Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Le Pianiste

2013; Routledge; Volume: 17; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17409292.2013.844505

1740-9306

Christine Montalbetti, Laura Ceia, Mark Osborne Humphries,

Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size THE PIANISTChristine MontalbettiIt is a grand-hotel type of bar: you picture warm colors, sinking into a red-covered loveseat, chatting under glass-crystal chandeliers whose classicism limply reigns over several halogen lights which, ultra-modern and seemingly sprouting lanky stems from the ground, remind you of slender young poplars. Simon hasn't been in this bar for a long time. The last time, he thinks to himself—things are poorly organized in his memory—, he could not say how long ago it was. It was indeed this same lounge, the same star-shaped arrangement of rooms, but in his mind the images are enveloped in a light fog, as if painted in sfumato tones, which perhaps isn't entirely misremembered, for that was a time, perhaps you might recall, when cigarettes weren't forbidden in public places; thin partitions of smoke must have risen there, casting their veil over things, over people, all manner of floating veils, gray and translucent, through which only glimpses of the scenes beyond might be perceived, small groups of people in hushed discussion, blurred, shrouded in a sort of mystery, a patina about them—they whose successors now grew in clarity and force and impose upon you their sharply contoured silhouettes and dazzling fabrics.He has the muddled impression that there have been changes in the décor, but he couldn't say exactly what they were. The halogens, perhaps. This overgrowth of white light, at odds with the somber fabrics (the brown of the carpet, the ruby-red of the banquettes) and clashing with the ambient obscurity, punctures bright spots in his confusion, round, precise.Simon has a meeting with a filmmaker who wants to adapt one of his novels. The filmmaker is late, and Simon waits patiently, sipping his whiskey.He's not sure what this film will be. Does the filmmaker intend to stick to the story, to follow it as best he can, or will he infuse it with episodes of his own invention? This is something Simon has the right to ponder, as he turns his drink in his hand and listens to what's left of the ice cube as it clinks against the glass. All around him thrums the hum of conversation, like the murmur of a bellows, perhaps. At times a clearer, stronger, more resonant voice launches a phrase that he partly understands, reorienting his thoughts or, on the contrary, upsetting the edifice of his reverie.What would this novel become on the screen, Simon asks himself, what images could tell this story? And what impression would it have on him to see those images; would they please him, or displease him? Would it be like entering the mind of a reader?Things that the reader usually imagines in secret, suddenly projected onto the big screen, without shame, the imagination of that reader in particular—does he really want to see this? Simon takes turns jiggling and sipping his whiskey. It's not so stiff, now that the ice has melted, it doesn't burn his esophagus the way it does when he drinks it neat. Simon swallows steadily, palming the bottom of the glass with one hand while abandoning the other somewhere on his thigh, or on a cushion.The sensations felt by the characters in the novel, what kind of images would be needed to express them, what camera movements, to say nothing of their look, of their very appearance, an appearance that Simon doesn't imagine in exact detail when he writes (no, for him they’re mere silhouettes, fuzzy and fluid), and on which the actors will display their definitive faces, their precise bodies, transforming all this haze into something fixed and explicit. Forever after there will be something definitively incarnate about it, something irreversible, the colors of their eyes, the shapes of their noses, inscribed in the names of the characters, coupled with them, (nearly) indivisible.When we read a novel, do we picture the characters clearly? Are they not rather more supple forms, freely imagined, without necessarily remaining the same from one page to the next? We see things, of course, décors, gestures, but the faces themselves, do they not always have something equivocal, uncertain, and irresolute about them?Simon's thoughts continue to follow this sinuous line of thought. It's simply a matter of preparing for this dispossession, he tells himself. Again.The filmmaker who wants to meet with him won't be interested in hazy uncertainties, but rather framing and clarity. He will traffic in places and bodies, and his task will be to inscribe them in a rectangular format in which each and every element creates meaning. And not only create meaning, for meaning can be had anywhere, in any botched and wobbly thing, but meaning that will come, hopefully, to pleasantly titillate your retina. This is also the filmmaker's responsibility, to think in terms of converging lines and perspective, of the construction of the image itself. This is his work, as Simon's work is the word. Each in his own way strives to manufacture beauty.In spite of everything, there is something in the décor of this bar that softens his thoughts. As if the padded velvet of the armchairs smoothed their edges, their difficulties, their asperities.Simon imagines the face of the filmmaker, his body, the moment when he takes his seat, the excuses for his delay, the affectedly rapid breathing that communicates his haste, despite appearances, that he had walked briskly through the streets, running to catch the subway, beads of sweat on his brow and ruddy cheeks, but in this dim light will it really show, a large and vaguely out-of-breath man who’ll bend his body to take a chair, tossing before him the folder he’d brought with a careless gesture, and with it, I think, a rolled-up magazine with dog-eared pages, that when abandoned unfolds imperfectly on the flatness of the table.But the filmmaker is late, Simon's glass is empty, and he orders another whiskey. Around him, the hum of conversation continues; occasionally one word bursts out, leaps up clearer than all others.Is this meeting really necessary? Couldn't this filmmaker do his job alone, take possession of S.H.'s novel and adapt it in his own way, without any preliminary discussion? transcribe it into images however he likes? not transcribe it, exactly, but extract the necessary energy for his film, the essence that would serve as a matrix, a feeling, the impetus from which he could create a work all his own?Why would he require S.H.'s consent for all this? Does he intend to ask S.H. to write the screenplay, or to co-write it, all those long laboring hours to come, all those discussions by lamplight, all those efforts and adjustments?Simon imagines the cafés where they’ll meet, the offices where they’ll sit around conference tables, the e-mails exchanged; and then the shooting script, the daylight exteriors, the nighttime exteriors, the story dismembered, the plot reorganized, encaged by the needs of the shoot. He's not sure he wants any part of that.They bring him his second whiskey, identical to the first, though perhaps the shape of the ice cube isn't quite the same, not precisely to the same point of disintegration, but that's debatable.Simon decides to have that debate with himself, since the filmmaker has yet to arrive; he observes the ice cube not cutting an impressive figure in the glass—a little eroded, its angles cracked, or chipped perhaps, carelessly removed from the ice tray, the kind of ice cube that's had a hard time and really isn't at its best. It's dying before his eyes, slowly, because this is the fate of an ice cube, to spend a variable number of days in the invigorating chill of the freezer, then to melt in plain sight in a cruel and mundane clamor where no one is interested in this death, to end in a glass where the lukewarm water and the ambient air quickly do it in.Simon is suspended in the atmosphere of the ice cube's death, in the lonely death of all the other ice cubes around him that perish without anyone taking notice; suspended also in his imaginings of the film to come, of the role the filmmaker might ask him to perform on the project (the role of advisor, that's certainly possible, showing Simon photos of the location, for example, asking him if these are the kinds of places Simon had in mind)(or as a screenwriter, perhaps, and what would he want out of that? would he like to undertake such a task, would that please him, that form of expression, dialogues destined to be spoken, utterly unlike those he puts in his stories that maintain the continuity of the paragraphs)(or perhaps he's merely a guarantor, he just wants to have this one discussion with Simon and be rid of him, to leave with Simon's consent in his pocket and afterwards it's smooth sailing for the filmmaker, the red carpet, all agreements signed); it is thus in this atmosphere that Simon attends the entrance of the pianist.The pianist is a man approaching his sixties, dressed in a black suit and a charcoal gray shirt.He advances calmly towards the piano, without once looking around the room or at the patrons seated therein. One might think it's because he is concentrating, but I would say rather that it's a sort of absence, not as though he were floating through a world that was invisible to him, but rather because he himself wanted to be invisible. There is no expression on his face, it's an empty face, opaque and pale, withdrawn into its own impenetrable thoughts; there's only his somber suit, his slow and precise steps, and something else, something voluntarily dull advancing towards the unremarkable, towards the monotonous, towards something nearly imperceptible. As though he’d trickled into the relative penumbra of the bar, as though he’d taken his place in the liquid obscurity where everything washes out, he himself some itinerant, moving quantity, just another part of all this shadow.When he sits at the piano, it seems that no one has noticed his entrance. He's succeeded perfectly in erasing himself from the eyes of others, noticed only by Simon, who in his solitary wait has all the time in the world to watch him walk by, to observe his tranquil movements, and it's precisely this barely corporeal furtiveness (either in spite of his hope to vanish, to disappear, to fade into the background, or because of it) that draws Simon's attention, because it's unusual to encounter such modesty, such a deep desire to evanesce in a place like this. No one seems to wonder what he's going to play, no one awaits the first notes, or seems to show any interest at all in the presence of this fragile, nearly transparent hologram that's taken a seat before the keys, whose undertaking they might have encouraged, recalling to themselves this or that piece of music that they’d like to hear, or to guess, perhaps even make wagers as to what he might begin with. And in fact he doesn't give them the time to ask themselves this question anyway; he begins to play immediately, as soon as he's seated he bends his arms and strikes a few notes, but “strikes” isn't the right word to use, for the sound is soft, the notes barely distinguishable from the conversational hum, they slide into it like some muffled new word that's no more important than any other.This is how the pianist plays. With a certain dexterity, if you listen well, with lovely phrasing, with lithe and dexterous fingers that draw from the keys whatever they wish, but hushed, nearly whispered, because the music he's asked to play at certain hours of the day in this grand hotel bar shouldn't drown out the conversation, but should rather accompany it from afar, like the music in a film which, if well-chosen, gives rise to floods of emotions linked to the scene itself, that does its work inside you without your knowledge or consent, focused as you are on the story before you, letting yourself be swept up by it, without even noticing the music that makes your heart leap.This pianist seeks neither complicity, nor anything else resembling gratitude. He sits soberly, spectrally, and from his fingers a modest music flows, a discreet jazz, a music which, bent to his will and to the austere obliteration of his very self, docilely consents to be muzzled, weakened, exhausted, nearly extinguished, a music that restrains itself, that doesn't explode, as music is often wont to do, no, mere background music, faint and indistinct, wed to the movement of the room, barely audible, weaving its way from one group of people to the next, a music nearly apologetic of its own existence, that seeks to soothe, to melt into the setting, that serves precisely the same purpose as the seat cushions of deep red velvet, of the upholstered sofas, the purpose to bring comfort, yes, that's it, a decorative music, but decoration in good taste, that doesn't call attention to itself, or try to catch your eye, that does its work humbly, attentive only to the satisfaction of your own little nagging needs.And this pianist from whose fingers such music flows, while the filmmaker has yet to arrive, or got lost perhaps, or forgot the time of the meeting, or confused the date for some other date, or who perhaps finds himself in a broken-down subway car and is waiting for it to start up again, the filmmaker who perhaps at this moment is obliviously, innocently wandering the streets, distracted, genuinely convinced that the meeting was for tomorrow, who's stopped for a drink in some other café, with a friend with whom he's discussing the film he wants to make, a film based on a novel by Simon H., I don't know if you’ve heard of him, if you’ve read his book, it takes place in the countryside, and he continues, he describes the novel, what he took from it, what he wants to do with it, you know, I thought of this place, I went there one weekend, this remote, earthen cottage, I think it’d be ideal for telling this story, we’d have to shoot right at the end of autumn before winter hits, so the landscape is wilted and smacks of decomposition, that renounces all its vigor, none of the glorious greenery of spring, no, more of a deterioration, pitiful grass, as if it sensed the coming of the snow, the trees shedding their leaves, this abandoned and neglected way that nature has about her, you see what I mean, and he’ll talk some more, while Simon waits for him in this bar to which it's becoming increasingly unlikely he’ll show up; this pianist, as I was saying, from whose fingers such music flows, a music that's reedy and thin, that accepts its supporting role, its fate, a music that bows its head and labors without complaint, that has learned to stifle itself in the ears of its audience because once upon a time someone explained to it that it wasn't polite to steal the show, no, you’ll remain in the back, withdrawn, yes, it's something the music has accepted, this low rank it's been conferred, not what it had dreamed of becoming but nevertheless what it has become, and the music is dutiful, scrupulously respectful of the hierarchy, leaving the spotlight on the exchanged conversations, a music destined to remain in the background, the lesson driven home, inferior to the word, not its equal, not here, never; this pianist, what thoughts occur to him as he looks out over the room (he plays without looking at his hands, as though only a part of his body was at work producing music), seeking no attention, no recognition, no exchange of glances, on the contrary, not even seeking to know what sort of audience is there tonight, if there are any regulars he might recognize, not looking around to study the assembly, he could, of course, as his hands are quite capable of playing by themselves, as they do, but his eyes are empty, absolutely empty, as though there were no human specimens in the room, only empty chairs, deserted banquettes, and the frail music that flows from his fingers, and the doleful eyes, as if there is nothing to see, yes, and just as he's made himself as discreet, as invisible as possible, so he too he renders all of them invisible as well, all these people who prattle on, in whose details he has precisely no interest whatsoever, not in their clothes, not in their faces, no.His eyes fixate on a random and abstract spot before him, and there he concentrates his thoughts, groups them all together in this dense core where his pupils zero in, but it's more like a core of deep emotion, like the idea of his life itself, considered generally, his bygone desire to make a living by giving concerts, this deep love of music that has always been his. And he does play here and there from time to time, but he had to set his sights lower, to produce music that was neither glorious, nor explosive, nor dynamic, but inaudible, because this is what's asked of him, music that fades into the background, an exercise in inexistence, and this is what he plays every night at the appointed hour, before the same indifferent audience, an indifference he tries to reciprocate, while this point in space where he fixes his gaze contains at once his consent to disappear, but also an interrogation of that consent, and his nostalgia for the dreams of his youth, the strange face of his present life, a sort of surrender in which he also finds freedom, hours ripped from his dreams of glorious music that he needs to earn his keep without breaking his back, that allow him to awaken with thoughts of music, to sip his coffee on a terrace somewhere, or near a café window, in the winter, thinking of music, always music, to go for a stroll with his hands in his pockets and a tune in his head, to play for himself, alone in his apartment, or with friends, that's what it is, that's what's packed into the fixed point at which he stares, compact, compressed, the dense volume of his life floating there before him, and he’ll never take his eyes off this thing and the patrons of the bar cannot stop him to do so.Perhaps he also ponders the quality of the keys beneath his fingers. Every key has a story to tell. Each has been individually solicited, more or less often, and he must feel how each key requires its own unique energy. As the music plays on he must learn to apportion to each its own force, to make it resonate, because even in this near imperceptibility in which his music has decided to restrain itself, of course there are nuances, variations of intensity.And as he measures, contains, restrains, he thinks of all the other fingers that have struck these keys before him, all the different techniques used to approach them, to manhandle or respect them, these keys beaten down by so many different fingers, that at present reveal a certain fragility. There's something worn out in this keyboard that the tuner can't fix, that hints at the depths of these vast expanses of time, that summons forth the images of all those who’ve played here before, each with his own technique, his own conception of the world, his own mood of the moment.That, and the distilled image of his life that he continues to fix, engrossed only in that, not even noticing that this man, Simon, who is absorbed in the contemplation of his person, impregnated by this other man's solitude, by the renunciation he radiates, who lets himself be penetrated by the very thoughts of the pianist, thoughts he believes to be the pianist's. But the pianist doesn't pay any more attention to Simon than he does to all the rest, he persists on fixing his eyes on the dense singularity of his existence, and doesn't even turn his head when Simon rises to leave (it's late, clearly the filmmaker isn't coming, I wouldn't think) and in spite of himself seeks to make eye contact.For Simon would like to meet the pianist's gaze, to encourage him, to let him know that he’d listened to his music, that he hadn't erased him as the others had. Here in this bar he’d like to give the pianist his due, recognize his talents as a musician, but no, he asks for nothing, he hasn't noticed Simon any more than he's noticed the others, isn't the least bit interested in Simon's silent attentions, doesn't care one whit about Simon's appreciation. Simon is free to imagine his dejected inner life, the dreams of his youth annihilated by the reality of this hotel bar, his vague desires to be a pianist of note, to leave his mark on the world of jazz. And perhaps he did have such desires, but he doesn't show it, he's like an apathetic tiger imprisoned in the cage of a zoo who refuses to look at you, you who so desperately wants to distinguish yourself from all the other visitors, those visitors who alas make funny faces and jump around, disrespectful, who understand nothing of the noble solitude of this old, exiled tiger, but you, you’re capable of a deep and sweet complicity with it, this animal whose pain you understand and with whom, in an exchange of glances, you might express your pity and solicitude. The pianist doesn't give a damn about Simon's pity, about the pleasant smile he’d like to show him, the slight movement of the head that says, Not bad, I really enjoyed it, you’ve got a very graceful touch. The pianist doesn't want this condescension. He continues to look before him, his face pale, his eyes still fixed on the invisible point that distills everything he is, that holds him fast, because that is him, there, unchangeable, and for the few hours that he plays in this hotel bar, he manages to maintain a certain absence that renders those hours less burdensome. Were Simon to dare to inject therein any kind of feeling, were he to seek with his gaze to penetrate the fog surrounding the pianist, any interaction whatsoever between himself and those seated around the room (including Simon, of course, who seems to sense his distress) would, in the pianist's heart, involuntarily call everything to account, himself, the moment, the fact of playing in this hotel, an upheaval, infinitesimal yet catastrophic, of the meticulous equilibrium he has created for himself. The pianist moves from one piece of music to the next, and each moment that passes brings him closer to the instant of his liberty.Translated by Laura Ceia and Mark HumphriesAdditional informationNotes on contributorsLaura CeiaLaura Ceia is Associate Professor of French at California State University, Long Beach. She specializes primarily in turn-of-the-twentieth-century French Literature and History of Ideas, as well as contemporary French Cinema. Trained as a comparatist, her research interests also include Eastern-European literature and cinema, and contemporary European trans-national cinemas. Her work places a particular emphasis on the intersection between politics and aesthetics, and the role of artifacts (such as literature and cinema) in informing, reshaping, or distorting cultural perceptions of citizenship, nationality, and identity.Mark HumphriesMark Humphries specializes in postcolonial Caribbean Francophonie. He defended his dissertation “Cannibals of the Terrible Republic”: Representation & the Haitian Revolution at the University of Connecticut in 2010, and has published articles on topics ranging from La Chanson de Roland to contemporary Haitian poetics. He currently works as a freelance translator in Houston, Texas.