Something Which Seemed to Resemble Decay [Rembrandt]

Iii III II I: il I111 II III ! JEAN GENET III: Something Which Seemed to Resemble Decay [Rembrandt] Aworkof art should exalt only those truths which are not demonstrable, and which are even "false," those which we cannot carry to their ultimate conclusions with out absurdity, without negating both them and ourself. They will never have the good or bad fortune to be applied. Let them live by virtue ofthe song that they have become and that they inspire. Rembrandt van Rijn: The Jewish Bride, c. 1665. Rijksmuseum-Stichting, Amsterdam. Something which seemed to resemble decay was in the process of cankering my former view of the world. One day, while riding in a train, I experienced a revela tion: as I looked at the passenger sitting opposite me, I realized that every man has the same value as every other. I did not suspect (or rather I.did, I was obscurely aware of it, for suddenly a wave ofsadness welled up within me and, more or less bearable, but substantial, remained with me) that this knowledge would entail such a methodical disintegration. Behind what was visible in this man, or fur ther-further and at the same time miraculously and distressingly close-I dis covered in him (graceless body and face, ugly in certain details, even vile: dirty moustache, which in itself would have been unimportant but which was also hard and stiff, with the hairs almost horizontal above the tiny mouth, a decayed mouth; gobs which he spat between his knees on the floor of the carriage that was already 84 Jean Genet Something Which Seemed to Resemble Decay. 85 filthy with cigarette stubs, paper, bits ofbread , in short, the filth ofa third-class car because I did not yet have a very rich vocabulary) which was forever circulating riage in those days), I discovered with a shock, as a result of the gaze that butted among all men and which a forlorn gaze accounted for. I even felt that this ap against mine, a kind of universal identity ofall men. pearance was the temporary form of the identity ofall men. But this pure and al No, it didn't happen so quickly, and not in that order. The fact is that my gaze most insipid gaze that circulated between the two travellers, in which their wills butted (not crossed, butted) that of the other passenger, or rather melted into it. were not involved, which their wills would perhaps have prevented, lasted only an The man had just raised his eyes from a newspaper and quite simply turned them, instant, and that was enough for a deep sadness to fill me and linger on. I lived with no doubt unintentionally, on mine, which, in the same accidental way, were look this discovery for quite a long time. I deliberately kept it secret and tried notto think ing into his. Did he, then and there, experience the same emotion-and confu about it, butsomewhere within me there always lurked a blot ofsadness which, like sion-as I? His gaze was not someone else's: it was my own that I was meeting in a an inflated breath, would suddenly darken everything. mirror, inadvertently and in a state ofsolitude and self-oblivion. I could only ex "Behind his charming or, to us, monstrous appearance," I said to myself, "every press as follows what I felt: I was flowing out of my body, through the eyes, into his man-as has been revealed to me-retains a quality which seems to be a kind of at the same time as he was {lowing into mine. Or rather: I had flowed, for the gaze ultimate recourse and owing to which he is, in a very secret, perhaps irreducible was so brief that I can recall itonly with the help ofthat tense ofthe verb. The pas area, what every man is." senger had gone back to his reading. Stupefied at what I had just discovered, only I even thought I found this equivalence at the Central Market, at the abattoirs, then did I think of examining the stranger. My examination resulted in the im in the fixed but notgazeless eyesofthesheepheadspiled up in pyramids on the side pression of disgust described above. Under his drab, creased, shabby clothes his walk. Where was I to stop? Whom would I have murdered if I had killed a certain body must have been dirty and worn. His mouth was flabby and protected by an cheetah that walked with long strides, supple as a hoodlum ofold? unevenly clipped moustache. I thought to myself that the man was probably I have written elsewhere that my dearest friends took refuge-I was sure they weak, perhaps cowardly. He was over fifty. The train continued its indifferent way did-in a secret wound, "in a very secret, perhaps irreducible realm." Was I speak through French villages. Evening was coming on. I was deeply disturbed at the ing of the same thing? A man was identical with every other man, that was what I thought ofspending the minutes of twilight, the minutes ofcomplicity, with this had discovered. But was this knowledge so rare as to warrant my amazement, and partner. what could it profit me to possess it? To begin with, knowing a thing analytically is What was it that had flowed out of my bod y-and what had flowed out ofhis? different from grasping it in a sudden intuition. (For I had, ofcourse, heard people This unpleasant experience was not repeated, neither in its fresh suddenness say, and had read, that all men were equal, and even that they were brothers.) But nor its intensity, but its reverberations within me never ceased. What I had expe in what way could it profit me? One thing was more certain: I was no longer able rienced in the train seemed to resemble a revelation: over and above the acci not to know what I had known in the train. dents-which were repulsive-ofhis appearance, this man concealed, and then I was incapable oftelling how I moved from the knowledge that every man is like let me reveal, what made him identical with me. (I first wrote the preceding sen every other man to the idea that every man is all the others. But the idea was now tence, thepcorrected it by the following, which is more accurate and more dis within me. It had the presence of a certainty. It could have been stated more turbing: I knew that I was identical with that man.) clearly-though I will be deflowering it somewhat-in the: following aphoristic .'~ Was it because every man is identical with another? way: "Only one man exists and has ever existed in the world. He is, in his entirety, Without ceasing to meditate during the journey, and in a kind of state of self in each ofus. Therefore he is ourself. Each is the other and the others. In the laxity disgust, I very soon reached the conclusion that it was this identity which made it of the evening, a clear gaze that was exchanged-whether insistent or fleeting possible for every man to be loved neither more nor less than every other, and that it made us aware ofthis. Except that a phenomenon ofwhich I do not even know the is possible for even the most loathsome appearance to be loved, that is, to be cared name seems to divide this single man ad infinitum, apparently breaks him up in for and recognized-cherished. That was not all. My train ofthought also led me both accident and form, and makes each ofthe fragments foreign to us." to the following: this appearance, which I had first called vile, was-the word is not I expressed myself clumsily, and what I felt was even more confused and too strong-was willed by the identity (this word recurred persistently, perhaps stronger than the idea of which I have spoken. The idea was dreamed rather than 86 Jean Genet Something Which Seemed to Resemble Decay. 87 thought; it was engendered and drawn along, or dredged, by a rather woolly rev erie. Let us continue. The knowledge of what I had iust learned did not require that I direct Illy efforts according to the revelation in order to dissolve myself in an ap No man was my brother: every man was myself, but temporarily isolated in his proximate contemplation. Quite simply, I could no longer avoid knowing what I individual shell. This observation did not lead me to examine, to review, all ethical knew, and, come what may, I had to pursue the consequences, regardless of what notions. I felt no tenderness, no affection, for that self which was outside my in they were. Since various incidents in my life had forced me into poetry, perhaps dividual appearance. Nor for the form taken by the other-or its prison. Its tomb? the poet would have to make use of this discovery that was new to him. But above On the contrary, I tended to be as pitiless toward that form as I was toward the one all I had to note the following: the only moments of my life which I could regard as that answered to my name and that has been writing these lines. The sadness that true, ripping apart my appearance and exposing ... what? had settled on me was what disturbed me most. Ever since the revelation that I had Asolid vacuum that kept perpetuating me? I had known those moments during experienced when looking atthe unknown traveller, it was impossible for me to see a few bursts of really holy anger, in equally blessed states of fear, and in the rays the world as in the past.

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