Thus it is the Gilles who opens the dance of Rimbaud’s readers. It is precious to me that he was the first (the first in Paris of course, Charleville does not count in these matters) who, bent over that poet’s desk where he is catching up on correspondences, reads the verses of the white blackbird from Charleville; and that he replies; that he adds words to those words; that thus he is also the first to make comments, in terms we do not know, for the benefit of the author of those verses he has read closely — and for a hundred years his shadow is yoked to that letter, like those dolts in stories whom mischievous fate tethers to an iniquitous and monotonous task, he has not moved from that desk, he is replying to Rimbaud. Interminably he returns to the letter. His conviction has waned, but the fairy wants him to continue: a dark fairy who is inside that small mixture of work and life we call Rimbaud, and who transforms those who approach him into Banville, into Pierrot. Because it may be that all the books now written on Rimbaud, the one I am writing and those that will be written tomorrow, were written, are written, and will be written by Théodore de Banville — not exactly by Banville, not all of them, but all without exception by Watteau’s Gilles. Some are very much the work of a man we can call Banville, as Banville in person: by the countless Banvilles, that is to say, by a nearly perfect, well-meaning man of poetry, upright, timid but well-meaning, a poseur but sincere, hotheaded, a bit of a nightingale, a bit old-fashioned even if he is very young, and tousled or neatly combed according to inclination, the tousled ones stand for anger and nothingness, the neatly combed for salvation and charity, but they always lack the other cymbal; or there are two cymbals, but not at the same time; and if they were tousled when they were young, there they are in old age in the Luxembourg Gardens airing their white manes beneath the foliage, they, too, are eyeing the dome of the Pantheon, or less visible paradises, the gold of Time, the magnetic field of the beyond, the secret necropolis of the Enlightenment which is like a Saint-Denis built of philosophers’ stone where one will be gently laid between Sade and Lautréamont, the great captains, the men of anger who have no more anger — and in the Luxembourg, drawing up a chair to sit near the statues of queens and the girls who pass, they stop suddenly, they are searching for where all their anger has gone, then they smile, set off again, they tell themselves they still love Rimbaud, that all is not lost. André Breton under the trees says his devotions and takes a seat near the queens. Or again, if it is December and too cold in the Luxembourg, they walk down boulevard Saint-Michel in the north wind, cross the bridge, enter Notre Dame, which is an excellent windbreak, and there, in the dark of December, under the dark vaults, behind a pillar, they suddenly see the enormous roaring column of fire; and of course at that fire for sixty years they light a work beyond meaning, ridiculous, prodigious, through which stride great fiery captains who speak directly to God and whom God calls by their ridiculous, prodigious names, Thomas Pollock Nageoire, Monsieur de Coûfontaine et Dormant—but when they take it into their heads to write a preface to Rimbaud and their great wings have fallen off, there they are, nightingales, they mistake the pedal of charity for that of anger and quote the saints of the almanac. They become Banville again. Even Breton and Claudel become Banville again and reply to Rimbaud wearing a silk skullcap over their white mane at their poet’s desk.
All these books written on Rimbaud, that one book, in truth, as they are so much alike, interchangeable, however ludicrously at odds, like the successive interpretations of the Filioque in the Middle Ages, all these books come from the hand of the Gilles. The Gilles is better informed than Banville; he has been informed by a century of work; he knows more about the life of Rimbaud than Rimbaud ever knew, as has been rightly pointed out; he is more modern than Banville, with more modern resolution; floured and modern; he, too, is standing in a kind of garden, since that is where Watteau placed him: yes, he is standing in the Luxembourg, like Banville, like Mallarmé, like Breton with his magnificent mane under the leaves, like young Claudel at the moment when he pushes open the gate to rush down Saint-Michel and shut himself up in the windbreak of Notre Dame. Standing at the edge of that garden, where behind his back under the statues of queens there is laughter and games that he does not hear, some lovely afternoon where he is not, Italian pines, girls, the Gilles watches passing in the void the work and life of another, which he calls Arthur Rimbaud. He invents it: it is the magic that he is not. He watches that magic sparkle; he sees signs there, the promise of the Resurrection of the body or the gold of Time, depending; he watches the comet; he watches nothingness and salvation, revolt and love, the lowly body and the letter, which go at one another, embrace, dance, come apart, come together again, pass and collapse considerably. In his dark room at midday he makes that inexhaustible bobbin spin; that dance; that fall; and it leaves him dumbstruck, he who is nailed there with his arms hanging, his Caliban feet. Laugh if you like: but truly audacious, the most stupid of the Gilleses perhaps, is the one who dares to throw the first stone.
The Gilleses have seen the considerable passerby; they believe they have seen him pass; invented his passing; there where he passed they see a great furrow that cuts the field of poetry in two, rejecting the old-fashioned on one side, full of beautiful works of course, but old-fashioned, and on the other, the proud ravaged acre of the modern where perhaps nothing grows, but modern; he passed; and when he passed there they were leaning over their poets’ desks and silently they speak to us of him, the horrible plowman, the white blackbird. They watch the comet; they note its winding paths; it has twelve feet and sometimes no feet at all or a thousand feet, that much they have found; they are looking for the place, the formula, and the key; they believe that it is coded; they combine those numbers; they are nearly there; they are going to see: and suddenly, if a sharper laugh rises behind their backs, if silk murmurs beneath the Italian pines, if a woman’s voice as if from very far off calls to them in the great silence, they look up from their notebooks and wonder if the comet really did pass, if their mathematics mean anything, if poetry exists in person, or if it is the Harlequin who has rolled them in flour. Alas, Rimbaud has a talent for throwing flour in the eyes of those who approach him: and as I say this, my arms hanging, I begin to cough; if I beat my breeches, flour comes out of them. But sometimes I imagine, and all the Gilleses surely imagine with me, in the brief moments when we forgive ourselves, when we can bear ourselves, when for example the evening wind passes in those Italian pines that Watteau has painted behind us, when our colds are abating, when looking down at ourselves we no longer see flour but a kind of smock of light, then yes, in those moments we imagine that before us stands a tall boy who also had big heavy hands, working hands, like those of a laundress, says Mallarmé, a boy who to dust off his own flour beat his flanks to death with rhymes, the renunciation of rhymes, refusals, slave labor; who, to appear free, not of this world, not from Charleville, not born of the poor woman née Cuif, shut us into the modern slave galley — I imagine that this very weary boy is before us, standing there in his great clumsy shoes, he looks at us and lets his big hands hang. He is before us, the same size or almost, on his two feet; he comes from afar; there he no longer knows that he has created what we call a work; he has no more anger; greatly astonished he regards in our hanging hands the endless, futile Rimbaudian gloss. A thousand times he reads his name, then the word genius, then the old word archangel, then the words: absolutely modern, then illegible numbers, then again his name. He lifts his eyes to ours; and we remain there face to face, unmoving, dumbstruck, old-fashioned, the Italian pines behind us suspended in a breath of air, he is about to speak, we are about to speak, we are going to pose our question, we are going to reply, we are there — the pines rustle in a sudden wind, Rimbaud once again has leapt into his dance, there we are all alone, pen in hand.