Rameau's Nephew and First Satire (Oxford World's Classics) (7 page)

HIM
: Don’t rush me; I like to be consistent.

ME
: Which would you prefer? That he’d been a good man, always busy with his bookshop, like Briasson, or with his bolts of cloth, like Barbier, giving his wife a legitimate child every year, a good husband; a good father, a good uncle, a good neighbour, an honest tradesman, but nothing more; or that he’d been a swindler, a traitor, ambitious, jealous, and spiteful, but had written
Andromaque, Britannicus, Iphigénie, Phèdre
, and
Athalie
?

HIM
: My goodness, of the two, for him it might have been better to be the first.

ME
: That’s infinitely truer than you know.

HIM
: Oh, you philosophers, there you go again! If something we say is to the point, it’s by a fluke, because we’re maniacs, or mystics. You and your friends are the only ones who know what you’re saying. Yes, Master Philosopher, I know what I’m saying, and I know exactly the way you know.

ME
: Well, let’s see. Tell me: why for him?

HIM
: Because all those fine things he wrote didn’t put twenty thousand francs in his pocket, whereas if he’d been a good silk merchant in the Rue St Denis or the Rue St Honoré, a good wholesale grocer or a popular apothecary, he’d have made an immense fortune, and while making it there’d not have been any kind of pleasure that he wouldn’t have enjoyed; because from time to time he’d have handed a gold coin to a poor devil of a buffoon like me who might have made him laugh, or occasionally procured him a young girl to relieve the monotony of the marriage bed; because we’d have enjoyed excellent meals at his table, and some serious gaming; drunk excellent wines, excellent liqueurs, excellent coffee; gone on pleasure jaunts outside the city—so you see, I knew what I was saying. You’re laughing. But let me finish. It would have been better for those around him.

ME
: Unquestionably: as long as he hadn’t made a shameful use of the great wealth he’d acquired through honest trading: as long as he’d kept his house free of all those gamblers, those hangerson, those mawkish yes-men, those idlers, those useless perverts, and had employed the underlings from his shop to beat up the officious character who provides husbands with a little relief from the unappealing monotony of the marriage bed.

HIM
: Beat up! Beat up, Monsieur! No one is beaten up in a properly policed city. It’s a respectable calling. Lots of people, even titled people, dabble in it. And what the devil do you want people to spend their money on, if not in keeping a good table, good company, good wines, beautiful women, and enjoying pleasures of every colour, diversions of every sort. I’d as soon be a beggar as possess a great fortune without any of those
pleasures. But let’s get back to Racine. That man was good only for men who were as yet unknown, and for centuries when he no longer existed.

ME
: Agreed. But weigh the good and the bad. A thousand years from now he will stir men to tears, men in every country of the world will marvel at him. He will inspire benevolence, compassion, tenderness; men will ask who he was, where he came from, and will envy France because of him. He caused pain to some individuals who no longer exist, in whom we feel almost no interest; we ourselves have nothing to fear from either his vices or his failings. No doubt it would have been better had nature given him the virtues of a good man, together with the talents of a great man. He was like a tree in whose vicinity young trees shrivelled and died; he stifled the saplings growing at his feet; but his leafy crown touched the clouds and his branches stretched far and wide; he offered his shade to those who came, who come now and who will come to seek rest beside his majestic trunk; he produced fruit of an exquisite flavour that will never be exhausted. One might well wish that Voltaire had the sweetness of Duclos, the simplicity of Abbé Trublet, the rectitude of Abbé d’Olivet; but since that cannot be, let’s look at the matter from the really interesting angle, let’s forget for a moment the point we occupy in space and time, and extend our gaze to centuries that lie ahead, to lands far distant and to nations yet unborn. Let’s reflect on the good of our own species. If we ourselves are insufficiently generous, let’s at least forgive nature for having been wiser than we are. If you fling cold water on Greuze’s head, you may perhaps wipe out his talent along with his vanity. If you make Voltaire less sensitive to criticism, he’ll no longer be able to plunge into the depths of Mérope’s soul.
*
He’ll no longer move you.

HIM
: But if nature is equally powerful and wise, why didn’t she make them as good as they are great?

ME
: But don’t you see that such reasoning would turn the general order of things upside-down, and that if everything in our world were excellent, then nothing would be excellent?

HIM
: You’re right. The important point is that you and I should exist, and that we should be you and me. Let everything else get on as best it can. The best order of things, as I see it, is the one that includes me; to hell with the most perfect of worlds, if I’m not part of it. I prefer to be, and even to be an impudent logic-chopper, than not to be.

ME
: But there isn’t anyone who doesn’t think like you, and who doesn’t denounce the way the world works, without realizing that they’re jettisoning their own existence.

HIM
: That’s true.

ME
: So let’s accept the way things are. Let’s see what this costs us and what it gives us, let’s not worry about the whole picture, which we don’t know enough about to praise or censure, and which may well be neither good nor bad if, as many good people suppose, it’s simply necessary.

HIM
: Most of what you’re talking about is beyond me. It sounds like philosophy; I warn you, I don’t dabble in that. What I do know is that I’d love to be someone else, even at the risk of being a man of genius, a great man. Yes, I have to admit, there’s something that makes me feel that way. I’ve never heard anyone praised without secretly feeling wild with envy. I’m an envious man. When I hear some discreditable detail about their private life, I’m delighted. It brings us closer. I find my mediocrity easier to bear. I tell myself: Of course you’d never have written
Mahomet
,
*
but neither would you have written that eulogy to Maupeou.
*
So I have been, and I still am, discontented with being mediocre. Yes, oh yes, I’m mediocre and discontented. I’ve never heard the overture to
Les Indes galantes
being played, never heard ‘Profonds abîmes du Tenare’, ‘Nuit, éternelle nuit’
*
being sung, without telling myself gloomily: you’ll never write such music. So I was jealous of my uncle, and if at his death there’d been some beautiful harpsichord music among his manuscripts, I wouldn’t have hesitated to go on being me and be him as well.

ME
: If that’s all that’s upsetting you, it’s hardly worth it.

HIM
: It’s nothing. These moments quickly pass. [Then he
again started humming the overture to
Les Indes galantes
and the melody of ‘Profonds abîmes’ before continuing:] That whatever-it-is inside me that speaks to me says: Rameau, you’d love to have written those two pieces; if you’d written those pieces, you’d undoubtedly do two more, and when you’d done a certain number, they’d be playing and singing you everywhere; you’d walk with your head high, and you’d hear your conscience testifying to your own worth; others would point you out. They’d say: ‘He’s the man who wrote those charming gavottes.’ [Here he began humming the gavottes, then, with the air of a man deeply moved, as if overcome with joy, his eyes full of tears, he added, rubbing his hands:] you’d have a good home [and with his arms he measured out the size], a good bed [and he stretched nonchalantly out on it], good wines [which he savoured, clicking his tongue against his palate], a good carriage [and he raised his leg as if stepping up into it], pretty women [whose breasts he was already fondling as he eyed them lustfully]; a hundred hangers-on would come every day and flatter me [and he seemed to be watching them gather round him: Palissot, Poinsinet, the Frérons both father and son, and La Porte; he was listening to them arrogantly, nodding approval and smiling, then waving them away with a sneer, only to summon them back again; then he continued:] And so they’d tell you in the morning that you’re a great man; you’d read in
Three Centuries of our Literary Heritage
*
that you’re a great man; by evening you’d be convinced that you’re a great man; and the great man, Rameau the nephew, would fall asleep to the sweet murmur of praises ringing in his ears; even asleep he’d look pleased with himself; his chest would dilate and rise and fall freely; he’d snore, like a great man [and saying this, he let himself subside indolently onto a bench; he closed his eyes, and imitated the happy sleep he was imagining. After enjoying this pleasurable repose for a few moments, he awoke, stretched his arms, yawned, rubbed his eyes, and looked around again for his insipid toadies].

ME
: So you believe the happy man sleeps soundly.

HIM
: Do I believe it! A poor devil like me, when I’m back in my attic at night and tucked into my cot, I lie shrivelled up under my blanket; my chest’s constricted and my breathing’s constrained; the ear can barely detect a kind of feeble groaning, whereas the breathing of a financier shakes the walls of his room and astounds his entire street. But what troubles me today is not that my snores and my sleep are so niggardly, like some wretched beggar’s.

ME
: But that is sad, even so.

HIM
: What’s happened to me is far sadder.

ME
: So what is it, then?

HIM
: You’ve always taken a certain amount of interest in me, because I’m quite a good sort of devil whom in your heart you despise but find amusing.

ME
: Quite true.

HIM
: So I’m going to tell you. [But first, he sighs deeply and rests his forehead on both his hands. Then, somewhat calmer, he says to me:] You know I’m a stupid, crazy, cheeky, lazy ignoramus, what we Burgundians call a bad lot, a swindler, a glutton …

ME
: What a panegyric!

HIM
: It’s the exact truth. There’s not a single inaccurate word. I’ll thank you not to question any of it. Nobody knows me better than I do; and I’m not telling everything.

ME
: I don’t want to annoy you; I’ll agree with every point.

HIM
: Well, I was living with some people who’d taken a liking to me, precisely because I possessed—to an exceptional degree—all those qualities.

ME
: This is extraordinary. Up till now I’d supposed that one concealed such defects from oneself, or forgave oneself for them while despising them in others.

HIM
: Conceal them from oneself, is that possible? You can be sure that when Palissot’s on his own, thinking about himself, he tells himself something different. You can be sure that when he’s alone with his partner, they freely admit to one another that they’re just a couple of out-and-out swindlers. Despise
them in others! My people were fairer than that, their character was such that I was a marvellous success with them. I was in clover. They spoiled me rotten. They missed me if I was gone for a single moment. I was their dear little Rameau, their pretty Rameau, their clownish, crazy, cheeky, ignorant, lazy, greedy, gross Rameau. There was not one of those familiar epithets that did not earn me a smile, a caress, a cuff on the shoulder, a slap, a kick, or, at table, a tasty morsel flung onto my plate. Away from the dinner table they behaved with a certain freedom that I thought of no consequence, for I’m a man of no consequence. They did what they pleased of me, with me, in front of me, without offending me; and then—those little presents they showered me with! How could I have been so unbelievably crass—I’ve lost it all! I’ve lost it all because once, just once in my life, I showed some ordinary good sense—ah, never ever again!

ME
: But what happened?

HIM
: An unparalleled example of the most inexcusable, irremediable folly.

ME
: But what sort of folly?

HIM
: Rameau, Rameau, that wasn’t what they’d taken you in for! The folly of showing a little good taste, a little wit, a little judgement. Rameau, my friend, that’ll teach you to stay the way God made you and your patrons wanted you. So they grabbed you by the shoulders, marched you to the door, and said: ‘Get out, you rat, and don’t ever come back. I do believe the creature’s trying to show it’s intelligent, it has a mind! Get out! Besides, those are things we already have.’ So out you went, biting your fingers; it was your cursed tongue you should have bitten, earlier. Because you didn’t grasp that, there you were, standing outside in the cold, not a penny in your pocket, not knowing where to turn. You were fed like a turkey-cock, and now you’re back to the slop-house; you were well housed, and now you’ll be lucky to get your attic back; you had a comfortable bed, and now you’ll sleep on straw, between Monsieur de Soubise’s coachman
*
and our friend
Robbé. Instead of a sweet, peaceful sleep, like you used to enjoy, in one ear you’ll be hearing the whinnying and stamping of horses; in the other, the infinitely more insufferable sound of harsh, wooden, unpolished verses. You miserable, reckless, devil-driven wretch!

ME
: But is there no way to get back into their favour? Was your offence so unpardonable? If I were you, I’d go there and see them. They need you more than you realize.

HIM
: Oh! I’m sure that now they haven’t got me there to make them laugh, they’re bored to tears.

ME
: So I’d go and see them. I wouldn’t leave them time to get used to doing without me and find some respectable entertainment; for who can say what might not happen?