I said that I had met Lirat one evening by accident, in a place I don’t remember and that instantly I took a fancy to him. … He was the most original of men. … With his forbidding appearance, his machinelike and magisterial stiffness and his air of a petty official, he at first made the impression of a typical functionary, of some orleanist puppet such as are manufactured in the politicians’ clubs and drawing rooms for the punch and judy show of parliaments and academies. From a distance, he positively looked like one who is in the habit of distributing decorations, excise offices and prizes for valor! This impression, however, quickly disappeared; for this it was sufficient to listen, if only for five minutes, to his conversation, lucid, colorful, bristling with original ideas, and above all to feel the power of his glance, his extraordinary glance, exhilarated and cold at the same time, a glance to which all things seemed familiar, which went through you like a gimlet against your will.
I liked him very much, only in my liking for him there was lacking the element of tenderness, of kindliness; I liked him with a sort of fear and uneasiness, with a painful feeling that in his presence I did not amount to much and that I was eclipsed, so to speak, by the grandeur of his genius. … I liked him as one likes the sea, the tempest, as one likes some immense force of nature. Lirat inspired me with fear, his presence paralyzed what little intellectual powers there were in me, for I was always afraid that I might say something foolish at which he would jeer. He was so severe, so relentless to everybody; he knew so well how to discover, to reveal the ridiculous side in artists, in writers whom I considered superior to myself, and to characterize them by some apt remark unforgettable and fierce, that in his presence I found myself in a state of constant mistrust, of ever present disquietude. I always asked myself: “What does he think of me? What scornful thoughts do I inspire in him?”
I had that feminine curiosity which obsessed me to know what opinion he had of me. By means of distant allusions, absurd affections or hypocritical circumlocutions, I would sometimes try to surprise or provoke him into frankness, and I suffered even more when he deigned to pay me a curt compliment, as one who throws a few pennies to a pauper whom one wishes to be rid of; at least, that is what I imagined. In a word, I liked him very much, I assure you; I was very much devoted to him, but in this affection and in this devotion there was an element of uncertainty, which destroyed the charm of those feelings; there was also a certain grudge which rendered those feelings almost painful, a grudge caused by the sense of my inferiority. Never, not even when I was most intimate with him, was I able to conquer that feeling of base and timid pride, never could I enjoy a friendship which I prized very highly. Lirat, on the other hand, was simple in his relations with me, often affectionate, sometimes “fatherly” in his attentions, and of all his friends, who were very few in number, I was the only one whose companionship he sought.
Like all those who hold tradition in contempt, like all who rebel against the prejudices of conventional education, against the idiotic formulae of the School, Lirat was very much discussed; spoken of with contempt—I should rather say. It must be stated also that his conception of free and lofty art conflicted with all the professed conventions and accepted ideas, and that by their forceful synthesis and prodigious knowledge of life which obscured his craftsmanship, his works of art disconcerted the lovers of prettiness and grace and of the frigid correctness of academic unity. The return of modern painting to the great gothic art—this they could never forgive him.
He fashioned the man of today in his craving for enjoyment, a frightfully tortured soul with a body sapped by neurosis, with flesh tormented by lust, which quivers under the influence of passion that lures man on and sinks its claws into his skin. In his representations of the human body wrought in avenging postures, with monstrous apophyses guessed at under the garments, there was such human emphasis, such grief over infernal voluptuousness, such tragic power, that a shudder passed through one’s frame when looking at them. It was no longer curly headed, pomaded love, adorned with ribbons and fainting with yearning, rose in mouth, by the light of the moon, or strumming on a guitar under the balcony; it was Love besmirched with blood, drunk with the filth of vice, Love with its onanistic furies, wretched Love which fastens upon man its mouth like a cupping glass and drains his veins, sucks the marrow of his bones and emaciates his frame. And in order to give these representations a still greater intensity of horror, to weigh them down with the burden of even greater affliction, he cast them in the midst of peaceful, smiling surroundings of surpassing clearness, among pink and blue landscapes with softened vistas, amidst glorious sunshine, with the radiant sea in the background. All around them nature was resplendent with all
