'La Belle Noiseuse'

Honore de Balzac's 'The Unknown Masterpiece' is the title of his French short story 'Le Chefd' Oeuvre inconnu', in English. Nicolas Poussin is a young and upcoming painter who is not sure of his talent and has had an obsession of indescribable nature with his success as a renowned painter. The story opens with Nicolas sauntering before the chateau of a famous painter Porbus. He is reluctant to get in. His poverty is one of the reasons for his stagnancy. It is the Paris of 1612 that has drawn the poor painter from his native place hoping to find a foothold in the world of artists. One of his friends, who is rich enough to support him has seen to it that Nicolas reaches Paris safely. It usually happens to gifted individuals in the world. Within a very short while from his arrival, he is spotted by a very beautiful, rich young woman Gillette. Gillette is that sort of a young girl who would do anything for a poor artist who wants to realise his dream. She falls in love with the young man and sheds all her riches to be with the hapless artist. His intention to meet Porbus is to get inspiration and promotion in the field of art as he has nothing but a few canvasses, pieces of chalk and charcoal and not palette with paints and brushes.

A stranger overtakes Nicolas on the flight of staircase and knocks at the atelier. It is opened by an emaciated man and Nicolas gets a feeling that the figure is Porbus. The stranger is old and bald-headed and has a promising visage and spirit in his eyes. The stranger looks at the canvass at the easel, that upholds a recently done portrait of St. Mary of Egypt at a boat with a boatman. Porbus is all ears as the old man begins a discourse on painting, use of light and tint and bringing life into the painting. He dismisses any painting that merely copies things as they are, which is nothing but a prising of objects off nature and making them lifeless. He wants the veins of women in portraits blush with flowing blood. Nicolas is roused by the criticism as he finds the portrait promising. He intervenes with a raddled face to praise the painting. The old man wants Nicolas to prove his mettle as a connoisseur of art and Nicolas draws a line drawing, a reproduction of St. Mary of Egypt and signs on the canvass as Nicolas Poussin. The old man and Porbus admire his talent and approve him of a painter and the old man begins his lesson of improving the portrait of Porbus. The old man is Frenhofer, a student of a great artist, Mabuse. Mabuse taught him about the employment of light and shade on portraits. Frenhofer was rich enough to sponsor Mabuse and learn everything from him. He starts working like a possessed spirit on Porbus' portrait and improves it with his magical brush-strokes.

Frenhofer's talent is admirable and uncanny. He compares this with his life-time work, 'Belle Noiseuse', as he has been working on it for ten years, and it titles itself to be his masterpiece. It is a portrait of a courtezan, Catherine Lescault, that remains incomplete as Frenhofer is incapable of combining light with shade and cannot produce shape of the body successfully. He does not want to show the portrait to his hosts, as he takes Porbus and Nicolas for a drink to his studio, where Nicolas is flabbergasted by the portrait of Georgina, as he considers the figure of the woman as his lover, he her creator, lover and husband. Three months pass and the man could not finish his masterpiece, as his efforts to perfect it on seeing the paintings of great masters and he is in dire requirement of a perfect model. Porbus meets him and tries to strike a deal with him. Gillette is conveyed of Nicolas' admiration for Frenhofer and his masterpiece and is requested by Nicolas to pose for the completion of it. Gillette does not want to do so. However her love for Nicolas and the future of Poussin drive her to accept the proposal. The deal of Porbus is that Frenhofer should show his masterpiece as they swap women, Gillette for Noiseuse.

Though Poussin initiates the suggestion of Gillette posing for the portrait, he rues for his decision as he sees the eyes of the old painter gain unusual energy on seeing the silhoutte of Gillette's body. She wants Poussin to wait outside the studio with a dagger in his hand, strongly clutching its hilt and rush in if hears a squeal from her. After waiting for several hours, the gentlemen are let in to find a hazy, foggy portrait, that Frenhofer claims shrouding the figure of a fantastic woman. Poussin and Porbus point out the artist's failure that Frenhofer refuses to accept and accuses of them trying to cheat him. The artist Poussin is distracted by the cry of Gillette and the lover in him wakes up to take her out of the atelier. Frenhofer is discombobulated and bids a nasty farewell. The story ends the very next day when Porbus discovers that Frenhofer died the previous night after setting his portraits on fire including his masterpiece.

In 1991, Jacques Rivette, a French director made a film La Belle Noiseuse, a very liberal adaptation of Balzec's twenty page short story. It is a near to four hour film extensively detaililing the recuperative artistic energy of Frenhofer. The film begins in a village inn with Marianne and Nicolas (Gillette is Marianne in the film), as they are waiting for Porbus to take them to the chateau of Frenhofer. Marianne is interested as Nicolas talks a lot about the painter and has given arresting looks while looking at the portraits of him. She does not know much of the painter nor has she been acquainted with his paintings. The painter lives with his ex-model wife Liz, who has been the painter's model for many of his famous paintings and he has later confined her beauty to himself by not letting her pose after the marriage. Marianne is good looking and lures the painter's chances of reviving his effort to produce the la belle noiseuse masterpiece. Unlike in the story, Marianne has many a modelling session with Frenhofer for almost a week, visiting the chateau everyday, much to the discomfiture of Nicolas from the third day onwards. In the film, Liz warns Marianne not to see the finished product and which is snubbed by Marianne. The finished masterpiece is not shown to the audience and is known only to Marianne, who gets angered by the portrait, Liz and the servant-maid's daughter. Frenhofer seals the portrait with bricks and mortar on a wall and shows the nude back and buttocks of a woman as his masterpiece. The director takes a lot of liberty with Balzac's story as the film has a model-ex-lover to Nicolas. The film ends with a scathing opinion of Nicolas on Frenhofer's masterpiece as a lampoon and anti-climactic comic relief.

A great feature of the film is, it depicts real-time sketching of portraits with the lending of hand by the painter Bernard Dufour, a French painter notable for abstract painting.

The Bull

The Bull

See an old unhappy bull,

Sick in soul and body both,

Slouching in the undergrowth

Of the forest beautiful,

Banished from the herd he led,

Bulls and cows a thousand head.

Cranes and gaudy parrots go

Up and down the burning sky;

Tree-top cats purr drowsily

In the dim-day green below;

And troops of monkeys, nutting, some,

All disputing, go and come;

And things abominable sit

Picking offal buck or swine,

On the mess and over it

Burnished flies and beetles shine,

And spiders big as bladders lie

Under hemlocks ten foot high;

And a dotted serpent curled

Round and round and round a tree,

Yellowing its greenery,

Keeps a watch on all the world,

All the world and this old bull

In the forest beautiful.

Bravely by his fall he came:

One he led, a bull of blood

Newly come to lustihood,

Fought and put his prince to shame,

Snuffed and pawed the prostrate head

Tameless even while it bled.

There they left him, every one,

Left him there without a lick,

Left him for the birds to pick,

Left him there for carrion,

Vilely from their bosom cast

Wisdom, worth and love at last.

When the lion left his lair

And roared his beauty through the hills,

And the vultures pecked their quills

And flew into the middle air,

Then this prince no more to reign

Came to life and lived again.

He snuffed the herd in far retreat,

He saw the blood upon the ground,

And snuffed the burning airs around

Still with beevish odours sweet,

While the blood ran down his head

And his mouth ran slaver red.

Pity him, this fallen chief,

All his spendour, all his strength,

All his body's breadth and length

Dwindled down with shame and grief,

Half the bull he was before,

Bones and leather, nothing more.

See him standing dewlap-deep

In the rushes at the lake,

Surly, stupid, half asleep,

Waiting for his heart to break

And the birds to join the flies

Feasting at his bloodshot eyes, -

Standing with his head hung down

In a stupor dreaming things:

Green savannas, jungles brown,

Battlefields and bellowings,

Bulls undone and lions dead

And vultures flapping overhead.

Dreaming things: of days he spent

With his mother gaunt and lean

In the valley warm and green,

Full of baby wonderment,

Blinking out of silly eyes

At a hundred mysteries;

Dreaming over once again

How he wandered with a throng

Of bulls and cows a thousand strong,

Wandered on from plain to plain,

Up the hill and down the dale,

Always at his mother's tail;

How he lagged behind the herd,

Lagged and tottered, weak of limb,

And she turned and ran to him

Blaring at the loathly bird

Stationed always in the skies,

Waiting for the flesh that dies.

Dreaming maybe of a day

When her drained and drying paps

Turned him to the sweets and saps,

Richer fountains by the way,

And she left the bull she bore

And he looked on her no more;

And his little frame grew stout,

And his little legs grew strong,

And the way was not so long;

And his little horns came out,

And he played at butting trees

And boulder-stones and tortoises,

Joined a game of knobby skulls

With the youngsters of his year,

All the other little bulls,

Learning both to bruise and bear,

Learning how to stand a shock

Like a little bull of rock.

Dreaming of a day less dim,

Dreaming of a time less far,

When the faint but certain star

Of destiny burned clear for him,

And a fierce and wild unrest

Broke the quiet of his breast,

And the gristles of his youth

Hardened in his comely pow,

And he came to fighting growth,

Beat his bull and won his cow,

And flew his tail and trampled off

Past the tallest, vain enough,

And curved about in spendour full

And curved again and snuffed the airs

As who should say Come out who dares!

And all beheld a bull, a Bull,

And knew that here was surely one

That backed for no bull, fearing none.

And the leader of the herd

Looked and saw, and beat the ground,

And shook the forest with his sound,

Bellowed at the loathly bird

Stationed always in the skies,

Wating for the flesh that dies.

Dreaming, this old bull forlorn,

Surely dreaming of the hour

When he came to sultan power,

And they owned him master-horn,

Chiefest bull of all among

Bulls and cows a thousand strong.

And in all the tramping herd

Not a bull that barred his way,

Not a cow that said him nay,

Not a bull or cow that erred

In the furnace of his look

Dared a second, worse rebuke;

Not in all the forest wide,

Jungle, thicket, pasture, fen,

Not another dared him then,

Dared him and again defied;

Not a sovereign buck or boar

Came a second time for more.

Not a serpent that survived

Once the terrors of his hoof

Risked a second time reproof,

Came a second time and lived,

Not serpent in its skin

Came again for discipline;

Not a leopard brght as flame,

Flashing fingerhooks of steel,

That a wooden tree might feel,

Met his fury once and came

For second reprimand,

Not a leopard in the land.

Not a lion of them all,

Not a lion of the hills,

Hero of a thousand kills,

Dared a second fight and fall,

Dared that ram terrific twice,

Paid a second time the price. . . .

Pity him, this dupe of dream,

Leader of the heard again

Only in his daft old brain,

Once again the bull supreme

And bull enough to bear the part

Only in his tameless heart.

Pity him that he must wake;

Even now the swarm of flies

Blackening his bloodshot eyes

Bursts and blusters round the lake,

Scattered from the feast half-fed,

By great shadows overhead.

And the dreamer turns away

From his visionary herds

And his splendid yesterday,

Turns to meet the loathly birds

Flocking round him from the skies,

Waiting for the flesh that dies.

Ralph Hodgson


Ralph Hodgson is a Georgian Poet. Georgian Poets are those whose poems have been published in anthologies named Georgian Poetry. There have been five anthologies under this title and the major poets include D H Lawrence, Rupert Brooke and Robert Graves. Hodgson is not much of a celebrated poet of the Georgian School, however has reached greater depths in his selection of themes and presentation. He went on to teach English and poetry in Japan in Tohoku University. He is credited with the theme of being more pastoral in his poems. ‘The Bull’ sketches the poignant life of an old bull, that was once sturdy, powerful and a ruler of a herd. The poem is more of a depiction of the agony of old age and the loss of support.