura of sulkiness, but beyond all conventionality there also behind our left shoulder and gone when we turn around. We see only the body. And in the lines, can we see the soul? In all that light, the wind passes. In the passageway the miters lack luster and witness. The hands of the second fiddles hang. They are quiet. They do not know for certain that the set lips have spoken Le Bateau ivre, but they suspect that they have spoken some lines: they have had their photographs taken as well, on the stool they have recited to death their second fiddle masterpieces. They do not know any better than we do on which stanza Carjat took his shot, which word he trapped; no, we do not know if at that moment Rimbaud longed for Europe. We cannot see the laundress’s hands. We cannot see the color of the eternally crooked tie.
Carjat makes other plates, which are unknown — he destroyed them later when the two of them came to blows. He does not know that he has just made his masterpiece. The sons are sitting on the ground and making jokes, Rimbaud has become withdrawn again, these poets horsing around like naughty choirboys bore him stiff. Suddenly we can hardly see them. They are not going to stay there all afternoon. That is it. Carjat goes by with his plates, there are the vats, the nitrates, no time to waste, the sons know the way. They take their top hats, the hat peg is bare and alone in the hallway. The sky lowers over the five sons; they are in the street, the October light is declining, the trees are moving, the golden leaves are flying in the simple rhythm of the wind. They are gems underfoot. Holding onto their hats, the flashes of black descend the slope full tilt. They cross Paris, seven times a star appears in the Big Dipper, they are in the Académie d’absinthe.
7. IT IS ALSO SAID THAT GERMAIN NOUVEAU, POET
It is also said that Germain Nouveau, poet; that Alfred Mérat, Raoul Ponchon, Stéphane Mallarmé, poets; that Émile Cabaner, musician; that Henri Fantin-Latour, painter; that Jacques Poot, Brabant printer; that beyond Suez, Pierre and Alfred Bardey, merchants; that César Tain, merchant; that Sotiro, lowly employee of the merchants; that Paul Soleillet and Jules Borelli, explorers; that Menelik, king; that Makonnen, ras, that is to say grand duke; that little Djami, gentle young minion; that His Grace Jarosseau, bishop in partibus; that six nameless black Abyssinians running toward the sea with a stretcher on their backs; that on this side of Suez the doctors Nicolas and Pluyette who officiated double quick with a saw in the Marseille hospital; that the priest Chaulier who, after the saw had done its work, offered the unleavened bread in that same hospital; that Isabelle, Rimbaud’s sister, to whom in the depths of mortal agony he may have called for God, or perhaps for gold or minions, we will never know; that the two or three white gravediggers in Charleville, as nameless as the six Abyssinians; that many witnesses, finally, saw with their own eyes that mythology, when it was that tall young man who was becoming old and dying. That tall young man of the great blunted rages, who no longer had Virgil on his desk to foster his rages, nor Racine, Hugo, Baudelaire, nor little Banville; who, for that matter, no longer even had a desk; who instead had a workbench strewn with do-it-yourself guides, surrounded by those black and white men I have mentioned. And as such, all those with whom he was associated, like Izambard, like Banville and Verlaine, that is to say, who served as father or brother and who thus passed on the phantom bugle, all those men deserve a chapter here.