Paul-Albert Laurens- artist friend of Louys & Gide

Portrait of Andre Gide

Paul Albert Laurens (1870-1934) was a French painter and illustrator; he was the eldest son of distinguished painter Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921), who taught at the Institut de France, the Academy in Toulouse and the Academie Julian in Paris. Paul Albert was born in Paris, although the family soon afterwards moved away from the city, seeking safety during the Franco-Prussian war. Laurens’ younger brother, Jean-Pierre, was born five years later and was also a painter. Paul-Albert went to school in Paris, where he became friendly with André Gide; he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and then, in 1890, worked at the Académie Julian alongside his brother. The next year, the young Laurens won second prize in the prestigious Prix de Rome and began exhibiting his work at the Salon des Artistes Francais during the same year. Further awards and prizes followed and Laurens became a teacher at the École Polytechnique in 1898.

Laurens and André Gide remained friends into adulthood, and they went to live for a time in Algeria. On 18th October 1893 the pair sailed from Marseille bound for Tunis, and from there travelled on to Sousse in Tunisia. In January 1894 Laurens and Gide travelled to and settled in the Algerian city of Biskra, in the former home of the White Fathers (Missionaries of Africa). Various paintings of Algerian street scenes by Laurens obviously date to this period. Through Gide, it seems almost certain that there would have been some direct contact or familiarity between Laurens and Pierre Louys, who was also a friend of the young author. The two writers had met as teenagers in 1888 and remained close until 1895, when there was a falling out. Some resemblance of acquaintance was sustained for another year until the pair severed all communication in 1896. It’s probable that all three were, to some degree, sex tourists in Algeria; Louys got some of his inspiration for Bilitis there, although for Gide the journey led to the discovery of his homosexuality. Laurens was present when Gide’s first gay experience took place, an event that made the two men close, even though Laurens (like Louys) was straight and went on to marry in 1900.

Two Nymphs

Around 1912, with his father and one of his students, Laurens helped to decorate the walls and ceilings of the Capitole in Toulouse with allegorical scenes. During the First World War, he worked with several other artists on designing camouflage schemes for the armed forces and their work served as a model for the Allied armies (the British army, for example, used the painter Solomon J Solomon to work on tank camouflage). After the war, Laurens was promoted to Professor of Drawing at the École Polytechnique, where he continued to teach until his death in 1934. His professional standing was recognised when he was appointed member of the French Academy of Fine Arts in 1933.

A study for ‘Dido’

Laurens is known for his portraiture (for example, of Gide) and for his illustrative work. He also designed posters for theatres and, as a painter, his output appears extremely eclectic: he doesn’t seem to have had any really settled style or subject matter. Doubtless he painted what he was commissioned to produce or what would sell. Hence we have the neo-classical bathing scene, Les Baigneuses, which looks very like work by Alma Tadema, Lord Leighton and many others, a mythical Feast of Flora, and an imitation of the eighteenth century galant painting of Watteau in Le Jardin de l’amour (The Garden of Love).

Les Baigneuses

The Feast of Flora

Le Jardin de l’amour

Neo-classical nymphs and nudes are rather common, as might be anticipated if one is familiar with Laurens’ work on Pierre Louys retelling of Leda. These female figures draw on the artist’s skills as learned in the life drawing classes at the Academy, and are more or less conventional, reflecting the types developed by Bouguereau or Chabanel, but we can see as well that Laurens liked to depict pairs of nubile figures, leaving the viewer a little unsure as to whether he is seeing friends, sisters, mother and daughter or lovers.

Catching Waves

Nymphes de la mer

Amongst his other sources of income, Laurens illustrated books. He provided plates for editions of Daudet and Gautier, but also worked on editions of three books by Pierre Louys- in 1897 he produced six etchings depicting scenes from the recently published Aphrodite and, in the following year, he illustrated editions of the novel Bilitis and the short story Leda, as I have described previously.

Aphrodite, Book 3, c.4- the bacchanalia at Bacchis’ home

Aphrodite, Book 4, c.5: the burial of Chrysis by Rhodis & Myrtocleia

An illuminated capital from Leda

For me, Laurens’ work on the three books by Louys seems to rise above his other designs: there’s an energy and creativeness in them which I don’t find in some of his more generic pieces. Perhaps the subject matter was especially conducive to his imagination- as we might judge from his life study titled Adolescence (below), a figure who could as easily be a nereid, dryad or character from one of Louys’ Hellenic fantasies. Viewed from this perspective of this work, Laurens’ young nymphs may be understood as being clearly symbolic of the fertility of Nature, of perpetual renewal and regrowth. Nevertheless, aside from any mythological connotations, Lauren’s interest in this transitional state from youth to maturity was by no means unique to him: it was an aspect of life that fascinated very many artists of this period, from famous figures such as Edvard Munch (Puberty, 1894-95) and Oskar Kokoschka to relatively less well-known painters like Eleni Luksch-Makovsky (Adolescentia, 1903), Oskar Heller, Paul Hermann Wagner and Richard Muller. More particularly, a range of artists of the same period were drawn to create studies of the sleeping adolescent: examples include Marie Madeleine Rignot-Dubaux (1857-87), Oskar Heller (1870-1938), Hugh Ramsay (1877-1906), Gustave Brisgand (1867-1944) and, especially, Zinaida Serebriakova (1884-1967), a Russian artist who settled in France in 1924 and who, between 1923 and 1935, painted a number of portraits of her daughter, Katyusha, asleep in poses very similar to that chosen by Laurens.

Mike Cockrill has also pointed out something I had initially missed- the resemblance of Laurens’ model’s pose to that of numerous paintings by Balthus. The reclining female figure was one to which he returned throughout his career: it began with Therese Blanchard with one leg raised in Girl with Cat (1938) and evolved from there. Variations upon the theme of the slumbering girl include The Victim (1939-46), Reclining Nude (1945), The Week with Four Thursdays (1949), Nude with Cat (or Basin) (1948-50), The Room (1952-54), Large Composition with Raven and Nude with Guitar (both 1983-86) and Expectation (1995). All of these postdate Laurens’ death; although I have been unable so far to date Adolescence, Balthus may have been inspired by it- or will certainly have been responding to the general popularity of the subject within French painting of the era.

Adolescence

“Wonderful things”- Some rare illustrated books in the British Library

Clara Tice, King Pausole, Princess Aline & Giglio at the Fountain of the Nymphs (Book 4, Epilogue)

I recently made a sort of pilgrimage to the British Library to look at some of their illustrated editions of the books of Pierre Louys; a confession- I’ve written a lot about these but I’ve substantially relied on images found online- other than for the 1932 Collected Works published by the Pierre Louys Society of America. I wanted to experience some of these books in my hands because, as regular readers will know, I have put considerable stress on the significance of the bibiology of Louys- the astonishing number of illustrated editions of his works that people have felt it worthwhile producing. The experience of the book as a physical, tactile object can be every bit bit as valuable as reading the text, in addition to which I wanted to see the various colour plates as they had been designed to be seen- on the page and at the size that the artist had intended. This was the visit I looked at the very rare poem Maddalou as well.

I’ll start with the most outrageous- the 1933 edition of L’Histoire du Roi Gonzalve s et les douze princesses. It was tiny- just 10 by 7.5 cms; perhaps this was to enable something potentially illicit to be smuggled more easily; certainly, the book pretends to have been published in Madrid, which was probably intended to throw the authorities off the scent. This edition (which only totalled 205 copies) is illustrated with a dozen pen and ink drawings by Auguste Brouet. The unfinished story concerns King Gonzalve’s incest with his twelve daughters and Brouet faithfully reproduced these incidents in explicit detail. That said, the pictures were very small indeed, which must rather have detracted from their impact.

Next, a couple of real treasures. I looked first at the 1898 edition of Louys’ version of Leda, generally found now as part of the collection Crepuscule des nymphes (Twilight of the Nymphs in the 1926 Collected Works). As I’ve described before, this original version is illustrated with plates by Paul-Albert Laurens. It is a truly beautiful book, to hold and to look at. It’s printed on thick verge d’Arches paper and the illuminated initial letters and tailpiece illustrations are handpainted in watercolour. In places, I could see where the paint had strayed over the printed outlines and, in one case, over the frame of one of the decorative capital letters. Only 600 copies were printed, of which this was number 183- it was gorgeous, a little jewel.

Clara Tice, King Pausole, Mirabelle & Aline at the inn (Book 2, c.8)

Nearly as lovely was the 1926 edition (for the Pierre Louys Society) of The Adventures of King Pausole, illustrated by Clara Tice. This was copy 586 of 990. The book itself, like my copy of the 1932 Collected Works, was decent but not top quality; the text was the same translation in each. The pages are moderately heavy paper, typical of middle of the range books of the time, but what lifts this edition is the plates- ten of them- by Tice. These are little jewels, printed in bright pinks and greens but, in some cases, with radiant backgrounds of silver or gold. The figures are, predominantly, Tice’s sweet female nudes; her drawing is dynamic and the designs are elegant. It was a joy to turn the pages. There’s a delightful humour in Tice’s work- from the odd phallic sceptre carried by the king to her young females, who always look slightly startled, their mouths in a cute moue.

Clara Tice, King Pausole, Queen Philis arrives in the capital (Book 4, c.5)

Collot, courtesans of the temple of Aphrodite

Next I looked at the 1946 edition of Aphrodite, illustrated by Andre Collot and published by Henri Kaeser in Lausanne. The plates were printed on heavier paper than the text; a total of one thousand copies were printed and this seemed to be reflected in the fact that it felt less special and expensive than the books I’d already inspected. From 1930, I also inspected a copy of Douze douzains de dialogues illustrated by Collot. Although it lacked any bibliographical information from the publisher, the pages were thick, heavy paper, untrimmed (and unnumbered) and there were attractive floral pattern endpapers. The text was reproduced as if it was handwriting and the plates were minimalist pen and ink sketches, but it was notable how well the artist had captured the various facial expressions of the protagonists.

All the same, the next volume, Les Chansons de Bilitis, illustrated by Mariette Lydis in 1934, was number 1550 copies out of a total print-run of 5000- yet it felt more precious than the 1946 Aphrodite. Perhaps this was because it was printed on velin chiffon paper rather than plain old velin blanc– although the marbled endpapers may have helped? Maybe it was just because I esteem Ms Lydis more highly as an artist. She was generous- thirty four images, mainly included as tailpieces to the individual songs. In the copy I saw, these were printed just in black and white, but I have seen online coloured versions which have some differences in the drawing too. As ever with Mariette Lydis, these were delicate and tender evocations of female beauty and women in love.

Lydis, Bilitis, song 76, ‘Evening by the fire’

Also illustrated by Lydis in the same Union Latine d’Editions series was a copy of Les Aventures du Roi Pausole. It was in the same format as Bilitis, with attractive marbled end papers and quality, heavier paper for the illustrations. There was a title page image of a young woman’s head, and eleven ‘tipped in’ plates on separate sheets bound into the text. These were in Lydis’ typical soft pencil drawing style; interestingly, one plate- showing Aline at theatre, catching sight of Mirabelle for the first time- was coloured; the only one on the book. As ever, Lydis produced beautifully modelled female nudes and delicate, expressive pictures of girls in love.

Mariette Lydis, Aline at the theatre, 1934

The rest of the books I examined were from the later 1940s. In 1947 Edition du Grand-Chenes produced an edition of Bilitis illustrated with nine lithographs by Andre Dignimont. One thousand were printed, on velin blanc; the paper was very white and smooth, not as rich feeling as some, but enhanced by red section headings at the top of each page and red page numbers at the foot, plus the drop capital letter at the start of each chapter was printed in red. The book included an introduction on the life and work of Louys written by his friend, Claude Farrère, and the plates reproduced delicate soft pencil drawings with colour shading, all pleasingly simple and attractive.

Dignimont, Bilitis, Book 2, song 76- ‘Soir pres du feu’ (contrast to the Lydis’ plate above)

From the previous year was a curiosity, a version of Pybrac with plates by an unknown artist. It was clearly a reasonably expensive printing, as there were three different qualities of edition: one on papier d’arches that also included a ‘suite’ of the illustrations, provided in a separate folder on unbound sheets and printed on Holland van Gelder Zonen paper (this Dutch firm handmade paper from 1685 to 1982), plus two extra original designs that the editors had decided not to include in the final volume; eight copies of the book were supplied with a single extra original design and a ‘suite’ printed on velin de Renages paper (Renages is a town near Grenoble); lastly, there was the ‘basic’ printing which ran to 42 copies. The eight illustrations were the mystery- again, they spoke of quality, in that they each had a tissue paper cover. The plates were painted, perhaps in gouache, in bright colours, the scenes depicted being very explicit but (technically) rather crude. Some of these scenes also did not reflect any of the quatrains in the collection that I can can identify. The hairstyles and clothes were certainly right for the mid-’40s, but I wonder if at least some of these images were recycled from elsewhere, as if the artist, whoever he was, just decided to paint something rude that was vaguely inspired by the text- which would be odd (then again, there are those two rejected plates). An alternative explanation may be that this selection of 140 quatrains does not draw solely upon the ‘canonical’ collection of three hundred four-line verses. Louys wrote many more than those that are typically included in the available volumes (for example, the translations by Wakefield Press or Black Scat). However, it would have been difficulty to establish this with certainty from the British Library copy as a number of pages were missing. Finally, this edition appears to be so rare I can find no examples of it online- hardly surprising given that there were only ever 51 copies.

The cover of the Serres edition, 1948

From 1948, I inspected a copy of the edition of the Manuel de civilite illustrated by Raoul Serres and ostensibly published in London. Once again, this was a ‘fine art’ edition with several levels of quality. There was just one single copy printed on luxury Vieux Japon paper with six original watercolours, six original designs by the artist and a ‘suite.’ Six were printed on handmade Auvergne paper with the watercolours and the suite; another six were on Auvergne and also included an original design as well as the suite; fifteen were on Auvergne with only the suite added and all the rest were on the velin rives paper (with a very clear watermark) but without any extras. All copies except the top quality version were initialled by the artist. Serres’ twelve watercolours are rude but very funny. The young females have little dot eyes (rather like figures by Clara Tice) and regularly sport a coloured ribbon or bow in their straw yellow hair. The older men they encounter are made to seem more ghastly and unappealing by giving them pale blue skin.

I’ve kept the (second) best for last: Suzanne Ballivet‘s 1948 edition of Roi Pausole, printed in Monte Carlo by Editions du Livre. Three levels of quality were offered: eight copies on Old Japan; forty on pur fil Johannot, a heavy paper made from 100% linen, and the remaining 925 on Grand Velin Renage (which was clearly watermarked Renage). It was a big, heavy book (29 x 23 cms) and, even though the British Library version (as always) was from the least expensive of the sets, it still felt sumptuous. It came in a hard case with card covers and a heavy paper dustjacket. There was a separate ‘suite’ of twelve of the illustrations. The book itself was illustrated by 37 lithographs incorporated into the text plus another twenty ‘tipped-in’ full page plates. Ballivet’s fine pencil illustrations were gorgeous- especially the detail of the woods and meadows in which she placed her figures, with flowers and blades of grass individually delineated. The quantity of illustrations meant there was an image every seven to ten pages, making the book feel very special indeed.

Ballivet, Mirabelle dressing

To conclude, the feel of a book- its size, the quality of the paper, the number and nature of the illustrations- all contribute to the reader’s sense that they are looking at something precious and significant. As for the plates themselves, there was unquestionably something special about seeing the luminosity of Clara Tice’s pastel colours, and the sheen of her silver and gold background, or Laurens’ jewel-like watercolours in Leda.

I wrote recently about the legacy and importance of the work of Pierre Louys: that surely can be appreciated when you handle lavish and expensive books like these and realise how much money, effort and respect publishers, artists and purchasers have been prepared to continue to put into his writings since his death a century ago. These books were unquestionably created as investments: their limited print runs and range of ‘extras’ all confirm that they were planned as highly collectible from the outset, a tribute to the high regard in which their author was held.

For more on the work of Pierre Louys, see my bibliography page. For more on my own writing on the author, see my books page with its links to my Academia page where a range of essays on Louys and his illustrators are posted.

‘Three daughters and their mother’- scandal and complexity from Pierre Louys

Teresa & family by Edouard Chimot

During the last decade and a half of his career, Pierre Louys completed three major works- the Handbook of Manners for Young Ladies, which was a parody of deportment manuals; the novel Trois Filles de leur mere, and the poetry collection Pybrac. It is arguable, in fact, Pybrac was never actually completed, in the sense that Louys added continually to the quatrains that comprise it and the published versions of the book only include a fraction of the total known number of verses. There were, in addition, several unfinished works: the novels Toinon and L’Histoire du Roi Gonzalve and the mock-travelogue/ novel L’Ile aux dames. These texts all have a number of themes in common: Louys’ encyclopaedic literary knowledge coupled with a tendency to mock those books; his filthy sense of humour; the utopian strand to his writing, and his liking for erotica.

Here, I focus on Trois Filles de leur mere (Three Daughters of Their Mother), arguably one of the most difficult books by Louys. This considerable difficulty for readers arises from the tension between the surface content of the text- some of his obscenest erotica- and the deeper purposes of his writing.

Louys had a number of aims and targets in writing Trois Filles. He felt a deep antipathy for the stifling morals and conventions of the Catholic church within which he’d been raised (hence his regular recreations of the pagan faith of classical Greek and Roman seen in several of his works) and it’s clear that the book is, in part, an assault upon many of the sacraments and concepts of the faith: the story features sex in a church, a vicious parody of communion, and a perverse immaculate conception, for example. One of the three daughters, Charlotte, is something of a martyr-figure, and it’s even arguable, I think, that the mother, Teresa, stands as a satanic temptress figure for her trinity of girls. Amongst the other targets for Louys’ derision, alongside casual piety, were French wine snobbery and the general bourgeois mood of propriety.

In addition, the book is deeply literary. There are repeated references to classical and Renaissance and later French authors, such as Clement Marot (1496-1544) or La Fontaine, which readers are expected, implicitly, to know. Some of these sources are quoted, some are parodied and mocked. An obscene passage is attributed to the Humanist scholar Erasmus, which I’m sure he never wrote (although I’ll confess I’ve not checked all 86 volumes of his collected works). One contemporary French writer is condemned as merely deadly dull (just as was the case with the moralist Guy du Faur in Pybrac): after a rather overstimulating session with the mother, Teresa, the student narrator concludes “I took from my library a ‘heady’ novel by Henri Bourdeaux that I had purchased especially for the purpose of calming myself down when I was in a worked-up state.” Bourdeaux (1870-1963) was a lawyer and author known for his traditional Catholic morality and his very correct French style.

Besides citing classical authors, Louys borrowed themes from them just as he modelled parts of his plot on the Bible. Hence, we find traces of Leda, Pasiphae and Europa in some of the incidents described.

René Ranson’s title page

The book is also ‘metatextual’ before that term was invented. It is repeatedly aware that it is a story, pretending to be a memoire. For example, the student narrator addresses us, as readers, explaining “I would have taken much more pleasure in inventing a story where I could give myself (so easily) a more sympathetic role” or “That’s the trouble with memoires: they get monotonous. In a novel, this kind of repetition can never be excused, but in life it has to be accepted.” When a play is acted out in the final chapters of the book, the artificiality of that make-believe within the wider pretence of the story-telling is continually highlighted, the use of dramatic jargon constantly reminding us that it is all invented and staged: for example “Teresa probably did not know that she had introduced a prosopopoeia into her speech, but there is no need to know the figures of rhetoric to put them… at the service of persuasion. Was it the apostrophe, the hypothesis, the exhortation or the prosopopoeia that won? I do not know…” Very evidently, this sort of passage is not part of standard work of pornography.

The text can be understood at several levels simultaneously, I would argue. The basic plot concerns a student who moves into a new flat next door to Teresa and her three daughters and discovers that all four are sex workers. A few weeks of uninhibited sensual indulgence with the entire family follows, before they suddenly disappear. The novel may be interpreted as a condemnation of the sex trade and its malign impact upon the women trapped within it. At the same time, though, there are elements of the narrative which celebrate female sexual autonomy and women’s right to control over their bodies and their pleasures. Teresa is proud of her physical prowess; she comes over as a powerful and determined woman- except that the downside of her assertiveness is the fact that she dominates her family and is involved in damaging incestuous relationships with all of them. Then again- as he often did- Louys seems to suggest that self-sufficient lesbian households may represent some sort of social utopia– an ideal of independence and happiness. Yet he also interrogates lesbian or bisexual identity, perhaps ultimately tending towards a position that sexual fluidity is a more accurate way of understanding individuals.

On its face, Trois Filles may appear outrageously, shockingly pornographic, but I think it’s plain that any text that casually mentions Jesuit preacher Louis Bourdaloue, Roman poet Tibullus, the Greek playwright Aeschylus, Alexander the Great, Melisandre, and the painter Ingres, has depths and intentions that are not instantly obvious. The complex and multi-faceted nature of Trois Filles means that we are constantly left unbalanced by it, not quite sure of Louys’ meaning, uncertain whether he is playing a game and always returning to the text to uncover new layers of significance.

As ever, I find the novel’s bibliology as fascinating as the book itself. Illustrated editions proved extremely popular with publishers and several artists whom we’ve already encountered before, because of their work on texts by Louys, were commissioned to provide imagery. The first edition of Trois Filles was released by Pascal Pia in 1926, with twenty plates by Louis Berthomme Saint-Andre. Further illustrated editions followed in due course: in 1930, with plates by Andre Collot; in 1935, illustrated with sixteen etchings by Marcel Vertes and in 1936, with 34 watercolours by René Ranson (1891-1977). Ranson was one of the most important designers at work during the interwar heyday of the Parisian music hall, working for the Folies Bergère between 1924 and 1932. Renowned for his draughtsmanship, he was a painter, illustrator and costume designer as well. Ranson also supplied designs to the Paris Opera, and for several film studios, including Fox, Pathé and Paramount. Over and above his theatrical work, Ranson painted glamour or pin-up nudes and provided plates for works such as Baudelaire’s Fleur du mal. In past posts I’ve remarked on the frequency with which cartoonists and caricaturists found work as illustrators- and, for that matter, how often the skills acquired in illustrating children’s books might be transferred to the distinctly adult content of the works of Pierre Louys. René Ranson demonstrates how theatrical and costume designers might find additional work in book illustration; other examples I’ve noted previously include George Barbier, Louis Touchagues and Andre Dignimont. All of them surely deserve our respect for their multi-talented ability to turn their hands to almost any artistic commission offered to them.

After the end of the Second World War, further editions of Trois Filles followed: Jean Berque provided sixteen plates for an issue in 1955 and, late that same year, Edouard Chimot also illustrated an edition with a dozen plates (see head of page for the family in their best ‘New Look’ dresses). Then, in 1960, an edition illustrated by Rojan was published. Finally, as I have mentioned several times, a version illustrated by graphic novel artist Georges Pichard appeared in 1980. In all these cases, the illustrators were faithful after their own style to the text they were commissioned to work upon, meaning that in most cases the plates are not really suitable for publication on WordPress. This explicitness can- as I’ve suggested- have its own implications for the text that the images accompany. Pichard, used to multiple frames in cartoon strips, designed an impressive fifty-three plates to go with Louys’ book. The sheer number of these, coupled with his graphic style of strongly drawn images, has the effect of underlining the more bleak and depraved aspects of the book. His monochrome plates emphasise the elements of tragedy and desperation in the narrative- something that Chimot’s and Ranson’s very pretty coloured illustrations definitely do not do.

This post is a simplified version of a longer, fully annotated essay on the novel that can be downloaded from my Academia page. I have also written there in detail on Louys’ attitudes towards religion. For readers who are interested, several translations of the book are readily available, the most recent being Her Three Daughters, available from Black Scat books (published December 2022). See as well my Louys bibliography and details of my other writing on the author.

The cover of Pichard’s edition

Illuminating ‘The Twilight of the Nymphs’- illustrating ancient myths retold

Paul Albert Laurens, Leda

Between 1893 and 1898, French writer Pierre Louys produced a series of retellings of classical myths- the stories of Leda, Ariadne and Byblis– which were accompanied by The House Upon the Nile, a story set in Hellenic Egypt. These were later grouped together, along with Louys’ version of the story of Danae, as Le Crepuscule des nymphes (The Twilight of the Nymphs). Several illustrated versions of this were published after Louys death in 1925. This post reviews the artworks generated by this pleasant, if minor, collection of stories.

Laurens, Leda

The first illustrated volume in the series was Leda, issued in 1898 with plates provided by Paul Albert Laurens. I have mentioned edition this in other posts. Laurens (1870-1934) was born in Paris, the son of the distinguished painter and sculptor Jean-Paul Laurens. He undertook his artistic training at the Académie Julian and during his artistic career he won a variety of medals and prizes for his work. Laurens undertook a wide variety of commissions, including street scenes, still lifes, figures, murals and book illustration. During the First World War he helped to devise camouflage schemes and from 1898 was teacher and later professor of drawing at the École Polytechnique in Paris. His plates for Leda are very attractive little vignettes, faithfully portraying the rather alien blueness of the nymph and contrasting her slender nudity with the coarseness of the river gods.

Wagrez, Byblis

The same year as Leda, an edition of Byblis, illustrated by Jacques-Clément Wagrez (1850-1908), appeared. This little known story concerns the nymph Byblis and her brother Caunos, the twin children of the river nymph Cyanis (the naiad Kyane, who is evidently just as blue as Leda). Being continually alone together, the siblings fall in love with each other and their mother determines to terminate their incestuous romance. She therefore has the boy carried off by a centauress. Byblis is heart-broken to lose her twin, sole companion and lover. She sets out in search of him but becomes hopelessly lost. In despair, she breaks down in tears of grief and is turned into a fountain.

Like Laurens, Wagrez was the son of a painter and studied École des Beaux-Arts in Paris before travelling in Italy. He became a painter (especially in watercolours) as well as a decorative arts designer (including tapestries). His compositions were often inspired by the artists of Renaissance Florence and Venice, as well as by classical mythology. In addition to the edition of Byblis, he also illustrated editions of Shakespeare’s plays, Balzac, Wagner and Boccaccio’s Decameron. His illustrations for Louys are conventional and not very exciting (sorry Jacques-Clément).

This last edition of Byblis was far surpassed in 1901 by Henri Caruchet’s art nouveau design, a truly stunning little book, on nearly every page of which the text is framed by beautiful studies of entwined flowers, foliage and nymphs.

Henri Émile Caruchet (1873-1948) was a French painter in oils and watercolours, illustrator and poet. He studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris in 1892, attending classes with Gustave Moreau amongst others.  Subsequently, Caruchet worked in many fields: he was a book illustrator, working on titles by Theophile Gautier and Anatole France, but he was also a press caricaturist, painter, and ceramics designer, in addition to which he was the author of poetry, reviews, stories and magazine articles. The Benezit Dictionary of Artists describes his “extravagantly floral style, typical of Art Nouveau.” The results are strange and beautiful.

Caruchet’s erotic illustrations have been described as symbolist: in 1904 he supplied twenty gorgeous art nouveau designs for an edition of Jean de Villiot’s Parisienne et Peux-Rouges, published by Charles Carrington; it was one in that company’s series La Flagellation à Travers le Monde (Flagellation Across the World).  The book was raised above its genre by the plates, which are stunning little works of art, both bizarre and beautiful: amongst them are a naked woman being molested by an octopus against a background of stars and a woman who is wearing only stockings and holds a small puppet of a man dressed in a suit and top hat, whilst apparently floating before a giant cobweb in which are trapped numerous babies. These are uniquely disturbing and yet lovely images.

Abandoning chronology for a moment, in 1929 a rather similar edition of Crepuscule appeared, designed by Sylvain Sauvage. It bore the title Contes Antiques (Ancient Tales) and was decorated with thirty-two colour engravings, as well as ornamental initials and decorative head and tail-pieces in colour. This stunning book is another example of the idea of the illustrated book as gesamtkunstwerk to which I have previously referred.

Contes Antiques (House on the Nile)

Contes Antiques, ‘L’Homme de pourpre’

Gervais, The House on the Nile

In 1904, an edition of Ariadne or The Way of Eternal Peace, combined with The House on the Nile or The Appearances of Virtue, was published. The two stories were illustrated by Georges Antoine Rochegrosse (1859-1938) and Paul Jean Gervais (1859-1936) respectively. Rochegrosse was the stepson of the author Theodore de Banville and was brought up in a very cultured environment, beginning his artistic education aged just twelve. He painted orientalist scenes in Algeria as well as depictions of Egyptian and Classical culture; later he portrayed scenes from the works of Wagner.  Rochegrosse was much in demand for book illustration, working on Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Petronius’ Satyricon, Flaubert’s Salammbo and Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, amongst others. He was extremely popular in his day, but is now largely forgotten. Gervais had studied under Gerome in Paris and became a painter of murals, allegorical and historical paintings and book plates (such as Aristophanes’ Lysistrata). Both artists’ illustrations of Louys are very conventional ‘academic’ and neo-classical images; perhaps the most notable thing about them is how Gervais has departed so much from his text: two young African girls in the House upon the Nile have become two white women under his brush, thereby losing much of the point of the story (contrast this plate to those by Clara Tice and others already reproduced).

Rochegrosse, Ariadne

Then, in the year of the author’s death, 1925, the first consolidated edition of Twilight of the Nymphs was issued, with woodcuts designed by Jean Saint-Paul. Born in Paris in 1897, he was a designer of tapestries, painter and illustrator; he is probably best known for this work on Louys. The images are strong and bold and seem to have been quite influential: an edition of the Collected Works of Louys issued in the USA in 1932, with translations by Mitchell S. Buck, included woodcuts by Harry G. Spanner. His version of Byblis bears marked similarities to Saint-Paul’s.

Byblis by Jean Saint-Paul

Byblis by Harry Spanner, 1932

As with many of Louys’ books, a small flurry of new printings then followed. The major Swiss artist and writer Rodolphe-Theophile Bosshard (1889-1960) worked on another edition in 1926. He had studied at the Geneva School of Fine Arts, before travelling to Paris in 1910 where Expressionism and Cubism had a great impact on his style. After the First World War, Bosshard returned to live in Paris for four years, getting to know Marc Chagall and André Derain amongst other writers and artist. On his return to Switzerland, the artist designed murals and painted portraits, landscapes, still lifes and mystical/ religious scenes, but it was female nudes dominated his output. He depicted their bared bodies in increasingly cubist and abstract manner.  Bosshard also undertook book illustrations, leading to his rather austere set of ten lithographs for Le Crepuscule des nymphes the year after Louys died. They have a cool, sculptural quality to them that is in some ways appropriate to these Greek myths.

Bosshard

Clara Tice, Danae

In 1927, the Pierre Louys Society in the USA issued a translation of Le Crepuscule, with gorgeous and lavish illustrations by Clara Tice. The pastel colours, highlighted with gold and combined with Tice’s delicate, naïve style, make for a memorable and highly appealing edition of the book. 

Another English translation was published in 1928 (and reissued in 1932) by the Fortune Press in London (it was intended, initially, as a small press specialising in gay erotica). Perhaps this is why the young Cecil Beaton was commissioned to provide the illustrations, even though he was almost unknown at that stage. despite his lack of formal qualifications, there’s no denying the unique flare of his five plates.

In 1940, the designer Louis Icart was commissioned to work on a couple of Louys’ works, including Leda. I have featured some plates from this edition in my post on the career of Icart.

Cecil Beaton, 1928

Lastly, in 1946, the established post-Impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) provided lithographs for a further edition of Le Crepuscule des nymphes. He was a pioneer of Post-Impressionism in his youth, forming the Nabis group along with Gauguin, but over his long career Bonnard constantly stayed alert to and adapted new artistic styles. Nudes were a regular feature of his painting, but he was always interested in the integration of art into popular media, such as posters, magazine covers and book illustrations, as well as into ordinary household objects and decoration, including murals, painted screens, textiles, tapestries, furniture, glassware and ceramics. It was in this context that such a well-known and distinguished figure was commissioned to work on another edition of Louys’ book. His 24 lithographs give quite a detailed account of the events in the text.

Bonnard, Byblis, 1946

There have been several other editions of Louys’ short stories, many unillustrated and in a variety of combinations, often including stories from other collections that the author wrote. An example is the English language Collected Tales, of 1930, which featured illustrations from John Austen.

On Leda, Pasiphaë and Little Red Riding Hood- modern uses of ancient myth

Valentin Serov, The Rape of Europa, 1910

In a recent posting I examined the late nineteenth century fascination with Gustave Flaubert’s story of Salammbô– and the wider contemporary interest in representations of sinful women involved with serpents. These images were just one facet of a larger theme in western art. 

In truth, depictions of cross-species relationships are nothing new in the history of human imagination. They have an ancient and classical pedigree. We need only think of the myths of Leda and the Swan, or of Europa and the Bull, in both of which Zeus took animal form in order to get close to women. Most memorable is the case of Pasiphaë, the queen of Crete, who had a wooden cow constructed for her by Daedalus so that she could couple with a bull, a union which gave rise to the hybrid Minotaur. Classical literature was just as outrageous, as, for example, in Apuleius’ Golden Ass (Book 10, c.22). Ancient art too unashamedly depicted such scenes, as in the famous Greek sculpture of Pan and a She Goat. In more recent British folklore, sexual relationships between humans and selkies (seal-folk), leading to part-seal/ part-human offspring, are quite common. This is a theme which has plainly engaged our imaginations for millennia.

Masson, Pasiphae, 1942

These myths have long contributed subjects and themes to fine art. Pasiphaë and the bull have been painted by Symbolist Gustave Moreau, John Buckland-Wright and, most notably, by the French Surrealist Andre Masson who, from 1932 onwards, produced a series of studies of the myth and, in turn, inspired Jackson Pollock to do so. We should also note Matisse’s lino-cuts of the Pasiphaë story that he designed to accompany an edition of de Montherlant’s play of the same name in 1944. Felix Labisse’s Strange Leda of 1950 is a late Surrealist exploration of the myth of nymph and swan, but in this case, Leda herself partly metamorphoses into the animal that molests her.

Jackson Pollock, Pasiphaë, 1943

Labisse, Strange Leda, 1950

Other artists have appropriated the classical story lines but relocated them to more familiar stories and settings. For example, in 1930 the Paris-based Russian artist Rojan (Feodor Stepanovich Rojankovsky-1891-1970) produced a series of illustrations of an adult re-imagining of Le Petit chaperone rouge (Little Red Riding Hood) in which the interaction between the girl and the wolf becomes more a matter of Greek myth than familiar fairy-tale. Subsequently, in 1935, the artist revert to classical precedent when he produced a portfolio based on Apuleius’ L’ane d’or (The Golden Ass) that depicted the episode in the book involving a taboo relationship with a man metamorphosed into the titular quadruped (see too Rojan’s Zoo (1937)). Most surprisingly perhaps, Rojan then moved to the United States and established himself as a leading illustrators of children’s books, leaving far behind this rather troubling period in his early career.

Rojan

Rojan was far from being alone in producing such material at the time. Whilst these themes have clear classical precedents, we might trace them most directly in French literature from the famed and scandalous Gamiani of 1833, a book generally ascribed to Alfred de Musset. The novel concerns the Comtesse Gamiani and her unbridled sexuality; the text features a lot of straight and lesbian sex, but also, disturbingly, scenes that reference and develop Apuleius. Gamiani‘s particular shock value seems to have lain in the way that it used the classical myths and classical storylines. Ancient models help to justify or make familiar and respectable what otherwise would seem wholly unacceptable. It appears that de Musset’s book helped to have establish something of a malign precedent in French literature; it was soon followed by Théophile Gautier’s Le petit chien de la marquise (The Marchioness’ Lap-Dog, 1836). These themes didn’t go away, but persisted into the next century. This was, I suspect, a reflection of new attitudes to human nature that emerged from the middle of the Victorian era onwards: Darwin’s work started to demolish the idea that humans were created distinct from other animals and that we were somehow superior to them; rather, our common descent meant that we shared many characteristics with ‘wild beasts.’ Secondly, Freud’s investigations into the human psyche revealed how much we are driven by subconscious and instinctual desires. This less separate- and less noble- view of human nature appears to have fed back from science into art; perhaps this is part of the message of Labisse’s Leda: that she is not at some levels so different from the bird.

In the writing of Pierre Louys- notably in his novel Trois filles de leur mere, which was written- but not published- in about 1914, the author indulged in a few scandalous scenes, albeit- as I’ve indicated previously– in such an exaggerated manner that I think they should be understood as hyperbolic parodies of Gamiani and the classical myths that Louys knew so well- and of Pasiphaë in particular. The purpose of the scenes was also to highlight the abuse and exploitation- even ‘martyrdom’- of the one of the book’s characters. Similar incidents are also to be found in some of Louys’ poetry collections, such as Pybrac and, in his Twilight of the Nymphs, Louys presented his own reworkings of various classical myths- including that of Leda. These scenes were, in turn, illustrated by the artists who worked on editions of his books- for instance, Paul-Albert Laurens, Leda & the Swan, 1898, Louis Berthomme-Saint Andre, Jean Berque, Marcel Vertes and Georges Pichard for Trois filles, by Rojan for an edition of Louys’ Poésies érotiques in 1937, and by Vertes for Pybrac in 1928.

Paul-Albert Laurens, Leda & the Swan, from Pierre Louys, The Twilight of the Nymphs, 1898

Hard to understand as it is, this sort of material would seem to have had a market- both texts and, more problematically still, images. Various other artists included scenes which were reminiscent of the myths of Leda and Pasiphaë, but which did not illustrate or draw upon them- in collections they published: examples include several of the portfolios by von Bayros, André Collot’s Jeunesse from 1933, a plate in Rojan’s illustrations for Renée Dunan’s novel Dévergondages (‘Wantonness’ or ‘Immoral Behaviours’) of 1948 or Jean Dulac’s 1952 plates for Trente et quelques attitudes. I personally struggle to understand the demand for such material that led to such a flow of books and art work from the presses (although the editions were very likely to have been quite limited), but they must be seen as depressing evidence of a high degree of very unpleasant misogyny. This probably tells us a lot about extremely regrettable male attitudes towards women during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These books and illustrations may seem more outrageous to us because they do not seek to depict the mythology or to imitate classical settings, but this should probably not distract us from the very deep-rooted misogyny and gynophobia for which the Greek myths may also be evidence. 

The ancient myths remain powerful and fascinating. They are valuable vehicles that enable us to discuss many difficult aspects of human nature and, as such, they continue to provide inspiration even into the twenty-first century. Contemporary South African artist Diane Victor frequently references Greek mythology in her work, including Leda and the White-Backed Vulture, Endangered Liaisons- The Lady and the Rhino (2004) and Pasiphae (2001/2, reworked 2003). I am also a great admirer of the work American graphic artist and painter Stu Mead, who has long confronted issues of masculinity in his work. He clearly has a broad knowledge of themes and precedents in art history and borrows subtly but cleverly from the Greek and Roman canon, from classically inspired works of the Renaissance, and from more contemporary images such as film and musical. Accordingly, Mead has adopted the narrative traditions and the iconographical lineage of ancient mythology, but has relocated these ancient themes within a modern context- as we see in his allusion to Leda below.

For more information, see my recommended reading page.

Stu Mead: a modern version of the myth of Leda?

Image & Imagination in the Work of Pierre Louys

Leda or ‘La Louange des Bienheureuses Tenebres‘ engraving by Paul-Albert Laurens (1898)

In 1862 Gustave Flaubert published his historical epic, Salammbo. His publishers suggested having the book illustrated, given that it featured spectacular scenes of warfare and exotic religion in ancient Carthage, but the author rejected the idea, objecting that it would destroy the imaginative impact of his work. I think we can understand and sympathise with Flaubert as a writer; additionally, much of Salammbo is taken up with almost cinematic descriptions of vast armies fighting- something illustrations could hardly have represented adequately.

Nevertheless, I was fascinated to discover this detail about the book and to contrast it to the attitude of the later author, Pierre Louys, whose Aphrodite was, I would say, strongly influenced by Salammbo. Both books are set in an alien, pagan world, distant in time and space. Both feature thefts from temples, crucifixion of offenders, sacred harlots and an enigmatic central female figure. Despite these broad thematic similarities, Louys’ novel pursued a very different course and, significantly for our purposes here, illustrated editions appeared very soon after its first publication.

Considering this contrast, it struck me that Pierre Louys was, in fact, a very visual writer. He was himself a photographer and an amateur artist and in recent years his erotic photos and drawings of naked women and girls have been published, as Le cul de femme and La femme respectively. His books contain scenes that seem almost intended to form the basis of plates designed by artists: Princess Aline admiring herself before her mirror in Roi Pausole, or, in Aphrodite, the heroine Chrysis carried off as a girl by horsemen or displaying herself to the population of Alexandria in the jewellery she has had stolen for her. For this crime, she is executed with poison, and the artist Demetrios, who became obsessed with her, then sculpts her deceased body as a way of preserving an image of her notable beauty. In the novella Trois filles de leur mere (Three daughters and their mother), the eldest daughter Charlotte is imagined dressed up as a schoolgirl with plaits; in the Twilight of the Nymphs, Louys pictures how the nymph Leda’s body and hair are all different shades of blue. As for most of Louys’ later poetry, it is comprised of short verses (for example the compact four line ‘quatrains’ of Pybrac that each describe a single vignette) which are ideally suited to the artist and have been copiously illustrated as a result.

Carlier, Le Miroir de Chrysis

These verbal images soon became printed ones. Twilight of the Nymphs was published with illustrations by Paul-Albert Laurens in 1898. In that same year, Laurens also illustrated the second edition of Bilitis. Others editions of that book followed in 1895, with watercolours by Robaglia and in 1906, illustrated by Raphael Collin. The first illustrated edition of Aphrodite, with plates by Antoine Calbet, appeared in 1896; another, illustrated by Edward Zier, appeared in 1900 (this is the edition to be found on Gutenburg). In that same year, the sculptor Joseph Carlier exhibited Le Miroir, which represents Chrysis admiring herself in a mirror, at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Plainly, Louys must have welcomed the physical depiction of his imagined scenes. Another edition appeared in 1896, reprinted in 1898 and 1910, with plates by Edmond Malassis. As I shall describe elsewhere, Malassis’ plates and headpieces partook very much of the graphic style of their period, but they also exude a charming and saucy energy, taking full advantage of the opportunities offered by the text to make the most of the set-pieces, such as the bacchanalian orgy at the home of the courtesan Bacchis (Book 3, chapters 1-4).

The dancers at Bacchis’ orgy

‘Party got out of bounds….’

We can go further still, I think. Louys often included scenes in his books in which performances are staged for characters- and thereby for the reader. He imagines this play or dance and then enacts it for us as if we are the audience too. These performances involve the characters, but in addition they are something for us to witness as a spectacle and to become deeply engaged by. In Les aventures du Roi Pausole, Princess Aline falls in love with the dancer Mirabelle when she sees her performing on stage. In Bilitis the two young girls, Glottis and Kyse, dance for Bilitis, partly displaying their skill but also as a way of trying to tempt her to choose one as a partner- a moment depicted in a plate by Paul-Emile Becat. In the novella Trois filles de leur mere, the story concludes with the three daughters staging a ‘play’ (with costumes) for the young student they have all seduced. This is very clearly a ‘home theatrical,’ but there are other elements in the story in which the girls and their mother perform for others. The oldest daughter, Charlotte, passed various milestones in her journey to sexual maturity in front of invited audiences, whilst the entire family, as sex workers, in a sense ‘perform’ for their clients in order to give them an illusion of passion and love.

Bilitis illustrated by Becat

Staged scenes therefore seem to have been a key part of the way in which Louys liked to envisage his works. That this is the case is demonstrated, as I described before, by the fact that he collaborated or agreed to several works being turned into various musical dramas, operas and plays. Fascinatingly, a very early (and brief) erotic film, Le Rêveil de Chrysis (1899), seems to have been based upon the opening chapter of Aphrodite. Much more recently, La femme et la pantin became a film, firstly in 1935 as The Devil Is a Woman, directed and photographed by Josef von Sternberg, starring Marlene Dietrich, and then in 1977 as That Obscure Object of Desire directed by Luis Buñuel. Aphrodite in 1982 was filmed by Robert Fuest and, very much more loosely, David Hamilton adapted Les Chansons de Bilitis into the 1977 film Bilitis.

Because Louys’ books were so frequently illustrated, especially in the quarter century period from his death until about 1950, it is now hard to hard to conceive them separately from those images- rather as is the case with John Tenniel’s illustrations of the Alice stories. Those book pates can stand apart as separate artworks (and, as I have described, there is a thriving market for them as such) but they also bring vitality and vividness to the texts themselves. Often, they shed new perspectives on the books. For example, whilst Louis Berthomme Saint-Andre‘s watercolours for Trois filles de leur mere are quite delicate and make the sex scenes appear almost loke genteel parties in suburban living rooms, Georges Pichard‘s cartoon style artwork, with its strong contrasts between black and white and bold delineation, brings out far more starkly and memorably the bleaker, more depraved aspects of the book. This is a key aspect of illustration: encapsulating literary ideas in visual form, can mean that they are far less mediated or disguised. As such, they may reveal the psyche of an age more directly, crystallising or laying bare attitudes and appetites which were generally hidden.

The best book plates not only complement but enhance and amplify the text that they accompany. The result is a Gesamtkunstwerk, a single, unified work of art, and I would argue that many of the illustrated Louys volumes should be regarded as such (as, once again, the auction prices paid for them by collectors might well attest). It’s arguable, as well, that the publication record of the works of Pierre Louys stand testimony to the fact that word and image can work so well together: there have been at least forty illustrated editions of the poet and author’s works over the last 130 years.

For more detail on the illustrators of Louys, see my books page.

Chrysis displays herself to the citizens of Alexandria in Zier’s illustration to Aphrodite

Clara Tice- bohemian illustrator of Pierre Louys

Clara Tice (1888-1973) was an American avant-garde illustrator and artist whose bohemian lifestyle and daring artwork often caused scandal during her life-time.  She was the first woman in Greenwich Village to bob her hair (in 1908), and her generally decadent look and conduct led to her being known in New York as the ‘queen of Greenwich Village.’ Her reputation only increased when, in 1915, the Society for the Suppression of Vice tried to confiscate some of her art from a display at the well-known bohemian restaurant Polly’s.

‘Nudes in a bath’

Tice was briefly married, but much of her output depicted naked women, meaning that she’s widely regarded as a lesbian artist today. Certainly, one of her watercolour sketches shows two women embracing in bed and readers may judge for themselves from other examples of her work.

Women Bathing

Tice, an untitled drypoint etching

During the 1920s, she received some seven commissions to illustrate erotic books, which included La Fontaine’s Tales and Boccaccio‘s Decameron. Amongst the illustration work Tice undertook were plates for editions of Pierre Louys’ Aphrodite, an edition of The Adventures of King Pausole in 1926 and for Twilight of the Nymphs (1927). In these colour plates, she repeatedly celebrated youthful female bodies; her ideal appears to have been the athletic and young woman, for she drew slim, curvaceous and pretty girls like this, with long ringleted hair, repeatedly.  One plate for Twilight of the Nymphs, for example, shows a bevy of naked girls, gathered in a line with their arms interlinked (see below).  At the same time, though, Tice’s style was innocent- colourful and almost childish- with her figures’ eyes reduced to round black dots. To a considerable degree these simple, bright images, playful and almost cartoonish as they are, leaven the sexuality she was being asked to reflect in the texts.

Plate from Roi Pausole

from ‘Twilight of the Nymphs’

Twilight of the Nymphs was a collection of retellings of classical myths, published by Louys between 1893 and 1898. Their theme reflects his deep interest in and familiarity with classical culture and literature- to the extent that he chose to produce his own versions, which are based upon- but depart quite noticeably- from the originals that inspired them. The stories are framed as if they are being told to each other by a group of travellers as they rest at night.

Despite the title of the collection, the stories are by no means all about nymphs. Ariadne concerns the princess abandoned by Theseus on Naxos and rescued by Dionysos- although in Louys’ version, the outcome is actually rather violent. Danae is told as a continuation of the story of the mother of Perseus, impregnated by Zeus in a shower of gold, and The House Upon the Nile- or the Semblance of Virtue in Women actually has no basis in Greek myth at all; it is entirely a story invented by Louys, and as such betrays some of his typical interests- with the more relaxed sexual attitudes and customs of the ancient past coupled with his not always admirable treatment of race or of women.

Two stories do deal with nymphs. Byblis is the bitter tale of the two children of the nymph, Cynas, who are called Byblis and Caunos. The brother and sister fall in love with each other and their mother resolves to separate them for their own good. The boy is taken away by a centauress, leaving Byblis bereft. She tries to follow him, but becomes lost and dies of despair. In its bleakness, the story is pure Greek myth; in its incest theme, it’s pure Louys.

Lastly, we have the story of Leda, the nymph made pregnant by Zeus- this time in the form of a swan. Leda is a naiad and is definitely not human:

“She really was most blue for, in her veins, ran the blood of the iris and not, as in yours, the blood of roses. Her nails were bluer than her hands, her nipples bluer than her breasts; her elbows and her knees were wholly azure. Her lips shone with the colour of her eyes, which were blue as the deep water. As for her flowing hair, it was sombre and blue as the nocturnal sky and quickened so along her arms that she seemed to have wings.”

Louys tells the story of this innocent’s seduction by the god very tenderly, whilst Tice’s illustrations are rich and charming, although they may not capture the otherworldly beauty of Leda in the same way as the plates designed by Paul-Albert Laurens for an edition of 1898.

For details of my essays on the French interwar illustrators, and other areas of art history, see my books page. For further information on all of Pierre Louys’ books, see my bibliography page for the author.

from ‘Twilight of the Nymphs’

Sun and Flesh, a song of praise by Arthur Rimbaud

Benes Knupfer, Nymph & Satyr

The French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud’s 1870 poem, Soleil et chaire, is a hymn in praise of Aphrodite (as well as other classical gods), and everything she represents, and a condemnation of the modern world. It’s addressed to Venus, but also to many of her other manifestations, the Cyprian, the Kallipyge (big bummed), Cybele, Astarte and Ariadne (wife of Dionysos) as well as the minor female divinities- the nymphs of tree and spring. She is presented as mother and lover of all humankind.

The Sun, the hearth of tenderness and life,
Pours burning love on the ravished earth,
And, when one is lying in the valley, one feels
That the earth is nubile and swells with blood;
That her immense breast, heaved up by a soul,
Is made of love like God, of flesh like woman,
And that it contains, big with sap and sunlight,
The great tingling of all embryos!

And everything grows, and everything goes rises!

O Venus, O Goddess!
I miss the days of ancient youth,
Of lascivious satyrs, of animal fauns,
Gods, who mad with love, bit the bark of boughs
And in the water lilies kissed the blonde nymph!
I long for the times when the sap of the world,
The water of the river, the pink blood of the green trees
Put a whole universe into the veins of Pan!
Where the ground throbbed, green, under his goat’s feet;
Where, softly kissing the fair nymph Syrinx, his lips
Modulated under the sky the great hymn of love;
Where, standing on the plain, he heard Nature all around
Responding to his call ;
Where the dumb trees cradling the singing bird,
The earth cradling the man, and all the blue ocean
And all the animals joined in the love of god!

I miss the times of the great Cybele
Who was said to travel, gigantically beautiful,
On a great brazen chariot, through splendid cities;
Her two breasts poured into the immensities
The pure flow of infinite life.
Man happily sucked her blessed nipple,
Like a little child, playing on her knees.

Because he was strong, the Man was chaste and gentle.

Misery ! Now he says: I know everything,
And goes, eyes closed and ears closed.
And again, no more gods! no more gods! Man is king,
Man is God! But Love, that is still the great faith!
Oh ! if man still drew from your breast,
Great mother of gods and men, Cybele;
If he had not left the immortal Astarte
Who once, emerging in the immense clarity
Of the blue waves, flower of flesh perfumed by the wave,

Showed her navel, towards which the snowy foam came rushing

And, being a goddess with the big black victorious eyes,
Made the nightingale in the woods and love in the hearts!

The Aphrodite of Rhodes

II

I believe in you! I believe in you ! Divine mother,
marine Aphrodite! – Oh ! the road has been bitter
Since that other God hitched us to his cross;
Flesh, Marble, Flower, Venus, I believe in you!

Yes, Man is sad and ugly, sad under the vast sky.
He wears clothes, because he is no longer chaste,
Because he soiled his proud god-like head,
And he stunted, like an idol in the fire,
His Olympian form with dirty servitudes!
Yes, even after death, in pale skeletons
He wants to live, insulting the first beauty!

And the Idol in which you placed so much virginity,
Where you deified our clay, Woman,
So that Man could enlighten his poor soul
And ascend slowly, in immense love,
From earthly prison to the beauty of the day,
Woman no longer even knows how to be a courtesan!

It’s a good prank! and the world sneers
At the sweet and sacred name of the great Venus!

III

If only the times which came and went could come again!

Because man has finished! Man has played all the roles!
In broad daylight, tired of breaking idols,
He will rise again, free from all his gods,
And, as he is from heaven, he will search the heavens!
The Ideal, the invincible, eternal thought,
All; the god who lives, under his carnal clay,
Will rise, will rise, will burn under his forehead!
And when you see him surveying the whole horizon,
Despiser of old yokes, free from all fear,
You will come to give him holy redemption!

Splendid, radiant, within the great seas
You will arise, giving the vast universe
Infinite Love with its eternal smile!
The World will vibrate like an immense lyre
In the quivering of an immense kiss!

The world is thirsty for love: you will come to slake its thirst.

O! Man has raised his head, free and proud!
And the sudden blaze of primeval beauty
Makes the god throb in the altar of the flesh!
Happy in the present good, pale with the evil suffered,
Man wants to fathom everything- and to know! Thought,
So long a jade, so long oppressed
Springs from his forehead! She will know Why!…
Let her leap free, and man will have faith!

Why the silent, azure and the unfathomable space?
Why the golden stars swarming like sand-grains?
If we kept going up, what would we see up there?
Does a shepherd lead this immense herd
Of worlds walking in the horror of space?
And all these worlds, which the vast ether embraces,
Do they vibrate to the accents of an eternal voice?

And man, can he see? can he say: I believe?
Is the voice of thought more than a dream?
If man is born so quickly, if life is so short,
where does he come from? Does he sink into the deep ocean
Of germs, foetuses, embryos, at the bottom
Of the immense crucible from where Mother Nature
will resuscitate him, a living creature,
To love in the rose, and grow in the wheat?

We cannot know! We are overwhelmed
With a cloak of ignorance and hemmed in by chimeras!
Men are like apes, fallen from their mothers’ wombs,
Our pale reason hides infinity from us!
We want to look: Doubt punishes us!
Doubt, gloomy bird, strikes us with its wing…

And the horizon rushes away in endless flight.

The vast heavens are open! the mysteries are dead
Before the Man, upright, who crosses his strong arms
In the immense splendor of the rich nature!
He sings… and the wood sings, and the river murmurs
A song full of happiness which rises towards the day!…

It is the Redemption! it’s love ! it is love!

Nymph & Spring, by Clodion

IV

O splendour of the flesh! O ideal splendour!
O renewal of love, triumphal dawn
Where, bending at their feet the Gods and the Heroes,
Venus Kallipyge the white and little Eros will touch,
covered with the snow of the rose petals,
The women and the flowers under their beautiful open feet!

O great Ariadne, who shed your sobs
On the shore, seeing the sail of Theseus fleeing over the waves,
White under the sun,
O sweet virgin child whom a night has broken,
Be silent! On his golden chariot embroidered with black grapes,
Dionysos Lysios, paraded in the Phrygian fields
By lascivious tigers and red panthers,
Reddens the dark mosses along the blue rivers.

Zeus, the bull, cradles like a child on his neck
The naked body of Europa, who throws her white arm
At the muscular neck of the shivering God in the wave.
He slowly turns his dreamy eyes towards her;
She lets her pale blooming cheek rest
On the forehead of Zeus; his eyes are closed; she swoons
in a divine kiss, and the murmuring flood
Of golden foam makes flowers bloom in her hair.

Between the oleander and the waxwing lotus
Slips lovingly the great dreaming swan
Embracing the Leda with the whiteness of its wing;

And while Cypris passes by, strangely beautiful,
And, arching the splendid curves of her loins, proudly displays
the golden vision of her large breasts
And her snowy belly embroidered with black moss,

Heracles, the tamer of beasts, who, in his strength,
Girds his vast body with the lion’s skin,
Advances, terrible and gentle brow, on the horizon!

By the dimly lit summer moon,
Standing naked and dreaming in her golden pallor
Stained by the heavy flow of her long blue hair,
In the dark glade where the moss is starry,
The Dryad gazes at the silent sky…

White Selene lets her veil float,
Fearful, over the feet of the beautiful Endymion,
And throws a kiss to him in a pale beam…

The spring cries in the distance in a long ecstasy…
It is the nymph who dreams, one elbow on her vase,
Of the handsome young white man whom her wave has washed over.

A breeze of love in the night has passed,
And, in the sacred woods, in the mane of the tall trees,
Majestically standing, the dark marbles,
The Gods, on whose foreheads the Bullfinch makes his nest,

The Gods listen to Men and to the Infinite World!

Rimbaud’s paean is almost a summary of so many themes I’ve examined in recent posts and in various books, the latest of which are my studies of Dionysos-Bacchus and of Aphrodite.