Acknowledgments
I affectionately thank the following:
V. S. Pritchett for sending me to the right place; Professor Rudolf Arnheim for his painstaking and inspired criticism and suggestions; Dr A. M. Hammacher for our fruitful discussions; Roger Shattuck for his unflagging support; Andrew Forge for his insights and encouragement; Ronald Christ for his many helpful gestures and his good talk; Adja Yunkers for his special response to Rilke; Silvia Tennenbaum for her German translating; Patrick O'Brian for our correspondence; Una E. Johnson for her enthusiasm and help; M. M. Wright of the National Gallery in Washington for aid in research; Matti Megged, for his goading and help with Rilke translations; Octavio Paz, for everything; Octavio Armand for his confidence and his publication of the Rilke chapter in the magazine Escandalar ; Inga Karetnikova for the Russian documents on Rilke; Madame Jacqueline Sarment, Curator of the Maison Balzac for her exceptional cordiality and help; and Lester Trimble for his kind reading of the Schoenberg chapter.
Synopsis of Balzac's 'The Unknown Masterpiece' |
Part I-'Gillette' |
In 1612 young Poussin arrives at the studio of Porbus, Henry IV's painter abandoned by Marie de Médicis. Simultaneously, the old legendary painter Frenhofer arrives. Young Poussin listens while the old master criticizes Porbus's painting; makes a drawing which Frenhofer praises, and is invited to breakfast at the old master's studio. There he hears of Frenhofer's secret painting, La Belle Noiseuse , on which he has worked ten years. Seized with the desire to learn Frenhofer's secret, Poussin returns to his young mistress Gillette and proposes that she pose for 'another', in order to assure his future renown. She weeps, but finally consents. |
Part II-'Catherine Lescault' |
Three months later Porbus visits Frenhofer offering to 'lend' Poussin's beautiful young mistress in return for his letting them see his masterpiece. The old man agitatedly demurs, saying his portrait of Catherine Lescault, the courtesan known as La Belle Noiseuse, would never be submitted to the criticism of fools. At that point Poussin and Gillette arrive. Frenhofer falters, and finally consents to compare the living beauty with his painted masterpiece. They go into the studio and a few minutes later Frenhofer calls in the other two painters, having determined that no live woman rivals his Belle Noiseuse. The two enter, seek the painting but cannot find it. Frenhofer indicates a painting on which they can see only 'colours piled upon one another in confusion and held in restraint by a multitude of curious lines which form a wall of painting'. Gradually they discern the only part of the painting which has escaped 'that most incredible, gradual progressive destruction' - a foot. After some polite evasion, Poussin lets slip that he can see nothing there. The old master at first submits, and calls himself an idiot and madman, but then calls them jealous, and turns them out of the studio. 'The next day, Porbus called once more at his house and learned that he had died during the night after burning his pictures.' |