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 Edited by Pierre Joris
and Jerome Rothenberg

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José Lezama Lima: Selections. Edited and with an Introduc

by Ernesto Livon-Grosman
 The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution
to this boo!^ provided by the Literature in Translation Endowment Fund
of the University of California Press Associates, which is
supported by a major gift from Joan Palevsky.
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 SELECTIONS

JOSÉ LEZAMA LIMA

EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

ERNESTO L IV O N - G R O S MAN

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley Los Angeles London

 University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 2005 by the Regents of the University of California

Credits and acknowledgments for the poems and other texts included are on page

All photographs reproduced in this book appear courtesy

of the Biblioteca Nacional José Marti. The photographers are unknown.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lezama Lima, José.
[Selections. English. 2005]
José Lezama Lima : selections / edited
and with an introduction by Ernesto Livon-Grosman.
p. cm. — (Poets for the millennium ; 4)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0 - 5 2 0 - 2 3 4 7 5 - 8 ( c l o t h : a l k . p a p e r ) .

ISBN 0 - 5 2 0 - 2 3 4 7 6 - 6 ( p b k . : a l k . p a p e r ) .

1. Lezama Lima, José — Translations into English.

I. Livon-Grosman, Ernesto. II. Title. III. Series.
PQ7389.L49A25 2005

8611.62 — dc22 2004044063

Manufactured in the United States of America

14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

T h e paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements

of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) {Permanence of Paper).
 C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgments

Transcending National Poetics: A New Reading of José Lezama Lima

ERNESTO LIVON-GROSMAN

Key to Translators

FROM Enemigo Rumor (1941)

An Obscure Meadow Lures Me.

Insular Night: Invisible Gardens

A Bridge, a Remarkable Bridge

Sonnets to the Virgin

FROM Aventuras Sigilosas (1945)

Summons of the Desirer

F R O M La Fijeza (1949)

Thoughts in Havana

Rhapsody for the Mule

Ten Prose Poems

Joyful Night

Fabulous Censures
 The Adhering Substance 41

Fifes, Epiphany, Goats 43

Weight of Flavor 45

Death of Time 47

Procession 49

Tangencies 51

Ecstasy of the Destroyed Substance 53

Resistance 55

FROM Dador (i960)

To Reach Montego Bay 57

The Music Car 68

A Visit from Baltasar Graciât! 73

FROM The Fragments Drawn by Charm (1977)

Surprised 76

Mother 78

Unleashed so

The Nec\ 82

They Slip through the Night 84

Dissonance 86

Anthony and Cleopatra 88

I Hear a Bird 90

Old Surrealist Ballad 92

Pavilion of Nothingness 94

DOCUMENTS

Confluences (1968)

José Lezama Lima 99

Interview with José Lezama Lima (1964)
Armando Alvarez Bravo 122

To Reach Lezama Lima (1967)

Julio Cortázar 1 38

Letter from Lezama (1969)

Severo Surdity 1 67

Selected Bibliography 1 83

Credits 1 85
 A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

I am indebted to a number of colleagues and friends who in differ-

ent ways have contributed to the completion of this book. In Cuba:
Eliades Acosta Matos and Araceli Garcia C a r r a n z a from the Biblio-
teca Nacional José Marti; Maria Luisa C a m p u z a n o from Casa de
las Américas; Reina Maria Rodriguez, Jorge Miralles, Antonio José
Ponte, and Duanel Diaz Infante from Azoteas, all of w h o m m a d e
every possible resource and then some available to me. In the United
States: Nina Gerassi-Navarro, Reinaldo L a d d a g a , Susana H a y d u , and
Roberto Tejada for their comments and engagement in detailed dis-
cussions about Lezama's work. A special thanks to series editors Jerry
Rothenberg and Pierre Joris for their support and to L a u r a Cerruti
from University of California Press for her attention to detail.

IX
 T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S

A New Reading of José Lezama Lima

T h e first view of Havana immediately impresses upon a traveler

the multilayered reality of Cuba. The multiplicity of political signs,
whether they be the old pictures of Che Guevara or the newer bill-
boards alluding to the forty years of the Revolution, are iconographic
of Cuban reality, because in spite of their willingness to convey a mes-
sage, Cubans disguise much more than they reveal. The visitor, no
matter how informed beforehand about the intricacies of Cuban life,
would very soon need to test and probably change his or her assump-
tions against what he or she sees and hears on Cuban news, from cus-
tomers in coffee shops, in grocery stores, and through conversations
with friends and intellectuals — some of whom are dedicated enough
to read and think about the work of José Lezama Lima, by far one of
the most complex figures of twentieth-century Cuban literature.
One of these assumptions is a certain didactic simplification of
Lezama Lima as a one-dimensional figure: as the representative of
the Revolution or its enemy; as the epic founder of a truly cosmopol-
itan literary magazine, Orígenes, or as the asthmatic patient who
would stay home for long periods of his life and who almost never

X I
left the island or, after a certain point in his life, even his home.
(Among the many photos of Lezama there is only one by now very
rare set of pictures of him walking around Havana's Cathedral.) T h e
complexity of his circumstances matches well the historical changes
undergone by his country and ultimately by his poetics. It is this com-
plexity, which Lezama himself refers to as "difficulty," that makes
Lezama's work unique in an introspective sense and that also pro-
vides an opportunity to reflect on the extraordinary historical times
in which it developed. Therefore we should look for the keys to his
poetics not only in the texts themselves but also in their cultural set-
tings and in Cuban society at large, so alive both before and after the
Revolution.
In the opening statement of La expresión americana (1957), one of
Lezama Lima's best-known books, the author declares: "Only diffi-
culty is stimulating," a statement that has become Lezama's trade-
mark, the departure point from which we are to approach his work in
particular and, presumably, literature as a whole. The fact that, since
Lezama's first exposure to a large Latin American readership in the
late 1960s, his work has always been seen as difficult never constituted
a real obstacle but rather an incentive for continuing to delve into it,
based on an understanding that the complexity of his writing reflected
his equally complex cosmogony. Lezama's poetic unveiling of reality
is echoed in the complexities of the language itself. To recognize this
serves as an effective strategy for questioning the cultural circum-
stances in which he was embedded without reducing them.
José Lezama Lima was born in Cuba on December 19, 1910, and
with the exception of brief trips to Mexico in 1949 and to Jamaica in
1950, he spent most of his life in Havana, where he died in 1976. Yet
his writing always went beyond the cultural boundaries of his nation.
Lezama's private and public personas were barely separate, and many

XII \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
of his activities as publisher and cultural
b r o k e r w e r e m a r k e d by a noninstitu-
tional, almost domestic, character. A f t e r
the premature death of his father, when
L e z a m a was only nine years old, he
and his mother m o v e d into his grand-
mother's house on Calle P r a d o and
later to 1 6 2 Trocadero Street, where the
writer lived until his death. H i s father's
death left the family in a precarious situ-
ation f r o m which the family never com-
pletely recovered. In spite of his family's
financial difficulties and his o w n severe
asthmatic condition, L e z a m a was able to
establish around his home an expanding
artistic circle of painters, musicians, and
writers, which w o u l d become a defin-
L e z a m a L i m a at a year and nine
ing factor o f Cuba's twentieth-century
months old, 1 9 1 2 .
cultural life. L e z a m a ' s w o r k , his poetry,
novels, and essays, are the result of the social and personal circum-
stances in which he developed his poetics, yet the facts of his life have
proven so elusive that w e still lack a comprehensive biography. R e a d -
ing his w o r k is, then, the best w a y of reconstructing his intellectual ca-
reer, and with some limitations it provides a larger personal picture as
well.

Restricted by his acute asthma and his financial situation, L e z a m a

was housebound for extended periods. In spite of these obstacles he
studied law in H a v a n a and dedicated m u c h of his youth to reading
everything that came into his hands. N o t h i n g went unnoticed; and
m a n y of those readings were to find their w a y back into his w r i t i n g as

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / XIII
more or less disguised rewritings. Lezama finished high school in
1928. In 1930 he became a law student, but the university closed down
for political reasons, and Lezama spent the following years reading
Góngora, Lautréamont, Valéry, Mallarmé, and Proust. It was during
those years that he started to write essays and developed his own po-
etics and a network of friends and writers that later constituted his
closest circle. In 1956 Lezama turned down a job teaching literature at
the Universidad Central de Las Villas, but a year later he read a series
of five lectures at the Centro de Altos Estudios that were published as
La expresión americana, a collection of essays in which Lezama ex-
pressed his own encompassing view of Spanish American culture.
The Cuban Revolution took place in 1959, and in i960 Lezama was
designated director of the Department of Literature and Publications
of the National Council of Culture. In 1961 he became one of the vice
presidents of the U N E A C , the Artists and Writers Union of Cuba,
and in that same year his two sisters left the island. Lezama, whose
sometimes elusive public persona added to the complexity of his work,
experienced the separations from his sisters as traumatic experiences
that, like everything with Lezama, generated more writing, in this
case in the form of extensive correspondence with them. Lezama's at-
titude toward the Cuban Revolution is a clear example of his elusive-
ness toward institutional life in general. Although he held an official
post, and although he wrote a poem in memory of Che Guevara, it
was never clear where he stood as a supporter of the Revolution.
In 1964 Lezama's mother died. In that same year he married Maria
Luisa Bautista, his constant companion and the person who, during
the last years of his life, helped him to cope with his increasingly dete-
riorating health. If we were to choose two determining moments in his
career, instances that could be considered turning points of his life and

XIV \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
w o r k , they w o u l d be the editing of Orígenes and the publication o f his
first novel, Paradiso, in 1966. T h i s novel granted L e z a m a the visibility
both inside and outside C u b a that he truly deserved, a kind o f recog-
nition that he did not have before its publication. A l t h o u g h the ten
years that separated the publication of Paradiso and his death were for
the most part m a r k e d by health problems, they were also a time w h e n
his w o r k was gaining an increasingly international appreciation.
In 1958 Cintio Vitier, one o f the f e w members o f the Orígenes cir-
cle still alive in C u b a , developed a massive history o f C u b a n poetry —
Lo cubano en la poesía — in w h i c h a m o n g other things he canonized
L e z a m a ' s w r i t i n g in an effort to m a k e his w o r k and Orígenes organic
components o f Cuba's literary history. Since L e z a m a ' s death the
n u m b e r o f w o r k s dedicated to his poetics has multiplied exponen-
tially, as have the critical perspectives on his writings. T h e s e writers
all had in c o m m o n a desire to follow the multiple b r a n c h i n g o f
Lezama's baroque poetics, as was the case with such canonical and es-
thetically diverse writers as Julio Cortázar, Severo Sarduy, Reinaldo
Arenas, and Néstor Perlongher, a m o n g others, all o f w h o m share
L e z a m a ' s appreciation o f the baroque imaginary.

Latin A m e r i c a n literature has often been seen both inside and out of
Spanish A m e r i c a as a dramatization of history, as a rehearsal, in con-
tent as well as form, o f the cultural issues of the last five hundred
years. T h i s perspective is taken with the hope that a fresh realignment
of major historical landmarks — the Spanish conquest, the wars of in-
dependence, the struggle for national organization, and so on — will
provide the reader with a sense o f continuity that directly or indirectly

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / XV
 L e z a m a L i m a with his mother, 1953.

answers the question, W h o are the people alluded to in these books?

Or, H o w do we explain the present by recovering a sense of cause and
effect directly related to the past? A l t h o u g h for the most part very
helpful, this v i e w tends to o f f e r a series of chronological events, an
idea of progressive change and continuity that m i g h t create a sense of
identity and a homogeneous sense of history. Less frequently do w e
find writers convinced that the most important Spanish A m e r i c a n
cultural juncture was the d y n a m i c fusion of indigenous, A f r i c a n , and
E u r o p e a n influences — impossible to contain in a single definition of
identity or to fix in one historical m o m e n t — which saw its first day in
colonial times. O f course by definition such a vision cannot be reduced
to a single f r a m e , either by f o r m or content, yet Cuba's present culture
depends so m u c h on issues of political independence.

It is enough to remember that while most of Spanish A m e r i c a de-

clared its independence f r o m Spain between 1 8 1 0 and 1824, C u b a was

XVI \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
 m
UNIVERSIDAD DE l_A HABANA
SECRETARIA CÍENEFAL
S E C C I O N DF. M A T R I C U L A GRATIS
C U R S O A C A D E M I C O D E 193 ¿ A m / '
ENSERAN**» onciAt
MATRICULA No Ó/ S 9 3

ApiH
' rckw
Numbie* .
natural de
<k_i2á c edad, ha sidíí ¡iitcripT C esta fecha ^cmtyftlamn.g
de Uiiívcrsirfad, ins asignaturas que m exefesato, para ja! jirtscnE« corsa
iicult-: ¡cpirmtc a ¿ titulo i m j L . J t i í * J U j W U & Í t L •

Lezama Lima's libreta universitaria, 1936. This student identification "card" is a

booklet and has a number of pages, three of which are reproduced here.

still a Spanish colony as late as July 1, 1898, when U.S. intervention

ended the Spanish regime to replace it with its own occupation. T h e
Cuban constitution of 1901, approved by Cubans and overwritten by
the U.S. Congress that very year through the imposition of the Piatt
Amendment, gave the United States the power to overule political,
economic, and legislative decisions made by the Cuban government. In
particular article 3 of the amendment, which represented American
interests in the island, giving the United States the right to intervene
for "the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of

TRANSCENDING NATIONAL POETICS / XVII

life, property and i n d i v i d u a l liberties," curtailed C u b a n sovereignty.
T h i s n e w colonial establishment put conditions on the evolution of the
public sphere, w h i c h w a s left w i t h v e r y little a u t o n o m y , thereby d e l a y -
ing the f o r m a t i o n of a cultural industry. T h e s t r u g g l e to establish an
effective g o v e r n m e n t and a true separation f r o m the U n i t e d States w a s
a political constant t h r o u g h most of L e z a m a ' s life.
F r o m v e r y early on, w h e n he w a s a l a w student in the early 1 9 3 0 s ,
L e z a m a opposed the dictatorship o f G e r a r d o M a c h a d o a n d later re-
m e m b e r e d w i t h p r i d e his participation in one o f the largest student
d e m o n s t r a t i o n s o f the time. L a t e r he successfully n a v i g a t e d the fine
line b e t w e e n his hope f o r the end of F u l g e n c i o Batista's r e g i m e , w h i c h
p r e c e d e d the R e v o l u t i o n , a n d his e q u a l l y personal a m b i v a l e n c e a b o u t
associating his w r i t i n g w i t h institutional politics. H o w e v e r , in his
p o e m " T h o u g h t s in H a v a n a , " first p u b l i s h e d in Orígenes in 1944 a n d
later i n c l u d e d in La fijeza (1949), w e hear an echo o f political c o n c e r n
w i t h the A m e r i c a s as a c o n t i n e n t , at the s a m e t i m e that L e z a m a
m a k e s a direct r e f e r e n c e to the U n i t e d States' intervention t h r o u g h
his r e c u r r e n t use o f E n g l i s h (the italics in this translation by J a m e s
I r b y indicate the o r i g i n a l lines in E n g l i s h ) :

They want that death they have given us as a gift

to be the source of our birth,
and our obscure weaving and undoing
to be remembered by the thread of the woman beset by suitors.
We know that the canary and the parsley make a glory
and that the first flute was made from a stolen branch.

We go through ourselves
and having stopped point out the urn and the doves
engraved in the chosen air.
We go through ourselves
and the new surprise gives us our friends

XVIII \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
 and the birth of a dialectic:
while two dihedrals spin and nibble each other,
the water strolling through the canals of our bones
carries our body toward the calm flow
of the unnavigated land

Lezama calls on a common past; the verse "They want that death they
have given us as a gift" could be read as a reference to the United
States' intervention in Cuba's war of independence with Spain. They,
the carriers of the first flute, the one "made from a stolen branch," are
the Americas colonized by Europe, and both are by now inseparable
from each other. While Lezama is asking for an introspectiveness that
would give us friends, he also points out the existence of a dialectic
rift. The poem asks us to acknowledge the "two dihedrals," each of
them already forming a double angle, the North and the South, each
with its own geography, looking in turn at the indigenous as well as
the European components of their present, while we drift even fur-
ther into the "unnavigated land," a continental reality that presum-
ably will end the conflict between the two Americas.
As was the case with the Vietnam War for the United States, the
Cuban Revolution created for Latin America a dividing line, a before
and after, that changed the way Spanish American countries saw
themselves in relation to each other and to the rest of the world. The
Revolution not only inspired and supported many liberation move-
ments and multiple attempts to overthrow conservative or ineffective
Spanish American administrations, but it also promoted a pan—Latin
American movement based on the idea of a shared language and a
continental sense of cultural fusion, known in Spanish as mestizaje.
Although many of the issues included in the Cuban agenda, such as
land reform, nationalism, and the development of a national culture,
were already present in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the conti-

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / XIX
nental, political juncture of the 1960s was marked by the search for a
political model that could overturn the cultural and political depend-
ency of Spanish American countries; this in turn created a common
ground for a shared political project, making the Cuban Revolution
an attractive role model. It was not — by any means — the first incar-
nation of a pan—Latin American proposal. Already during the wars of
independence of the early 1800s Francisco Miranda had appealed to
the British Crown, asking for support for a centralized Spanish
American government with an Inca official as its head. Since then, the
idea has been revisited and associated with a political model of
diversity.
Lezama's own continental view of the Americas lacks any such ex-
plicit political ambition. Yet La expresión americana can at times be
read as a precedent to the Revolution's model, and perhaps it even
helped to negotiate his relation with the revolutionary establishment. 1
But like so many events associated with Lezama's work and poetics,
the official reception of his work was uneven, and he lost official back-
ing toward the end of his life. Lezama supported the Revolution and
some of its ideals of justice and sovereignty, which of course were al-
ready upheld by his beloved José Martí, one of the most prolific Cuban
intellectuals of the second half of the nineteenth century. Lezama'a at-
titude toward homosexuality created a similar effect to that of his pol-
itics. As if walking a tightrope, Lezama seems to have taken a
guarded stance on these issues, not so much to hide his position but to
avoid turning himself into a target. In this respect Lezama's position
was not very different from that of so many other people at the time:
on the one hand, sexual preferences were for the most part kept pri-
vate, and on the other homosexuality was not exactly an open topic of
conversation. Although in Paradiso he makes a direct reference to the
homosexuality of some of its characters, Lezama's poetry, as well as

XX \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
the majority of his writings, doesn't. His m a r r i a g e to Maria Luisa
Bautista implied some sort of arrangement between them but was
probably much more than just a cover-up: it was as much a good ex-
ample of the complexity of Cuba's cultural life as it was a w a y of pro-
tecting her from future financial problems.

T h e evasive quality of Lezama's writing m a k e s it quite difficult to

bury his poetics under pre-established notions of national literatures
or literary schools. Literary schools are aimed at creating, for the most
part, a homogeneous, more general, picture in which the exceptions to
the rules remain neatly on the margins. T h a t said, it would be very
difficult to introduce a selection of Lezama's work in translation with-
out at least attempting an outline of some of those general historical
circumstances that framed his poetics, even if only to stress his efforts
to redefine the boundaries of some of these schools.
By now it is understood that what we call a national literature is al-
ways more than the sum of its parts. The works and their multiple
branchings are in the long run far more important than any general
claim in support of a group or an esthetic circle, which tends to be the
rationale of national literary politics as we know it. It is quite common
for the corpus of a national literature to escape the programmatic
definition of a movement. In many cases whole periods of a national lit-
erature are cannibalized and reprocessed through the formulations of
new genealogies — history as an effort toward active interpretation. In
their own terms those new literary movements find and redefine their
poetics in dialogue with their predecessors. Very early on, Lezama's po-
etics moved out of a restrictive national canon; and in a very inclusive
w a y L e z a m a threaded his readings throughout his writing, using

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / XXI
 Spanish American, French, classical, and
Spanish cultural icons to draw the con-
tours of the fusion he thought of as Latin
American culture.
What a work expresses, directly or in-
directly, about national literature is al-
ways the tension between our insight
about the writing itself and its context
and potential for addressing the present.
That is why our reading and its concomi-
tant tension, in turn, change with each
new generational reading, a transforma-
tion that in this case is due to the extraor-
dinary richness of Lezama's work and his
L e z a m a L i m a as a child in an effort to challenge predictable expecta-
army uniform, ca. 1916.
tions. Lezama's insistence on a baroque
esthetic has come to be perceived for what
it is: an invitation to the reader to take an active part and to rewrite as
he or she reads along. Therefore a critical approach to Lezama's po-
etry in translation needs to take into account his poetics as well as its
reception.

One of Lezama's distinctive intellectual hallmarks has always been

the baroque, the Spanish as well as his own Spanish American version
of it. A review of at least two general characteristics of the baroque is
key to understanding Lezama's poetics. One is the way in which na-
ture seems to extend or multiply itself in cultural products, as when
Lezama fuses a botanical reference with a Renaissance painting, blur-
ring the separation between culture and the natural world in another
example of inclusiveness. T h e other is the tendency of the baroque to
bare its internal conflicts and to thrive on them instead of smoothing

XXII \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
them over. It is this tension that best explains the difficulty of his work,
a difficulty that both challenges and seduces the intelligence of the
reader. Lezama's work essentially asks for an active reader, one will-
ing to immerse him- or herself in the intricacies of his images.
It is this kind of inclusiveness that made Lezama gravitate toward
the Spanish poet Luis de Gongora and the seventeenth-century
European baroque. T h e Spanish baroque in particular was at once an
esthetic renovation, a critique of a decadent social system, and a pow-
erful example of the impact of Catholic theology, all concepts that are
well represented in Lezama's writing. Lezama's Catholicism consti-
tutes a pillar of his esthetic, including the iconography of his poetry
and the sublime tone of his writing. Take, for example, the opening
lines of the "Sonnets to the Virgin," in which nature seems to reenact
God's miracles:

Deipara, bearer of God! F r o m such deceit

To ease his bulk of care, the cuckold sire
Saw need to separate both bird f r o m wheat
A n d flower f r o m bird, not being f r o m desire.

T h e more we read Lezama's work the closer we get to realizing that

his apparent obscurity is an invitation to the reader to get closer to the
image-making process, as when Lezama proposes in "Fifes, Epiphany,
Goats":

Clarities became dark. Until then darkness has been a diabolic sloth,
and clarity a contented insufficiency of the creature. Unchanged
dogmas, clear darkness, which the blood in spurts and in continuity
resolved, like the butterfly caressing the shepherd's forehead while
he sleeps. A birth that was before and after, before and after the
abysses, as if the birth of the Virgin were prior to the appearance
of the abysses. Nondum eram abyssi et ego jam concepta eram.

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / XXIII
 L e z a m a L i m a and Salvador Gaztelu, 1931-

At times it seems that what really attracts L e z a m a to Catholicism is its

mystery and that w h a t attracts him to the idea of America is its d a r k -
ness — "clear darkness" — the place w h e r e mystery multiplies.
Lezama's idea of America as the ultimate site for the baroque is
neither a matter of continuity with the Spanish movement nor a
search for a European genealogy. For him the Spanish baroque be-
came fully developed in America because only there did it surpass a
mere effect of accumulation or excess in gaining the kind of tension
L e z a m a believed is created by the intersection of African, indigenous,
and European cultures. In the poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la C r u z , as
well as in the architecture of cities like Mexico City, Cuzco (Peru), and
Minas (Brazil), the Latin A m e r i c a n engagement with the Portuguese
and Spanish baroque, with its extraordinary cultural fusion, is much
more than a simple extension of the peninsular movement. For

XXIV \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
Lezama, to write was to put into play a myriad of fragments, scraps of
information, and cultural references, and his conception of the image
depends on the tension that amalgamates those fragments. That cul-
tural intersection forced Europeans, Africans, and locals to share sym-
bolic space, creating, as I stated above, what we now call mestizaje, a
vernacular culture that in Lezama's view, because of the fusion of its
components, is a richer and more mature example of the baroque than
is its Spanish counterpart.
In Lezama's writing difficulty is not a goal but a process, the result
of his conception of the image, which — in turn — immerses the reader
in a system constructed out of pure images, in many cases apparently
divorced from an external referent. In fact, Lezama's complexity
comes in part from his all-inclusive, sometimes encyclopedic system of
quotes and references, which together with his very long and open
grammatical structures contribute to his baroque style. Lezama sought
and found a delicate balance between the Spanish influences that per-
meate, even today, everyday life in Cuba and the need for a truly
Spanish American view of the arts. He rooted himself in the baroque,
which he saw as the cultural bridge between the Spanish past and the
American present — his favorite readings were Spanish baroque —
and which was also in a new and unique way the fusion of the Spanish,
African, and indigenous cultures. The repercussions of his poetics out-
lived him by several generations, and the neo-baroque brought back
some of his esthetics, as with the writings of Severo Sarduy and Néstor
Perlongher, both of them active explorers of Lezama's poetics.
Lezama's baroque legacy extended itself onto the next generation
through writers like Severo Sarduy, who in turn developed a formal
theory of the Latin American neo-baroque.2 For Sarduy, as can be
seen in his essay included in this volume, the Latin American baroque/
neo-baroque is as much a way of writing as it is a way of reading. The

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / XXV
neo-baroque has been disseminated beyond the boundaries of the
movement, and its traces can now be found in the work of poets as
different as José Kozer (Cuba), Gerardo Deniz (Mexico), and Haroldo
de Campos (Brazil); it is less a literary school than an awareness,
through linguistic expansiveness and bricolage, of the multilayered re-
ality in which we live. In retrospect the neo-baroque was another way
of proposing an inventive, experimental poetic practice that did not
depend on the historical avant-garde. In fact, Lezama's kept an open
connection with modernismo, the movement that preceded the histori-
cal avant-garde.

If the baroque is one of the threads Lezama wove through his work,
then Spanish American modernismo is another. Modernismo — the
Spanish American movement that in its own American way carried
on a dialogue with French symbolism and was therefore quite differ-
ent from what is called modernism — is for the most part associated
with the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 3 It was a
movement dedicated, among other things, to building a bridge be-
tween the cultural legacy of Spain and the specificities of the Ameri-
cas, in a continental sense. Though modernismo was well represented
by several major poets from all over Latin America, one of them,
Rubén Darío, became emblematic of the whole movement. Darío
was born in Nicaragua but became, through traveling and holding
various diplomatic posts, a truly continental figure and an effective
promoter of the movement. That bridging came with a certain am-
bivalence, as can be seen in some of Darío's work, in particular
"Salutación del optimista." 4 Darío thought that Spanish America's
bright future was based in part on the newness of the place and its

XXVI \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
culture, as well as on the ties that connected it with a prestigious,
European tradition.
As a movement modernismo strove to make clear that, in sync with
political times, its poetics was the cultural product of those new nation-
states, more American in a continental sense and more interested than
ever in finding a vernacular register within its own writings. Moder-
nismo was also concerned with retaining a link with a European cul-
tural heritage that reached all the way back to Greek and Latin classi-
cal traditions and that sifted through Spanish literature and culture.
This gesture, as foundational as the new political divisions that were
reshaping the geopolitical map of Latin America, was possible only in-
sofar as those "new" countries were politically independent, or, as they
would prefer to call themselves, sovereign. For Lezama, who, after all,
was born almost at the very peak of modernismo and whose country en-
joyed such a late independence, the movement preserved a resonance
that was already in decline in other Spanish American countries.
Spanish American modernismo created a transitional place where new
linguistic formations, that is, the continental vernacular, could be ex-
plored as a national language. At its best, adherents to modernismo ex-
plored the possibilities of contributing to the notion of national culture,
knowing that the possibilities for foundational changes would remain
open for a limited number of years.
Lezama's contribution was to explore those romantic elements al-
ready present in modernismo and to expand them in conjunction with
a cultural political agenda that, by Spanish American standards, was
quite unusual, given the history of Cuba's frustrated independence
process. Not only did Cuba lack a cultural industry in the sense of a
centralized book industry and mass-produced art forms, but at that
time Cuba was also navigating a space in which it was still possible to
go directly from being a colony to the true newness of being sovereign.

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / XXVII
In comparison with other countries, Cuba achieved this transition
from a Spanish colony to a revolutionary state much more directly
than is the norm with the nation-state model so prevalent among most
Latin American countries.
T h e extraordinary hybrid positioning of Lezama's poetry, his place
in between modernismo and the avant-garde, was a direct and creative
response to the transitional phase of the cultural institutions he was
challenging. Noticing the experimental quality of his poetics is crucial
because it reminds us that the meeting of explorative writing and the
historical avant-garde is just one possible encounter. Experimental po-
etics like Lezama's have preceded the historical avant-garde and gone
beyond the need for an organic connection with any given movement.
It is only by taking into account Lezama's cultural context that we can
start appreciating the complexity of his poetics. By responding to the
cultural circumstances of his time, Lezama was able to create a new
point of confluence by integrating anew all the components of ver-
nacular culture.
Lezama Lima's work, canonical as it is, has been heavily read for
his dedicated efforts to develop a foundational view of Latin Ameri-
can culture, a preoccupation that follows from his ever-present con-
cern with origins. In this sense Lezama puts forward his own interest
by exposing an all-encompassing project, while at the same time feed-
ing a foundational equation: cultural fusion as continental identity.
Any historical approach to his work will therefore need to take into
account the circumstances and the cultural forces that made Lezama's
work as well as Orígenes — the influential journal he edited from 1944
to 1956 — possible.
T h e development of his poetics, and, by extension, the work of the
artists associated with his work, was directly linked to four liter-
ary journals, all edited or co-edited by Lezama. T h e first of those mag-

XXVIII \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
azines, Verbum, published only three is-
sues, all of them in 1937 — the same year
that Lezama published "Muerte de Nar-
ciso," his first major poem. The second
magazine, Espuela de plata, consisted of
six issues published between 1939 and
1941. A third one, produced in collabora-
tion with Angel Gaztelu, was called
Nadie Parecía and managed to publish its
tenth issue in 1944. The writers' use of
the journal as the preferred publishing
medium reflects a scarcity of distribution
means. In fact, the magazine format
proved to be the best way of establishing
a public space and of extending a writer's
social and intellectual circle. L e z a m a L i m a leaning against a

It was also in 1944 that Orígenes ap- statue of Apollo in front of the
amphitheater, 1935.
peared for the first time, and it lasted
until 1956. Next Lezama published La
expresión americana, his most programmatic book of essays.5 He co-ed-
ited Orígenes with the critic José Rodríguez Feo and relied on contri-
butions from a vast circle of Cuban intellectuals and artists: writers
Angel Gaztelu, Virgilio Piñera, Fina García Marruz, Lorenzo García
Vega, Justo Rodríguez Santo, and Eliseo Diego; painters Alfredo
Lozano and René Portocarrero; and musicians like José Ardévol and
Julián Orbón. For Lezama what best defined the dynamics of the
group was friendship, understood as an ongoing dialogue and as read-
ing one another's work, beyond the actual making of the magazine.
This particular quality, which could easily be overlooked, helps us to
understand that the relevance of Orígenes rests on the fact that so

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / XXIX
 The painter René Portocarrero, who was also a member
of Orígenes, and Lezama Lima, 1953.

much work was done with a fair amount of autonomy, with very in-
clusive editorial criteria, free from a rigid agenda, and always within
the dynamics of a social encounter. T h e center of all intellectual ex-
change was closer to the coffeehouse or to Lezama's home than it was
to a magazine office. Again, the social tissue, the sociability of every-
day Cuba, is key to assessing the impact and success of Orígenes.
Because of the historical proximity of Lezama's work and his im-
pact on the generation that succeeded him, his poetry was perceived
as the bridge in literary Cuba between the first and second half of the
twentieth century. In Spanish America this transition is much more
than a chronological passage through time; it also implicitly refers to
the transition from political independence to full-fledged nation-

X X X \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
A group at a cafe on Calle 23 and F, 1966. From left to right: Antón Arufat, Pablo
Armando Fernández, Mariano Rodriguez, Lezama Lima, Heberto Padilla,
Sigifredo Alvarez Conesa, Roberto Fernández Retamar, and Victor Casau.

state status. The avant-garde movements so present during the first

half of the century were as deeply concerned with formal renovation
as they were interested in reflecting on the present. Orígenes was in-
terested in both, but Lezama would also make connections to other
historical movements, rendering the journal a much more inclusive
publication.
This perception — of Orígenes as an open, less programmatic jour-
nal— was framed by the fact that in the 1940s Lezama, as editor of
Orígenes, engaged in a controversy with Jorge Mañach, the former ed-
itor of another Cuban literary magazine, the Revista de Avance, which
stood for an avant-garde esthetics, one which equated progress with
modernity. In retrospect, the exchange between these two editors is

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / XXXI
critical in understanding Lezama's poetics in a much wider context
than that of the exchange itself.6 The discussion, begun by Mañach
through an open letter published in 1949, constituted a response to La
fijeza, Lezama's book of poems from that same year. Mañach begins
his letter by stating that Orígenes owes an intellectual debt to the
Revista de Avance, because in his eyes the experimental character of
Lezama's literary circle was simply a variation of his own avant-garde
position. Lezama's response to Mañach's indictment was to create his
own list of authorities, while asserting his own journal's merits in at-
tracting a prestigious series of contributors. The list included the
names of the writers published in Orígenes, such as Saint-John Perse,
George Santayana, T. S. Eliot, and others whom, although not always
included in the magazine, Lezama thought of as his group's equals:
Alfonso Reyes in Mexico, and Ezequiel Martinez Estrada and Jorge
Luis Borges in Argentina, all writers more concerned with rescuing
tradition than with breaking away from it. If we compare the poetics
of Lezama to those of Vicente Huidobro, the Chilean poet who
founded creacionismo, one of the most visible avant-garde poetry
movements in Spanish America, we will find that while creacionismo
was trying very hard to break away from literary canons, Lezama was
trying not only to include them all but in effect to expand them be-
yond the more programmatic avant-garde that in Mañach's view was
associated with novelty and rupture from tradition.

Although the discussion between Lezama and Mañach offers us a

sharper view of the positions at stake at a time when Cubans were
openly discussing the possibilities of modernity, by focusing entirely
on the opposition between Avance and Orígenes one runs the risk of
distorting the picture by equating Avance with the only experimental
agenda, while leaving Orígenes either in a more traditional position or
in an indefinable critical space. In fact, recent critical readings of the

XXXII \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
From left to right: Manuel Diaz Martinez, Roberto Branley, Cesar Lopez, Lezama
Lima, Armando Alvarez Bravo, Fayad Jamis, and Onelio Jorge Cardoso, 1966.

work of some other Orígenes writers, such as Reinaldo Laddaga's

work on Virgilio Piñera, José Antonio Ponte's essay on Lorenzo
García Vega, and Duanel Diaz Infante's "Mañach or the Republic,"
successfully place Orígenes in a larger picture and offer a perspective
from which to view both these magazines as part of the same tissue,
while giving back to Lezama a much-deserved complexity. Although
Virgilio Piñera was a prolific writer of poetry, short stories, and plays,
his work has only recently started to be published again outside Cuba.
Yet translations of his books into English are still rare. L i k e Piñera,
García Vega was also part of Orígenes, and his extraordinary memoir
of the group, Los años de Orígenes, published in Spanish in 1979 and al-
ready many years out of print, is indispensable in acquiring a deeper
understanding of how so many different voices could be part of the

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / X X X I I I
 L e z a m a L i m a in his study, i960.

same magazine. Pinera and García Vega have remained for the most
part invisible and in the good company, virtual as well as real, of other
writers overshadowed by the Boom: Witold Gombrowicz, Felisberto
Hernández, José Bianco, and Juan Rodolfo Wilcock, among others. 7
Orígenes, not only the magazine but its circle of writers, would try
to supply a unifying cultural model, thereby creating a sense of na-
tional identity — what Lezama likes to call in his "Colloquium with
Juan Ramón Jiménez" a pure definition of poetry and, by extension, of
culture, which I believe in Lezama's case is interchangeable with his
poetics. For Lezama, a cultural blending is neither an ideal nor a goal,
but a reality. Interestingly, his model of purity is anything but trans-

XXXIV \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
parent and tends to set in motion an almost out-of-control mechanism
of encyclopedic references that provide the content for his baroque
sensibility. This attempt to create an all-encompassing Cuban poetics
through Orígenes is paradoxical, given that the project did not follow
an institutional model. This gap, between his vision of a unified, fu-
sion model and the state of cultural institutions at the time, created the
sense of displacement that even today we encounter every time we try
to place Lezama's work in a larger historical frame. In this way
Lezama's cultural project was several decades ahead of its time, and
this fact in turn helps us to understand the late, but very positive, re-
ception of his work by some of writers of the Boom, during the first
years of the Revolution.

In spite of his work as a poet and editor Lezama was not very well
known outside his country until the publication in 1967 of his first
novel, Paradiso, which was received in the context of the international
phenomenon known as the Latin American Boom. The young writers
of the Boom — an ideological stance and a confluence of esthetic
affinities more than an organic movement — were eager to distance
themselves from the realism of the 1930s and 1940s, while preserving
an interest in the social and the political. The core writers of the
Boom — Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas
Llosa, and Julio Cortázar — who favored a monumentalist esthetic,
which they thought capable of expressing the cultural complexity of
Spanish America, saw in Lezama one of the greatest founding figures
of their own poetics. Cortázar's efforts to promote Paradiso included
one of the first and most influential critical articles ever dedicated to
Lezama's work: "To Reach Lezama Lima," from 1967, included in this

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / XXXV
volume. Cortázar not only promoted Lezama's writing, but he also
took upon himself the never-ending task of proofreading Paradiso. A t
least two aspects of Lezama's writing supported this genealogical, al-
though retroactive, designation as a precursor to the Boom. For some
of the Boom writers, Julio Cortázar and José Donoso among others,
Lezama's work reformulated the Spanish baroque as a defining char-
acteristic of Latin American identity, while integrating European,
African, and indigenous colonial realities. In itself this reappropriation
of colonial influence was a masterpiece of cultural fusion and offered a
possible closure to the long-lasting discussion about the boundaries of
Latin American culture, as well as to the formal and the content-
oriented definition of those limits. 8 As part of his cosmogony, Lezama
put forward a pan—Latin Americanism of sorts that was very much in
tune with the dominant political agenda of the 1960s and 1970s, creat-
ing an extremely fertile climate for the reception of his work. A de-
scription of Lezama's unique situation as a writer, then, could start
with the fact that in spite of his long, prolific life as a writer and cul-
tural broker in his own right, Lezama's work was disseminated out-
side Cuba through, and to some extent was appropriated by, the eyes of
the next generation, the Boom and its readers. 9 It is paradoxical that
for many writers associated with the Boom one of the most obvious
amalgamating factors of their generation was, without any doubt, the
Cuban Revolution, which in turn would change forever the cultural
environment in which Lezama established himself as a writer.

T h e association of Lezama's work with the Boom created a certain

distortion in the reception of his work: while the Boom consisted al-
most exclusively of a group of novelists, at that time Lezama had pub-
lished only one novel—Paradiso — and a few short stories, while the
majority of his work consisted of an important collection of poetry and
essays on poetics. Since the critical excitement generated by the Boom

X X X V I \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
 Lezama Lima, 1975.

supported the idea of the novel as the ultimate genre, Lezama's poetry
is often viewed as the path leading to his novels, the above-mentioned
Paradiso and the unfinished and posthumous Oppiano Licario. Today,
almost half a century after the first publications associated with the
Boom, it is easier to look at Lezama's fiction, poetry, and essays as si-
multaneous, rather than as a precursor to exploring the same poetics.
If the continental projection of the Boom and the controversial ex-
change with Mañach over the avant-garde are clear ports of entry to
Lezama's poetics, I would like to suggest another approach, that of ex-
amining one of his earliest essays. Lezama's interest in literary history
was particularly evident in his efforts to formulate a theory of litera-
ture that would integrate Spanish and Cuban literary traditions into
the same poetics. From very early on in his career this fusion can be
seen, more indirectly in some of his first essays — "The Secret of
Garcilaso" and "Sierpe of Don Luis de Góngora" — and more clearly
in "Colloquium with Juan Ramón Jiménez" from 1937.

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / XXXVII
 Lezama's "Colloquium with Juan Ramón Jiménez" constitutes one
of the most spectacular acts of Euro-American ventriloquism of the
first half of the century. T h e anecdote is simple. A famous Spanish
poet, Juan Ramón Jiménez, visits Cuba and is courted by local writers.
L e z a m a writes an entire dialogue between himself and Jiménez, writ-
ing both voices in a style that is so unmistakably his that J i m é n e z felt
the need to write a short disclaimer published as an additon to the ex-
change: "I have preferred to accept everything my friend attributes to
me and m a k e it mine as much as possible than to question with a firm
no as it is sometimes necessary to do with the attributed writings of
others and easygoing talkers." 1 0 L e z a m a fulfills two goals. On the one
hand, he pays tribute to an admired poet, and on the other he takes
advantage of his fictional interlocutor in order "to talk" about Cuba
with the impersonated distance of a foreigner. Earlier L e z a m a states
"The crystal serpent is already on other skin and it takes us time to ac-
cept that the older skin is already paper, that paper falls with the ele-
gance of a w r i n k l e d leaf." 11
In his introduction to the essay, L e z a m a suggests that the skin of
the serpent is left behind, but the arrow that was covered by that skin
moves on. It seems that at the time of his visit to Cuba Jiménez was
that arrow, in a different skin. H e has mutated while retaining the
core, with that which does not change — that is, himself — serving as
the perfect example of w h a t he will be asked to discuss. Can Cuba be
an island and still be Spanish? Is it just a change of skin? Does the
place retain the arrow, or does it move beyond containment?
W e now see that the m a i n theme of this fictional, almost ironic, ex-
change arises from the question, Is Cuba an example of insularity? Or,
more explicitly, Is it valid to speak of Cuban culture in terms of its dis-
tance from the European continent? 1 2 At one point, Jiménez, in the
ventriloquist voice of L e z a m a , poses a question about the true consti-

XXXVIII \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
 L e z a m a Lima at his house, ca. 1970.

tution of an insular poetry. At the same time, "he" — Lezama through

Jiménez —says, "These days I have heard in Havana a lecture on
racial fusion, a fusion that would necessarily create a mestizo poetic
expression. I am interested in knowing if the search for a distinctive
insular sensibility is not the opposite of this mestizo expression."
To this, the "true" Lezama answers that artistic mestizaje implies
an unacceptable eclecticism, forcing poetry to choose between an ab-
solute love and a well-defined rancor, with nothing in between.

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / XXXIX
Furthermore, for Lezama, an insular sensibility is not in conflict with
a universalistic solution. More important is for mestizo culture to
imply a dissociation from a "feudal sensibility" and therefore a dis-
tancing from the kind of universalistic purity that Lezama sees as the
destiny of every great national culture. 13
In some ways this is the same cultural model that was dominant
among the modernistas: the search for a form that would be their own
not only because of its well-defined lines, but also because it would
carry the original imprint of a new continent. If successful, this new
form should attract a continental recognition.
T h e concept of a pan—Latin Americanism, as an all-encompassing
cultural model, was not a novelty in Lezama's time. On the contrary,
it is a cyclical cultural model that seems so appealing because it is al-
most a "natural" by-product of sharing the "same" language. Yet by
the beginning of the twentieth century, that door was almost closed,
and the boundaries that divided Spanish American countries had be-
come sharper as a consequence of the nation-state formation. Lezama's
work stems from his idea that the baroque quality of its images shares,
in a sense, that continental quality that he thought of as a regained
familiarity with the core of Latin American culture.
More than in his fiction or his essays it is in his poetry where
Lezama's proposed tension between what we as readers are able to
recognize as familiar and what we are out to discover achieves the
highest intensity. In "Resistance" (1949), one of the prose poems in-
cluded in this collection, Lezama, in ventriloquist fashion, explains
what he does while he does it. T h e "resistance" of the title is already
twofold: what we experience as readers while confronted with the text
and what we should look for to reach an insight.

W h a t m o r p h o l o g y a l l o w s , the realization o f an epoch in a style, is very

scant in c o m p a r i s o n to the eternal resistance o f w h a t is not permissible.

XL \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
 Potency is merely the permission granted. Method: not even intuition,
not even what Duns Scotus called confused abstract knowledge, reason
in disarray. Method: not even creative vision, since total resistance
prevents the organizations of the subject[.. . . ] Then .. .On this night,
at the beginning of it, they saw fall from the sky a marvelous branch of fire
into the sea, at a distance from them of four or five leagues (Journal of
Voyage, 15 September 1492). Let us not fall into the idea of paradise
regained, for the men who came packed into a ship moving within a
resistance could see a branch of fire fall into the sea because they felt
the history of many in a single vision. Those are the times of salvation
and their sign is a fiery resistance.

O u r knowledge of the "permissible" is minimal in comparison to

what w e don't k n o w and therefore should not be taken as a means of
arriving at a safe harbor, but rather as an incentive to constant move-
ment, even at the risk of dispersing and fragmenting that potency. F o r
L e z a m a it carries more weight to propel the reader into his or her
own series of associations than to reach a unique interpretation, a
definitive meaning. T h e quote incorporated in the poem, indicated by
the italics, is f r o m Christopher Columbus's journal, the implication
being that the founding of America was, for all parties involved, the
product of multiple resistance. In Lezama's poetics resistance and
difficulty are not merely preconceived by the writer but the result of a
praxis of seeing and recognizing the poem as the tension between the
images we as readers are acquainted with and the ones we are about
to discover.

With the exception of Cintio Vitier, the other members of the

Orígenes circle — Rodriguez Feo, Lorenzo García Vega, Virgilio Piñera,
and René Portocarrero, a m o n g others — were less interested than
L e z a m a in the creation of an autonomous critical system. F o r L e z a m a ,
the complex uniqueness of his poetics demanded a critical development
but always as an extension of writing as a whole. A t times this unique-

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / XLI
 From left to right: Chiqui (bacf^ to camera), L e z a m a L i m a , Roberto Fernández
Retamar, José Bianco, María Luisa Bautista, and José Rodríguez Feo, 1968.

ness would create an equally distinctive hermeneutics and generate a

dedicated body of criticism pointing to the singularity of Lezama's
writing as inseparable from his literary persona. In this sense, Lezama
resembles the American poet Charles Olson. Both were concerned
with a foundational poetics capable of accounting for the originality of
the Americas, and both in their own ways thought of continental mi-
gration in mythopoetic terms. Lezama, like Olson, was highly aware of
the importance of place and he could say, like Maximus:

I c o m e back to the g e o g r a p h y o f it

A n American
is a c o m p l e x o f occasions,
themselves a g e o m e t r y
o f spatial n a t u r e . 1 4

X L II \ T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S
 Virgilio Pinera and Lezama L i m a , 1968.

Lezama's Havana in 1910 was quite a different place from Olson's

Worcester, Massachusetts — except perhaps for the fact that both cities
are often defined by their connection to a colonial past. T h e differ-
ences prevailed, and Lezama's interest in American poetry never in-
cluded Olson or the Black Mountain writers with whom Olson was
associated. Nonetheless, both were very much aware not only of their
American condition but also of how much their America lay some-
where in between Europe and the indigenous cultures of this "new
geography." They shared the awareness that if European influences
were somehow a given, the same could not be said of the impact of the
indigenous cultures on the present Americas, that to recover what
colonial times have covered up so neatly would constitute an intellec-
tual challenge. Lezama saw it in the baroque quality of indigenous re-
ligious art, Olson looked for it in Mayan culture, and they both un-

T R A N S C E N D I N G N A T I O N A L P O E T I C S / XLIM
Another random document with
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certainement le faire rire à table, au moyen de certaines
plaisanteries chiffrées, qui paraîtraient certainement insolentes aux
deux familles.
Daniel passa une partie de la matinée à la cuisine. Il conseilla de
mettre autour du filet au madère une garniture qu’il avait beaucoup
remarquée chez les Voraud : des champignons et des truffes dans
des petits ronds en croûtes de pâté. La cuisinière n’accueillit pas ces
conseils avec une déférence parfaite.
— Alors Monsieur se figure donc qu’on ne sait rien faire ici. Si
Monsieur savait que j’ai resté six mois dans un restaurant de Neuilly,
où que l’on servait des fois jusqu’à deux trois repas de mariage dans
la même journée. Le filet au madère avec la garniture que vous
dites, il ne faudrait pas que Monsieur croie que c’est un plat bien
sorcier. Mais c’est justement pour la raison que Monsieur en a
mangé de ce plat chez ces messieurs dames, qu’il ne s’agit pas de
leur servir la même chose aujourd’hui et qu’il vaut mieux les sanger
de leur ordinaire… Et puis d’abord si Monsieur est tout le temps
comme ça sur mon dos, il est bien sûr que je ne ferai rien de bon…
Si je ne peux pas cuisiner à mon idée, que Monsieur prenne donc
mon tablier et qu’il cuise à ma place.
Cet ultimatum décida Daniel à quitter la cuisine. L’après-midi,
pour se débarrasser de lui, on l’envoya acheter des menus chez le
papetier de Bernainvilliers. Ce fut une bonne demi-heure de
perplexités. Il dédaigna les petits éventails en carton, estima les
papillons trop banals. Son goût personnel le portait à choisir des
petits bateaux, où l’énoncé des plats s’écrivait sur la grande voile.
Sa mère et sa tante Amélie n’allaient-elles pas les trouver trop
excentriques ? Il se décida pour des guitares qu’on lui remit en
paquet. Mais à peine avait-il fait cent pas dans la rue que, saisi d’un
remords, il revint échanger les guitares contre de petits chevalets.
Il alla chercher Julius à la gare, et vit avec satisfaction que son
ami avait fait des frais. Il portait une redingote grise et un chapeau
haut de forme en bon état. Son col montant surmontait un petit
nœud de cravate, qui n’avait que le tort de laisser à découvert une
partie du plastron de chemise et particulièrement une boutonnière
sans bouton. Mais Daniel trouverait bien un bouton à lui prêter. Il
tenait à ce qu’il fût présentable. C’était la première confrontation de
son ami et de sa fiancée.
— Tu sais, dit-il à Julien, que nous avons d’excellents
renseignements sur la situation de M. Voraud. Tu m’as dit des
blagues. Il est très riche.
Julius ne répondit pas là-dessus. Il était probable qu’il ne tenait
pas à rouvrir un débat aussi peu intéressant.
— Alors, dit-il, nous allons dîner avec la panthère de Java et la
pauvre chèvre malade ?
La panthère noire, c’était l’oncle Henry ; la chèvre malade, c’était
la tante Amélie.
— Écoute, dit Daniel. Tu me feras l’amitié de ne pas dire des
blagues devant ces gens. Si j’ai envie de rire à table, ça sera très
embêtant pour moi.
Cette recommandation était inutile. Julius, railleur impitoyable,
avait devant ses victimes habituelles l’air le plus innocent. Et ce
n’était pas une fausse attitude. Il ne masquait pas devant les gens,
sous un aspect timide, les affûts de sa moquerie ; c’était plutôt qu’il
tâchait d’oublier hors de leur présence avec des moqueries
rétrospectives les gaucheries de sa timidité.
En rentrant au chalet, Daniel alla jeter un coup d’œil à la table
servie et constata qu’elle avait un bon aspect. On avait sorti la belle
argenterie, marquée au chiffre des Henry, ainsi que deux surtouts de
table, achetés à l’hôtel Drouot. Daniel les trouva très somptueux,
trop somptueux même, car leurs écussons portaient une couronne
de comte, qui aurait pu difficilement être attribuée aux Henry, même
si les initiales qu’elle surmontait eussent été leurs initiales.
Daniel prit sa mère à part.
— Tu as fait chercher du champagne ?
— Mais oui. Tu vois bien qu’on a mis les flûtes.
— C’est du bon champagne ? Combien coûte-t-il ?
— Il est bon… Tu n’as qu’à regarder l’étiquette.
 Daniel lut sur l’étiquette les titres nobiliaires les plus pompeux. Il
n’en fut pas plus rassuré, car il avait vu, chez l’épicier, du
champagne à deux quatre-vingt-cinq qui portait le nom d’un duc.
— J’ai peur, dit-il, qu’il ne soit pas très bon.
— Il est excellent, que je te dis… Et puis, d’ailleurs, le
champagne, c’est toujours du champagne… Tous les champagnes
se valent. Pour ce qu’on en boit ! On en boit une flûte ou deux en
servant la glace.
— Chez M. Voraud, dit faiblement Daniel, il y a des jours où l’on
mange au champagne depuis le commencement du repas.
— Chez M. Voraud, c’est chez M. Voraud… D’ailleurs, si tu veux
mon opinion, je ne trouve pas que ce soit comme il faut de prendre
du champagne en mangeant.
— Tu sais, dit Daniel, que ça ne revient pas plus cher de servir le
champagne en mangeant. On en boit beaucoup moins que du vin.
— Il est toujours à croire, ce garçon-là, qu’on veut faire des
économies… Est-ce que je ne fais pas les choses convenablement ?
— Oui, maman, je te demande pardon, dit Daniel en
l’embrassant.
Cependant, l’heure s’avançait. Ces messieurs, M. Henry et
l’oncle, étaient arrivés de Paris. Ils redescendirent de leurs
chambres en redingote et en souliers vernis. La tante Amélie, vêtue
de faille grise, s’était installée dans le salon. Elle avait dit, à plusieurs
reprises, à Mme Henry, qui surveillait les préparatifs du dîner :
« Adèle, veux-tu que je t’aide ? » Adèle avait répondu : « Mais non,
mais non, repose-toi ! »
Le train avait amené de Paris un frère de M. Henry, un veuf
silencieux, et une cousine également veuve, deux personnages dont
la vie s’affirmait si peu qu’ils paraissaient veufs l’un de l’autre. Tout le
monde était assis dans le salon quand on entendit tinter la porte de
la grille. C’étaient les Voraud, qu’on attendait fébrilement depuis
vingt minutes. On cessa alors de regarder du côté de la porte vitrée,
qui donnait sur le perron, et quand le bruit qu’elle fit en s’ouvrant
permit à tout le monde de se retourner, on feignit une petite surprise.
Les Voraud arrivaient seuls avec Berthe. Louise Loison avait dû
retourner à Paris ce jour-là ; quant à la fragile grand’mère, son
transport eût exigé un emballage spécial et de trop grandes
précautions. Il y eut un moment de confusion. Puis la famille Henry
se précipita sur les Voraud pour les dépouiller de leurs habits, et se
disputer leurs chapeaux, leurs manteaux, leurs mantilles et leurs
voilettes.
Après une trêve de quelques minutes, on annonça : « Madame
est servie », et la mêlée reprit de plus belle pour s’emparer des bras
des dames et pénétrer dans la salle à manger.
Une surprise attendait Daniel et les convives. Les serviettes
avaient été pliées en éventail et posées sur les verres par l’oncle
Émile lui-même, à l’instar des plus élégantes tables d’hôte de
France.
Pendant le potage, la conversation fut nulle, et Daniel en souffrit.
Placé à côté de Berthe, il avait commencé, selon l’usage, de tendres
pressions de genou. Mais cet entretien secret, si charmant qu’il fût,
n’apportait aucun appoint d’animation à la conversation générale.
Quand on enleva les assiettes, M. Henry, au milieu du silence,
demanda à M. Voraud comment avait été la Bourse. M. Voraud
répondit : « Bien calme, un peu d’affaires seulement sur l’Extérieur. »
Après cette courte phrase d’armes, les deux jouteurs rentrèrent dans
leur camp et laissèrent l’arène libre et déserte.
L’oncle Émile ne disait rien. Se ménageait-il ? Fallait-il faire son
deuil de ces brillantes ressources de causeur, que Daniel avait
d’abord redoutées, et sur lesquelles il comptait maintenant pour
sauver la situation. Car tout valait mieux que ce morne silence.
Enfin, en versant à boire à Mme Voraud, M. Henry renversa le sel,
et chacun put parler de ses superstitions, et raconter ses histoires de
treize à table. Ils étaient lancés. Daniel, rassuré de ce côté, put
s’occuper exclusivement de Berthe, et de son ami Julius, qui, assis à
la droite de la fiancée, ne lui avait pas encore adressé la parole. S’il
disait quelques mots, c’était en s’adressant à Daniel, par-dessus
Berthe, comme si la jeune fille n’eût pas existé. Il n’énonçait que des
phrases insignifiantes, mais qui n’étaient pas sans le poser un peu,
sans attester chez lui quelque supériorité, en consacrant l’infériorité
de quelqu’un.
— A propos, disait-il à propos de rien, j’ai rencontré hier
Mougard, au Casino. Quel parfait imbécile !
Daniel avait pris dans sa main la main de son amie. Jamais cette
main de femme ne lui avait paru si douce à caresser qu’à ce
moment, devant un jeune homme de son âge.
Il se pencha vers Berthe, et lui désignant Julius.
— Voilà mon meilleur ami. Il faut que vous l’aimiez. Lui vous
aimera beaucoup.
Il se sentait plein d’affection pour eux, et les regardait avec des
yeux fondants, attendris par son bonheur.
Du moment que Berthe était son amie, il lui semblait impossible
qu’elle ne fût pas l’amie de Julius. Puisqu’ils l’aimaient tous les deux,
pourquoi n’auraient-ils pas été d’accord ?
Il ne soupçonnait pas qu’il leur plaisait pour des raisons diverses,
et qu’il y avait en lui deux Daniels différents, fabriqué l’un par Berthe,
l’autre par Julius.
Il voulait plaire aux gens pour lui-même, intégralement et ne
réfléchissait pas que son âme véritable était difficile à connaître et à
saisir. N’en changeait-il pas constamment ? Ne choisissait-il pas, à
l’usage de chaque interlocuteur, une face spéciale de lui-même,
celle qu’il croyait devoir plaire ?
Il ne mentait pas, mais il avait des sincérités sur mesure, des
sincérités pour dames, pour messieurs âgés et respectables, pour
jeunes hommes indépendants. C’est ainsi par exemple qu’avec
Julius, qui n’attachait qu’un prix médiocre à la bravoure, il dévoilait, il
étalait tout ce qu’il y avait en lui de pusillanimité, alors que Berthe ne
le connaissait que sous l’aspect d’un garçon pas endurant, chaud de
la tête, un peu casse-cou.
 Il vint s’asseoir après le dîner sur un canapé avec sa fiancée et
son ami. Placé entre eux deux, il souriait d’aise, et pensait les unir,
n’imaginant pas un instant que peut-être il les séparait. Il ne lui
venait pas à l’idée qu’ils fussent jaloux l’un de l’autre et de la
domination qu’ils exerçaient sur lui. Pourquoi ne pas se le partager à
l’amiable, puisqu’il mettait tant de grâce à se laisser partager par
eux. Et même s’il y avait entre eux quelque antipathie, il fallait
l’oublier, pour l’aimer plus gentiment et pour qu’il fût plus heureux.
Il fut très longtemps à s’apercevoir que les gens avaient d’autres
soucis sur la terre que de s’occuper de son bonheur.
 XXV
ANDRÉ BARDOT

« Comme c’est venu subitement ! se répétait Daniel en rentrant

au chalet Pilou, après avoir reconduit les Voraud. Du fond du passé
arrivent de brusques tempêtes, qui brisent des vitres et font tomber
des cheminées. Des secrets funestes, que l’on croyait morts et
qu’aucune malveillance humaine n’a réveillés, se dressent tout à
coup dans notre vie tranquille ! »
Après le départ de Julien qui avait disparu sans rien dire, pour
prendre son train, Berthe était restée quelque temps encore chez les
Henry avec sa famille. Elle et Daniel s’étaient assis au bout d’un très
long salon, qui servait, l’hiver, d’atelier à Mme Pilou, et qui était
encombré de coquillages, aussi abondants qu’au fond des mers et
plus ornés de miniatures. Daniel avait pris la main de sa fiancée et la
pressait dans ses mains. Il n’éprouvait pas à ce jeu une très grande
volupté, mais cette attitude leur étant permise, il fallait bien en
profiter. Autrement les parents, assis à l’autre bout du salon, ne les
auraient pas trouvés assez amoureux.
— Je n’aime pas votre ami, dit Berthe.
— Pourquoi ? demanda-t-il, sans trop de regret. A cet instant, il
oubliait Julius. Berthe était jolie de partout. Elle avait de tendres
yeux, une taille plus souple et d’amusants petits souliers vernis.
— Je ne l’aime pas, parce qu’il n’a pas l’air franc.
 Cette remarque fit sourire Daniel. La franchise était la grande
qualité de Julius, qui s’était toujours montré incapable de mentir
(sinon dans les questions d’argent).
— Je ne suis pas contente, poursuivit Berthe, que vous sortiez si
souvent avec lui.
— Vous avez tort de dire cela. Lui vous aime beaucoup. Il a pour
vous une grande sympathie.
— Ce n’est pas vrai, dit Berthe. Et puis il doit vous entraîner, et
vous faire voir des maîtresses… D’abord je suis sûre d’une chose,
c’est que vous avez une maîtresse à Paris.
— Je vous assure que non, dit Daniel, évitant de s’en défendre
avec trop d’énergie.
— Vous ne le jureriez pas.
Il feignit d’hésiter et dit : « Je le jure. »
— Vous savez, dit Berthe, que si j’apprenais une chose pareille,
ce serait fini. Je ne voudrais plus vous épouser.
— Mais je n’ai pas de maîtresse ! dit Daniel avec un air de viveur
lassé… Je puis d’autant mieux vous le dire, que si j’en avais une, ça
n’aurait aucune importance. Il y a des choses qu’il est difficile
d’expliquer à une petite fille comme vous. Un jeune homme de mon
âge est à peu près obligé d’avoir une bonne amie.
— Oui, oui… Alors, quand vous irez passer un après-midi à
Paris, au lieu de venir à la maison, on saura ce que ça veut dire.
— Mais non, mais non, dit Daniel doucement, comme si la
galanterie lui défendait de répondre oui.
Il allait environ deux fois par semaine à Paris, mais sa dernière
fredaine remontait bien à deux mois. Elle consistait en un séjour d’un
quart d’heure dans une maison mystérieuse du quartier Vivienne, en
compagnie d’une dame en peignoir bleu, à qui il n’avait pas adressé
la parole.
— Comment sont-elles, ces femmes chez qui vous allez ?
— Je vous assure que je ne vais chez aucune femme.
 — Je ne vous crois pas… Mais j’admets que vous ne mentez
pas, et je vous pose la question autrement, pour que vous puissiez
me répondre. A supposer que vous vouliez me tromper, chez quelles
femmes iriez-vous ?
— Qu’est-ce que ça vous fait ?
— Ça m’amuse. Répondez-moi. Chez quelles femmes iriez-
vous ?
— … Chez plusieurs, dit Daniel. Des femmes avec qui j’étais en
relations avant de vous connaître. Une grande femme blonde, qui
demeure dans un hôtel, près de l’Arc-de-Triomphe.
Cette femme existait. Il lui avait même dit quelques mots, un jour,
aux courses, où elle se trouvait en compagnie d’un camarade de
collège, qui les avait présentés l’un à l’autre.
— Vous êtes terrible, dit Berthe. Et quelles femmes encore
connaissiez-vous !
— Une dame très brune, qui demeure boulevard Haussmann.
C’était une dame qu’il avait suivie un après-midi sans lui dire un
mot, jusqu’à une porte qu’il pensait être la sienne. Il s’était proposé
maintes fois d’aller interroger le concierge.
— Quel âge a-t-elle, cette dame brune ?
— Trente à trente-cinq ans.
Aux yeux d’une très jeune fille il est flatteur pour un très jeune
homme d’être à tu et à toi avec une dame plus âgée.
— Je suis sûre, dit Berthe, que ces dames sont de vilaines
femmes et qu’elles connaissent des quantités d’hommes.
— Pas ces femmes-là, dit Daniel.
— Et vous alliez chez elles ? Vous passiez des nuits avec elles ?
— Ne parlez pas de ça, dit Daniel d’un air ennuyé et discret. Je
vous assure que toutes ces femmes-là sont bien oubliées et que je
ne songe plus à elles depuis que je vous connais.
— Quand je pense, dit Berthe, que vous leur avez dit que vous
les aimiez.
 — Je ne leur ai jamais dit ça.
— Menteur !
— Vous avez tort de ne pas me croire. Je n’ai jamais aimé que
vous.
— Et vous les embrassiez… Vous les embrassiez… comme vous
m’embrassez, moi.
— Non, ma petite Berthe.
— Si ! A partir d’aujourd’hui, vous ne m’embrasserez plus.
— Vous êtes méchante pour moi. En admettant que je les aie
embrassées ainsi, ce qui est faux, je serais bien excusable, puisque
je ne vous connaissais pas.
— Vous m’avez juré que vous n’aviez aimé personne avant moi.
Pourquoi embrassiez-vous des femmes que vous n’aimiez pas…
Pourquoi ?
C’est alors qu’elle ajouta :
— Moi je vous ai bien attendu.
Et c’est alors que Daniel avait dit, en souriant, sans penser à mal
et par manière de plaisanterie :
— Est-ce bien sûr ? Est-ce bien sûr que vous m’ayez attendu ?
Mais Berthe, soudain, se tourna vers lui et le regarda en face, en
ouvrant largement les yeux, pour qu’il pût lire au fond d’elle-même.
Pourquoi cette façon grave de répondre à une plaisanterie ?
Pourquoi prendre, à propos d’un badinage, ce grand air d’innocente,
à qui sa conscience ne reproche rien ?… Daniel pensa à André
Bardot. Il se dit : Je suis peut-être en chemin d’apprendre quelque
chose. Et l’instinct diabolique de savoir ne lui permettait pas de
s’arrêter sur ce chemin. Et puis, le soir, quand il se couchait, pouvait-
il s’endormir tranquille s’il n’avait pas scruté tous les recoins
d’ombre ?
Il regarda Berthe et sans quitter son ton de plaisanterie, afin que
son accusation ne fût pas regardée comme sérieuse si elle était
reconnue injuste, il dit en ricanant : Hé, hé ! André Bardot !
 Les paupières de Berthe battirent une fois, puis elle continua à
regarder Daniel les yeux grands ouverts. Il sembla pendant deux
secondes qu’elle ne pourrait plus s’en aller et qu’elle n’oserait plus
refermer les yeux. Daniel en avait froid par tout le corps.
Elle sourit enfin, et dit : Pourquoi ce nom ? Mais elle avait souri
trop tard, deux secondes trop tard. Et puis que signifiaient ces mots :
Pourquoi ce nom ? Elle n’avait donc pas osé le répéter, ce nom ?
Le soupçon, maintenant, avait pris possession de l’âme de
Daniel, comme un nouveau patron avec qui ça va changer et à qui
on n’en pourra faire accroire. Autoritaire, il allait tout visiter au
passage, peser les réponses, examiner l’aloi de tous les regards.
Elle se força à répéter sa question et dit encore : Pourquoi ce
nom ? Car elle ne pouvait pas battre en retraite ainsi, sans avoir de
réponse.
Daniel répondit :
— Pour rien.
Et elle s’en contenta.
Il cessa de lui tenir la main et s’assit à fond sur le canapé, sans la
regarder, les yeux devant lui, sans rien dire… Elle non plus ne disait
rien et ne s’étonnait pas de ce silence subit. Elle n’avait pas assez
de hardiesse, sans doute, pour continuer à parler de cela. Et si elle
pariait d’autre chose, peut-être l’accuserait-on de tenir à changer de
propos.
Au bout d’un instant, elle sentit le besoin d’expliquer son silence,
en appuyant ses doigts sur sa tempe, comme si elle souffrait d’une
migraine.
A l’autre bout du salon où étaient les deux familles, la
conversation était en train de mourir, et personne, vu l’heure tardive,
n’y ajoutait de nouvelles bûches. « Berthe, nous allons rentrer ! » dit
Mme Voraud d’une voix haute.
Berthe sembla attendre une intervention de Daniel. Elle répondit
enfin : « Oui, maman, » et fit mine de se lever.
 Daniel la retint, non par la main, mais du bout des doigts et par le
bras, et dit avec précipitation à Mme Voraud : « Ah ! madame, il n’est
pas tard. Attendez encore un instant ! »
— Mais non, madame, il n’est pas tard, se décida à dire Mme
Henry, qui aurait pourtant bien voulu aller se coucher.
— Il faut que je vous parle, dit Daniel à Berthe.
Elle sourit du coin des lèvres, et dit : Parlez.
Le ton de ce : Parlez, bouleversa Daniel. C’était le premier mot
hostile que Berthe lui eût jamais dit. Elle restait sur la défensive. Elle
se défendait contre lui, maintenant. L’amie était devenue
l’adversaire. Il en souffrit comme de la séparation la plus déchirante.
Il regarda autour de lui, il vit au bout du salon le sourire
complaisant de la tante Amélie qui s’attendrissait sur les deux petits
fiancés, sur les deux amoureux.
Il dit à Berthe avec effort :
— Je suis jaloux.
Elle répondit : Jaloux ? avec un petit étonnement feint. Elle
feignait maintenant avec lui. Toujours dans l’autre camp, toujours
hostile !
Il reprit : Vous savez de qui je suis jaloux.
Oh ! le geste évasif qu’elle fit, le geste peu sincère !
— Je suis jaloux de… de cette personne que je vous ai nommée
tout à l’heure.
Elle répondit : Vous êtes fou.
— Écoutez, Berthe. Il ne faut pas nier. On m’a déjà dit… On m’a
déjà parlé de vous et de cette personne…
Berthe ne répondit rien. « Eh bien ! ma fille, dit Mme Voraud, il faut
nous en aller. Ces dames tombent de sommeil. »
— Oh ! madame ! dit Daniel nerveusement, je vous en prie !
Restez encore un peu !
— Non, non, dit M. Voraud, il est tard. Il faut rentrer.
 — Encore cinq minutes, supplia Daniel… Berthe, dit-il à demi-
voix, répondez-moi quelque chose.
— Que voulez-vous que je vous réponde ?… Il est exact que ce
jeune homme m’a aimée, et je crois même qu’il m’aime encore.
— Mais vous, Berthe, vous ?
— Vous m’avez vue le soir où il est venu dîner à la maison. Vous
avez vu comment j’étais avec lui.
— Je pense bien que vous ne l’aimez plus, dit Daniel. Mais vous
l’avez peut-être aimé ?
— Jamais, dit Berthe.
— Jurez-le-moi.
— Je vous le jure.
Il resta sombre. Elle n’avait pas bien juré.
Il pensait aussi à d’autres questions, à toutes sortes d’autres
questions qu’il n’avait pas posées encore.
— Eh bien ! Berthe, voyons, décide-toi, dit Mme Voraud.
— Je vais mettre mon chapeau, dit Berthe.
Elle alla dans une autre pièce, où elle avait laissé sa veste et son
chapeau. Elle espérait sans doute que Daniel l’y rejoindrait. Mais il
ne la suivit pas. Il voulait rester fâché. Il n’irait même pas la
reconduire chez elle.
Pourtant, il ne put se décider, quand elle revint chercher ses
parents, à ne pas les accompagner. Elle partie, il resterait seul avec
tous ses soupçons. Il voulait rester avec elle le plus longtemps
possible, pour laisser à une explication plus complète la chance de
se produire. Sur la route, M. et Mme Voraud marchaient devant.
Daniel et Berthe les suivaient dans la nuit, côte à côte. Il ne lui dit
rien pendant le chemin. Seulement, comme on arrivait près de la
maison Voraud, il s’arrêta et l’arrêta sous le dernier réverbère. Il
regarda le visage de sa fiancée et lui dit : Je suis malheureux !
Elle répondit avec un sourire un peu douloureux : Daniel, mon
cher Daniel, moi qui vous aime tant !
 Ce n’était pas l’explication souhaitée. Dans le ton de ses paroles,
il y avait comme l’aveu de choses inavouées. Daniel en souffrit. Mais
sa douleur fut moins pénible, car il lui sembla qu’à ce moment,
Berthe n’était plus son ennemie, qu’elle était maintenant de son côté
pour souffrir avec lui, pour souffrir de quelque chose qui était dans le
passé et qui revenait les affliger d’un malheur commun. Quand
Daniel reprit seul le chemin de la maison, une sorte de paix triste
était rentrée dans son cœur.
 XXVI
L’ENQUÊTE

Quand il arriva chez elle le lendemain, après le déjeuner, elle

avait repris son sang-froid. Il n’osa pas revenir sur la conversation de
la veille, mais il dit qu’il était triste, que la vie l’affligeait. Elle lui
répondait : Vous êtes fou… ou : Vous savez bien que je vous aime.
Et, quand ils furent seuls, il ne refusa pas quoi qu’il s’en fût promis,
les lèvres qu’elle lui tendait.
Il avait mal dormi la nuit précédente, et, dans la matinée, il avait
pris la résolution d’aller trouver André Bardot et d’avoir avec lui une
explication. Il lui parlerait sans se fâcher, mais nettement. Cette
démarche lui paraissait très simple, car, selon son habitude, il avait
imaginé les demandes et les réponses de ce décisif entretien.
Il avait décidé de ne pas parler de ce projet à Berthe Voraud.
Mais il lui était difficile de retenir un secret. Le besoin de parler le
harcelait, et il trouvait toujours une bonne raison pour lui céder et
rompre le silence.
Il s’était aussi juré de ne pas ennuyer Berthe, ayant pour elle une
grande pitié. Mais c’était là une de ces promesses magnanimes, qu’il
n’avait jamais la fermeté détenir.
— J’ai l’intention, dit-il tout à coup, d’aller trouver André Bardot.
 Elle se tut pendant un instant, puis elle dit : « Allez le trouver »,
s’étant fait sans doute ce raisonnement puéril qu’elle semblerait
suspecte en lui déconseillant cette visite.
Il répondit du ton le plus naturel :
« Oui, j’irai. »
Puis ils se turent tous deux un temps assez long. Assise près de
la fenêtre, elle penchait sur un ouvrage de tapisserie sa tête
charmante et impénétrable. Daniel se dit qu’il fallait ne pas avoir l’air
fâché et prononcer une phrase quelconque. Il regarda un portrait au
mur, et s’écria : Comme ce portrait de votre grand-père ressemble à
M. Voraud !
Elle ne répondit rien. Souffrait-elle au fond d’elle-même ? Il en
ressentit à la fois un déchirement et un plaisir. Il craignait de la voir
souffrir, mais il ne détestait pas le goût de sa souffrance.
— Il ne faudrait pas, dit-il, que vous preniez contre vous ce que je
vous ai dit tout à l’heure, relativement à ma visite à ce jeune homme.
— Je ne le prends pas contre moi.
— Je le pense bien… Si je vais le voir, ce n’est pas du tout pour
contrôler ce que vous m’avez dit… Je vais seulement lui demander
une explication au sujet de certains racontars que, selon certaines
personnes, il aurait faits sur votre compte.
— Allez le voir, dit-elle encore.
— Je n’irai le voir que si vous m’en priez, ma petite Berthe. Vous
savez bien que je vous aime et que je vous obéis toujours.
— Si vous avez le moindre soupçon, il faut aller le voir.
Seulement, si vous voulez mon avis, je trouve cette démarche
ridicule. De quoi ça aura-t-il l’air ?
— Je n’irai pas le voir.
Il venait de se résoudre à un moyen terme ; il interrogerait Julius,
qu’il n’avait jamais osé questionner à fond. Mais il ne parla pas de
cette démarche à Berthe, qui n’aimait pas Julius et n’eût pas toléré
qu’on le mêlât à cette affaire.
 Un télégramme avertit Julius de se trouver le même soir, à la
terrasse de la Paix.
Il prit le train pour Paris après avoir dîné à la hâte. Il se trouva
seul dans un compartiment avec une dame, qui lui fit l’effet d’une
demi-mondaine très élégante. Elle portait un corsage et une
ombrelle en dentelle assortie et tenait à la main un petit sac en
maroquin jaune clair. Daniel s’assit à l’autre bout du compartiment,
sur la banquette d’en face, et regarda cette dame fixement.
Il avait conçu ou plutôt rêvé un plan de campagne : engager la
conversation avec elle, lui proposer de la reconduire chez elle,
passer la nuit en sa compagnie, puis se lier d’une façon suivie. Il se
voyait son amant attitré, la conduisant au théâtre, où Berthe, à qui
on les désignerait de loin, serait navrée de désespoir.
Mais il se dit : A quoi bon ? Berthe m’aime. Il ne s’agit pas de la
dépiter et de me faire aimer d’elle. Ce n’est pas la question. Ce qu’il
y a de grave, c’est ce quelque chose qu’il y a dans le passé et que
rien, rien ne peut effacer.
Le train arrivait en vue de La Chapelle et sifflait sans relâche,
comme un cheval hennit en rentrant à l’écurie. Il passa entre des
bâtiments interminables, des fils télégraphiques, de longues suites
de wagons désœuvrés, et d’innombrables signaux, qui n’avaient
jamais semblé aussi prodigieusement inutiles. La dame avait tiré une
glace de sa poche et se tamponnait doucement le nez avec un petit
mouchoir. Quand le train entra en gare, Daniel sauta sur le quai, puis
attendit sa compagne de voyage, afin de lui offrir un semblant d’aide
pour descendre. Ne sachant par quel bout la prendre, il lui toucha
vaguement le bras. Elle remercia d’un signe de tête et se dirigea
rapidement vers la sortie. Il pensa à la suivre jusqu’à sa voiture, afin
de ne pas perdre toute trace ; mais il aperçut au bout du quai un
jeune homme de haute taille, à qui elle tendit la main ; puis tous
deux s’en allèrent ensemble, en causant. Daniel renonça donc à elle
et la remit mentalement aux soins de cet inconnu.
Julius était installé à la terrasse du café, à côté d’un de leurs
vagues camarades communs, un étudiant en médecine d’une
trentaine d’années, borgne d’un œil et triste de l’autre et qui parlait
sans relâche, d’un ton las et assuré. Il était prolixe en anecdotes sur
le monde médical, sur les nouvelles découvertes et sur toutes
choses. Il parlait aussi, avec moins de précision, de ses examens,
dont on n’entrevoyait jamais la fin. Daniel, impressionné par sa
morne supériorité, avait en lui beaucoup de confiance, et l’avait
maintes fois consulté, au sujet de toutes sortes de symptômes.
Daniel fut content de le trouver là, pour ne pas être obligé de
parler tout de suite à Julius. Le jeune homme borgne leur raconta
des histoires d’une femme hystérique, qu’il avait connue à la
Maternité. Puis il dit qu’il n’avait pas été aux courses depuis trois
semaines. Il leur dit encore pourquoi il ne retournerait plus dans un
café du boulevard Saint-Michel. A la fin il se leva, pour rentrer
travailler.
Daniel n’entama pas tout de suite la conversation qu’il avait
projetée. Julius et lui examinèrent un maigre vieillard aux longs
cheveux bouclés, qui se promenait de table en table à pas traînants
et montrait des petits miroirs qu’il approchait de sa bouche ouverte,
et où d’un dernier souffle de vie il faisait apparaître l’image d’une
femme nue, d’une très pauvre obscénité. Un autre individu,
arbitrairement coiffé d’un fez, déroulait sans espoir un tapis à fleurs
jaunes.
— Tu ne m’as pas dit ce que tu pensais de Berthe Voraud ? dit
tout à coup Daniel, d’un air détaché.
— Pas mal, dit Julius.
— Je voulais te parler… continua Daniel. Tu m’as raconté dans le
temps une histoire à propos d’elle et de Bardot. J’ai de bonnes
raisons de croire que ce n’est pas vrai. Mais je ne serais pas fâché
de savoir de qui tu tiens ça.
— Je te l’ai déjà dit, répondit Julius. Je le sais de Bardot lui-
même.
— C’est un blagueur, dit Daniel, et un mufle, s’il a vraiment
raconté ça.
 — Il l’a vraiment raconté, dit paisiblement Julius. Et il me le
raconte environ quatre fois par semaine. Il me rase assez avec ça.
— Qu’est-ce qu’il te dit ?
— Oh ! je n’y fais pas attention.
— Écoute, mon petit Julius, c’est toi qui es un mufle de ne pas
me parler plus sérieusement de cette chose qui est très grave. Fais-
moi le plaisir de laisser ces allumettes tranquilles. Et il enleva le
porte-allumettes où Julius venait de frotter la dixième allumette pour
s’amuser à écrire sur la table avec des bouts de bois carbonisés.
— Qu’est-ce que tu veux que je te dise ?
— Je veux que tu me racontes exactement tout ce que Bardot t’a
dit.
— Il serait content s’il t’entendait. Car c’est évidemment pour que
je te le rapporte qu’il vient m’embêter avec ça tous les deux soirs.
D’abord il y a une chose que tu peux savoir, parce que c’est connu,
c’est qu’il a été pour ainsi dire fiancé avec Berthe Voraud. Le
mariage s’est rompu, à ce qu’il prétend, parce que le père Bardot n’a
pas voulu qu’il l’épouse. Mais je crois que c’est le contraire et que
c’est Voraud qui n’a pas voulu lui donner sa fille ; il n’a aucune
position.
— Qu’est-ce qu’il t’a raconté d’autre ? dit Daniel.
— Il m’a dit toutes sortes de choses sur Berthe, sur la façon dont
ils s’étaient connus. C’est Louise Loison qui les a présentés… Et
puis il m’a dit ce qu’ils faisaient ensemble.
— Elle a été sa maîtresse ? dit Daniel d’un ton calme.
— Non, dit Julien.
— Comment le sais-tu ?
— Il me l’aurait dit.
— On ne dit pas ces choses-là, dit Daniel.
— Si. On les dit. Lui, en tout cas, me l’aurait dit. Il aurait trop tenu
à ce que tu le saches, pour t’empêcher de faire le mariage. S’il avait
été en droit de raconter quelque chose de ce genre, il n’aurait pas
hésité.
— Tu me jures que c’est bien ta pensée ?
— Je te le jure, dit Julius docilement. Elle n’a pas été sa
maîtresse… Il m’a raconté comment il l’embrassait. Elle venait
s’asseoir sur ses genoux.
Daniel regardait dans le vague, devant lui. Si bien qu’un homme
qui vendait pour quarante francs une montre et sa chaîne, se crut
gratifié d’une attention spéciale et dépensa en pure perte un assez
long exposé.
— Qu’est-ce que tu me conseilles ? dit Daniel.
— Ne l’épouse pas, dit Julius. Tu n’es pas forcé de l’épouser.
Deux interminables armées de passants, sur le trottoir, l’armée
montante et l’armée descendante, se croisaient à la débandade. Un
vieux monsieur en chaussons marchait à pas méticuleux, avec des
pieds informes. Un homme en jaquette, sans linge apparent, glissait
une canne sournoise sous les tables et piquait des bouts de
cigarettes, qu’il empochait avec flegme et beaucoup de douceur.
— Viens-tu au Moulin ? dit Julien.
— Je veux bien, dit Daniel.
Ils montèrent bras dessus bras dessous la rue Blanche. Daniel
ne sentait pas encore son mal. Il avait plutôt quelques satisfactions,
la petite joie perverse d’être en présence d’une catastrophe. Et puis,
il n’était pas fâché de tenir un grief certain et sérieux, avec lequel il
pourrait confondre Berthe. Et puis, c’était aussi l’occasion, toujours
tentante, de s’en aller, de n’être plus fiancé, c’était une libération,
une porte ouverte.
Mais au Moulin, sous le vaste hall de plaisir, le décor changea. Il
vit avec tristesse la vie qu’il allait reprendre. C’était là-dessus que
donnait la porte ouverte ! Il avait le droit de sortir, mais vers quelle
existence vide et sans amour !
Il quitterait donc une femme qui l’aimait, et pour quoi la quitterait-
il ? Un orage avait bouleversé son logis. Un pan de mur était tombé,