in the early days of the year 1911, a young man who was very badly dressed went running up the rue houdon. his extremely mobile countenance seemed to be filled with joy and anxiety by turns. his eyes devoured all that they saw and when his eyelids snapped shut quickly like jaws, they gulped in the universe, which renewed itself incessantly by the mere operation of him who ran. he imagined to the tiniest details the enormous worlds pastured in himself. the clamour and the thunder of paris burst from afar and about the young man, who stopped, and panted like some criminal who has been too long pursued and is ready to surrender himself. this clamour, this noise indicated clearly that his enemies were about to track him like a thief. his mouth and his gaze expressed the ruse he was employing, and walking slowly now, he took refuge in his memory, and went forward, while all the forces of his destiny and of his consciousness retarded the time when the truth should appear of that which is, that which was, and of that which is to be.
the young man entered a one story house. on the open door was a placard:
entrance to the studios
he followed a corridor where it was so dark and so cold that he had the feeling of having died, and with all his will, clenching his fists and gritting his teeth he began to take eternity to bits. then suddenly he was conscious again of the motion of time whose seconds, hammered by a clock, fell like pieces of broken glass, while life flowed in him again with the renewed passage of time. but as he stopped to rap at a door, his heart beat more strongly again, for fear of finding no one home.
he rapped at the door and cried:
"it is i, croniamantal!"
and behind the door the heavy steps of a man who seemed tired, or carried too weighty a burden, came slowly, and as the door opened there took place in the sudden light the creation of two beings and their instant marriage.
in the studio, which looked like a barn, an innumerable herd flowed in dispersion: they were the sleeping pictures, and the herdsman who tended them smiled at his friend. upon a carpenter's table piles of yellow books could be likened to mounds of butter. and pushing back the ill-joined door, the wind brought in unknown beings who complained with little cries in the name of all the sorrows. all the wolves of distress howled behind the door ready to devour the flock, the herdsman and his friend, in order to prepare in their place the foundations for the new city. but in the studio there were joys of all colours. a great window opened the whole north side and nothing could be seen but the whole blue sky, the song of a woman. croniamantal took off his coat which fell to the floor like the corpse of a drowned man, and sitting on the divan he gazed for a long time at the new canvas placed on the support. dressed in a blue wrap, barefooted, the painter also regarded the picture in which two women remembered themselves in a glacial mist.
the studio contained another fatal object, a large piece of broken mirror hooked to the wall. it was a dead and soundless sea, standing on end, and at the bottom of which a false life animated what did not exist. thus, confronting art, there is the appearance of art, against which men are not sufficiently on their guard, and which pulls them to earth when art has raised them to the heights. croniamantal bent over in a sitting posture, leaned his fore-arms on his knees, and turned his eyes from the painting to a placard thrown on the floor on which was painted the following announcement:
i am at the bar—the bird of benin
he read and re-read this sentence while the bird of benin contemplated his picture, approaching it and withdrawing from it, his head at all angles. finally he turned towards croniamantal and said:
"i saw the woman for you last night."
"who is she?" asked croniamantal.
"i do not know, i saw her but i do not know her. she is a really young girl, as you like them. she has the sombre and child-like face of those who are destined to cause suffering. and despite all the grace of her hands that straighten in order to repel, she lacks that nobility which poets could not love because it would prevent their being miserable. i have seen the woman for you, i tell you. she is both beauty and ugliness; she is like everything that we love nowadays. and she must have the taste of the laurel leaf."
but croniamantal, who was not listening to him, interrupted at this point to say:
"yesterday i wrote my last poem in regular verses:
well,
hell![6]
and my last poem in irregular verses (take care that in the second stanza the word wench is taken in its less reputable meaning):
prospectus for a new medicine
why did hjalmar return
the tankard of beaten silver lay void,
the stars of the evening
became the stars of the morning
reciprocally
the sorceress of the forest of hrulo?
prepared her repast
she was an eater of horse-flesh
but he was not
mai mai ramaho nia nia.
then the stars of the morning
became again the stars of the evening
and reciprocally
they cried—in the name of mar?e
wench of arnamoer
and of his favorite zo?phyte
prepare the drink of the gods
—certainly noble warrior
mai mai ramaho nia nia.
she took the sun
and plunged him into the sea
as housewives
dip a ham in gravy
but alas! the salmons voracious
have devoured the drowned sun
and have made themselves wigs
with his beams
mai mai ramaho nia nia.
she took the moon and did her all with bands
as they do with the illustrious dead
and with little children
and then in the light of the only stars
the eternal ones
she made a concoction of sea-brine
the euphorbiaceans of norwegian resin
and the mucous of alfes
to make a drink for the gods
mai mai ramaho nia nia.
he died like the sun
and the sorceress perched at the top of a fir pine
heard until evening
the rumours of the great winds engulfed in the phial
and the lying scaldas swear to this
mai mai ramaho nia nia.
croniamantal was silent for an instant and then added:
"i shall from now on write only poetry free from all restrictions even that of language.[7]
"listen, old man!"
mahevidanomi
renanocalipnoditoc
extartinap # v.s.
a. z.
telephone: 33-122 pan : pan
oeaoiiiioktin
iiiiiiiiiiii
"your last line, my poor croniamantal," said the bird of benin, "is a simple plagiarism from fr.nc.s j.mm.s."
"that is not true," said croniamantal. "but i shall compose no more pure poetry. that is what i have come to, through your fault. i want to write plays."
"you had better go to see the young woman of whom i spoke to you. she knows you and seems to be crazy about you. you will find her in the meudon woods next thursday at a place that i shall designate. you will recognize her by the skipping rope that she will hold in her hand. her name is tristouse ballerinette."
"very well," said croniamantal, "i shall go to see ballerinette and shall sleep with her, but above all i want to go to the theatres to offer my play, ieximal jelimite, which i wrote in your studio last year while eating lemons."
"do what you want, my friend," said the bird of benin, "but do not forget tristouse ballerinette, the woman of your future."
"well said," said croniamantal. "but i want to roar to you once more the plot of ieximal jelimite. listen:
"a man buys a newspaper on the seashore. from the garden of a house at one side emerges a soldier whose hands are electric bulbs. a giant 10 feet tall descends from a tree. he shakes the newspaper vendor, who is of plaster and who in falling breaks to bits. at this moment a judge arrives. with strokes of a razor he kills everybody, while a leg which passes hopping crushes the judge with a kick in the nose, and sings a pretty little song."
"how wonderful!" said the bird of benin. "i shall paint the decoration, you have promised me that."
"that goes without saying," answered croniamantal.
