During Lent
Concerning fin de siècle
ingenuousness and Mlle Yvette Guilbert,
five lectures at the Théâtre d'Application, by M. Hugues Le
Roux.
FOR HORACE FINALY.
Ingenuousness? People
frequently tell us about that of the singer, and in telling us
about it they amuse us without convincing us: we have too much
respect for the ingenuous to want to give them to Mlle Yvette
Guilbert as a companion and too frequently have we savoured, at
the Concert Parisien or the Nouveau Cirque, her keen delights to
call it ingenuousness. Ingenuousness? Should we then not talk
about that of the critic who has given five lectures on Yvette
Guilbert, four more than M. Ganderax gave on Molière? But that
is no longer ingenuousness exactly. It is something - if I dare
use an expression that has come to us from M. Prudhomme which he
uses to adorn some of his observations today - very "fin de
siècle", and, something that is not difficult, even more
"fin de siècle" than Mlle Yvette Guilbert.
It is worth mentioning here, in fact, that by
virtue of an evolution too complex to be analyzed here, French
criticism between 1889 and 1891 has become dogmatic once more,
not in a different sense, but on different grounds than
previously. Let's take M. Jules Lemaître for example.
It is for one of the seemingly less contestable
literary works of art that he feels the most fondness, professes
the greatest veneration: he dare not affirm anything, for fear of
judgement, or give his judgement other than as an entirely
personal preference, denying it beforehand any universal value.
It is for an evening spent at the Concert Parisien: he tries to
create a theory of the musical "catch-phrase" and to
create scientific basis for the simple café-concert song. Take
our most refined dilettantes, our most elegant Pyrrhonians to the
Scala and behold they turn into fierce dogmatics. We would not
know how to attribute such a marvellous metamorphosis to the
mysterious suggestions that float through the café-concerts, in
winter on the blue cigar smoke, in summer in the blue brightness
of the moon. The things that can be reduced to formulae, because
they are governed by laws, which, in a word, are the subject of
science, are precisely the most physical, the most material
manifestations of what we do, whereas art, in its highest
creations, because of its quasi-divine essence, avoids scientific
investigation entirely. The Heart and aesthetic Thought have
their reasons that Reason can scarcely understand. But laughter,
that laughter that shakes us at the café-concert, - translation
of the unhealthy pleasure that we experience in order to feel our
momentary irrationality - our reason knows the reason for it. And
thus the shows at the café-concerts, by continuing to remain
wholly outside literature, have become material for literature,
and the critic of the café-concert is born. From that time on it
has become a most agreeable exercise for the greatest virtuosos
of style. They have sung the praises and merits of M. Paulus or
M. Valti, one on lyrical style, one in evangelical flavour. The
disproportion between the dignity of the epithets that aggrandize
these rather secular persons, and the persons themselves, greatly
amuses the reader. And if from the learned combination of lyrical
style and evangelical style is born the apocalyptic style, the
critic then adopts the attitude of St Joan at the Nouveau Cirque
that is not without some piquancy. M. Jules Lemaître's
collected articles will become, as well as many other things, a
very instructive repertoire for this new form of literature.
But if because of this M. Le Roux's lecture is
very "fin de siècle", Mlle Guilbert is not at all. One
does not become more refined just because one has ceased to be
ingenuous. No more than her near namesake, the drunken but good
sailor of M. Loti, our sister Yvette is not "fin de
siècle". What connection is there between this woman, who
is so funny, so invigorating, so healthy, whose manner of
speaking, so lacking in colour and naturalism, is mingled with so
much good intention, such good will, so much of the charm and
good grace of Mme Judic, what connection is there between her and
the "flowers of vice", the sensuous and sickly flowers
which, with their scrawny elegance, adorn so bizarrely the
fantasies of Chéret and of Willette? Dressed in a simple white
dress which made her long black gloves stand out still more, with
her white powdered face, in the midst of which her exaggeratedly
red mouth bleeds like a cut, she looked rather more like those
creatures, brutally drawn and with their own intense life, which
are scattered through the work of Raffaelli. As such, in her
physical appearance - as well as in her diction - she makes one
think of naturalism, of a naturalism that is already outdated,
and so very different in any case from the art of today.
No, she is no longer the little woman stepped
down from one of Chéret's posters to lead a new
"embarkation to Cythera". We admire Mlle Yvette
Guilbert's talents more than anybody. But, despite all our best
efforts, we do not find her perverse at all. Perhaps that is
ingenuousness.
M.P.
Le Mensuel
no 5, February 1891.