The Shadow of Memory. Bernard Comment

Because, precisely, the question, the real question, is to be found in the body absolute, the body that’s been finished off, dead, in the minutely attentive observation made of it; this is the question asked by and forming the content of certain paintings—Leonardo and Rosso Fiorentino as well, dug up corpses in the cemetery at Borgo Sansepolcro so they could study them. Later there are Géricault’s paintings, when he collects scraps from the guillotine, uses those ghastly scenes to make all those anatomical sketches, among them an unforgettable little drawing in wash, quick, definitive, The Struggle with Death—an unbearable lucidity! But in Pontormo, starting from that mass grave Vasari so carefully avoids mentioning, it’s a living death—one even more alive because it concerns the odorous, aggressive truth of putrescence. So people didn’t want to open their eyes and confront their imminent death, the way he, no coward, had unremittingly done. People preferred to destroy that inescapable sight, less than two centuries later. All the frescos, demolished! Officially, on account of restorative measures . . . But, to be more precise, on account of indigestion. Fragile little bellies, incapable of stomaching any major upsets, any frontal attacks. Because no one trembles with blind fear when faced with death like the living-dead. When you’re truly alive, you live with death, right up to the end, and not against it. You challenge it. Turning on the charm in order to deal with it irreverently, skillfully, to try and see it coming, to pin it down.”

      Robert went on and on about intolerance. How many works—and often the greatest—had been thrown away, destroyed. He had a whole list of them! Giotto in Naples, in Rome, in Florence. As well as Masaccio, and Piero della Francesca, and a multitude of others. The plundering of Rome, various backwashes of bad taste and misunderstanding, an excruciating plea against the stupidity of the world. “The most beautiful things have always been the ones attacked, they suppress one here, distort one there, laughing at it if they can’t tear it up, smash it, or spit on it. When I see a beautiful work from the past, I can’t help but think what a miracle it is for it to have held out so long, surviving until now through the flood of contempt or just slipping between the drops of their mundane sweat. And so, my ambition is to bring these works back to life, these texts, all the treasures that ignorant or jealous fools have hoped to doom to oblivion once and for all. I say no to all you fine censors! No oblivion! No loss! We have to stand firm, against that insatiable barbarism, always ready to recommence. Even Michelangelo’s Last Judgment barely escaped, under Paul IV I think it was. The young El Greco was preparing to paint over it when Titian used all his authority to intervene!”

      I couldn’t believe my ears. Not only was he reciting Vasari by heart, but he knew, moreover, what had vanished, things he’d never been able to see! He somehow had added forgotten memory to his own, annexing it thanks to a flood of descriptions, the superimposition of so many gazes. No limit to how far he could go back in time, paring away the world’s amnesia. So that he had come to feel a particular predilection for those works that were indeed destroyed, the ones leaving only a few indirect traces. “There’s something really great about reconstructing a painting, an image existing only in accounts, vague specks! What could be more exciting? And then you have the sketches as a reinforcement, either preparatory or working ones. They represent the peak of art; they turn loose a superior sort of madness and the boldest innovation—things the academy and the public can never know, never share!” This interest in lost works, however, by no means excluded the ones that still remained. Therefore, Robert proposed that, together, we go see them, a few of them. “Mannerists, something by Pontormo, just to illustrate our discussion. Except I hardly dare go out in the winter because of the slippery roads, and my car doesn’t like the cold; it needs good weather to run—even more fragile than I. But it will be different with you along.” My schedule didn’t permit running around to art galleries, I’d fall too far behind, but already Robert was setting a date. “Not tomorrow, there’s something I’d like to finish reading, but day after tomorrow, Friday, fine. We need to leave early so as not to take more than the morning—let’s say ten o’clock at the latest!”

      And once again I’d consented, docile and defeated. He asked me if I had a problem with getting up at dawn. I replied no, on the contrary, you had to make good use of your days, along with a few other hypocritical phrases. The old man interrupted me abruptly. His work was calling him, his schedule, things he had on his mind. And maybe he’d brought up this project, the one he’d said he wanted to talk to me about, too quickly. We could think it over. “It wouldn’t be a bother to get back together again, would it?”

      Chapter IV

      I’d gotten as far as the letter R, to Rosso Fiorentino, an odd character, not easy to digest. His wanderings around Italy, his frequenting of the court of Francis I. And his final suicide, more mysterious than it might seem. There were plenty of documents, of every sort, about Rosso. A big deal, a prime mover in the transmission of Florentine innovations to France. I still had several kilos worth of texts and images to cram in. So, spending hours looking at frescos by Pontormo, whom I’d already categorized and registered on diskettes, didn’t really tempt me. Maybe I could skip ahead, only as far as the letter S, to Andrea del Sarto, one of the next stages in my project, and prepare myself for this by looking at some of his pictures. Surely there had to be a few of them in some museum not too far distant.

      Lost in these thoughts, I’d forgotten about Robert. He’d already stood up to go and pay for our croissants and drinks. We had to leave right away: the abbey he’d chosen was outside the city, so this was a good time to go, before the traffic jams. There was no way I could have given him a quick answer; I was always dropping out of conversations because of my slowness, which tended to keep me on the outside of such decisive moments. And, anyway, how would a reply have changed things? So I suggested taking the bus, there was a direct route, we’d get there faster. That seemed the best solution, what with the penetrating cold, a dry wind that went right through even the tiniest of openings, stung the face with little frozen barbs. My clumsy lips managed only a few vague, almost drunken words, popping in flimsy cartoon bubbles, disappearing into thin air. That didn’t keep Robert from starting to shout loud enough for the people inside the café to hear him quite clearly, no doubt. “The bus? Well, thanks a lot! Are you crazy or what? And you claim you’re interested in painting! In art! That’s some way to begin! Bravo! Public transportation . . . An obscenity! Not to mention that they’re uncomfortable, or the promiscuity they impose. Or the noise. No, even just their color!” His voice had gone back to a more or less normal volume, but it seemed his mouth was just too narrow to let his rage out. He’d stopped, in the middle of the public square, in the wind, forgetting the bitter cold. “The color! That vulgar industrial orange, always shuttling back and forth, a bruise on the city, permanently violating our eyes! No doubt we have some thoughtless administrative council or other to thank for this. Because that color, it was chosen, that’s what’s most incredible. The worst orange possible!” He’d made a face, giving his lips all the space he could, so he could talk even faster. “And there are hundreds and hundreds of those buses. Their ceaseless parade at rush hour makes for a real disaster; all the beauty of the city and the streets weaving through it collapses! Yet there were other solutions! Blue, for example. Or lemon yellow! Imagine, little splashes of sunlight outlined in white, how charming . . .” So instead we took a taxi, which would cost twice the price because of going out of town.

      When we reached the abbey, after Robert, timidly hanging onto my arm, had painfully climbed the twisting little stony road leading to it, we’d found the door locked. “Closed for restoration,” read the sign, according to which this had been announced in the press. I repressed a sudden urge to laugh. The old man, still out of breath from the strain of climbing, just couldn’t understand, didn’t want to believe it, squeezed his eyes shut to focus and pull himself together. “It would do no good to ring and bang on the door and shout, they’ll never open up! They’ll remain deaf to even the most legitimate plea. It’s an obsession with them, vows of abstinence, silence, inappetence—they’re closed every chance they get. I know them, Carmelites, Carthusians, or the others, they’re all the same: the Rule, period, the end. It probably makes them giddy just to put a notice in the parish chronicle—all that publicity! What a hassle!” Now he was smiling. Because he couldn’t be roaring all the time, especially considering the problems he had with his lungs and arteries, which he’d briefly described during our climb. “Well that’s it for the frescos! They’re