3
'(• • •) souvent il donnoit a ses voisines ce qui appartenoit a sa femme, combien que ce fust le plus
secretement qu'il pouvoit' (ed. cit., p. 369).
4
Heptameron (Paris, Classiques Gamier, 1964), p. 483, note 623. Cf. les remarques de Pierre Jourda
(Co/tteursjramais duXVT siede (Pans, Gallimard, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, 1956), p. 1418 et Yves Le Hir
(M. de Navarre, Nouvelles (Pans, P.U.F.-Universite de Grenoble, 1967), p. 373).
5
Dans son edition de ['Heptameron (Paris, G. F. -Flammanon, 1982), p. 516.
6
Ed cit., pp. 760—61.
7
L'ouvrage formera la seconde partie de YHtstoire abre'ge'e de differens miles (Paris, Guillaume, Ponthieu et
Peytieux, 1825).
8
Pans, Societe du Mercure de France, 1905, p. 278.
9
Op. cit., p. 280.
10
Ed. cit, pp. 760-61.
U
Eipigrammes, I, 6; CEurves poe'tiques, ed. par Gerard Defaux (Paris, Gamier, 1995), II, pp. 205—06 et
comm. p. 991.
12
CEurves completes, ed. par M. Huchon et F. Moreau (Pans, Gallimard, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, 1994),
13
LES / ESCRAIGNES / DIJONNOISES. / Reeueillies par le sieur des / Accords. / [marque] / A
ROUEN, / Chez DAVID GEUFFROY, demeurant / a la rue des Cordeliers, joignant / Sainct Pierre. /
[filet] / 1616. (f. i7v o -i8r°). Quant a la jeune fille de la nouvelle I, XIX: 'comme les Innocens
s'approchaient, elle estoit menacee de tous costez' (f i9r o ).
14
CEurves computes, ed par Georges Couton (Paris, Gallimard, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, 1987), III,
pp. 1313-14 (texte), 1694—98 (notes).
On remarquera la presence, dans ce recueil Bnenne (ms. 5171), f. 187, du poeme 'Sur le canal de
Languedoc pour la |onction des deux mers' (ed. cit. p 731), traduction du poeme latin de 1'avocat
toulousain L. Pansot (dont les vers sont egalement transcnts). Aucune variante n'est a relever, par rapport
a la version lmprimee (ibid., 1584), ce qui montre que les copies manuscrites anciennes savent aussi etre
fideles (ibid., p. 1696).
16
Voir la bibliographie du Recueil des textes et des documents du XVIIe stick relatifs a Corneille, de Georges
Mongredien (Paris, Editions du C.N.R.S., 1972).
17
Sur ces recueils, voir Danielle Muzerelle, 'Le recueil Conart a la Bibliotheque de PArsenal', XVIIe St'ecle,
192, 1996, pp. 477-87).
BAUDELAIRE, WILDE, THE ACTRESS AND THE MASK
BARBARA WRIGHT, Dublin
It can, no doubt, be put down to serendipity, since Baudelaire's novella, La
Fanfarlo (1847) was not widely known until after the poet's death, but parts of
Oscar Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), bear an uncanny
resemblance to the earlier work.
The duality which characterises the structure of La Fanfarlo and the personality
of its protagonist, Samuel Cramer, heralds the starding dichotomy of the
relationship between the painting and the person of Dorian Gray (who begin by
being so similar that there is no difference between 'the one who is pouring out
the tea' and 'the one in the picture').1 The binary nature of Samuel Cramer is
highlighted, from the outset, by the fact that he was born of a phlegmatic
German and a hot-blooded Chilean. Furthermore, he adopted a feminine
pseudonym, Manuela de Monteverde, thus playing on the male-female opposition inherent in the Romantic concept of die androgyne. Presented as a latterday knight errant, Samuel Cramer sets out on a mission for his belle dame sans
merci, Madame de Cosmelly. He then gets caught in a trap of his own making,
since, with the ulterior motive of obtaining a 'reward' from Madame de
Cosmelly, Samuel seeks to woo the dancer, La Fanfarlo, away from Monsieur de
Cosmelly, but ends by falling in love with her himself. True, there is no diabolic
pact in La Fanfarlo, no portrait which grows old as its subject appears to have the
gift of eternal youth. In Baudelaire's novella, there is no painting which constitutes
the life-line of the protagonist, as in Oscar Wilde's novel (although, since Dorian
[81] 5
Gray did not realise that to stab his portrait would be to stab himself, he can be
said to have committed suicide unintentionally). Notwithstanding these deviations, it may, however, be instructive to reflect on the parallelisms between the
two works, in so far as the figure of the actress is concerned.
In ways which anticipate the love of Dorian Gray for the actress, Sybil Vane,
Samuel Cramer loves the dancer, La Fanfarlo, for all the multiple identities of
the roles she plays, 'par une agreable succession de metamorphoses sous les
personnages de Colombine, de Marguerite, d'Elvire et de Zephyrine':2 ranging
from Italian commedia dell'arte to Goethe's Faust and Moliere's Don Juan, these
different identities make of her 'a la fois un caprice de Shakespeare et une
bouffonnerie italienne' (LF, 63). For Dorian Gray, Sybil Vane is 'all the great
heroines of the world in one.' 'She is more than an individual' (DG, 54). 'Tonight
she is Imogen, and tomorrow night she will be Juliet', he tells Lord Henry
Wotton, who then asks: 'When is she Sybil Vane?' Whereupon Dorian Gray
replies: 'Never.' In La Fanfarlo, when the couple cease being 'The Poet' and 'The
Dancer', their love ends: she gives up her career for his sake, has twins, gets fat
and becomes an upper-class tart; he becomes a hack writer and falls 'bien bas'
(LF, 70). In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Sibyl Vane, in love with the protagonist,
sees through the 'hollowness', the 'sham' of the 'empty pageant' (DG, 86), in
which she had always played. However, from the moment that she ceased to be
an actress, she lost the love of Dorian Gray. Her fatal weakness is that she values
life over art. 'Without your art,' he said to her, 'you are nothing' (DG, 87). That
night she committed suicide.
Frequendy described by Baudelaire as a 'comedien,' Samuel Cramer's mosdy
hypocritical play-acting is not dissimilar to that of Lord Henry Wotton, who says
to Dorian Gray: 'I love acting. It is so much more real than life' {DG, 79). Samuel
Cramer conducts his sensual life in the company of La Fanfarlo with the
detachment and control of an actor or a poet. When, in the seduction scene, she
advances towards him 'dans la splendeur radieuse et sacree de sa nudite' (LF,
66), he insists that her maid-servant rush back to the theatre, at three in the
morning, in the driving rain, to get her Colombine costume and thunders after
her not to forget the rouge. Here, too, it would be appropriate to say, with Lord
Henry Wotton:
Suddenly wefindthat we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we
are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us. <pG, 101)
In both La Fanfarlo and The Portrait of Dorian Gray, there are elements of selfportraiture. The art of the self-portrait, as described by Jacques Derrida in
Me'moires d'aveugles, exemplifies the experience of the mask, as it oscillates between
the seer and the spectacle, between the eye and the gaze, and between an
objective sense of self, rooted in exterior reality, and that which is interior and
intimate, and which can only be represented through memory.3 For both
Baudelaire and Wilde, the conventional mirror of art could never offer a true
depiction of lived reality. The self-reflexivity and the fictionalisation of real
events in La Fanfarlo attest to this recognition. Indeed, the specular image
provided by the mirror could, for Baudelaire, only lead to truth through
distortion and inversion. Indeed, a parallel understanding by Wilde, that perhaps
the only means of approaching the self is through distortion, may have led to his
masterful development of the portrait as mask. The painting, consigned to the
6 [81]
attic of Dorian Gray's house, is a type of mask, which conceals, defends and
simulates. It also sees, its hideous eyes following the viewer as he moves. Both
Baudelaire and Wilde found that looking through a mask at oneself provides an
acute means of seeing oneself as Other. It acts, in the words of Umberto Eco, as
an imaginative 'prosthesis,'4 which extends the range of self-perception and, in
so doing, draws us closer to a version of the truth.
1
Oscar Wilde, The Picture ofDonan Gray, ed. by Isobel Murray ('The World's Classics', Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1994), p- 29. All further references will be to this edition and will be designated by the
abbreviation 'DC
2
Charles Baudelaire, La Fanfarlo, ed. by Barbara Wright & David Scott ('GF, 478, Paris, Flammanon,
1987), p. 62. All further references will be to this edition and will be designated by the abbreviation 'LF.'
3
See Jacques Dernda, Me'moms d'aveugles: I'autoportratt et autres mines (Pans, Reunion des Musees
nationaux, 1999)^. 48.
4
Umberto Eco, Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition, tr. Alastair McEwen (London,
Seeker & Warburg, 1999), p. 368.
THE REMEMBERED MOMENT: BAUDELAIRE, LAFORGUE, ELIOT
ANNE HOLMES, Oxford
'In a widow's veil, mysteriously and mutely borne along by the crowd, an
unknown woman comes into the poet's field of vision'.1 This is the subject of
Baudelaire's 'A une Passante', a sonnet which encapsulated for Walter Benjamin
the spirit of the modern in lyric poetry. He argued that it could not have been
written before the city offered thtflaneurits wealth of transient impressions. The
poem describes an experience of love at first sight that is also love at last sight.
The two moments are fused: 'It is a farewell for ever that coincides with the
moment of enchantment' (ibid). Naturally this revolutionary poem has had a
following. Claude Leroy has recently traced the myth of the 'passante', as it
appears in a number of poets including Corbiere and Laforgue, through to
Mandiargues.2 Laforgue's 'Complainte de la bonne defunte', a poem treated by
Leroy, that recounts a haunting encounter, is written in the minor key and selfconsciously set against the powerful Baudelaire sonnet. That it owes its existence
to life as well as to literature is clear from a diary entry of March 1883: 'Ma belle
inconnue de l'Opera! Souvenir eternel: Elle aura ma derniere pensee a mon lit de
mort. Ideal entrevu et enfui. Je suis sur qu'elle a vu que je l'adorais et qu'elle m'en
a adore — Ou est-elle?'3
I would like to extend the comparison across languages to a T.S. Eliot poem,
'La Figlia Che Piange', which is generally acknowledged to have been written
under the sign of Laforgue.4 Its subject is not a 'passante', but it is an arresting
vision of beauty: the parting of two lovers, the girl of the tide and a man who
turns out to be the narrator of the poem. In this sense it is also a poem of last
love. The sense of obsession found in all three poems is developed even more
by Eliot than by Laforgue, who, in keeping with his general approach in the
Complaintes, treats it with an easily detectable irony. What the three poems share
is the fusion of the ephemeral moment and the unforgettable experience. In all
three cases, of course, the described scene is 'une resurrection par l'ecriture'.5
The title of Laforguer's complainte, which recalls his facetious 'Complainte de
cette bonne lune', immediately indicates that his 'defunte' is not to be taken too
seriously. This is not a tragic tale in Edgar Allan Poe style. We learn in line eight
that what has died is the dream of the girl, not the girl herself: 'Elle, loyal reve
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