Gaspard de la Nuit: Fantaisies à la mannière de Rembrandt et Callot par Louis Bertrand

Felicien Rops, frontispiece 1868 edition

Art has always two antithetical sides, as if of a medal where one side would show the likeness of Paul Rembrandt, and the reverse, that of Jacques Callot. - Rembrandt is the philosopher with a white beard which spirals as it ends, his mind absorbed in meditation and prayer, who closes his eyes to gather himself, talking to the spirits of beauty, science, wisdom and love, and burning to penetrate the mysterious symbols of nature. - Callot, however, is the lancer and saucy braggart strutting about the place who makes noise in the tavern, who caresses the daughters of gypsies, who swears by his sword and his gun, whose only concern is to wax his mustache. The author of this book has considered art under this double personification.

In 1842 Bertrand's book of poems was released, after the efforts of several faithful friends, including the rather famous Sainte-Beuve who wrote the introduction to this first edition, but especially the concentrated efforts of David D'Angers. His book would become a cornerstone for Baudelaire, Mallarmé and the symbolists, Breton and the surrealists. Baudelaire acknowledges his influence on his prose poem text Le Spleen de Paris because Bertrand is largely considered the founder of the form, even if unknown and ignored. 
 

The strange text folds over and over on itself so that the voice of the narrator becomes confused among characters and authorial presences.

Bertrand's strange prose poems embrace the pictorial as the Romantics generally did, but all the more so for claiming to be inspired by two great artists and opening with a discussion of art. After a quote from Sainte Beuve and a poem, the next page presents a shaggy dog story in which the narrator recounts being told that art is not many things by a man who starts off seeming friendly, becomes increasingly strange, and then thrusts a book on him. The man, he discovers the next day, who had offered his name as he was leaving, Gaspard de la Nuit, is the devil. The narrator, unable to return the book, wishes him to burn in hell and decides to publish the book. We get the next Preface from which the above quote is excerpted, followed by a dedication to Victor Hugo dated 1836, then finally the title page of the 'devil' book simply titled Les Fantaisies de Gaspard de la Nuit.

Beyond the issue of art within the contained text of the poems, he also imagined the art of the published book. He specified directions not only for the layout of the text, but the illustrations he desired and where they might be placed. Three pages of notes included with the manuscript to the editor were ignored. He was not a great artist but he did produce some drawings that give a sense of what he imagined the artist could do better. Unfortunately, despite his interest in ensuring the role of the visual in his work, it would not be there, except for the occasional frontplate, or page ornamentation.

Moments of Art

In a little curio shop a half-spent candle, projecting its warm glow over an engraving, reprinted it in sanguine, while, battling against the darkness, the light of a big lamp bronzed a scrap of leather, inlaid a dagger with glittering spangles, spread a film of previous gold like the patina of time or the varnish of an old master on pictures which were only bad copies, made in fact of the whole hove, in which there was nothing but pinch-beck rubbish, a marvelous composition by Rembrandt. The Guermantes Way, Part 1

I was thinking of some image like the following, sadly mislabeled as a Rembrandt. As I went looking through other Rembrandts, I could not find an interior lit that was sufficiently like Proust description though I know exactly what he means, and imagining something could not find an actual Rembrandt like the one in my or Proust's mind. 

One of my favorite pastimes is walking through neighborhoods where I can look in windows as evening settles around dinner and home. A loneliness lingers, a lie I welcome–oddly comforted by the melodrama of my own lack as I walk. Some of the back streets of Brooklyn Heights offer surprising stores of window delights at night. I walked them a few times until I noticed the glimpse no longer offered a surprise as I passed by and so would have had to stop as I went, to look, thereby ruining the desired experience.

Such moments are like the panels painted centuries ago whose warmth and aged darkness bring you closer even as they keep the distance necessary for appreciation.

Sketches of Change

...Our social existence, like an artist's studio, is filled with abandoned sketches in which we fancied for a moment that we could set down in permanent form our need of a great love, but it did not occur to me that sometimes, if the sketch is not too old, it may happen that we return to it and make of it a wholly different work, and one that is possibly more important than what we had originally planned. The Guermantes Way, Part II Chapter 2

There is a scene in a Woody Allen movie, though which one I do not remember, in which a character explains that he may not do well in life but he does in art. I always though reality was over-rated and that the story is much better if you revise it slightly, sometimes for others, sometimes for yourself. There are friends who weave through my life, each time we are each altered. Joys from the past now seem juvenile. Current pursuits will dull, or maybe with practice become helpful habits.

I spent part of the past few months working on ideas that I thought were only useful to the moment and the task at hand. Recently I am beginning to see how I might allow that work to become a part of a necessary step in a project that had seemed totally separate. The papers come back out of the filing cabinet to be reshuffled on my desk and on my computer.

Sometimes the task seems more daunting than Vermeer suggests in his The Artist in his Studio of 1665. I often have to come at the work sideways, disturbed by it slightly as Rembrandt appears to be in his The Artist in His Studio, c 1629.

However it feels, life only appears fixed. I find myself in new situations only to realize they are oddly familiar, and that this time I can alter the color, dynamic, of an aspect because I know better, or simply because I am curious. Why not treat life as a picture to return to and reconsider? Why not sketch something new from the material at hand? Or, take an old thing and refine it? Whatever happens, no matter how intimidating, there is at least the exciting possibility that it will offer something more important, produced more wisely, than before.