ARLEQUINADE

VIII. ARLEQUINADE

Arlequin porte un arc-en-ciel
De rouges et vertes soieries,
Et semble, dans l’or des féeries,
Un serpent artificiel.

Ayant pour but essentiel
Le mensonge et les fourberies,
Arlequin porte un arc-en-ciel
De rouges et vertes soieries.

À Cassandre jaune de fiel
Il dénombre ses seigneuries
En Espagne, et ses armoiries :
Car sur fond d’azur et de miel
Arlequin porte un arc-en-ciel.




VIII. ARLEQUINADE

Arlequin wears a rainbow
of red and green silk rags,
and, in the gold of fairylands, resembles
an artificial snake. 

Having as his essential goal
deception and confidence tricks,
Arlequin wears a rainbow
of red and green silk rags.

To choleric Cassandre
he enumerates his seigniories
in Spain, and his coats of arms:
for against a backdrop of blue sky and honey 
Arlequin wears a rainbow.

NOTES (by line number, beginning with the title).

1 ARLEQUINADE : The namesake set-piece of Arlequin, another stock character (he reappears in rondels XI, XXXIX, and XLVIII). DAf1798 styles him « Bateleur, farceur, bouffon », ‘Tumbler, trickster, buffoon’, and his « Arlequinade » a bouffon- nerie—« Ce qu’on fait ou ce qu’on dit pour faire rire », ‘What one says or does to get a laugh’. However, the current DAf, taking account of recent research (Appendix B), precedes its article Arlequin with a darker etymology: 12th century, in the phrase mesnie Hellequin, a retinue of accursèd knights; 16th century, Harlequin, the devil (a character in a play, not the theological entity).

5 serpent artificiel : What, if any, might have been literary or historical referents for this image of Giraud’s? (1) I think it probable that Giraud had access to J. P. Migne’s Dictionnaire des apocryphes (Paris, Imprimerie Migne, 1856). Migne, in his commentary on Le Combat d’Adam et Ève (one of several hundred apocryphal books translated and reviewed at length in the over 1500 pages of the two-volume Dictionnaire), cites a number of ‘fabulous tales’ about Eden found among Arabian Muslims. One describes the serpent who tempted Eve: he surpassed all other animals in beauty, was large as a camel, had long floating hair like that of a young girl; his skin was enameled in the most beautiful colors, his head was like a ruby, his eyes like emeralds; his mane gave off a smell of musk and amber, and he ate nothing but saffron. In a footnote on the same page, Migne points his readers to Adam, un drame anglo-normand, published in 1854 by V. Luzarche. Adam is a « représentation dramatique du XII^e siècle », ‘a 12th century dramatic script’. Luzarche, who found the manuscript in the Bibliothèque de Tours, added French commentary to its Anglo-Norman dialogue and Latin stage directions. The first bit of business in scene 4, the temptation of Eve, is “Tunc serpens artificiose compositus ascendit juxta stipitem arboris vetite”, ‘Then an artificial serpent climbs the forbidden tree’. Luzarche comments « Nous voici en possession d’un serpent automate six siècles au moins avant la naissance de Vaucanson », ‘We have here an automated snake built at least six centuries before the birth of Vaucanson’ (1709-1782), famous for his intricate and lifelike automata with up to a thousand moving parts. No indication is given of how that serpent was painted, certainly none that it was red and green like the Arabian Muslims’ serpent or Giraud’s Arlequin. And even if Giraud did in fact read Migne’s book, he could hardly have gotten hold of Luzarche’s (printed in a few hundred copies, on vellum; now, at least, Belgian libraries hold only a few copies). With great regret I have resisted the temptation to believe such an account of the origin of Giraud’s image. (2) French freemasonry has a long tradition of artificial snakes in its ceremonies (but they seem to be gilded, not red and green, nor do I have any reason to think Giraud joined the Masonic lodge at the University of Louvain). (3) So-called serpents artificiels were a fad in Paris in the mid-1860s (see, e.g., a September 1865 letter of L. Veuillot reprinted in his Correspondance, 1884, and the end of Petit-Jean’s « Courrier du Palais », Le Monde illustré, 7 Avril 1866, pp. 215-222), but these appear to be the dull monochrome pyrotechnic « serpents de Pharaon », not the exquisitely engineered and beautifully decorated mechanical serpents described by Lacombe (1792, p. 847) which in any case I doubt were available to Giraud (nor do I suppose he would have encountered Lacombe’s book).

6 but essentiel : Giraud was surely familiar with the Thomist distinction between essential properties and accidental properties. For Arlequin, his roles as deceiver and confidence trickster are literally ‘of the essence’: they are what Arlequin is, not what he happens to be.

8 fourberies : The best known use of this word in French literature may be Molière’s comedy Les Fourberies de Scapin (1671). Scapin is based on Scapino or Scappino, another stock character from commedia dell’arte (Appendix B), in which he shares many qualities with Arlecchino including origins in Bergamo (K. F. Flögel, Geschichte des Groteskekomischen, David Siegert, Leipzig, 1778, p. 29). Although DAf has consistently declared fourberie and fourb to be synonyms, the controversial Académicien Jean de la Bruyère maintained in Les Caractères de Theophraste [etc.] (Lyon, Amaulry, 1693), p. 368, that fourb is mere « mensonge », ‘deception’, to which fourberie adds ‘malice’. Presumably Giraud is making a similar distinction, thereby casting light on Arlequin’s character.

10 Cassandre jaune de fiel : Cassandre (see XXXVI.11) is traditionally choleric. In the Theory of Humors (Appendix F), « fiel » is ‘yellow bile’ (choler); see XI.6.

11 seigneuries : A seigniory is the feudal institution relating the lord of a manor to the tenants of the manor. Arlequin is purporting to have several manors.

13 miel : I imagine this « fond », part sky-blue, part honey-colored, to be one of the amber-colored « fonds » from I.5, minimally reworked for a new production.