Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (51 page)

Before M. Colah, J. J. Weiss, in the third volume of his
Annales de Théâtre,
wrote the following words on the melodrama
Fualdès
: “For a beautiful crime, the criminal must act out of temperament, not out of a fortuitous and unique impulse. It is also required that the base details that almost always accompany a murder be excused in some way, their ignominy erased, for chance has disposed them so that they seem an effort of art, a contrast created and arranged by a mysterious rhetoric of things. Guilt must be demonstrated by the evidence, and yet there must lie over the motives and the execution of the crime a hint of mystery that one will always wish to penetrate, yet never manage to. It is necessary that bystanders be mixed into the story of the crime, which affects them in no way whatever. . . . It is necessary, if possible, that an entire city, or an entire class of society, be moved and appalled. It is necessary, etc. . . . (there is an endless list).” This theater critic’s good sense is immediately obvious.

No, there are no beautiful crimes, no matter how aesthetic they may be, save in the sphere of the philosophy of cruelty or the persuasions of egoism. There are no beautiful crimes, just as there are no beautiful diseases.

Only physicians find “lovely sores” and “pretty cases.” There are criminal artists, like Benvenuto, and sick artists, like the author of
Les fleurs du mal,
which buttress the new theories put forward by the philosophers of crime.

As for
buffo
criminality and comic criminals, they are indisputable. Criminals of the stripe of Mme. Humbert and Canon Rosenberg await a vaudeville libretto, a songsmith for the stage. They are
types
that allow us to more clearly see the grotesque and malignantly hilarious side of the human creature. Their work is set in motion by lust, concupiscence, avarice. Many innocents fall into their clutches, but in the skin of every innocent lamb there is often, in the world of business, the soul of a canny wolf. Paris, like New York, like London, like Buenos Aires, gives both shelter and a wide field to the Carlo Lanzas, the Artons, the Boulains, the Humbert-D’Aurignacs. The latest work by former police chief Macé is rich in lessons in that regard.

 

In the comic crime there is often blood, as a consequence, but what there is most of is gold—the gold of the deceived, swindled, double-crossed, which evaporates into the strongboxes of the deceivers, swindlers, and double-crossers. Then, the majority applauds, laughs. “Ah!” say some. “Mme. Humbert is the greatest woman France has ever produced, a veritable Joan of Arc! She should have a statue on the Champs Elysée.” And there is more than pity—smiles for the swindled. For the world cultivates, in one way or another, the art of deception.

I have heard the following story: Not long ago, several pieces of Empire furniture, put up for deposit on a famous
hôtel
by a calculating upholsterer, were sold to a buyer in Latin America for a large sum of money. “The Empress Joséphine’s
mobilier
!” an advertisement to recover the pieces exclaimed. “Historical, family heirlooms, etc. . . .” The Empress Joséphine’s
mobilier
came from the rue de la Pépinière. A certain marquis collected a fat commission, and a journalist another. Those are common practices. And the world smiles indulgently. Unfortunately, the “Latin American buyer” is growing rarer and rarer. . . . He is beginning to mistrust.

TO THE RIGHT REVEREND ABBOT SCHNEBELIN

 

 

Father, the prank your brother Bertoldo Schwartz played on the world has turned out to be a very expensive one for the race of Adam. A most refined Frenchman has caused a sound like that slow weeping of the strong knight Roland, his tears falling upon his sword, to come over the world, for that same sword, now transfigured, can in one blow cleave a mountain. The German friar who, tempted by the devil, invented that cold black pepper that is so tasty to the mouths of cannons and the pale lips of death, has done great harm to sacred, lovely poetry. He has stolen from us the brave struggle of hand-to-hand combat, the horses caparisoned in iron, the noble tourneys, the formidable strength of Tizona, the immense majesty of Durandal. I said Frair Schwartz had been tempted by the devil, and I will confirm that with a cloven-footed witness, Baudelaire, who addresses these two lines to Satan:

I do not believe it is the job of shepherds of men’s souls to practice diabolic chemistry. Our king Christ told them, “Go and teach all men”—but not to make explosives! The fire for your hands, Father? The fire of the censers, or the sacred, divine fire of charity.

Generally, I must say, I like inventor-priests. When L’Epée discovered a way to allow deaf-mutes to communicate, I was overjoyed. When Sechi discovers something new, I am second to no one, save the sun itself, in my applause. If any
dom
whatever discovers in his monastery the way to make a liqueur from the gold of honey, like that nectar we savor after our coffee, I take my hat off to him. While I do not kneel before the seraphim of fire, like Francis of Assisi, I love those good jolly friars who cultivate their bellies and dedicate their great, immortal books this way:
Bonnes gens, buveurs très illustres, et vous goutteux très précieux.
. . .
⁶¹

That seems to me more evangelical than teaching men to blow each other’s heads off in an entirely new way. One must harken to the words of that Jehovah who “maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire,” according to the words of holy Job.
⁶²
Your invention, sir, will be of great value; it may even come to outshine the brilliance of dynamite, melinite, and plancastite. But what is unpardonable and unacceptable is that it be your reverence who has his hand in that sort of witchcraft—the salts with which the devil seasons the triumphs of those whose kingdom is this world.

Father, judging by the success announced in the wire report, your holiness merits a couple of pistols. If that wise gray head had discovered something more elevated and more worthy of his ministry—a new sausage, for example, or a new cake, or some cowled liqueur for an after-dinner cordial—he would merit a proper, priestly gift, a box of snuff, say. Unless he preferred a load of chocolate.

GOLD’S CHOLER

Our dear, dashing poet Leopoldo Díaz has told us in lovely free verse (with all the splendors of Hugo) how bronze rages. It is time that metals make their humors known. Silver has complained through the words of
Salamandra.
Lead impatiently awaits the hour of its battles. Not long ago, I heard gold, on a high hill, speak. It was so high that I could barely hear it, but this is more or less what I made out:

“I do not know why people say that worship of me is more widespread today than ever. The truth is, one hardly sees me anywhere. In times gone by, I incarnated the idolized calf and was exhibited to the eyes of all, so that all men might take pleasure in my divine radiance. Today, I am hoarded up and locked away in cellars. Of course I am also cut into pieces in a mint and stamped with this or that Caesarean profile, but at least here, in this great Buenos Aires, I am shown as no more than a rarity in the display cases of some Shylock or Isaac Simon. The fractional and ungainly ‘bill’ has replaced me. As condor, I have flown; as eagle, I live in Uncle Sam’s house; as pound, I have fled to London. My radiance can hardly be seen even in the showcases of jewelers. I am not all that glitters. Accompanying the
straß,
⁶³
which struts about like a
parvenu,
⁶⁴
is gold plate.

“But then again, I must frankly say: although the anarchists raise the red flag for me, I am no anarchist—I am an aristocrat. The face of the man in the street has never looked good on a bright new gleaming gold coin. I take the face of an Augustus, an Ivan, a Bonaparte magnificently. Once, I gleamed with my most triumphant radiance on imperial scepters, but since—as someone has said—kings laid down their scepters and took up brollies, I tend to shine most brightly in museums. In the times of the brave Indians, I was
everything
: God in the idol, jewel, palanquin, sandal, necklace, diadem; today I am a rare invalid whose pulse is taken on the Bourse every day.

“And I must make another confession: I am the friend not of tradesmen and financiers, but rather, to their amazement, of poets!, however proverbial my material distance from all the Orpheuses may be.

“Yes, of poets and women, who know better than any others how to value my marvels and my splendors. I have never reigned more proudly than when, as messenger of an Olympic love, I fell like an incomparable rain upon the breast of Danaë, or when, transformed into the most harmonious of lyres, I made the divine aether vibrate when the blond-haired poet-god sang.”

At that, I addressed myself, in the most clearly amiable and courteous way, to the proud metal: “Friend gold, how welcome are those words. You have spoken with a most plausible oracular voice. Poets have always sung your praises, and today, when they are obliged to be rich, they seek you and pursue you with the same zeal as the owner of the rotisserie and the manufacturer of matches. One of my most beloved teachers put the matter this way: For us poets, and for our brothers the artists, is it better to be rich, or poor? My teacher showed that in the past, it had been better to be poor, when poverty could be carried off well and having genius without having money was a way of life and a social position. But he advised rhymers to be rich, simply because ‘the world wants it that way’ and because Néstor Roqueplan quite rightly noted that no one is truly beautiful unless he follows his nation’s, and his time’s, fashion; doing otherwise is wearing a disguise. Unfortunately, in this century rhymes have been worth very little, and it has been the rare poet who, like Catulle Mendès, has possessed you purely because of his lyric jewels. Because really, who can make better use of you than poets and artists?

“Who would have used you better than Pindar, Gautier, Barbey d’Aurevilly, Edgar Allan Poe, Villiers de L’Isle-Adam?

“I picture to myself the incredible architecture, the crystallized dreams, the Oriental magic, the august wealth, the creative fantasy of a multimillionaire poet. For him, the Wagners, the dreamers of art. For him, castles on solitary islands, or beside mysterious lakes blooming with swans. They say that Louis of Bavaria was mad. He adored himself as a king and a poet, and he lived his life in a fairy tale. He was the last of the princes whose life can be told by beginning with the words ‘This man was a king. . . .’

“As for your wrath, divine Gold, at being imprisoned in the strongboxes of a simple banker, some vulgar millionaire, some member of the clan of idle rich—it is just, and moving. You serve for gentlemen’s gambling, serve to pay the English tailor and the industrialist and the lawyer, and so that honorable and distinguished fingers may have many rings. I, for my part, celestial Gold, adorable Gold, do not call you vile, or dirty, like tatterdemalion poets and writers who never get paid—I would know how to make you into admirable tunics and radiant slippers for all nine Muses, necklaces of wondrous pearls for the Hours, and all sorts of diamond-bedecked trinkets for the Games and the Graces, and for Laughter. And I would forget no one in the crystal palace with cupolas of gold, for each time the roses bloomed, I would send a gown sewn by a fairy to Pierrot’s gay little wife. I would spare myself the suffering of vulgar humankind; I would go as far as I might, to be admired by my companions, and my
Messages
would come from the heart of Persia, or the illustrious city of Samarkand.”

“Ay!” said Gold. “Now I really think it’s unlikely that you and I could live together! . . .”

IRON

The apotheosis of iron may be said to have been proclaimed in this century, in which men have attempted to give it a high place as a material for art. Huysmans attributes the triumph of iron to the utilitarianism of the age. “The age of utilitarian lust that we are now living through has nothing to envy the Stone Age, which stratified, in a certain way, high impulses and prayers, but it may be embodied in monuments that symbolize its activity and its sadness, its cleverness and its lucre, in works that are strange and hard—or at least new. And the matter of which they are made is iron.”

Indeed, for as in luminous ages and intellectual countries marble was the material in which the architect symbolized an artistic ideal, so iron, in this harsh and cyclopic century, is the Numen’s favored matter.

It was the Saxon who first raised metallic, cold, and heavy monuments. Now from mere nails, rails, and the portentous planking of bridges, iron has passed on to become the principal element of modern constructions. The artist is replaced by the engineer.