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A dramatic portrait of Edgar Both

patiently Continuing my investigation of the intriguing Edgar Tant, which we saw at twice already, he vowed a high admiration for Saint-Pol-Roux, yesterday I received this volume collecting Dramas and Comedies Belgian poet, published by Editions de Belgique in 1937. I hoped so much, have so far not found in my reading of the good Edgar, a sensitive trace the influence of poetic Magnificent. Let us say right away, it is little more noticeable in this very book. Nevertheless, I am not unhappy with my purchase, which has the merit to inform us, through the dramatic fiction, the mysterious author and on the design he had of his art.

There is, indeed, in this collection of short pieces of an act, a drama, "Le Chant du Cygne," in which Edgar appears to be long to stage in the character of the poet Tristan weep. The list of characters inidque his 43 years of age even when the author appears for the first time in the act Three dramas: The Precursors The Supreme Mercy, The Song of the Swan (Ghent, Printing L. Van Melle, 1932), with a foreword by Hector Rabier, perfectly unknown to us, and that may well appear as a double by Edgar appearing under that name in the same list of characters, with the precision "The poet Hector Rabier, their friend, 43 years." Same age, same mission: twinning troubling. Other stage appearances: Clotilde, the wife of cocks, 40 years and Mrs. Verhelst, mother weep, 70. The action takes place "in Ghent today.

When the curtain opens, the poet completes reread the pages he has written, he finds them "excellent" but is "still under the sway of the joy of writing" , joy, tempered anxiety and "enlarged heart" newly diagnosed and hidden from his wife. Rabier happens it brings good news in the form of a study Fabius signed in La Plume on "The Life and Dream" that Chantepleurs has issued three months earlier. The latter receives the article, yet very favorable, without enthusiasm, saying it comes too late: "And then the opinion of Fabius, who is a Master, I mean, one of the peaks of Contemporary Poetry, Will it sell ten copies for? " The pessimism is then accompanied by the admission of the disease Rabier, followed by recollections, tracing his route biographico-poetic

"miserable and lonely childhood, no relationships, no friends ...

My inclination to dream first, then my birth poetic vocation, mocked and ridiculed! ...

illness and death of my poor father, who died at the age of forty-six years! The total incomprehension on the part of my mother, whose unconscious awkwardness makes me suffer so much and whose sordid avarice and let me vegetate like a pauper! ...

As a poet and playwright I felt I could reach far, but outside of that, I would stay in the low average ...

Do breathable than peaks of the unreal, I could not suffer that I love, as Dante loved Beatrice and Petrarch loved Laura, remained trapped in a subordinate employment: I share the little I had. This was not always that mediocrity became embarrassed, often poverty, misery sometimes ...

The cataclysm of 1914! [...] I went to Zealand, Veere, the picturesque island of Walcheren, but the climate is too humid, I returned to the province of Gelderland and I lived many years in Oosterbeek, on the Rhine, a village near Arnhem ...

The Rhythm of Life medalist and a graduate several times in France, told me do not have a penny, despite a grant of three hundred francs from the Ministry of Science and Arts of Belgium ... "

This title is not unknown to us, since it exists and is signed Edgar So, like others that appear in the dialogue between Rabier and weep, true self where authorial pride is not absent:

RABIER. - Your Poet's Wisdom Belgium knew even brighter still praise.

Chantepleurs. - It's The Wisdom of Poet, composed of two hundred Parnassians quatrains, which I prefer as a whole.

RABIER. - And your precursors, which contain as few pages as Princess Maleine , would you like the least?

Chantepleurs. - As far because, although written in prose is poetry and that I was able to express in a way that is accurate, complete and final, what I feel.

RABIER. - And your Pity Supreme , the most audacious thesis that has been daring, deeply dramatic, so human in its simplicity? .. And the wonderful part: The Life and Dream?

Chantepleurs. - I love them too, but all this together, as if the final few pages for twenty-three years of poetic inspiration!

RABIER. - The Gaspard de la Nuit was enough to immortality by Aloysius Bertrand, and this is only volume! ...

We feel any artificiality of such a dialogue here, a secret poet Pier in the theatrical fiction. But it delivers in return a certificate of authenticity to the biographical fragments above. So if Edgar has indeed slipped into the skin verbal Tristan cocks, then one can only be touched by the fate of a man intoxicated with ideal and poet who wanted and who was, without doubt, awkwardly, as sideline. While Edgar was underrated and it also unjustly forgotten? His work - what I've read - is not worth its boldness and its novelty; it looks easy it is commonplace, it's worth, however, as evidence of a "failure" of the century, a spurned lover of poetry and always hoping. I like to see Edgar Both the symbol of the countless Rastignac literature, voluntary victims of a system they did not have keys, but they never ceased to seek the illusion of a recognition. As such, it is pathetic that other co-confession statement by the two poets brothers

Chantepleurs. - You, Hector, did you print your Tales as Old Thatch where is thy mercy romantic Catholic missionary striker socialist. The handsome charcoal that enhance the text, make it doubly attractive book.

RABIER. - But the sale is null! So I made a very comprehensive news service: two hundred copies sent to journals and newspaper literary hundred copies signed, most dedicated, sent to novelists, storytellers and literary critics, friends and acquaintances may s of interest or take pleasure in reading this book, so I obtained a press abundant and unanimously favorable, only seventeen copies were sold in bookstores after eighteen years of publication, not even one per year! ... for a volume well illustrated, well printed, limited to five hundred copies numbered, sold at regular price of three francs fifty before the war and still only ten francs. [...]

Chantepleurs. - We are the first and only professional poets who, in Belgium, let us print our books at our expense and sell ourselves to readers. And why not sell us not what is the best of ourselves, as well as others sell perfume, maps, views or lighters? ...

RABIER. - The editors do not publish at their peril the masterpieces of a great poet, nor a powerful playwright. Even they do not pay for a first edition a thousand copies of a novel sales because some cons that fifty one, will not be reprinted, after years and meanwhile, they still have the option of unpublished manuscripts, the authors will be happy to see published.

The bookseller who receives books on deposit for three months, with option to return unsold after this period, affecting up to forty per cent, four to twenty four francs per volume sold to the public twelve francs, seven twenty francs of the eighteen francs! ... For over three years the French exchange is less than forty, but calls for a Belgian bookstore fixed minimum of fifty percent!

And then the author has the chance to reach a second edition of one thousand copies, only affects at most two francs per volume, semi-annual settlement of copies sold eighteen francs to the public.

When the ideal stumbles to the "ugly reality" of money ... It is, moreover, this "ugly reality" that comes precipitate the tragedy, with the entry of Clotilde bringing bad news: the threat of seizure by the owner if rent arrears are not paid to him before one week. We take the decision to discard inadequate of forty pounds each. The arrival of the mother, stingy and indifferent, will not solve anything, instead, well, it will exacerbate the precarious state of our poet, who died minutes later from a heart attack. It will still have time to pronounce a final tirade:

Being a poet, an artist, it leads to where they all finished: Tasso, Milton, Rembrandt, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Maurice du Plessis (sic ) Tancred Martel, Napoleon Roinard Paul, Saint-Pol-Roux, finally all those who have not only made work of a poet, but are themselves actually Poets and lived in Poets. All my poor Clotilde, always and everywhere, Homer, Heines, or Villons!

It will not be surprised to see the pen of Edgar Both the name of the Magnificent complete this litany of major penniless of poetry and art, the only one still living in 1932. New proof of the admiration that kind flawless Edgar vowed to work Saint-Pol-Roux. May we one day find evidence that the poet Camaret rewarded its most hardcore fan of a letter, a dedication, or even more. The Ghent would be permanently rescued from oblivion.