LE MERCURE DE FRANCE1
THE literary group under the protection of the Mercure de France was certainly of considerable importance. I can testify for it but feel too ill qualified to speak of it, having never been a part of it except from the end of my pen. Then, too, I rarely went to Madame Rachilde’s receptions. Just the same, I have a keen remembrance of the infrequent appearances I made in her very hospitable salon. It was in the heyday of Alfred Jarry, an unimaginable figure whom I met also at Marcel Schwob’s and elsewhere, always with the most keen enjoyment, before he sank frightfully into the attacks of delirium tremens. This Kobold, with his painted face, accoutred like a circus clown and playing a fantastic character, constructed, resolutely artificial and beyond which nothing human manifested itself in him, exercised on the Mercure (at that time) a kind of singular fascination. Everybody, almost everybody around him, tried, with more or less success, to imitate, to adopt, his humor and above all his peculiar mode of expression, implacable, without inflections or shades, with an equal accent on every syllable, including the mutes. If a nutcracker had spoken, it could not have done otherwise. He asserted himself without embarrassment, holding conventions in perfect contempt. The surrealists, later on, invented nothing better and it is with justice that they recognize him and salute in him a fore-runner. It would not have been possible to push negation further, and that in writings often harsh and durable in form; “definitive” as people liked to say yesterday; but to-day nothing is admitted to be definitive. Still more than his Ubu Roi, I consider Ubu’s dialogues with Professor Achras and the following debate with his conscience, taken from his very unevenly written Minutes de Sable Mémorial, one of the most solid and remarkable pages of French prose.
Alongside of Jarry, the other frequenters of the Rachilde’s salons gave the appearance, in my eyes at least, of supernumeraries. As for the most notable representatives of the symbolist movement, I preferred to meet them at their homes, and I was going to say: at liberty. Yet it must be recognized that the Mercure, at that time, was for them the only possible meeting-place, outside of a few salons, perhaps, and cafés. But no, decidedly, at the Mercure, I felt them out of place; I, too; not that I suffered from my unimportance in those places; but there was no air; I was stifling there; the atmosphere seemed to me unbreathable. I could not get interested in the remarks that were exchanged, and very little in the people, any more than they were interested in me. When the N. R. F. asked if they could take back Paludes and my Nourritures Terrestres under their name, there was no question even of buying back the rights; Vallette unconditionally relinquished the remaining volumes, that were stagnating and cluttering up the shelves of the unsold and unsalable. Let this be said to clear up a little any connection I might have with those connected with the Mercure, with the sole exception of Vallette and de Léautaud.
My esteem and affection for Vallette had already been declared on one occasion when I was bringing my contribution to a sheaf of homages. I had the pleasure of finding him, irremovable in his office, welcoming everyone with good humor and graciousness; firm in his relationships, fulfilling with devotion his functions as a perfect editor; revolted by scheming, but prodigiously skillful in defending the interests of the authors edited by him. I can not think of him without a very cordial gratitude.
I am not sure I would have liked de Léautaud for a daily diet; but in that way, from time to time, I took in his writings and conversations with unmixed pleasure. Everything in him delighted me; and first of all: that he did not try to please me. To be natural remained his only coquetry. I loved his glance, mischievous and tender at the same time; his rich voice with its sudden outbursts, enormous gales that often broke out like a trumpet of laughter, or of sarcasm or generous indignation. I loved that kind of distinction in his bearing, his gestures, his manners, in the somewhat untidy setting. What an astonishing face! It could have been mistaken for a pastel of La Tour’s or of Péronneau’s, a portrait of an encyclopedist that one was astonished to see come to life, that remained a perfect anachronism in our epoch; from it his spontaneous naturalness took on more savor. I loved his lack of respect for braid, decorations and degrees, outcome of his fundamental integrity; and even his lack of comprehension, his denials, sometimes excessive, his refusals; and the sincerity of his love for certain forms of art, the exclusiveness of his taste for what was French and the soundness of that taste. I loved … but why put into the past what still lives? With what joy I recently found once more the de Léautaud of pre-war days, scarcely aged and as though shrunken within himself, just as much Léautaud as before the torment, one of those rare witnesses of a past of which I hope to find an abundant reflection in his Journal, and which seems to-day almost as far away from us as the wars of the Empire or the Revolution. Just as it was, the Mercure represented a force, that of the mind, which restraints could only check temporarily. It will rise again soon, rejuvenated and under a new form, as the revival of the magazine will be able to prove. That is what I heartily wish.
October 1, 1946
1 Weekly review founded in 1672 for the publication of novelettes, short poems and anecdotes. Discontinued in 1825. In 1890 a group of Symbolists founded a magazine of the same name for the publication of literary information. Translator’s note.