A R E M B R A N D T

T O R N IN T O F O U R

EQ U A L P IE C E S

AND

F L U S H E D DOWN

T H E T O I L E T

Jean Genet

W H A T

R E M A IN S OF

R EM B R A N D T

Jean Genet

H A N U M A N BOOKSM adras & New Y ork

1988

© 1958, 1988 Editions G allim ard English translation © 1985 by Bernard Frechtm an English translation © 1988 by R andolph H ough © 1988 H anum an Books

A LL R IG H T S RESERVED ISBN : 0-937815-21-7

Frontispieces P hoto by D ouchan Stanim irovitch

CONTENTS

W hat remains o f a R em brandt T o rn into F o u r Equal Pieces And Flushed Down The Toilet . . . 9

R em brandt’s Secret 53

W HAT R EM A IN S O F A R EM B R A N D T TO R N IN T O

FO U R EQ U A L PIECES, A N D FL U SH ED D O W N

TH E T O ILET. . .

W HAT R EM A IN S O F A R EM BRA N D T T O R N IN TO

FO U R EQ U A L PIECES, AND FL U SH E D DO W N

T H E T O IL E T . . .

I

A work o f a rt should exalt only those tru ths which are not demonstrable, and which are even “ false,” those which we cannot carry to their ultim ate conclu­sions w ithout absurdity, w ithout negating b o th them and ourself. They will never have the good o r bad fortune to be applied. Let

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them live by virtue of the song th a t they have become and that they inspire.

Something which seemed to resemble decay was in the process o f cankering my form er view o f the world. One day, while rid ­ing in a train , I experienced a revelation: as I looked a t the passenger sitting opposite me, I realized th a t every man has the same value as every other. I did no t suspect (or rather, I did I was obscurely aware o f it, for suddenly a wave o f sadness welled up w ithin me and, m ore or less bearable, bu t substantial, remain­

WHAT REMAINS OF A REMBRANDT. . . 1 1

ed with me) th a t this knowledge would entail such a methodical disintegration. Behind w hat was visible in this m an, o r further— further and a t the same time miraculously and distressingly close—I discovered in him (grace­less body and face, ugly in certain details, even vile: dirty moustache, which in itself would have been unim portant bu t which was also hard and stiff, w ith the hairs almost horizontal above the tiny m outh, a decayed m outh; gobs which he spat between his knees on the floor o f the carriage that was already filthy with cigarette stubs, paper, bits o f bread, in

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short, the filth o f a third-class carriage in those days), I dis­covered w ith a shock, as a result o f the gaze th a t butted against mine, a kind o f universal identity o f all men.

N o, it d idn ’t happen so quickly, and no t in th a t order. The fact is th a t my gaze butted (not crossed, butted) th a t o f the other passenger, o r ra ther melted into it. The m an had ju s t raised his eyes from a newspaper and quite simply turned them, no doubt unintentionally, on mine, which, in the same accidental way, were looking into his. D id he, then and there, experience the

WHAT REMAINS OF A R E M B R A N D T . . . 13

same em otion—and confusion— as I? His gaze was no t someone else’s: it was my own th a t I was meeting in a m irror, inadvertently and in a state o f solitude and self-oblivion. I could only ex­press as follows w hat I felt: I was flowing ou t o f my body, through the eyes, into his at the same time as he was flowing into mine. O r ra ther: I had flowed, for the gaze was so brief tha t I can recall it only w ith the help of that tense o f the verb. The passenger had gone back to his reading. Stupefied a t w hat I had just discovered, only then did I think o f examining the stranger. My

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exam ination resulted in the im­pression o f disgust described above. U nder his drab, creased, shabby clothes his body must have been dirty and worn. His m outh was flabby and protected by an unevenly clipped m ous­tache. I thought to myself tha t the m an was probably weak, perhaps cowardly. H e was over fifty. The tra in continued its indifferent way th rough French villages. Evening was coming on. I was deeply disturbed at the thought o f spending the minutes o f twilight, the minutes o f com­plicity, with this partner.

W hat was it tha t had flowed

WHAT REMAINS OF A R E M B R A N D T . . . 15

ou t of my body—I had fl . . . - and what had flowed ou t o f his?

This unpleasant experience was no t repeated, neither in its fresh suddenness nor its intensity, but its reverberations w ithin me never ceased. W hat I had experienced in the train seemed to resemble a revelation: over and above the accidents—which were repulsive— o f his appearance, this m an con­cealed, and then let me reveal, what made him identical w ith me. (I first w rote the preceding sen­tence, then corrected it by the following, which is more accurate and more disturbing: I knew tha t I was identical with tha t man.)

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W as it because every m an is identical w ith another?

W ithout ceasing to meditate during the journey, and in a kind o f state o f self-disgust, I very soon reached the conclusion that it was this identity which made it possible for every m an to be loved neither more nor less than every other, and tha t it is possible fo r even the m ost loathsom e appearance to be loved, th a t is; to be cared for and recognized— cherished. T hat was no t all. My train o f thought also led me to the following: this appearance, which I had first called vile, was—the word is no t too strong—

WHAT REMAINS OF A R E M B R A N D T . . . 17

was willed by the identity (this word recurred persistently, per­haps because I did not yet have a very rich vocabulary) which was forever circulating am ong all men and which a forlorn gaze account­ed for. I even felt tha t this appearance was the tem porary form of the identity of all men. But this pure and alm ost insipid gaze tha t circulated between the two travellers, in which their wills were not involved, which their wills would perhaps have prevented, lasted only an instant, and that was enough for a deep sadness to fill me and linger on. I lived with this discovery for

J.G .—2

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quite a long time. I deliberately kept it secret and tried not to th ink abou t it, but somewhere within me there always lurked a b lo t o f sadness which, like an inflated breath, would suddenly darken everything.

“Behind his charm ing or, to us, m onstrous appearance,” I said to myself, “ every man—as has been revealed to me—retains a quality which seems to be a kind o f ultim ate recourse and owing to which he is, in a very secret, perhaps irreducible area, what every m an is.”

I even thought I found this equivalence at the Central M arket,

WHAT REMAINS O F A R E M B R A N D T . . . 19

at the abatto irs, in the fixed but not gazeless eyes of the sheep- heads piled up in pyram ids on the sidewalk. W here was I to stop? W hom would I have m urdered if I had killed a certain cheetah tha t walked with long strides, supple as a hoodlum of old?

I have written elsewhere that my dearest friends took refuge— I was sure they did— in a secret wound, “ in a very secret, perhaps irreducible realm .” W as I speak­ing o f the same thing? A man was identical with every o ther m an, tha t was w hat I had dis­covered. But was this knowledge

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so rare as to w arrant my am azem ent, and what could it profit me to possess it? T o begin with, knowing a thing analytically is different from grasping it in a sudden intuition. (F or I had, of course, heard people say, and had read, th a t all men were equal, and even tha t they were brothers.) But in what way could it profit me? One thing was m ore certain : I was no longer able not to know what I had known in the train.

I was incapable o f telling how I moved from the knowledge that every man is like every other

WHAT REMAINS OF A R E M B R A N D T . . . 21

man to the idea that every man is all the others. But the idea was now within me. It had the presence o f a certainty. It could have been stated more clearly— though I will be deflowering it som ewhat— in the following aphoristic way: “ Only one man exists and has ever existed in the world. He is, in his entirety, in each of us. Therefore he is ourself. Each is the other and the others. In the laxity o f the evening, a clear gaze that was exchanged—w hether insistent or fleeting—made us aware o f this- Except tha t a phenom enon of which I do not even know the

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name seems to divide this single m an ad infinitum, apparently breaks him up in both accident and form , and makes each o f the fragm ents foreign to us.”

I expressed myself clumsily, and w hat I felt was even m ore confused and stronger than the idea of which I have spoken. The idea was dreamed rather than thought; it was engendered and draw n along, o r dredged, by a rather woolly reverie.

N o man was my brother: every man was myself, but tem porarily isolated in his individual shell. This observation did no t lead me to examine, to review, all

WHAT REMAINS OF A R E M B R A N D T . . . 2 3

ethical notions. I felt no tender­ness, no affection, for th a t self w hich was outside my individual appearance. N or for the form taken by the o ther—or its prison. Us tom b? O n the contrary, I tended to be as pitiless tow ard th a t form as I was tow ard the one th a t answered to my nam e and tha t has been writing these lines. The sadness tha t had settl­ed on me was w hat disturbed me most. Ever since the re­velation th a t I had experienced when looking a t the unknown traveller, it was impossible for me to see the world as in the past. N othing was sure. The world

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suddenly wavered. For a long time I rem ained, as it were, sick­ened by my discovery, but I felt th a t it would soon force me to m ake serious changes, changes which would be in the nature o f renunciations. My sadness was an indication. The world was changed. In a third-class car­riage between Salon and Saint R am bert d ’Albon in had ju st lost its lovely colors, its charm. I was already bidding them a nostalgic farewell, and it was n o t w ithout sadness or disgust tha t I was entering upon ways which would be increasingly lonely and, m ore im portant, was

WHAT REMAINS OF A R E M B R A N D T . . . 25

entertaining visions o f the world which, instead of heightening my joy, were causing me such dejection.

“ Before long,” I said to myself, “nothing tha t once m eant so much will m atter, love, friend­ship, forms, vanity, nothing that involves charm and appeal.”

But perhaps the gaze with which I had looked at the traveller, a gaze so dreadfully revealing, had been possible owing to a very old cast o f mind that was due to my life, or for some other reason. I was not very sure tha t another man could have felt himself flowing through his eyes into

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someone else’s body, or tha t the meaning of this sensation would have been the same for him as tha t which I have been ascribing to it. I who had always been tempted to doubt the fullness o f the world was perhaps now trying to slip into particular envelopes, the better to deny individuality.

“ Before long, nothing more will m atter. . . ” O r perhaps nothing would be changed. If each enve­lope preciously sheathes a single identity, each envelope is indi­vidual and succeeds in estab­lishing in us an opposition that seems irrem ediable, in creating

WHAT REMAINS OF A REMBRANDT. . . 2 7

an innum erable variety of in­dividuals who are equivalent : each-other. Perhaps the only precious, the only real thing tha t each man had was this very singularity: “ his” m oustache, “ his” eyes, “his” clubfoot, “ his” harelip. A nd w hat if his only source o f pride were the size o f “ his” prick? B ut this gaze went from the unknow n traveller to me, and w hat of the immediate certainty th a t each-other were only one, both either he or I and he and I? How could I forget th a t mucus?

Let us continue. The knowl­edge of what I had just learned

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did not require that I direct my effects according to the revel­ation in order to dissolve myself in an approxim ate contem pla­tion. Quite simply, I could no longer avoid knowing what I knew, and, come what may- I had to pursue the consequences, regardless of w hat they were. Since various incidents in my life had forced me into poetry, perhaps the poet would have to make use o f this discovery that was new to him. But above all I had to note the following: the only moments of my life which I could regard as true, ripping

WHAT REMAINS OF A R E M B R A N D T . . . 29

apart my appearance and expos­ing . . . what?

A solid vacuum that kept per­petuating me? 1 had known those m om ents during a few bursts of really holy anger, in equally blessed states of fear, and in the rays— the first— that shot from a young m an’s eyes to mine, in our exchange of glances. And in the traveller’s gaze tha t en­tered me. The rest, all the rest, seemed to me the effect o f a false point o f view induced by my appearance, which itself was necessarily fake. R em brandt was the first to expose me. R em ­brandt! T hat stern finger which

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thrusts aside the finery and shows . . .w h a t? An infinite, an in ­fernal transparency.

I thus felt deep disgust for w hat I was moving toward and was unaw are of and w hat I could no t, thank G od, avoid, and then a great sadness about what I was going to lose. Everything around me was losing its enchantment, everything was decaying. Eroti­cism and its transports seemed rejected, definitively. How could I be unaware, after the experience in the train, tha t every charming form is, if it contains me, my­self? I f I wished to recapture this identity, every form, whether

WHAT REMAINS OF A R E M B R A N D T . . . 31

m onstrous or agreeable, lost its pow er over me.

“ The erotic quest,” I said to myself, “ is possible only when one supposes tha t each human being has his own individuality, th a t it is irreducible, and that the physical form accounts for it, and it only.”

W hat did I know about the significance of the erotic? But I felt disgust a t the thought that I circulated in every m an, that every man was myself. If, for a short tim e thereafter, every conventionally beautiful male form retained any power over me, it was, so to speak, by

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reverberation. This power was the reflection of the one to whichI had so long yielded. A nostal­gic farewell to it too. Thus, each person no longer appeared to me in his total, absolute, magni­ficent individuality: as a frag­m entary appearance of a single being, it disgusted me more. Yet 1 wrote w hat precedes with­out ceasing to be troubled, to be haunted, by the erotic themes th a t were fam iliar to me and that dom inated my life. I was sincere in speaking of a quest on the basis o f the revelation “ that every man is every other man, as am I”— but I knew I wrote that too in

W H A T REMAINS OF A R E M B R A N D T . . . 33

order to rid myself of eroticism, to try to get it out o f my system, in any case to keep it at a distance. A congested, eager penis, stand­ing erect in a thicket o f black curls, and w hat continues it: the thick thighs, then the torso, the whole body, the hands, the thum bs, then the neck, the lips, the teeth, the n ose, the hair, and lastly the eyes, which cry ou t for the transports o f love as if asking to be saved or annihi­lated—and does all o f this fight against the fragile gaze which is perhaps capable o f destroying tha t Omnipotence?

J.G .—3

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2

O ur gaze can be quick o r slow, depending on w hat we look at as much as on us—perhaps more. T hat is why I speak o f the quick­ness, for example, that thrusts the object tow ard us, o r o f a slowness th a t makes it ponderous. W hen our eyes rest on a painting by R em brandt (on those he did in the last years o f his life), our gaze becomes heavy, somewhat bovine. Something holds it back, a weighty force. W hy do we keep looking, since we are not immediately enchanted by the intellectual liveliness tha t knows

WHAT REMAINS OF A R EM B R A N D T.. . 35

everything and all a t once— about, for example, G uard i’s ara­besque? Like the smell of a barn : when I see only the bust o f the sitters (Hendrijke, in the Berlin M useum) or only the head, I cannot refrain from imagining them standing on manure. The chests breathe. The hands are warm. Bony, knotted, but warm. The table in The Syndics rests on straw, the five men smell o f cow dung. U nder Hen- drijke’s skirts, under the fur- edged coats, under the painter’s extravagant robe, the bodies are perform ing their functions: they digest, they are warm, they are

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heavy, they smell, they shit. However delicate her face and serious her expression, The Jewish Bride has an ass. You can tell. She can raise her skirts a t any moment. She can sit down, she has what it takes. Mevrow Trip too. As for Rem­brandt himself, the fact is even m ore obvious: starting with the first self-portrait, the mass of flesh increases from one painting to the next, until the very last, which it reaches in definitive form, though not void of sub­stance. A fter losing w hat was m ost dear to him —his m other and his wife—it is as if this

WHAT REMAINS OF A R EM B R A N D T... 37

strapping fellow were trying to lose himself, unconcerned about the people o f Amsterdam, to disappear socially. “ To w ant to be nothing” is an oft-heard phrase. I t is Christian. Are we to understand tha t man seeks to lose, to let dissolve, tha t which, in one way or other, singularizes him in a trivial way, tha t which gives him his opacity, in order, on the day o f his death, to offer G od a pure, not even iridescent, transparency? I don’t know and don ’t care. As for Rem brandt, his entire work makes me think th a t he had- not only to get rid o f w hat encumbered him in his

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effort to achieve the aforem en­tioned transparency, but also to transform it, to modify it, to make it serve the work. (To free the subject from his anecdotal self and to place him in a light of eternity. Recognized by to ­day, by tom orrow , but also by the dead. A work that was offered to the living of today and tom orrow but not to the dead would be what? A painting by R em brandt not only stops the tim e that made the subject flow into the future, but makes it flow back to the rem otest ages. By means of this operation Rem­brandt achieves solemnity. He

WHAT REMAINS OF A R E M B R A N D T . . . 39

thus discovers why, a t every moment, every event is solemn: he knows it from his own soli­tude. But he m ust also get this solemnity down on canvas, and it is then tha t his taste for the theatrical—which was so keen when he was twenty-five—serves him.) It may be tha t R em brandt’s immense grief—the death of Sasikia—turned him away from all ordinary joys and th a t he observed his m ourning by m eta­morphosing gold chains, swords and plum ed hats into values, or rather into pictorial fetes. 1 d o n ’t know whether this beefy D utch­man wept, but around 1642

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he experienced the baptism of fire, and his early nature, which was bold and conceited, was little by little transform ed. F o r a t the age o f twenty the fellow does no t look as if he were easy to get on with, and he spends his tim e before the m irror. He likes himself, he thinks a lot o f himself, so young and already in the m irror! N o t to spruce up and rush off to a dance, but to gaze a t him silf, complacently, in soli­tude: R em brandt w ith the three moustaches, w ith the puckered brows, with the uncom bed hair, w ith the haggard eyes, etc. No anxiety is visible in this sham

W H A T REMAINS O r A REMURANDT. . . 41

quest o f self. Tf he paints archi­tectural settings, they are always operatic. Then, gradually, w ith­ou t departing from his narcissism or taste for the theatrical, he modifies them : the form er in order to a tta in the anxiety, the frenzy, which he will transcend; the latter, to derive from it the joys—also haggard— of the sleeve o f the “ Jewish bride.” W ith Saskia dead—I wonder whether he d id n ’t kill her, in some way or other, whether he w asn’t glad she died—anyway, his eyes and hand are free. From then on, he launches out into a kind of extravagance as a painter. W ith

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Saskia dead, the world and social judgm ents have little weight. One m ust imagine him —while Saskia is dying—perched on a ladder in his studio, grouping the figures in The Nightwatch. W hsther he believes in G od? N ot when he paints. He knows the Bible and uses it. Obviously, all I have just said is o f any importance only if one accepts the fact that all was, by and large, false. Intellectual play and insights on the basis o f the work o f art are not possible if the work is finish­ed. The work would even seem to confuse the intelligence, or to restrict it. The fact is that I

WHAT REMAINS OF A R E M B R A N D T . . . 43

have been playing. In a certain way, works of art would make fools of us were it not that their fascination is p roof—unverifiable, though undeniable—that this paralysis o f the intelligence com ­bines with the m ost luminous certainty. W hat tha t certainty is I do not know. The origin o f these lines is the emotion 1 felt (in London, twelve years ago) in the presence o f R em brandt’s finest works. “ W hat’s wrong with me? Why do 1 feel like tha t? W hat are those paint­ings that 1 can ’t shake off? Who is that Mevrow Trip? That Mynheer... ”

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No. I never wondered who those ladies and gentlemen were. And it is perhaps this more or less definite absence of questions th a t shook me. The more I looked at them, the less the portraits referred me to anyone. T o no one. N o doubt it took m e some time to reach the dis­heartening and thrilling conclu­sion that the portraits done by R em brandt (after the age of fifty) have no reference to identi­fiable persons. N o detail, no cast o f features, has reference to a tra it o f character, to an indi­vidual psychology. Are they schematized and thus deperson­

W H A T R EM A IN S O F A R E M B R A N D T . . . 4 5

alized? N ot a t all. One has only to recall the wrinkles o f M argaretha Trip. A nd the more 1 looked a t them, hoping to grasp or approach the personality, as it is called, to discover their individual identity, the more they fled—all o f them —in an infinite flight and a t infinite speed. Only R em brandt himself—perhaps be­cause of the acuteness w ith which he scrutinized his own image— retained an element of indi­viduality: at least attention. But the others, i f I had regarded that profound sadness as negligible, fled w ithout allowing anything o f themselves to be grasped.

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Negligible, th a t sadness? The sadness o f being in the world? N othing other than the attitude which hum an beings adopt naturally when they are alone, waiting to act, this way or that way. R em brandt himself, in the self-portrait at Cologne in which he is laughing. The face and background are so red that the whole painting makes me think o f a sun-dried placenta. You don’t have room enough to move far back in the Cologne M useum. You have to take a diagonal view, from an angle. T hat is how I looked at it, but head down— my head—turned

W H A T R E M A IN S O F A R E M B R A N D T . . . 4 7

around, if you like. The blood rushed to my head, but how sad tha t laughing face! It is when he starts depersonalizing his models, when he prunes objects o f all identifiable characteristics, tha t he gives them the most weight, the greatest reality. Some­thing im portant has happened: the eye recognizes the object at the same time as it recognizes the painting as such. And it can never again see the object other­wise. R em brandt no longer de­natures the painting by trying to merge it w ith the object or face tha t it is supposed to re­present: he presents it to us as

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distinct m atter that is not asham­ed to be what it is. Candor of the ploughed, steaming fields in the early morning. I do not yet know w hat the spectator gains, but the painter gains the freedom of his craft. He presents him­self as the mad dauber that he is, mad about color, thus losing the hypocrisy and pretended superior­ity of the fabricators. This is perceptible in the late paintings. But R em brandt had to recognize him self as a man of flesh— of flesh?—rather of meat, of hash, o f blood, o f tears, o f sweat, o f shit, o f intelligence and tender­ness, o f other things too, ad

W H A T R E M A IN S O F A R E M B R A N D T . . . 4 9

infinitium, bu t none o f them denying the others, in fact each welcoming the others. And I need hardly say th a t R em brandt’s entire work has meaning— at least fo r me—only if I know th a t what I have just w ritten is false.

Translated fro m the French by Bernard Frechtman

J.G .—4

REM B R A N D T’S SECRET

R E M B R A N D T ’S SECRET

A fierce generosity. I em­ploy these words to get right to the heart o f the m atter. Rem ­b ra n d t’s last self-portrait seems to say th is: “ I will be o f such complicity th a t even savage an i­mals will know my benevolence.” This ethic is not just a vain attem pt to spruce up his soul; his w ork requires it, or rather brings it about. We know this because for perhaps the first time in the history o f art, a pain t­er posing before a m irror with an alm ost narcissistic self-satisfact- tion, has left us, parallel to his

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other work, a series of self-port­raits in which we can trace the evolution o f his m ethod and the action of this evolution upon man. Is th a t it, or is it the opposite?

In those paintings executed before 1642, it is as if Rem brandt were in love with splendor, but a scenic splendor only. The sum ptuousness (of, for example, the portraits o f Orientals, the biblical scenes) is in the decor, is in the clothing; Jeremy, wear­ing a very pretty frock, poses his foot on a luxurious tapestry, the vases on the boulder visibly in gold. We get the impression that

R E M B R A N D T ’ S S E C R E T 55

R em brandt is happy to invent or to represent a conventional sum ptuousness, as if happy to paint an extravagant “ Saskia in F lo ra ,” or him self with Saskia on his knees, magnificently dress­ed, raising his glass. O f course, ever since his youth, he had pain ted people o f modest condi­tio n —often decking them out in flashy and luxurious rags—but it seems tha t this splendor was only part o f a dream , a t the same tim e he seemed partial to faces expressing humility. The sensua­lity which flows (except on rare occasions) from the hand when he pain ts fabric, for example,

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ebbs as soon as he tries to paint a face. Even as a youth, Rem­brandt prefered age-ridden faces.

Perhaps it was out o f sym­pathy, perhaps it was due to a taste for painting difficult (or easy?) things, perhaps in response to a problem posed by a fore­fa th e r’s face? W ho knows? At any rate, these faces are chosen for their “ picturesque quality” . H e paints them tastefully with sensitivity, bu t he paints them (even the one o f his mother) w ithout love. The wrinkles are scrupulously noted, the crow ’s feet, the folds in the skin, the warts, b u t these traits do not

R E M B R A N D T ’S S E C R E T 57

penetrate any deeper into the canvas, they are not nourished by a living organism ’s w arm th: they are ornam ents. The ones painted w ith the greatest love are the tw o portra its o f M adame T rip in the N ational Gallery; tw o old and decomposing faces ro tting before our eyes. Further on, I ’ll tell you why I employ the word love, ju st when the pain ter’s m ethod becomes so cruel. The decrepitude (in these tw o paint­ings) is no longer seen and re­produced for its colorfulness, bu t as som ething as lovable as anything else. Were we to wash “ His M other Reading” , we would

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find, under the wrinkles, the charm ing young girl th a t she continues to be. We could never wash out M adame Trip’s decrepi­tude, for she is only that : decrepi­tude in all its splendor. M ani­fest. Dazzling. So evident that it bursts through the picturesque veil.

Agreeable to the eye or not, decrepitude is. Therefore it is beautiful. And rich i n . . . To give you an example: have your ever had a cut on the elbow tha t be­came infected? There’s a scab. Y ou lift it up with your finger­nails. U nderneath, the threads o f pus th a t nourish the scab go

R E M B R A N D T 'S S E C R E T 5 9

m uch deeper. Why, the entire organism is a t w ork on this cut. Well, it is the same thing with each square centim eter of M adam e T rip ’s m etacarpus or o f her lip. And who was it who succeeded in expressing all that? A pain ter who wanted only to render w hat is, and who by painting it with precision, couldn’t help bu t render it in all its force, and so in all its beauty. Or maybe i t ’s a m an who, having under­stood (by dint o f m editation), that each thing possesses its own dignity, decided to devote himself to painting th a t which in appear­ance seems to be lacking dignity.

6 0 JE A N G EN F .T

I t ’s been written that, contrary to Hals (for example), Rem brandt d idn ’t really know how to cap t­ure, the likeness of his models; in o ther words, he couldn’t re­ally see the difference between one man and another. I f he d idn’t see the difference, maybe it is bccause it doesn’t exist? O r maybe it is an illusion? In fact, his portra its rarely reveal model character traits: a priori, his figures are neither spineless, nor cowardly, neither big nor small, neither good nor bad, but are capable o f being all that a t any given moment. But never does there appear the caricatured

R E M B R A N D T 'S S E C R E T 61

tra it tha t is the result o f a previous judgem ent. N or does there ever appear, tha t sparkling bu t fleeting tem peram ent we find in Franz H als’ paintings. It would, nevertheless, be possible, bu t like the rest.

Titus, R em brandt’s smiling son, is the only figure with a calm expression. All the other faces seem to contain an extraordinarily heavy and dense dram a. But this d ram a is alm ost always camouflaged by a calm and collected attitude, like a tornado mom entarily held in check. Their faces express a precisely assessed and dense destiny which will

6 2 J K A \ G E N F T

eventually be acted out to the bitter end. Whereas Rem ­b ran d t’s drama seems to be entirely in his vision of the world. He wants to find out w hat is behind the surface, to get beyond appearances, in order to free him self from them. All o f his figures have been hurt, and take refuge in their pain. R em brandt is conscious o f his wound, but he wants to get well. T h a t’s why his self-portraits give us the im­pression of vulnerability, whereas his o ther paintings give us the impression o f a confident strength.

T here is no doubt bu t that, long before reaching m aturity,

R E M B R A N D T 'S S E C R E T 63

R em brandt bad already realized th a t even the m ost lowly object or being possesses its own dignity, bu t in the beginning, this reali­zation was due to a kind o f senti­m ental attachm ent to his origins. In his drawings, he treats the most fam iliar attitudes with a tenderness not exempt from senti­mentality. A t the same time his im agination combined with a natural sensuality made him desire luxury and dream of splendor.

Reading the Bible exalts his im agination: architecture, vases, weapons, furs, carpets, tu rb an s .. . He is particularly inspired

6 4 JE A N G E N E T

by the Old Testam ent and its theatricality. He paints. He is famous. He becomes rich. He is proud of his success. Saskia is smothered in gold and velvet. .. She dies. If nothing other than the world remains, and painting the only way to approach it, the world no longer has but one merit—or to be m ore precise, is no longer o f bu t one value. And this is neither anything m ore nor anything less than that.

But one doesn’t get rid o f so many mental habits, or so much sensuality in one night. I t seems, nevertheless, th a t little by little

R E M B R A N D T ’ S S E C R E T 65

he does, by transform ing them to fit his own needs. Resplend­ency ( I ’m talking abou t an im aginary, dream ed o f splendor) is still very im portant to him, as is a certain theatricality. To pro tect him self from these habits, he subm its them to curious trea t­ment : he exalts conventional sum­ptuousness, while a t the same tim e distorting it, thus rendering it impossible to identify. He goes even further, passing the radiance, which makes this sum ptuousness seem precious, in to the m ost miserable m aterials in such a way as to confuse everything. F rom this m om ent

J.G.—5

6 6 JE A N G E N E T

on, nothing will be any longer w hat it appears to be: the un­quenched passion of an old taste for splendor, which in­stead of being on the canvas or the object represented will now be put into them, and will silently illum inate the most hum ble subject matter.

This operation, conducted slowly and perhaps even ob­scurely, will teach him tha t one face is as good as another; each one refers to—or leads to—a hum an identity as worthy as any other.

As far as pain ting goes, this m iller’s son, w ho a t 23 knew

R E M B R A N D T ’ S S E C R E T 67

how to pain t wonderfully, no longer knew how a t the age o f 37. A t this age, he would relearn everything with a somewhat awkward hesitation, never taking a chance on virtuosity. Slowly, he discovered yet another thing: tha t every object possesses its own magnificence; to this p u r­pose he proposes the singular magnificence o f color. We can say th a t he is the only painter in the w orld equally respectful o f bo th painting and the model, exalting bo th at the same time, one by way o f the other. But what is really moving about these pain t­ings, which tend so desperately

68 JEAN G E N E T

to exalt everything with no concern for hierarchy, is a kind o f reflection, or more precisely, a kind o f inner ember, perhaps a kind o f nostalgia, not yet entirely extinguished, which is all th a t rem ains of a dreamed splendor, and o f an almost enti­rely consumed theatricality, signs o f a life caught up like any other in convention, a convention transform ed to fit his own needs. N o t by destroying it, but by transform ing it, by twisting it, by wearing it out, by consuming it. From this po in t on, the signs of an outer splendor are capable

r h m b r a n d t ’ s s e c r h t 6 9

o f illum inating anything, but from the inside out.

R em brandt? Everything, from his youth on, reveals a restless m an pursuing a fleeting truth. The sharpness of his eye is not entirely explained by the necessity o f staring a t the m irror. At times, he alm ost seems mean (le t’s no t forget th a t he went so far as to pay to have a creditor p u t in prison), or even vain (the arrogance o f the ostrich feather in his velvet h a t . . . and the golden necklaces...), but little by little his face becomes less severe. In fron t o f the mirror, the narcissistic self-satisfaction

70 JE A N G E N E T

has turned into a restlessness; a passionate and quavering search.

He had been living with Hen- drijke for some time and this marvelous wom an (the portraits o f Hendrijke are the only ones — besides those o f Titus—which seem steeped in the old sublime b ea r’s tenderness and gratitude) had to gratify his sensuality and his need for tenderness a t the same time. In his last self- portraits, we no longer find any psychological indications w hat­soever. If we really wanted to, we could see something like a look of goodness in these last self-portraits. Or an air o f

R E M B R A N D T ’ S S E C R E T 71

detachm ent? W hatever, here i t ’s all the same.

Tow ard the end of his life, R em brandt became a good per­son. Between him self and the world, maliciousness acts like a screen ; it either makes him with­draw, breaks him down, or dis­guises him. M aliciousness, and all o ther form s o f aggressiveness, and all that we call character tra its: our moods, our desires, eroticism and vanity. Slash the screen to see the world approach­ing! But he d id n ’t seek out this goodness (or detachm ent, if you prefer) merely to observe a m oral or religious code (it is

7 2 JL A N O F.N ET

only in times o f abandonm ent th a t an artist can have faith, if he ever does), nor to win over a couple o f virtues. If Rem­brandt does away w ith character traits, it is in order to purify h is vision o f the world, and thus to create a more ju st work. I sup­pose that, deep down, R em brandt d id n ’t give a dam n about being good or bad, short-tem pered or patient, money-grabbing or gen­erous.. . He had to be nothing m ore than an eye and a hand. M oreover, by following this self­ish path , he was bound to attain (w hat a word !) the kind o f purity, so obvious in his last portrait,

R e m b r a n d t 's s e c r t t 7.1

that it alm ost hurts. It is indeed by following the narrow path of painting that he attains it.

I f I had to roughly outline, or coarsely characterize this p ro ­cess (one o f the m ost heroic of m odern times), I would say tha t in 1642 (of course, R em brandt was already anything but banal), a young, am bitious m an, full o f talent, but also full o f violence, vulgarity, and an exquisite refine­ment, is surprised by misfortune and driven to despair.

W ithout any hope o f one day witnessing happinesses’ reappear­ance, he attem pts, with a tre­mendous effort, since painting is

7 4 JE A N G E N E T

all he has left, to destroy, both in his work and in himself, every sign of his old vanity, signs also o f his happiness and his dreams. He seeks both to represent the world (which is after all the aim of painting) and to render it unrecognizable a t the same time. Is he then aware o f it? This double requirem ent leads him to consider the m aterial aspects o f painting to be equally as im ­portan t as its representational aspects, then little by little, this exaltation o f painting, as it can­not be conducted abstractly (but the sleeve in “The Jewish Fiancé” is an abstract painting!),

R E M B R A N D T ’S S E C R E T 75

leads him to exalt everything represented in his painting, which he nevertheless seeks to render unidentifiable.

This effort causes him to get rid o f everything in him self which could bring him back to a differen­tiated, discontinuous, hierarchi­cal vision o f the w orld: a hand is as worthy as a face, a face is ju st as good as a corner of a table, a corner o f a table as worthy as a stick, a stick as good as a hand, a hand every bit as good as a sleev e ... all this is perhaps true o f o ther painters as well—but which painter has, to this degree, destroyed m atte r’s identity, in

7 6 JE A N G E N E T

order to better exalt it?—all this, it seems to me, brings us back to the hand, to the sleeve, then undoubtedly to painting, but from that m om ent on, unceas­ingly going from one to the other, in a breathtaking chase, towards nothing.

Theatricality, conventional sum­ptuousness, have also passed through the same process, but now, burned ou t and consumed, they are only there for solemnity.

There must have been some­thing else in Am sterdam , around 1666 to 1669, besides an old con m an ’s paintings (if i t ’s true, i t ’s the old etching plate story again)

R E M B R A N D T ’S S E C R E T 77

and the city. There was what was left o f an individual, reduced to alm ost nothing, a phantom going from the bed to the easel, from the easel to the to ilet—where he m ust have scribbled again with his dirty fingernails—and what was left o f this man m ust have hardly been anything other than a cruel kindness, som ething like, o r close to imbecility. A chapped hand holding brushes dunked in red and brow n paint, an eye posed on the objects, nothing more, yet a hopeless complicity linked his eye to the world.

In his last self-portrait, he seems to be having a good laugh,

7 8 JEAN G E N E T

but softly, subtlely. He knows everything th a t a painter can learn. A nd to begin with, this (well, maybe?): that a painter is nothing m ore than an eye going from an object to the canvas, and especially a gesture o f the hand going from a little puddle o f color to the canvas.

The pain ter is entirely con­centrated in the calm and sure course o f his hand. N othing else any longer exists: splendor, sum ptuousness, and his obses­sive fears have all been trans­form ed into a calm and quivering va-et-vient movem ent o f the eye and hand. H e no longer legally

R E M B R A N D T ’S S E C R E T 79

possesses anything. A simple m anipulation o f the accounts, and everything has passed into H endrijke The A dm irable’s and T itu s’ hands. R em brandt no longer even possesses the pain t­ings he paints.

A m an has ju s t passed entirely into his work. All th a t’s left o f the m an, is ready for the dump, but before that, ju st before that, he will pain t “ The Return o f the Prodigal C hild .”

H e dies before being tempted to act the fool.

Translated fro m the French b y Randolph Hough

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