Of Sunlight, Irony and Pranks...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bousingots
The Bousingots/ Frénétiques of the 1830’s (among them Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, Xavier Forneret, Aloysius Bertrand, etc.) were not merely content to shock, but were truly interested in using art and artifice of the highest order to do so; not mere sensationalistic hack-work. But even here, Borel anticipated much that would come later. Not content with a purely literary existence, he took great pains to create a public persona that merged Life and Art into a fully functional unity (much as the absurdist ‘Pataphysician’ Alfred Jarry would do nearly 60 years later). Borel became ‘le Lycanthrope’; a self-styled werewolf /Dandy making his appearance in nighttime Parisian cafés impeccably attired; his close-cropped beard framing lips that were carefully stained with carmine tint, intending to hint that he’d just finished consuming live, fresh flesh.
The Frénétiques were a kind of literary amalgam composed of equal parts Poe, Sade and Grand Guignol. Their lurid, gory descriptions of violent murders, executions and the like were a later influence upon what the British would call ‘Penny Dreadfuls’. Indeed, the work of Sade was duly noted (particularly ‘Juliette’ and ‘Justine’; the Opus Sadicum) as a direct influence upon the style and approach of the Frénétiques. This direct assault upon bourgeois values did not go unnoticed for long…
A certain Jules Janin, self-styled literary/dramatic critic and defender of bourgeois morality, lashed out in le Journal des Débats (one of the many periodicals of the day devoted to all things cultural), against Sade, Borel and their ilk. Furthermore, in order to show the Bousingots/ Frénétiques the error of their ways, Monsieur Janin decided to parody them away with a work of his own careful crafting; ‘l’Âne Mort et la Femme Guillotinée’ (‘The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman’). The book was an absolute hit with the Bousingots/ Frénétiques, who felt that Janin had mastered the genre immediately, going as far as to intimate that only a man who loved the genre could have written such a convincing work. The public, too, took Janin to be yet another Frénétique and turned his book into a runaway best-seller (complete with excellent and lurid illustrations by well-known book illustrator of the day, Tony Johannot).
Janin was furious, but the fun was just beginning…
By way of sweet revenge, Borel quoted just 2 words from Janin’s work in the poem below, as a prelude. The positioning of the quote at the head of Borel’s poem and the attribution of the quote to Janin directly, implies that it is Janin who is the ‘poor bugger’. This would be the public equivalent of taping a ‘Kick Me !’ sign to Janin’s back, and turning him loose in Parisian café and literary society, were this little incident to have occurred in our own time.
Lesson for Janin: never publicly challenge known pranksters.
In Borel’s poem below, the use of irony is fresh and palpable. His evocation of Nature stands in stark contrast to the sentimentalist poets of the time, and is intended to be so. A certain literary ferocity is set into motion with Borel (and his debt to Sade). This ferocity and irony would reach its pinnacle with Arthur Rimbaud 40 years later (Rimbaud’s 1870 poem ‘le Dormeur du Val’ (‘The Sleeper in the Valley’) sets a strikingly similar tone to the poem below). Think of Borel as the ‘Stooges’, ‘MC5’ and ‘New York Dolls’ all rolled into one to Arthur Rimbaud’s ‘Sex Pistols’ ‘J’accuse’-style attack on the Petite Bourgeoisie.
Hymne au Soleil
(À André Borel).
-
Pauvre bougre !
Jules JANIN
Là dans ce sentier creux, promenoir solitaire
De mon clandestin mal,
Je viens tout souffreteux, et je me couche à terre
Comme un brute animal.
Je viens couver ma faim, la tête sur la pierre,
Appeler le sommeil,
Pour étancher un peu ma brûlante paupière ;
Je viens user mon écot de soleil !
Là-bas dans la cité, l’avarice sordide
Des chefs sur tout champart :
Au mouton-peuple on vend le soleil et le vide ;
J’ai payé, j’ai ma part !
Mais sur tous, tous égaux devant toi, soleil juste,
Tu verses tes rayons,
Qui ne sont pas plus doux au front d’un Sire auguste,
Qu’au sale front d’une gueuse en haillons.
Pétrus Borel (d’Hauterive), Rhapsodies, 1832.
Hymn to the Sun
(to André Borel)
Poor Bugger !
Jules Janin
There in this hollow trail, lone promenade,
Of my clandestine pain,
I come in utter sickness, and I lie down upon the ground
Like a brute animal.
I come to brood upon my hunger, head upon stone,
To invoke sleep,
That it might quench a little my burning eyelid;
I come to use my share of sun !
Down there in the city, the squalid greed,
From masters gloating upon all their extorted wealth:
To the sheep-people: sun and emptiness are sold;
I paid, I have my share !
But for all, all are equal before you, o just sun,
You pour forth your rays,
Which fall no more sweetly on the countenance of an august Lord,
Than on the forehead of a filthy swine clad in rags.
Pétrus Borel (d’Hauterive), Rhapsodies, 1832.
[Traduction Anglaise: Raymond E. André III, 2009]