Afterword

(Afterword of Volume IV of Complete Works, Tchou)

A singular usage, you know, of the afterword, and which is akin to the most common rule of making the circus orchestra clang after the last number, while the public stands up and in people's minds the memory of the rider begins to mingle with that of the trapeze artists, the Japanese acrobats, the clowns, the learned dogs, the tigers and the tamer with an amiable license which is not thus as the prelude or the preparation of the dream. The finale of the orchestra, in fact, opens on something, which is the second imaginary spectacle where the child and even the adult will be astonished or charmed even more (we wish them) than in the good times when they tormented the plush seats of the round gallery with their pants. Because of this opening, the finale is justified. Is the same true of the afterword? I would like to, but I'm not sure. Singular use, I said. What is certain is that when we are required to comply, it is not a question of making noise, especially here. Because all the texts, or all the numbers, on which the reader is about to formally close the book oppose this; Jean Paulhan, moreover, would be annoyed.
Instead of Jean Paulhan, I will henceforth write J. P., not so much to recall a certain F. F. of whom the reader, unless initiated to the higher levels of the library, will have become aware at the beginning of the collection, but because these initials, the first, go to the eyes of the lover of literature and the lover of books (two different species) with more fire than those of any other ancient or modern writer, and then because in beautiful capitals, somewhat typographic in appearance, they sign most of the dedications which will delight amateurs (of the second type).

J. P., therefore, on the occasion of L'Auberge Parpillon, which he had followed by a text reproduced here, wrote: “This little afterword may seem completely useless.” “However, I believe that it is not,” he writes again. In the case of Noël Devaulx and J. P., no, of course; but in the case of J. P. and me, this is a more doubtful affair, I said to myself. That I am a little embarrassed, a little intimidated, in writing this, that I was before I started, I will not hide it. What is asked of me, in short, is to add an echo to a sum of (different) echoes, and to make mine the echo of the echoes sent back by J. P., to be (but without noise!) the final echo. Let us recognize that this approach, too difficult for me to take it further, has a baroque character which does not displease me. Echo is one of the arguments most often used by baroque poets. It is, in the domain of hearing, what the mirror is in that of sight. Many a critical text could gain appeal by using the words mirror and echo as a subtitle. Minds that have managed to keep from aging (those we prefer) would find their benefit there, through the grace of play. Baroque aside, I don't think I have strayed very far from J.P.
In thus receiving the echo and the reflection, in reading and rereading these acute texts, which are, generally, introductions or comments to a singular book or to the work of a surprising writer, I took great pleasure, and more than that. I mean, since one is not attentive without being a little voyeur, it often seemed to me that I was spying on J. P. in the company of what he loved best in the world, according to appearances. Because J. P., who really likes painting (modern paintings), who likes curious objects, who likes food and drinks (unusual, preferably), who really likes the company of women, from what I thought I saw, and who likes to love, I think I understood, will have liked none of this, no doubt, as much as he likes literature. This last term is as vague as possible so that we are inclined to notice a nuance or to establish a distinction which is not superficial. Among the literati (as we find it amusing to say in China), the greatest number are so inclined that their interest is mainly in books. Of this species, the best representative that we can cite is a man who amazed us and of whom J. P. spoke here briefly but deliciously: Larbaud. In this man, as long as he lived or at least was healthy, the passion for the literary object par excellence remained tyrannical to the point of dominating that of the feminine object and, through the comparison of the library with the brothel, of elevating the book above the woman herself. At J. P., things are different; I would like us to have felt here how much less respectful he is than Larbaud (which is not to displease us, no); I would like it to be recognized that his glance goes beyond the book and at the same time that he dismantles it (which amounts to saying that J. P. has a greater interest in the writer and in his words than in the book strictly considered).
The person and the language, in fact, seem to me to be the two points on which J. P. focuses with the most insistence and satisfaction as soon as he has decided to pass a critical judgment on literary matters. By the consideration given to this couple, the work itself, novel, poem, essay, goes to a somewhat lower plane, without escaping the gaze. That this method (if there really is a desire for a method there, which I am not sure of) leads to a more original judgment, of that I am really certain. Its best advantage is perhaps to thwart in the bud the formation of an aesthetic praise, such as those to which we all have the weakness to indulge, in writing or in conversation, because we cannot sufficiently detach ourselves from the book we are observing or make it explode with a violent glance. With J. P., never, or almost never, is there a question of a “beautiful” novel, of an “admirable” poem; and of the category of the “sublime”, of which so copious use is made today, J. P. does not hide the fact that he is rather suspicious. A story, sometimes, but it is a praise (explained), is judged “boring”; more often, it is rarity, or naturalness, flavor, weight, clarity, insolence, humor, which are praised; and always the figure of the author and the virtues of vocabulary and expression complete the account, and on any work taken into examination J. P. gives less a critical opinion than he draws a portrait.
With regard to this strange sort of people who are true writers, those, I mean, who have not been pushed to use words by concerns of interest, vanity or domination, what friendship, almost caressing and certainly searching, does he not show! Physically the writer interests him as soon as he begins to pay attention to his work; he looks at it, it seems as if he touches it, but as he would a feathered Polynesian mask or a Tibetan drum.
Thus: “It is curious that expression is said of both physiognomy and style, as if it were necessary to discern some secret but constant resemblance from the language to the features of the face.” In the collection that we have just read, there is a long and substantial gallery of physiognomies that we would like to transport into reality and place at the entrance to the ideal library which is the dearest desire and the most exhilarating mirage of all those whom the love of literature has conquered. The writers make, if not a makeover, at least a pleasant carnal display (and thus we find ourselves at the threshold of the brothel-library mentioned by Larbaud). Opening the gallery, here is Fénéon at the age of thirty-three: “He has thick eyebrows, a strong nose, a sloping face, but the look of his golden-brown eyes is rather tender.” Duranty “was a small bearded man, with a slightly odd appearance, a slightly ugly face, and who seemed stunned or troubled”. At Groethuysen: “The eyebrow was rather barbaric. The eyes in their cave, between green and silver gray, quick to twitch and blink.” In the case of Sade himself, who is only known through hearsay, the showman liked to think of “those blue eyes towards which, as children, the ladies leaned; of that nothing of softness in the figure, of those most beautiful teeth in the world”. “But what woman, and who are you?” he asks Pauline Réage, whose veiled face appears in a nicely intriguing way behind one of the sharpest texts in the collection, about one of the best-armed books (“those which mark their reader”) of our time. Hamsun, for his part, "is red: he has chewed mustaches, eyebrows designed to be furrowed, a shoulder that can stop cars. We feel him at every moment close to turning his face into a brick." Malcolm de Chazal “was bald early. He wears thick glasses and short mustache. His face is like an icebreaker.” Vallès is painted through three poor guys who, resembling him, were executed in his place: “Same yellow complexion, large forehead pulling downward, coal eyes, bushy beard; one of the three was drowned, the other two shot.” After the Commune, aged, diabetic, Vallès, says J. P., “is disconcertingly beautiful”. Cingria “is himself a stocky man. Rather short, but thick. Red, greedy. Golden.” Gide had an appearance perhaps too picturesque to remain strongly in the gaze of J. P., “this inflexible Mongol with the head of a beetle”, that is all that leaves us (insufficiently) to imagine him, throughout two essays which on a critical level are among the most successful in the collection. Too extraordinary also, undoubtedly, the magnificent Etruscan face of Ungaretti, the most superbly tormented face of a poet that has ever come before my eyes, and it is the opportunity to notice that J. P. is a little hesitant, a little reluctant, in the face of any form of excess, even if it is physical only and specific to a writer whose person, works and spirit are powerfully dear to him. Saint-John Perse, finally, is the best honored of all those we have just reviewed, and yet J. P.'s gaze does not bite on him either. Should we attribute this absence from the exhibition wall (to the hunting board) to respect, for once? I would be inclined to believe it; without insuring it.
One of the texts that we have just read with the most pleasure (if you are like me) is the one devoted to the “good use” of tarot cards. It will have been noticed, I hope, that the two words in quotation marks are precisely those which entitle most of the higher grammars. And J. P. adds: “The tarot cards are a language, of which only the alphabet is given to us.” From pretentious tarot users and occult specialists, it is clear that J.P. does not expect much. “As happens with famous mediums one day or another, they cheat,” he says of them. And “occult facts”, that they “dissolve or go astray, as soon as they are brought to light”. Now it seems to me that alongside the tarot cards, it is literature, once again, which is called into question here, and that what is said from the secret also applies to it, and that quite contrary to common criticism J. P. does not expect from it, any more than from the tarot cards, a profitable result, a gain, a message for the future, but that as a disinterested amateur he looks into its workings (which he enjoys dismantling, I I said it) and the way they play gives passionate attention. Exciting too, since the lessons that emerge from this long-considered game are multiple and clear.
We have just highlighted in J.P. (who loves all games and not just writing) the detestation of cheating. In a letter, not long ago, he quoted: "The very beautiful word of the Upanishads: Do not linger where you have already found. And a fact no less obvious: it is that those who linger always end up cheating." Implicit, confirmed by all the texts collected here, is the condemnation of one of the infirmities which afflict many modern narrators and poets, like so many of their painter or sculptor contemporaries. Honesty, spontaneity, are in J. P.'s opinion the best literary virtues, in the spirit no less than in the expression; the writers in whom he shows interest or more are those who have known how to avoid the process or the recipe and who do not dawdle; embarrassment, constraint, when he surprises them, bothers him, like missteps or visible effort on a dance floor. That writers are curious is another virtue which pleases J.P., and which I believe is difficult to do without. Was it not J. P., moreover, who pointed out to us how common it is to have only one word for opposite meanings, in French as well as in the most primitive languages, and how easily language gets by with it? Yes. And the word curious is precisely of this kind, since it changes meaning depending on whether its role is active or passive and equally suits the observer and the thing or person observed. Gide (about whom J. P. notes that “we have not had, in our West, so many curious writers”) is curious in the active sense, in the manner of Sade, and this is what earns both of them, on the part of J. P., a sympathy pushed to the highest point. Immediately, it must be added that Gide and Sade are no less curious writers according to the second and passive meaning of the word, and that the high reading grade given to their work is justified by this last argument as much as by the first. But the inquisitive mind par excellence, “endowed with curiosity” (as he says, for greater precision, again about Gide), is without a doubt J. P.. The truly curious, I don't think it's the great oddities that he's on the lookout for. J. P., in his stories, showed us that the simplest aspects of life, through the original attention he paid to them, reached the extraordinary and even the fantastic. This is how he behaves with writers: he enters into their work as into an ordinary house, he goes there as one only goes into a foreign house through the grace of solitude and indiscretion, he makes it his own (in some cases, he does not hide the fact that he feels better than elsewhere). Because he doesn't use switches in the usual way, anything capable of renewal becomes vivid.
In there, he's having fun, and he doesn't hide it. I said he was disrespectful everywhere except Perse. But it is disrespectful as one is in a place of delight, a palace, a monument whose beautiful order exalts, or near a loved one. The doors and drawers closed, the clothes buttoned, he quickly opened all of this, with a joy that needs no apologies. I believe that he loves writers and the work of writers as we ordinarily love women and children, by playing with them and placing them in an atmosphere of play (we never stop, with J. P., coming back to this), by ridding them of all stiffness and all constraint. Because the girdles and corsets annoy him (without however repelling his curiosity), and the tusks, and the multiple poses with which people who are said to be literate are often afflicted, for their obvious annoyance. At the opposite end (almost), we see that J. P. is quite fond of minor faults or slight ridicule in those whom he has decided to examine and who are the objects of his gloss. Pleasure which, I hasten to say, is still a pleasure of love. From this angle considered, literary criticism as a young man J. P. carries it out, with merciless tenderness and always with joy, at a brisk pace but with a lucidity which cuts deep, with unforeseen attacks but delights in the face of discoveries, is a unique thing, and I know of nothing that is comparable to it in its category.
Since I have spoken of love, I will observe, to support my point, that there are no critical texts as devoid of anger as those we have read here. Is it not obvious that J. P., who is nevertheless “the complete opposite” of a harmless mind, is only inclined to write about what he finds good, amusing, lovable, and which to condemn he would be bored? I really want to cite him as an example, in contrast to these prickly critics who believe themselves to be avant-garde and who play the pawn and the cop with ease and jubilation...
No doctrine, no preliminary theory governs this collection, where we are only sensitive to a certain spiritual climate intermediate between Stoicism and Epicureanism, which is not without reminding us a little of Montaigne, on the subject of whose figure he was here treated wonderfully with physiognomy. Wonderfully, yes, too bad for the big word, the very example of what displeases J. P. when he stands in the camp of Jules Renard. But there are these texts, generally short, which are inhabited by the happiness we had in writing them and which give others the rare joy of reading. And the Portrait of Montaigne is one of them. I would also like to say a few words of a certain ambiguity.

It seems to me that J. P. always put up with extreme positions, and that he never had to make an effort to move from one to the other. Better: I believe that more than anyone he has the art of simultaneously occupying spiritual positions located at the antipodes of each other. When he stands, as he frequently does, in what I call the Jules Renard camp, it is the simplicity and nudity of thought and expression that he rallies around, and it is for a terrorist classicism, in short, that he votes (or fights). However, this taking of sides does not cause him any difficulty in loving or defending the works of people who, like Cingria, Malcolm de Chazal, hold high the precious flag, baroque even in the second case. And Sade's thought nor that of Pauline Réage are undoubtedly of classical substance (they go back and forth between baroque and romantic). In the political domain, which is not my business, has not J. P. demonstrated that ambiguity is the necessary condition for freedom of mind? That's not all. Because in his most recent writings, in his Discourse to the Academy, among others, J. P. frequently returns to this notion (it is much more than an idea) of the coexistence of extremes and the equivalence of opposite poles. In a way, it broadens the principle of non-exclusion which since Heisenberg's relation has become one of the keys to modern mathematics and physics. That he grasped there something like a key to the universe and, what is more interesting, to the human mind, I would be inclined to believe.
Knowledge and love have the effect of abolishing oppositions. This is, broadly speaking, one of the good lessons that these critical examples have just given us. Balloon obstacles will have been deflated on our route. With a little surprise at first, we will have agreed to let poetry descend from the clouds and raise prose from the mud where fanaticism would have wanted to confine it. Loving literature very much, but not making it, as they say, a drama, here is a critical attitude which is strictly modern; even more modern if the passion is pushed to the point of putting literature on the same level as the sciences and religions in the scaffolding of this prodigious artifice which is man. The best of the new writers in French, Italian, English, Spanish (from Latin America), Swedish, I know that's how they think. Some have read Jean Paulhan, others have not, but his spirit has spread throughout the thought of the whole world, and all have received an echo of this great low voice which speaks of literature and language with such meaning and irony.