English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Early Autumn and the prejudice of an elitist jazz or classical music 0:16 And the autumn wind brings them to the end of the faded summer life. When an early autumn walks the land, And chills the breeze and touches with her hand, The summer trees, perhaps you'll understand, What memories I know.
1:02 There's a dance pavilion in the rain All shuttered down a winding country lane All russet brown a frosty window pane Shows me a town grown lonely I'm so alone, that dream of ours that started, so April-hearted, seemed made for just a boy and girl.
1:45 I never dreamed, did you, Any fall could come in view so early, Early, So darling, if you care, Please let me know, I'll meet you anywhere.
2:35 I'd really like us to listen to this superb "Early Autumn," you know I like it when I can. We have to act according to the season. And since we've entered into the cold darkness, as we'll see very quickly in the first text we're going to look at, a text by Baudelaire called precisely "Chant d'automne" ("Autumn Song"), I thought nothing could introduce it better than this superb "Early Autumn," sung by… this is for the connoisseurs, but I'm teasing you when I say that, because I know nobody knows the Four Freshmen.
3:11 On the other hand, they're right at the top of vocal groups in a jazz culture, while still remaining very popular. I say that against those who claim "jazz is elitist, classical is elitist." I remind you, I don't know if I've already said this, but to those who think that classical music, for example — I was talking about jazz, but for classical there's the same prejudice.
3:46 With a few variations, here they are thinking that classical music is made for old Eurocentric Caucasians. I'll remind you that in China, believe it or not, there are more top-level pianists — I mean concert performers, that is, people who've done 8 hours of piano a day for 15 years — than there are French people.
4:23 There are 67 million more of them than there are French people. There you go. So much for old Eurocentric Caucasians, etc. And besides, they're young. Well, anyway. No, it's a vocal group. Even those who aren't quite familiar with the great jazz repertoire, because here we're at the pinnacle of vocal groups. I'm not overstating it, among jazz vocal groups, one of the best rated is a French group — I say that too for the record, for those who think French can't swing — that famous group the Double Six, who stayed at the top of the Down Beat rankings for three years, the most prestigious jazz magazine in the United States, you can't get better referenced in that field, for vocal groups worldwide overall. And besides, the Double Six covered the wonderful melody you just heard, which plays a bit on the number 4, because the Four Freshmen group is here covering a theme that had been launched by an instrumental, not vocal, saxophone ensemble called the Four Brothers.
5:43 There, where the young Stan Getz was already featured, to be more precise. Well, I could talk about it for hours, so I need to stop myself with my internal rifle. So, why did I just say that the Double Six covered this melody in French — because they did an extraordinary piece of work, listening to all the great solos. The great jazz solos, it's complicated. They studied them again, including the most acrobatic ones, those of Dizzy Gillespie, and they transcribed them vocally, note by note.
6:23 So, for those interested, you just put the Double Six on YouTube and you'll see right away — try to get the complete album, the one with the red and white cover, you'll see. The Double Six, red and white cover album, and you'll find the theme we just heard, except instead of being in English, you'll see.
6:57 The chill of autumn. Instead of that, it's "Madness of a summer night in the beautiful air." It's a feat. Well, yes, so, autumn is going to come up, but how? Because we said the title is "Sickness, Unhappiness, Death."
Reading of Baudelaire's first "Chant d'automne" 7:27 But autumn is nice — the humus, the mushrooms, the undergrowth, the softness of the air. Yes, and especially these last few days we've been living through, we find again a bit of the autumn we love, don't we? It got a little too hot, then a little too cool. And that fits very well, actually, which is what finally pushed me to set tonight's session in a September setting.
7:57 So yes, for those who might think I'm just tacking something on out of convenience because it's autumn and I have a seasonal discourse — although tonight's sequence will indeed end with a passage from Rimbaud's "A Season in Hell," which begins like this, it's one of the last chapters of "A Season in Hell," already autumn. The chapter is significantly titled "Farewell." Already autumn, but why regret it — it's a telling word — an eternal sun, as we are in search of eternal light, far from the people who die by the seasons.
8:37 To write like that between 17 and 18 years old, as if he'd already lived 400 lives. What's the connection with our title, "Evil, unhappiness"? I don't know if it's the season of evil, there's no reason for that, there's no more unhappiness in autumn than in spring, that's not to say more or less, but it is still the season of decay, of the withering of leaves.
9:11 But I'm getting ahead of myself — it's the first text that's going to plunge us in medias res into both autumn and the reasons why it's linked to death, to sickness, to suffering. Let's go, I'm going to ask for it to be sent… there, there, there. So, "Chant d'automne," a nice matched pair from Baudelaire, giving us two poems grouped under the same title "Chant d'automne," very contrasting, as you'll see.
9:47 I'll read it without stopping. "Soon we shall plunge into the cold darkness; Farewell, bright light of our all too short summers! Already I hear falling with funereal thuds The wood resounding on the courtyard pavements. All winter will enter into my being: anger, hatred, shivers, horror, hard, forced labor. And like the sun in its polar hell, My heart will be nothing but a red and frozen block."
10:22 "I listen, shuddering, to every log that falls. The scaffold being built has no duller echo. My mind is like the tower that succumbs Beneath the tireless, heavy blows of the battering ram. It seems to me, rocked by this monotonous shock, That somewhere a coffin is being nailed in haste. For whom? Yesterday was summer; here is autumn! That mysterious noise sounds like a departure."
11:00 Before reading the second one, let me comment on this first one anyway, thank you. Yes, I'll just note… well, so you see here that all of a sudden, Baudelaire brilliantly groups together both the themes of autumn and that of death. So, that of decay — "it seems to me that somewhere a coffin is being nailed in haste," "the scaffold being built has no duller echo." And at the same time this ambivalence in the relationship to autumn, whereby we dread what's coming.
11:34 Winter, anger, hatred, shivers, horror, hard forced labor. And then this striking image, like the sun in its polar hell, my heart will be nothing but a red and frozen block. We're far from the voluptuousness of autumnal melancholy found among the Romantics, in a Lamartine or a Musset — the Musset of "Souvenir," for instance, set in the forest of Fontainebleau in autumn.
12:04 And then, of course, all the metaphors connoting decay, death, quite simply. So we have autumn, we have death, we already have the fear of physical suffering, you see — shivers, hard forced labor, frozen, the discomfort, the wood resounding on the courtyard pavements. A small remark, off-topic for tonight, but still, one that connects to one of my recurring themes.
12:40 "Already I hear falling with funereal thuds, the wood resounding on the courtyard pavements." Try to imagine the millions of Parisian dwellings of Baudelaire's time spewing out wood-smoke. No, no, I mean, because there are always people who think it was industry that had exploded, but no, it was still embryonic. Paris was black, and I myself — I wasn't born under Vercingetorix, mind you — when I first arrived in Paris, since I was in the equivalent of eleventh grade, so that was in the very early 1960s, I remember that the monuments — Notre-Dame was black, but black like my microphone here. That was before, you see, before, much later, under Malraux, a great cleaning campaign brought out the beautiful Chartres stone, you know, of the Parisian monuments, and their millions of fossils, for anyone who knows how to look and doesn't walk too fast past the walls.
14:01 So there, I'll open a little parenthesis again, this little pebble tossed, not maliciously, into the garden — not of ecology, which I respect, but of ecologism, of the ecologists. I've already said that there's the relationship of ecologism to ecology, and that of scientism to science. No relation whatsoever between scientism and science, nor between ecologism and ecology worthy of the name. So, back to our themes. And now, without transition, I'll add the second poem. One last thing about the first one — the last stanza, look: "It seems to me, rocked by this monotonous shock…" It was painful up until then, you see.
The second "Chant d'automne": the sea, the infinite and finitude 14:51 The first and second stanzas are almost violent, either very anxious, like the one about the scaffold, or violent, like the one about… hatred, shivers, anger, just through the rhythm of the lines, through what's called imitative harmony in stylistics. And then suddenly there's this "rocked," as if there were a soothing at the same time. You see the ambivalence of autumn — we like it because it's the last beautiful days; we dread what will follow. "It seems to me, rocked" — on my autumn, and then there's a calming.
15:27 So I move on to the second poem of this "Chant d'automne," which is very different, since here all of a sudden he addresses someone with "tu" — no, actually, he uses "vous," it's more intimate, it's a relationship to a woman, to an intimacy, but that's not really what it's about. On the contrary, from the very first line he pays homage: "I love the greenish light of your long eyes." You see the effects of the calming — that's why I ended with that. Suddenly, it's more peaceful. "I love the greenish light of your long eyes, Sweet beauty, but today everything is bitter to me, And nothing, neither your love, nor the boudoir, nor the hearth" — you can sense the crackling fireplace fire there — "Is worth as much to me as the sun shining on the sea." Now that, in Baudelaire, is rare.
16:20 Not that he talks about the sea — I'll come back to that — but that he talks about nature in general. Romanticism was over by his time. Baudelaire is one of the first great poets of the city of Paris. The second part of "Les Fleurs du Mal" is titled "Tableaux parisiens" ("Parisian Scenes"), it contains some of his most beautiful poems. And he writes to a friend, I think it was Asselineau, or maybe Barbey, I can't remember, he writes: "You know I'm incapable of being moved by a plant." And he once dreamed of going to Lisbon because he'd been told that there the inhabitants had banished all trees, and there was nothing but metal, marble, and water.
17:04 Elsewhere, one last example, he speaks of irregular vegetation, he who loves order — "there all is order and beauty, luxury, calm, and voluptuousness," as the refrain of one of his most famous poems says. But here, it's not nature in general. It's one specific manifestation of it, and not just any — it's the sea. The ocean, the sea. The sea within nature is where nature finds favor in Baudelaire's eyes. One of his most beautiful poems begins with "Free man, you will always cherish the sea."
17:41 With an extraordinary, almost line-for-line comparison between man and the sea. They are two similar beings. Judge for yourself — I'm quoting this poem, which you don't have in front of you, with that magnificent opening flourish, as they say, in the first line: "Free man, you will always cherish the sea." You'll notice that the river, the stream, is beautiful, noble — look at Hölderlin on the great rivers, I'll treat that properly at some point.
18:12 The brook in Schubert is a bride. There's a direction, there's a sense to it, it's not as free as when it reaches the ocean. There's no privileged direction, it's the swell that moves. That reminds me of what's said about the Spirit in the Gospel, you know? To the apostles who ask, "What is the Spirit?" The Father, we can more or less place him; the Son, he's right there in front of us. But the Spirit, what is it? And you know Jesus answers — forgive me for giving you catechism, but still — it's about freedom, that's why I bring it up, but let me quote it properly instead.
18:46 "You hear the wind, you know not where it comes from nor where it goes." The wind blows where it wishes, it has freedom. So it is with the things of the Spirit. But the sea, well… Just like that, there's no one direction, no one course. So, I'll pick back up and finish this digression with this magnificent poem: "Free man, you will always cherish the sea, the sea is your mirror, you contemplate your soul In the infinite unfurling of its billow."
19:22 There's also an infinitude in common between man and the sea. No, not in the abstract sense — quite the opposite — in the most literal sense there is, the most concrete. The infinite is what has no limit, no determination. We think there's a limit — "horos" means determination, finitude, limit in Greek, that's where "horizon" comes from. And yet, when the boat reaches the horizon, there is once again just as much distance stretching to infinity. That's another thing they have in common.
19:52 I've told you twice now that human desire has an infinitude that animal need, which we also have, does not have. Hunger, which must be repeated every day but is a finite need, like thirst, which calls for a determined object that, once present, ends the thirst, finishes it, limits it. No, a burst of light. "But the true travelers are only those who leave for the sake of leaving, light-hearted, like balloons following their fate, never do they turn aside, and without knowing why they always say 'Onward!'" says Baudelaire in his final poem, which closes "Les Fleurs du Mal" and is called "Le Voyage" — I know it has many readers among you, which pleases me very much.
20:37 So, "you contemplate your soul in the infinite unfurling of its billow, and your spirit is no less bitter a gulf," for the sea also harbors fearsome things in its depths. "You take pleasure in diving into your own image, You embrace it with your eyes and your arms, and your heart" — it always speaks to man — "is sometimes distracted from its own clamor" — we're getting close to evil, to suffering, its own terrible, implied clamor — "and your heart is sometimes distracted from its own clamor by the sound of this untamable and savage lament."
21:15 You could picture the sea battering itself against the rocks of Brittany. That's why he says "today everything is bitter to me" — let me reread the first stanza — "and nothing, neither your love, nor the boudoir, nor the hearth" — a great deal refused there, love included — "is worth as much to me as the sun shining on the sea."
21:45 Almost two indeterminations, two abstractions, in the proper sense — I mean, in the sense of abstract painting, there's nothing very figurative, we see a light of the sun shining on the sea, two indefinite things. And yet: "love me still, tender heart, be a mother, even for an ingrate, even for a wicked man," but that's the eternal fellow for you, I mean, he wants to have his cake and eat it too. "Lover or sister, be the fleeting sweetness of a glorious autumn or a setting sun."
22:17 There's a new dimension to autumn here, its glorious side. Maybe it's because everything takes on the color of gold in autumn. I'd alluded to this in the podcast — which I can't recommend enough — that I did under conditions as technically perfect as our friend Aliocha can manage, when I briefly commented on that masterpiece, a version of "My Funny Valentine" by… oh goodness, the baritone, it'll come back to me, I know who it is, don't worry.
22:56 Quick note — so you see, death comes back, the idea of death comes back, of finitude, this time in time, you see — infinitude of desire and finitude in time. The grave awaits, it is greedy. Ah! "Let me rest my forehead upon your knees, and taste, while regretting the white, torrid summer, the yellow and gentle ray of late autumn." Yes, there we are — we're not even in September yet — "of late autumn, the yellow and gentle ray."
23:29 So, we do have some heavy material here, with decay. Well, yes, it is an unhappiness to know that all this is going to end, but for now that's not what's expressed in detail here, so let's not get ahead of ourselves. You know, I don't like to interpret, I like to analyze what's actually said. And now we're going to move straight from this unhappiness of finitude, which goes from sweet romantic melancholy, you see, to Baudelairean anguish, to spleen.
Ecce Homo: Nietzsche saved by Wagnerian music 24:07 We're now going to move from unhappiness to sickness. No, this isn't me interpreting — I'm going to quote you a text from our great favorite ego, Nietzsche, right? There are some who still haven't understood why I call him "great ego."
24:39 Those who like to play the tough guys, the fellows freed from unhappiness, from Romantics, from sad thoughts, right? They do the same thing with Spinoza. They understand nothing, neither of Spinoza nor of Nietzsche. On the contrary, we're not talking about the early Nietzsche, from his Romantic period — he was Romantic, like all that generation. One small detail: he adored Schumann, one of the musicians who are emblematically Romantic, if I may put it that clumsily.
25:19 And people often said at the time that Schumann was the music of the eternal young man. And ironically, Nietzsche, once he reached maturity, would say, against his own youth, that it's more like the music of the eternal old maid. He's cutting when he's being human. And we'll see that all this is a struggle against himself. Let's let him speak, because otherwise you'll say I'm interpreting. "All things considered, my youth would not have been bearable without Wagnerian music." Now, there's a fine one for you. No, wait, that was written in 1888, he doesn't have much time left.
25:58 Well, his soul and his mind at least. He'll have a long agony in the psychiatric clinic, we'll get all the symptoms of madness, including the scatological ones. In short, it's pathetic, but that's precisely why I have affection for this Nietzsche, this Nietzsche who turns back upon himself. In 1888, he wrote about Wagner the worst things one could say about one's worst enemy. He denigrated him morally, no easy task with a man like Wagner; aesthetically, he nailed him to the pillory, ridiculed him.
26:44 I've already read you texts on this, so I won't go back to it. Look at what he says about Parsifal, in Beyond Good and Evil, but those who listen to me know. I've noticed that you always have more memory than I imagine, that always pleases me. I always have the impression that speech—how does Rimbaud put it? "What matters my speech, it must flee and fly." But no, it doesn't fly away with you, that pleases me greatly. Some of you remember that I had recalled that when he says of Parsifal that it's pious nonsense, that it smells of priestly tricks, nuns' sidelong glances, in short the worst of sanctimony and holy-water-font toads, he hadn't heard a note of the music, and that when he did hear it, he said the exact opposite—that it was the absolute masterpiece.
27:32 There you go, I love that Nietzsche. So, who has his internal contradiction on the subject of illness, his internal crisis, and not this Dionysian figure who's just the bourgeois orgy having a blast. All the same, Nietzsche is better than that. "My youth was not bearable." We learn that Nietzsche's youth was not as Dionysian as it seems, and that he is a survivor. And what's more, what pulled him out of what might have ended like so many Romantics—in madness, in suicide, or both, see Nerval? No—Wagnerian music. Now listen, that's rare, and it's his last work. We can't say it's a youthful sin, here.
28:24 "For I was condemned to the Germans." He gives us an explanation. Now this is even more paradoxical. What he doesn't like in Wagner is what he doesn't like about the Germans, in all his other texts. And here it turns out—luckily there was Wagner who saved me from the Germans. "Well now, the things one learns when..." These are the most famous texts, it's Ecce Homo, where he presents himself. It's taken from the Gospel. Ecce Homo—that's when we see the body of Christ covered in bruises and wounds.
28:56 Ecce Homo. That's Nietzsche, isn't it? A few months later he's going to write to Madame Wagner, in full madness this time, "Cosima, I love you, signed Dionysus, the Crucified." You see, the Crucified. And here, Ecce Homo. Well, let's leave that—"for I was condemned to the Germans," implied: if I hadn't been in contact with Wagner's music.
29:28 When one wants—you'll notice it's not what made his youth bearable, it's not Wagner, it's Wagnerian music—"for I was condemned to the Germans." When one wants to rid oneself of an unbearable oppression, one learns things about his youth. A chronic depressive takes hashish. Oh yes, you think you're the first to smoke a joint? That makes me laugh! It was sold openly at the time. This era that claims to be liberated, yours, I say that without pointing a finger, because it also has qualities we didn't have.
30:10 In particular, the fathers of your generation are better fathers, like there have never been, they spend more time with their children than ever, that's true. On the other hand, at a young age—I'm not making a promotion for weed, you talk however you talk. No, I nearly kicked the bucket, because I was already smoking too much tobacco, nicotine is very dangerous for the cardiovascular system, even more than for the lungs, which is saying something, and I quit smoking 10 years ago, luckily thanks to the heart attack.
30:47 So, Wagner compared to hash, Wagnerian music compared to the effect hash produces—that reminds me, yes, that's it, good grief, letters from Baudelaire to Richard Wagner. I can't send you every text, you'd be bombarded, we already have a Baudelaire text, but I strongly recommend, when you have time, it's easy, you type "Letter from Baudelaire to Richard Wagner," "Letter to Richard Wagner," that's the fastest way to get there, and you'll see it's quite pathetic—Baudelaire says he's past the age of writing to famous men, he writes as if he were a kid addressing a celebrity. And at the end, which is even more pathetic, there's a postscript saying "I am not giving you my address so that you don't think I have something to ask of you."
31:51 The greatest poet of his time ends up like that. Whereas the last nobody nowadays says he's the genius of the century. Anyway. Well, when I say nowadays, not everywhere, not in every field, not in every art, thankfully. But how many are there like that now? Even among athletes, I've noticed—before, when a guy had done something monstrous, the Tourmalet pass, we'd cheer at the quarter mark of the race.
32:25 That guy there, he did that, we cheer him, champagne for the young ladies, and in front of the microphone he says "I'll try to do better next time." Now it's... "Well, I was unlucky. But otherwise, I've made huge progress." It's odd. Anyway, it must be the coaches getting involved. Because before, it wasn't the coaches who set the tone. Oh dear, I was a consultant, you know, mea culpa, those are all crooked professions. Consulting. Well anyway, I needed Wagner. How to take it neat? Yes, because I interrupted myself—because Baudelaire says in your music I also felt something.
33:06 "Something akin to the reverie of great opium smokers." You see! And again, I'm searching for the word, but I'd say he's describing a psychotropic drug, let's say. So I would have preferred a less abstract term. Well, I needed Wagner. Wagner is the antidote—we stay in the medical semantic field—the antidote against everything German par excellence.
A philosophy that ignores evil is worthless 33:43 "He is a poison"—I don't contradict this, so he doesn't go back on what he said. Here I have to stop. I'm addressing the serious Nietzscheans here, those who take what is most serious in Nietzsche, which isn't the same thing. How many times have I said—and I took the example, of course, when we did Parsifal—the way he does a 180-degree turn the moment he listens.
34:16 These are the first notes of the Parsifal music, against everything he had said to devalue it before hearing the music, having only read the text. Now, I had told you that Nietzsche's problem, the essential axis of value, the determining dichotomy, is not the true and the false—in that sense he is not a philosopher in the strict sense. That's not meant to devalue him.
34:54 I prefer a great thinker like Pascal, a great moralist like La Bruyère—I take both from the great century, maybe because Nietzsche adored that repertoire. I prefer a great thinker, who is not strictly speaking a philosopher, even if he knows them, to a bad philosopher. But that's not strict either. All of it belongs to philosophy, because there's also the search for the true. There's also—I won't keep going back to the beginning, but still—in my introduction to philosophy, I remind you that the philosopher is the one who tries to hold together.
35:30 It's not like someone holding two teams of horses pulling him in opposite directions, toward the left, toward the right. That is, toward mathematics, hence the same search for univocal communication where one cannot say "that's valid for you." It's not about settling scores like sophists, with political opportunism.
36:02 The dream of capital is that each of us be locked in our own bubble, that we have nothing in common anymore—common, communist, if that word makes you wary. How many times do you read things saying that the universal is reactionary and totalitarian? Where does that come from? From the MEDEF. Well, from circles embodied among others by the MEDEF [the French employers' federation]. Well yes, it's better to divide, isn't it. So, to have women against men, young against old, Hutus against Tutsis—I don't want to repeat my usual refrain, but these should be reflexes, like multiplication tables, the kind of thing you should teach in elementary school.
36:47 The decisive dichotomy in Nietzsche, which he keeps returning to, is not the true and the false. Truth is not his supreme value, even though we make him out to be a great demystifier, a stripper of illusions. No, it's health and illness. There you have it, we're right in the middle of tonight's problem. And I'm only just starting the text. Illness. Let me remind you before continuing the text, before picking it back up and going on, that we find the root of "evil" [le mal]—hence tonight's title—in misfortune, in illness.
37:28 But also, "Mommy, it hurts" [j'ai mal]. I mean physical suffering too. Of course, there's no relation between physical suffering and the pain one can feel after a romantic breakup, a bereavement, whatever, or both. And so this notion of "mal" [evil/pain]—this is my last interruption of the text, I'll close my interruption of the text with this—those who follow me should remember, though I've perhaps only said it twice in several years.
38:11 And yet it was fairly solemn, and I repeat it tonight so that it might settle more firmly in your memories. A thought, or rather a philosophical reflection that does not reflect on the problem of evil—either directly, as we're doing tonight, or indirectly, even without naming it, where one sees it tackling notions or situations that imply that evil is present there.
38:45 Someone who doesn't confront this problem—sorry, a discourse that doesn't confront this problem—isn't worth a minute's trouble philosophically. Otherwise philosophy would be as ethereal as if it were only about the true and the false. Yes, we do have one thing in common with Nietzsche after all. He's not a philosopher, but we have one thing in common: that the most important thing is not only of a cognitive order. I haven't said that the true is not a value. I just rehabilitated the universal against the lynching it undergoes in liberal-libertarian society.
39:27 I have nothing against truth. I'm saying that if it were only the search for "A equals B implies B equals A," because that is indisputably true, not only for me, it's true everywhere and always, as we say of laws or theorems, we wouldn't need the philosopher to state that. There's another requirement. Just as medicine is not a science—it's not the cognitive part that's the most important part of medicine—it's about making sure that where there is "mal" (here it comes back in the form of illness, physical suffering, psychic suffering, most often physical but also psychic, mental illness), where there is "mal," one tries to bring back the good. That's the fundamental aim of medicine.
40:20 That's why things have been said. We're right to recall—it's never useless to recall it, and it's often said, thankfully, even outside of philosophers—that medicine is an art and not a science. The art of trying to push back evil/harm. Let me get back to the text. "Well, I needed Wagner. Wagner is the antidote against everything German, par excellence. He is a poison. I don't contradict this." From the moment there was a piano arrangement of Tristan—he takes Wagner's most poisoned work, well, "poison" here taken in the sense of...
Tristan, poison and "dreadful and sweet infinity" 41:08 Something that puts you beside yourself, like a drug. "From the moment there was a piano arrangement of Tristan, my compliments, Herr von Bülow, I am a Wagnerian." Bülow is the Karajan of the era, the Herbert von Karajan, the charismatic conductor of the time, and the husband of one of the rare women, Dura Troublenitsch, as the Russian was called, as Madame Wagner called her, being a proper Frenchwoman who took herself for a German. Yes, Bülow was going to marry Liszt's daughter, Cosima, who would leave him, taking their three children under her arm and moving in with Wagner.
41:50 She abandons one of the finest matches in Europe—the great von Bülow family, a great Prussian family, aristocracy, money, glory, a conductor—for a debt-ridden little musician. There are films to be made here. "From the moment there was a piano arrangement of Tristan, which had been made by Herr von Bülow, my compliments Herr von Bülow, I became a Wagnerian." Wagner's earlier works before Tristan—implied, before Tristan, which is a great turning point in the history of contemporary music—"Wagner's earlier works seemed beneath me." He's honest, he doesn't say "were beneath Tristan," but they seemed to him, personally, beneath him. "They were still too vulgar, too German"—you know, the Ring, the dragon, all that, too popular, too Star Wars.
42:47 Even today, where The Lord of the Rings—I say that because my son once told me, "Dad, they plagiarized Wagner," he was 11 when he saw the film, I said no, it's always the same things, Americans, Germans, it's the same mythologies. "Even today"—we're in 1888 here, he's nearing his end, this is late Nietzsche, apart from a few letters of madness still to come—"even today, I search in vain"—listen to this sentence of Nietzsche's—"in all the arts," a work in all the arts, not only music, but painting, poetry, "that equals Tristan in its dangerous fascination." I told you we'd talk about illness—"in its terrible and sweet infinity."
43:42 "All the strangenesses of Leonardo da Vinci lose their charm the moment one hears the first bar of Tristan." I won't dwell on this—I devote myself to this chord, the chord that opens Tristan, which is called the Tristan chord. Let me play it again, see? And then I resolve it, I can't leave it unresolved.
44:21 "This work is absolutely Wagner's ne plus ultra. The Mastersingers and the Ring were, after it, merely a relaxation"—because he wasn't done with it, Wagner. He had interrupted the Tetralogy, we saw that, so I'm going a bit fast. He takes a great intermission, leaves his Siegfried in the middle of the birds in the forest, in the second act of Siegfried, which is itself in the middle of the Ring, in the middle of the middle, protected, protected, from the end and the beginning.
44:51 Pure lyricism sheltered from the dramatic, a suspension of action, drama. Drama means action in Greek. Epic isn't tragic, it's dramatic, it's action. Theater is the dramatic art. "This work is absolutely Wagner's ne plus ultra. The Mastersingers and the Ring were, after it, merely a relaxation." "To become healthier"—you see I'm not talking behind his back when I tell you that it's health and illness that obsess him.
45:22 "For a nature like Wagner's, that amounted to a regression." That means Wagner dared to express illness. The illness of love, the illness of youth. But of course, that's certain. Listen closely to the guitar part, it's not simple. For those who think Salvador is only a clown, he's an immense jazz guitarist. "I consider it a great stroke of luck to have lived at the right time, to have lived precisely among the Germans, to be ripe for this work." The psychologist's curiosity, and fascination with psychology—these aren't Nietzsche's strongest points, I refer you here to what is perhaps best in the phenomenological current founded by Husserl, namely the critique—again, not to be confused with psychology, that's not my field. I'm talking about psychologism, the drive to explain everything. Still, this isn't a digression. So we're in philosophy. I can't move on here without recalling—precisely since Nietzsche himself hastens to recall it—a passage from Molière.
Critique of psychologism: dormitive virtue and identity 46:45 Ah, that does one good, Molière. You know, when they ask Molière's doctor, in The Doctor in Spite of Himself, in The Imaginary Invalid, why opium makes you sleep? Nobody knew anything, they didn't know the chemical chains, the neuroleptics, they didn't know. But you're not going to admit your ignorance when you're a doctor of that era. And so, for the fullness of words to come fill the emptiness of the thing, one answers what's expected. Why does opium make you sleep? "Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva"—because there is in it a dormitive virtue.
47:24 Well now, who would have thought! Why do we bother slaving away doing dynamics in mathematics, in physics, to explain motion? Why does the car move? Because there is in it a motive faculty. It's wordplay! What does this have to do with psychologism? You know I have a son? The mother who says to the teacher or the professor, "your son"... Frankly, I don't know if he'll manage to pass the baccalaureate or get into sixth grade.
47:59 The mother who says "no but actually he's very intelligent but he doesn't work." Or else, of her other, brilliant son, she'll say "but what's amazing is that he has memory." Why does he remember his lessons? Because he has memory. What does it mean to have memory of one's lessons? It means remembering one's lessons. Why does he remember his lessons? Because he remembers his lessons. Except that memory is treated like a faculty. You see the substantialism, as I denounce it every time. "Become what you are"—when I think that this phrase has become popular and that some people think they're profound philosophers when they stumble on Nietzsche's weakest aphorism.
48:39 Yes, weak—that's not a Nietzschean word, I grant him that credit at least, that intellectual honesty—unworthy of him. Ah, it would be so nice to think that in fact it's always me there. Ah well, there you go, yes. Goethe, whom Nietzsche admired because he was above the Germans, as he says. And the Germans will never be able to catch up with him. He says that somewhere. Goethe said, "Stirb und werde"—die and become.
49:12 It's more important to know how to become and change than to try with all one's might to assert one's identity. What could be more repetitive and pitiful than identity. When I think that music, for thousands of people locked in what I call sonic ghettos, comes down to—there you go—repeating, repeating. The meter, the... [TG?] Alright, I'll stop, or you'll think I'm caricaturing when in fact I'm far from exaggerating the gravity of the matter.
"The world is poor for one who has never been sick enough" 49:45 "The psychologist's curiosity goes that far in me. The world is poor for one who has never been sick enough to taste this heavenly voluptuousness." What a text! Yes, I am not Wagner, I am Nietzsche, I hold to health, one must beware the spells and seductions of this Cagliostro—he says it somewhere—Cagliostro, an 18th-century illuminist, to whom Nerval devoted a text as well, this enchanter—he also sometimes compares him to that Minotaur who attracts people.
50:27 There are young people in his labyrinth, like that, yes. He knew the myths, he just says what he knew best, in Greek terms. "The psychologist's curiosity goes that far in me. The world is poor for one who has never been sick enough to taste this heavenly voluptuousness." You see, we're far from the true-false axis. This is the axis, now health-illness, now rich-poor. But it's a metaphor. We can clearly see it's not about money, about fiduciary wealth here.
51:03 Even though Nietzsche always frequented the bourgeois class and was terrified when he believed the Paris Commune was endangering the gods of the city, he was nonetheless always extremely stingy when it came to his finances, with his little nest egg—there you go—and he was never, like Wagner, an insatiable sponger.
51:35 The world is poor in that sense—poor aesthetically, morally, psychologically. "The world is poor for one who has never been sick enough." If only the ecologists could hear that—how many times I'm struck when an ecologist says "oh don't eat that, it's not organic." We're at a restaurant, not in a hospital, we're allowed to enjoy ourselves too. But of course one shouldn't end up under the table. Still, a little sip of good wine among friends, like that, which loosens hearts a bit, and tongues.
52:16 I'm thinking of Hölderlin here, you know, there are magnificent passages in Hölderlin on this, around the figure of Dionysus, where he goes so far as to say—and this is very Nietzsche, the good Nietzsche—"it is not good to have in the soul no perishable thought." I repeat because it seems clear but isn't so obvious. It is good to have, let me put it the right way round first, it is good to have in the soul, from time to time, thoughts that are not the deepest, perishable thoughts, thoughts of mood, of the moment. It is not good to have in the soul no perishable thought. It is good to share with friends.
53:00 So there's this richness, then—I'll repeat this sentence one last time and move on—"the world is poor for one who has never been sick enough to taste this heavenly voluptuousness." So we no longer know whether it's heaven or hell now—earlier it was poison, we won't say poison comes from heaven, but I leave you facing the text's aporias, I'm not here to resolve them—we'll do that with artificial intelligence. "It is permitted, almost required, to use here a mystical formula"—even though Nietzsche generally criticizes—always the afterworlds, as Hondt [Hegel?] says.
53:41 "I believe I know better than anyone of what prodigious feats Wagner is capable." Now, Nietzsche likes to criticize. Even when he criticizes him and assassinates him, he doesn't like others doing it. Only he knows how to speak of him. I'm not justifying it, but it often comes from his pen. Example here: "I believe I know better than anyone of what prodigious feats Wagner is capable." The evocation of fifty worlds of strange raptures that no one but he can reach on the wing.
54:17 I am strong enough to turn to my advantage what is most problematic, most dangerous, in order to become stronger still. And here there is this heartrending confession: I call Wagner the greatest benefactor of my life. It's evil that concerns us this evening, and here we finally hear the word good, don't we? But a good that comes from what? From poison, from spells, from seduction, from infinity, from so dreadful and sweet an infinity.
54:59 What unites us — we see that the late Nietzsche feels alone, having separated from Wagner. I point out, for those who don't know, that Wagner said to Nietzsche's sister — they had broken off long before — tell your brother that since he left me, I am alone. Whereas Wagner, unlike Nietzsche, who had friendships he valued and loved a great deal but did not bask in glory, the late Wagner was swimming in glory, with kings traveling to come hear his works in his own temple at Bayreuth. Usually it's artists who go to the court of kings.
55:37 He had the impression of having achieved that, of having all the lovers of music in the world coming to prostrate themselves at his feet. And yet he says — he too confesses — tell your brother that since he left me, I am a lonely man. I'm announcing the end of this text by showing that there is a couple here, you see. What unites us is that we have suffered profoundly. Ah, the fools. He speaks of Spinoza only in order to speak of positivity, which would like to wave away the negative with a flick of the hand.
56:14 That ends badly for a general, by the way. What unites us is that we have suffered profoundly, suffered too because of one another, more than the men of this century would be capable of suffering. This alliance will forever join our names in the future. The proof that he's right is that every time I speak of Nietzsche, it's in relation to Wagner. If Wagner — and this is the most interesting part, all his ambiguities, his gathered richness — if Wagner is, among the Germans, only a misunderstanding, then so am I, just as certainly, and always will be.
56:51 As for me, Nietzsche would always be a misunderstanding for the Germans. At the time he was talking about the Germans, but if he knew how much he is one for the French now — those who talk only... I've heard Nietzsche quoted on France Culture about ten times a week. You would first need, gentlemen readers, two centuries of psychological and artistic discipline, gentlemen Germans. But such things cannot be made up for. A melancholic and bitter tone at the end.
The plot of Tristan and Isolde 57:22 There. So you'll tell me, yes, but wait, it's true I haven't listened to much Wagner, maybe it's better than I thought, but still, all this surprises me, because for me Wagner is more boom boom boom, Scandinavia and all that. So I'm going to ask for it to be replayed. This is the second time we'll be showing, as part of our workshop, the death of Isolde, in a beautiful version, a beautiful staging. I'll tell you right away that the voices are very beautiful but don't hold a candle to certain reference recordings — very badly recorded, though, from the 1930s. I'm not a purist.
58:02 We'll find performers perhaps even better, from the 1930s, but for now there's a great shortage of great Wagnerian voices, especially among the men. But let's leave that aside — she is admirable, Waltraud Meier, who is going to sing here, and above all the staging is good, the conductor is Barenboim, that Jew who fought to have Wagner performed in Israel. You have some reasons to ban him. I'm not saying you're right, but at least some reasons. There. So, let's start it. I'll remind you before the first notes plunge us into that magic Nietzsche speaks of, that evocative sorcery.
58:41 I'll just remind you that we are in the very last minutes of the work, since this is the death of Isolde. It's been going on for almost five hours, so I won't tell you the whole story, but you all know it. There's an old king, who is impotent, whose best knight, the one he trusts most, Tristan, is sent on a mission to fetch a princess from Ireland. We're going to try to entice the king a bit, who badly needs it.
59:12 And of course her confidante hurries to bring along, on the boat taking them from Ireland to Cornwall — across the Irish Sea, because that's where it will all end, the love between the two — a potion, isn't that right? An aphrodisiac potion for the old man. It happens that a devouring passion arises between Tristan and Isolde.
59:43 How they first met would take too long to tell, but in any case, during the voyage, Isolde, wanting to commit a double suicide, tries to make Tristan drink the death potion; the terrified servant, guessing her intentions, switches the flasks. The love potion — as if they needed that when they already had a paroxysmal love. That's the first act. The second act is the most beautiful night of love ever dared to be set to music — an act Wagner said went against decency, since normally Isolde should be naked on stage for an hour and a half. And in the third act, Tristan, wounded at the end of the second act, has been caught in flagrante delicto in Isolde's arms by the king, denounced to the king by someone.
1:00:32 All that leads to the corpses at the end. All these people are dead except the king. His faithful servant, with whom he is agonizing, is agonizing, is agonizing in his small kingdom of Kareol, by the Irish Sea. Tristan — King Mark's ship arrives to pardon him because he has learned, at the last moment, the story of the potion: that it wasn't Tristan's fault, that he wasn't really unfaithful, disloyal. I'll go quickly. He arrives and it's too late. Tristan has just died of the wound inflicted by the one who denounced him at the end of the second act, after a very long death agony. He had time to see Isolde's ship returning.
1:01:20 And indeed, Tristan's confidant has been killed by someone from the king's retinue who has also come to avenge. There is nothing but corpses left; only Isolde is there, and her servant. Her servant says to her, "Don't you hear us?" No, she no longer hears anyone.
Listening to the death of Isolde 1:02:00 You'll see in the text — you'll find many of the thematic elements we've begun to develop. So, let's go!
1:09:29 Yes, I was reminding Pierre-Alain of an anecdote, but I can't help sharing it with you. Hans von Bülow, whom I briefly alluded to just now — the most famous cuckold in Germany at the time, all the same — is finishing a rehearsal of what we've just heard, not just the death of Isolde, but the whole of Tristan, five hours.
1:10:01 So for five hours, he rehearses a work in which his wife's passion for another man rages, expressed by that other man. And do you know what he says to the orchestra once the rehearsal is over? He says, "To the man who wrote this, everything must be forgiven." These are real enigmas, all this. Well, let's leave the swamps and the psychology and come back to autumn, and to what is sickly in the fact that autumn has become — for your humble servant first of all, I mean, you know I love gathering mushrooms, the smell of humus, it's the smell of decomposition.
Loved autumn: a historical reversal 1:10:48 I'll remind you that this is quite recent historically. In the old regime, what used to be called the beautiful season — but the seasons were when it was warm, when you didn't need to spend wood, energy. The warmth of the light, that's it, when days are long — and now autumn comes, the bad weather begins to return, even if there are days of ineffable mildness, but still, when you walk on millions of dead leaves.
1:11:29 I'll take this opportunity to move on to the second text, which I had already used, but for a different question — here specifically focusing on that pathology which concerns us this evening, on the evil in the word illness, isn't that right? Between illness and unhappiness. So I return to a writer as discreet with regard to public glory as Wagner, since one is always linked to an uproar, whether to disparage him, denounce him, condemn him, or adulate him, no, no, as...
1:12:15 Sorry! As Sainte-Beuve, the critic Sainte-Beuve, said: "Monsieur de Senancour will have a discreet but faithful posterity." Well, listen, let's try to be part of it. When the frost recedes — so it's the opposite of autumn, when the bad weather recedes and spring comes — when the frost recedes, I barely notice it. You can guess that I'm now approaching the period of the mal du siècle. There had been no equivalent before. And since this inaugurates the period that leads up to us, we can never come back to it too often. You know, that's my method. It seems like detours, but it's the spiral that comes back — not to return to zero, though. There's a slight shift in the spiral. We progress each time.
1:13:10 provided we remember the circles we've already traced. Whence comes to man — sorry, spring passes and did not attach me. He writes that when he's a very young man, writing to a friend — it's like a diary, he writes to a faithful friend, he's a solitary, it was fashionable, especially since Rousseau's Julie, or the New Heloise, an epistolary novel. Whence comes to man? Yes, summer passes, I do not regret it at all, but I take pleasure in walking on fallen leaves, on the last fine day, in the stripped forest.
1:13:56 People will tell me, yes, but we know all that. Yes, but I don't understand why we don't find this reversal more astonishing — that no generation, no era, no culture, no civilization had explored this enjoyment of finally arriving at the bad season. And especially of experiencing it at the very moment of the season of death — well, of death, fortunately, exterior to oneself.
1:14:29 That's what he's going to say further on, so I won't dig into it — he'll do it for us. Whence comes to man the most lasting of his heart's pleasures? So, he's speaking generally, forgetting that it's all brand new, that it's his generation, and that it will soon be called Romanticism. We are here in the years 1790-1802. Whence comes to man the most lasting of his heart's pleasures, this voluptuousness of melancholy?
1:14:59 One couldn't be clearer — we come back to what Nietzsche said, it's a poison, but one that provides voluptuous pleasure. This charm full of secrets, which makes him live off his sorrows and still love himself in the feeling of his own ruin. That's why I come back to Senancour. There are admirable texts, by Rousseau — it's Rousseau who inaugurates this whole cycle, this whole new sensibility. There's Chateaubriand, the enchanter, who enchants us more, in fact, for the eyes than as he himself often does.
1:15:34 For sensibility and the ears, Rousseau. Why him? Because, I've already said it but I repeat it, no one has analyzed the mal du siècle with such surgical, precise lucidity as he does in this passage. It's because it matters to me, as a philosopher, precisely. He doesn't let himself go merely into moods. He poses the question: whence comes to man the most lasting of his heart's pleasures? He wants to know, he does. This voluptuousness of melancholy.
Self-consciousness, distraction and perishable existence 1:16:04 This charm full of secrets, which makes him live off his sorrows and still love himself in the feeling of his own ruin. One might say, "these are sick people, forget it, they're neurotics." Yes, as was said about Baudelaire, the bell rings for him — except he's speaking about us, he's talking about us. Let's move, contrary to what seems here elitist moods, to a somewhat more popular song, Le Temps des Cerises.
1:16:37 I who do not fear cruel pains, I shall not live a single day without suffering. That's in the third verse of Le Temps des Cerises. We must take the richness of the human heart seriously. I cling to the happy season, which will soon be no more. He sees an ambivalence here, how contradictory all this is. A belated interest, a pleasure that seems — how good it is!
1:17:17 He knows that deep down, at some level, the contradiction must be resolved, but leaving that aside for now. A pleasure that seems contradictory draws me to it, to this season, when it's about to end. The same moral law makes it painful for me, on one hand the idea of destruction, and makes me love here the feeling in what must cease before me — the falling leaves.
1:17:47 It is natural that we enjoy perishable existence all the more. Let's begin — he's profound, still. Man is the animal that has not merely consciousness, because acquiring consciousness is the great mystery. A dog sees very well the cat it wants to pounce on, the female dog it wants to mount. Just as the panther sees the gazelle very well, and makes sure the gazelle doesn't see her.
1:18:17 There is a consciousness — and even superior to ours in terms of smell — a consciousness, an attentiveness to the outer world, isn't there? It's not consciousness that man lacks, it's self-consciousness, consciousness of oneself as a being that will end. These are reminders I'm giving for now. I'm not going to send you all of Pascal's thought. "When I set myself to consider the various distractions of men... I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in one room." Man's misfortune is that he cannot remain at rest in a room. In other words, unless he is drenched in diversion — not in the sense of "entertainment," not only in the sense of "fun."
1:19:11 No, it can be things that seem important, you know, all business urgently attended to — no animal concerns itself with these things, all business urgently attended to; it doesn't prevent one from living, but it diverts. One doesn't think about the miserable condition of one who knows he will come to an end. And so, he says, except there are things that console us for it. Well, there, let's return to the text: it is natural that we enjoy perishable existence all the more when, warned of its whole fragility by all these falling leaves, by this mildness of the air, and by the fact that life is gradually withdrawing from the scenery, we nonetheless feel it lasting within us. What lucidity and what honesty!
1:19:58 Yes, but it's all right, it's not so dramatic after all, it's nature that's dying, it's not me — I'll still be here. When death separates us from things, it survives without us. That's harsh. When death separates us from things, it survives without us. But with the falling of the leaves, exactly the opposite: vegetation stops, it dies. We remain, for new generations. Autumn is delightful because spring must still come, for us.
"Man has done so much that autumn is sweeter" 1:20:30 One wouldn't find many authors of such density as Monsieur de Senancour. So I recommend you read his entire body of work. No, don't worry, it fits in a single volume — a short text on landscapes, a single volume, an epistolary novel entitled Obermann. There. And now this sentence, which some of you sometimes quote back to me in the comments, but you can't imagine how happy it makes me to see that it left a mark. "Spring is more beautiful in nature." What could be more beautiful than a spring, than youth, than love? But man has done so much, and suddenly the historical dimension emerges.
1:21:14 We are in the years around 1800, not to overstate it, at the turning point of the 18th and 19th centuries. This is the generation of Hegel, of Hölderlin, of Hegel who had inaugurated the philosophy of history. Spring is more beautiful in nature, but there is no history in the sense of history books. There are natural histories, evolution, all that, of course, it wasn't all like that, but it's cyclical.
1:21:50 The leaves fall and then they'll grow back the following year, and in a few million years the trees will be different, the animals will be different, reptiles will have become birds. All right then, let's move on: spring is more beautiful in nature, but man has done so much — you see the break — that autumn is more beautiful. Here again, I come back to Nietzsche earlier, I said, what matters is not the true and the false, it's health and sickness, and here, it's not the beautiful and the ugly that matters most.
1:22:26 He's not doing aesthetics. Only here it's within this framework. The sweet is here placed even above the beautiful, but man has done so much that autumn is sweeter. The greenery that is born — that's spring — the bird that sings, the flower that opens, and that fire that returns to strengthen life, those shade trees that shelter obscure refuges — that's the season of Eros — and those fertile grasses, those fruits without cultivation, without labor, those easy nights that allow for independence.
1:23:12 Season of happiness, I fear you too much in my ardent unease. I find more rest toward the evening of the year. The season when everything seems to end, and of you, he says — adorned, out of intellectual honesty — is the only one in which I sleep, not in happiness, in joy, joy — in which I sleep in peace on the earth of man.
1:23:50 I'll recall this last sentence after the final text, which hasn't come yet, to introduce the piece of instrumental music this time, which will close this evening's session, taking up this note of sublimation found here at the end. It doesn't end on a despairing note — one might think there's no room at all in him for anything positive.
1:24:22 And yet there is — there is this attentiveness to the possibility of sweetness given by the awareness of everything that has been done, in search of lost time. Proof that here it's not entirely lost for everyone. There. But you see the thread we're following, the black thread — not a red thread, a black dotted line.
1:24:53 I repeat this sentence, which is quite dreadful if you look closely. "Season of happiness" — after having praised spring in a way that thrills everyone — "I fear you too much in my ardent unease." The philosopher Leibniz, in the century before, the 17th century, one of the titans of classical philosophy — as it's called, classical philosophy, the one stemming from Descartes, even if only to refute him on this or that point, whose very problem would have been unthinkable before Descartes — Leibniz, Spinoza, Leibniz, who was at the same time an immense physicist and an immense mathematician. You owe him delta y over delta x — that's no small thing. The discovery of infinitesimal calculus, at the same time as Newton — there's a priority dispute between the Germans and the English, at roughly the same time. They didn't copy each other, except that it was Leibniz's formulation, delta y over delta x, that won out.
1:26:04 And in physics, he went so far as to sense certain themes that would much later be called relativistic, when he says that space is not a neutral framework indifferent to the objects it contains. There's not yet a notion of space curved by masses, but still. So why this detour through Leibniz? Because he says somewhere — since he was also a great linguist, one would need to say more about Leibniz, he's a great polymath — he deciphered old German manuscripts when he was legal counsel at the court of the princes of Hanover.
1:26:43 No, this isn't a detour. The linguist and logician that he is examines the notion of "Unruhe." "Ruhe" is rest. "Unruhe" in German is non-rest, it's restlessness, unease. If you look up "unease" in a German dictionary, it's Unruhe. And here, what does he say? I fear you too much, you, the seasons of happiness, in my ardent unease. And what does Leibniz say? He says that it's the same word used in German to designate the movement of a clock's balance wheel, the tick-tock, Unruhe, the non-rest, the movement.
1:27:27 You see how we're not far from Pascal, from diversion — the point being, isn't it, that what matters isn't what I do, but the fact that what I do diverts me from what I don't want to think about, which would paralyze me, and I want to live. As if, you see, the detour, the ruse of diversion, could be even more profound than the awareness of truth. But you first have to pass through the discovery of that reality.
Reading of "Adieu" in Rimbaud's Une saison en enfer 1:28:03 "The season when everything seems to end is the only one where I sleep in peace on the earth of man." So now I'm going to move on to A Season in Hell. Yes, with a subject like this, I can hardly escape A Season in Hell, because we can conclude with A Season in Hell. Something begins to take shape, a solution, because Rimbaud went so far down. A Season in Hell is a descent. In theology, we call it the descent into hell. There must be a Good Friday for there to be an Easter Sunday.
1:28:40 But precisely so as not to end on a negative note — enough abstractions, let's make room for Rimbaud. Don't forget that this is a young man writing. It's unbelievable. Yes, this is the end of A Season in Hell, after passages I'll spare you, where he tortures himself, drags himself through the mud. "I never understood the rage with which he threw himself into escape, made himself ridiculous when he walked." Well, in short, he doesn't spare himself. And here is the end. Farewell.
1:29:21 If you skip two paragraphs, you see that he's already marked the autumn — you see the continuity all the same, I'm not jumping from one butterfly to another. "When shall we go, all together at once, beyond the shores and the mountains?" Think of Perceval, the one who pierces the valleys. "When shall we go, beyond the shores and the mountains, to greet the birth of new work, the new wisdom, the opposite of everything we have seen, of all the misfortunes as we have known them, the flight of tyrants and demons, the end of superstition, to worship — when shall we go to worship the firstborn? Christmas on earth."
1:30:09 "The song of the heavens, the march of enslaved peoples — let us not curse life." So, after having descended into the depths of misfortune, Rimbaud does not leave us there — quite the opposite, isn't it? He says: this is no reason to curse life, let's go now, "already autumn." So, granted, this will be the malady of the century, regret, what's the use of it all. But why regret an eternal sun? He's the first to speak of the pleasure of autumn — there remain, as it were, a few traces of those beautiful holidays, doesn't there?
1:30:51 "But why regret an eternal sun, if we are engaged" — implying, since we have gone through this crisis, this season in hell — "if we are engaged in the discovery of divine light, far from those who die according to the seasons." We are not cabbages, we are not flowers that close at evening and open in the morning. "Autumn — our boat, raised in the motionless mists, turns" — not toward the forest, not toward nature, not even toward the landscape, or even the countryside, which is already far from nature — all of this turns "toward the harbor of misery, the enormous city, beneath a sky stained with fire and mud."
1:31:50 "Sometimes I see in the sky endless shores" — once again the vision of a collective solution arrives — "covered with white rejoicing nations. A great golden ship, above me, waves its many-colored flags in the morning breeze." I created, I, Rimbaud, "I created every festival, every triumph, every drama" — all this at 18 years old, let it be said in passing. "I tried to invent new flowers, new stars, new flesh, new tongues. I believed I had acquired supernatural powers."
1:32:30 "Well then, I must bury my imagination and my memories! A fine glory as an artist and storyteller, swept away!" You hear that — you don't know what you're losing. But look closely, this is the whole romantic self annulling itself here. "I, who called myself magus or angel, exempt from all morality, I am sent back to the earth, with a duty to seek, and rough reality to embrace."
1:33:02 Am I deceived? Could charity be a sister of death for me? Well then, I shall ask forgiveness for having fed on lies. And onward! But not a friendly hand, and where can I draw help from? And that is where the essential thing arrives. Yes, this is the outcome of all that, the new hour is at the very least very severe. For I can say that victory is mine. You see, it's strange, the hour is severe, but I have won. The gnashing of teeth, the hissings of fire, the fetid sighs grow more moderate.
1:33:38 All the foul memories fade away. My last regrets take flight. Jealousies toward beggars, brigands, the friends of death—there would be all sorts. Damned, if I… were to take revenge, you see, one last upsurge. And there, all at once, Rimbaud's profession of faith: one must be absolutely modern. No hymns. Hold the ground gained. No, there's no tomorrow that sings and no final solution, that's it. No, step by step. Hold the ground gained.
1:34:11 Harsh night in which I had to realize all this, dried blood smokes on my face, I have nothing behind me but this horrid little shrub. The spiritual combat is as brutal as the battle of men, but the vision of justice is the pleasure of God alone. However, it is the eve, let us receive all the inflows of vigor and real tenderness, and at dawn—we've spent this whole session on autumn, that is, the twilight of the year, and now we conclude on the morning.
1:34:48 And at dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter into splendid cities. Well, this… this double lesson, the one that ends the last sentence—I had told you it needed to be remembered—tucked in a corner, that of Senancour: the season when everything declines is the only one in which I walk in peace on the earth of man. There was a final appeasement. And here, there is more than appeasement. There is something like a collective victory.
Lipatti plays a Schubert impromptu: the smile through tears 1:35:28 And so I thought, rather than musically staying with the deathly splendor, in the literal and figurative sense, of Isolde's death, to leave you with a pianist — alas, we don't have technically excellent recordings, well, they're audible, they're not heroic recordings either — I'm thinking of Dinu Lipatti, the Romanian, from the same homeland as another immense pianist, a woman, Clara Haskil. I can't talk about everyone at the same time, but the two of them adored each other, and they both died of illness, and very young too, especially Lipatti.
1:36:04 And what you're about to hear was made at his last concert, wasn't it? In Besançon, the doctors had said, "don't play pieces that are too long." So, if it interests you, you can listen more closely — there aren't many recordings, but all of them are miracles. This is great art, that is to say, the pianist who doesn't put himself forward, even though he has staggering technical mastery, but that's not what we see. He doesn't put the demonstrative side forward, the somewhat Horowitz-like side, where you get a punch to the stomach almost at every phrase he gives back to us.
1:36:41 And we ask for more of it, this isn't a criticism, but here it's the opposite. Lipatti, like a painter who erases everything he had started sketching out at the beginning of his sketch. Out of courtesy for the reader, no matter, for the viewer, and here for the listener, he gives us the impression that it flows naturally, whereas it requires colossal and exhausting work. And so, since we said to play short pieces, he ends with an impromptu, as the word indicates, it's even more radical than an impro, Schubert's Impromptu, where we see what Hegel saw in his Aesthetics. It's the ideal of modern, romantic beauty in Hegelian terms, so modern, as opposed to classical antiquity, namely the smile through tears. That is to say, a victory nonetheless over misfortune, a smile through tears.
1:37:38 You will see these tears and this smile at every moment in the trembling of Lipatti's fingers in this Schubert impromptu, who died at 31. There you have two early deaths, the performer and the composer. And I'll see you next time.
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