Chapter 43 II Departure from Montparnasse to join the war (2) Celebrations in Paris

My conscience is like a pile of dirty laundry, and tomorrow is the day to wash it. Max Jacobs The front line of the war is 100 kilometers away from Paris, and the battle situation is constantly expanding.Like suffering from high fever and hives, people are constantly changing doctors, sometimes using Marshal Joffre, sometimes appointing Marshal Lyautey, and using heavy medicine, that is, death treatments such as flamethrowers and poison gas, but everything is difficult to fundamentally reverse Losing situation.There was talk of an attack by aircraft, and some said that the Americans would send troops to join forces with the Allies.There are also fears that Russians, suffering from turmoil, will change sides and betray the Allies.Thousands of dead bodies piled up in the trenches, and the wounded retreated from the front lines to the rear like a tidal wave.

Life in the Montparnasse district of Paris was normal: hunger and thirst were managed by all possible means, and the situation eased.The croissant reappeared in the Rotonde tavern, in Mary Vasilyev's, in the Samaritel bakery.On curfew nights, to pass the long hours, painters, poets and other artists walked through the dimly lit streets to a luxurious residence in Auteuil or Passy.A well-dressed lucky one who lives there can offer them a drink.His only purpose is to get drunk with the artists.On other nights, there is a workshop open.Throughout the whole night, some people who did not know each other ignored the ban on passing, and came here one after another, taking out everything in their pockets—bread and cheese—as donations to others.

The one-armed general Sandras is undoubtedly guarding his severed arm, Kisling is guarding the butt of the gun that smashed his chest, Braque and Apollinaire are guarding the knives, saws and axes that smashed through their skulls, and are suffering. Their days and nights are full of nightmares.However, in the joy and joy of life, their wounds and hearts may be able to get some relief. In July 1916, an exhibition of Angtin's paintings was held in a pavilion.Immediately afterwards, the costume master Paul Puvale also opened a painting exhibition hall in his mansion.Poiret's sister, Germene Bongar, has had several major exhibitions of this kind.But this latest one is indisputably the largest exhibition of paintings.This is the masterpiece of André Breton, who once wanted to embody the ingenious combination of French art and foreign art in it, so as to revive the spirit of collaboration between French art and foreign art.Cremeni's paintings are next to Matisse, followed by Severini's works, not far from him are Loesche, Chirico, Kisling, Van Dongen, Zarate …Max Jacobs was also present at the exhibition, he was French and also Breton, he himself asked that it be made clear.

The mansion of Paul Poiret is located at 26 Avenue d'Antin.A path through the Versailles-style gardens leads to his mansion.The painting exhibition is held in a small gallery.An entire wall is occupied by a gigantic painting that has been completed long ago, but the public has never seen it because of the artist's resolute attitude: "The Maiden of Avignon". The outdoor space is reserved for poets to exhibit their works.Max Jacob Brown read his "Christ in Montparnasse".General Sandras and Guillaume Apollinaire, whose head was still bandaged, received a warm welcome.

In the evening, a concert was organized.It was among those musicians that Cocteau suddenly had the idea of ​​how to capture Picasso thoroughly. A few days later, he suggested to Picasso a collaboration with a realist ballet troupe for which he and Eric Satie had written a libretto, as well as with a Russian ballet troupe.The script reflects the story of the circus performers performing a show in order to attract the onlookers on the road into the circus performance venue. It seems that the inclusion of Picasso prompted Diaghilev, director of the Russian Ballet, to make the final decision.Diaghilev didn't care at all about the burlesques that attract customers at the theater door.In the fall he met with the painter Picasso, the composer Satie and the playwright Cocteau and agreed to collaborate with them.Composers and playwrights got to work right away.What about Picasso?He left his original studio and moved to a separate cottage on Montuz Street.He will not live there long.

At the end of 1916 a number of other meeting places for artists were opened, one of which was located deep in the courtyard at 6 Huygens Street.A Swiss painter, Émile Lejeune, dedicated his studio to poets, painters and composers who wished to exhibit, read and perform their works. Blaise Sandras, Jean Cocteau and Ortiz de Zarate are the founders of this association of poetry and painting.There are all kinds of people received here every day: the elderly residents in sweaters, trousers, and ragged clothes near the Rue de Vavins, as well as the upper-class people in suits, leather shoes, and jewels brought by Jean Cocteau from the right bank of the Seine.In a room that is sometimes as hot as summer and sometimes as cold as winter, these two completely different types of people communicate and get acquainted.Outside the courtyard, gilded cars took up most of the open space, leaving a pitiful little space for the trolleys and chairs brought from the Luxembourg Gardens for the artists to transport their exhibits.

November 19 is the date for the opening of the first exhibition of poetry and painting, with paintings by Kisling, Matisse, Modigliani, Picasso and Ortiz de Zarate hanging together.Paul Guillaume also contributed his preservation of the main statues representing black African art.In the evening, to play Dadaist music, Eric Satie carried a piano on foot from his residence.The titles of these pieces are: Escape Song, Inclined Dance, Secular Text, Overture to Dogs. In the next few days, six people who were called "New Youth" at that time organized activities here.They later formed the "Group of Six": Arthur Honegue, Darius Millau, Francis Poulenc, Georges Auric, Louis Diray, Germene Taifer you.

On November 26, Sandras, Max Jacobs, Levedi and Salmon read their poems aloud.Cocteau recited a poem by Apollinaire because Apollinaire was too weak to read it himself.He was wearing a set of high-end military officer uniforms he had just bought from the mall the day before, and a pair of leather boots on his feet, and he took a seat at the back of the hall.From time to time, he brushed off the dust that no one knew existed on his sky-blue shirt, and proudly touched the black bandage wrapped around his forehead with his hand.A young woman's hand rests on his arm.Her name is Jacqueline, but Apollinaire gave her another name-Luby (the French for reddish brown is Roux, and her new name Ruby is Ruby in French) based on her reddish-brown hair.She knew very few people, and after seeing her several times accompanied by her fiancé, the poet Jules-Gerard Jordan, he pulled her to his side by chance.The fiancé fell to his death from a tree in the Montmartre Buttes forest in 1916, and Guillaume Apollinaire was also injured that time.

On December 31, 1916, to celebrate the publication of Apollinaire's collection of poems "The Murdered Poet", his friends decided to organize a small-scale luncheon with 200 participants, and the venue was chosen on Main Street Orleans A carpeted area of ​​the palace.The menu determined by Max Jacobs and Guillaume Apollinaire after careful research is as follows: Cubism, Orphism, Futurism cold cuts, Friend Merritter Fish, Sirloin of Crognamental, Heretic originator capon, Aesthetic Meditation Salad, Ofer funeral procession cheese, (Greek allegorist) Ai Shaopu banquet fruit,

Masked soldier cookies. magician liquor, Almond's Magic Box Red Wine, artillery champagne, Paris Evening Coffee, All kinds of soju. The banquet was a complete success.The pompous luncheon devolved into a worthless dispute between Lahielde, Paul Faure, André Gide and several other literary and artistic figures who sat at the same table. Celebrities, on the other side were some rowdy, uneducated young artists, but when the party ended, everyone was happy. A similar banquet was organized two weeks later.This time it was at Marie Vasiliev's house, the purpose of which was to welcome Braque, who had been demobilized from the army after surgery.The organizing committee composed of Apollinaire, Gris, Max Jacobs, Levedi, Matisse, Picasso, Mei Jingqi and several others invited their friends, and the participants paid six francs (Andre Salmon confirms that Picasso never wrote any letters to Braque throughout the war).

This time the banquet was not very successful, because Mary Vasilyev invited Beatrice Hastings, who had broken up with Modigliani.She was present, but not alone, accompanied by her new lover, the sculptor Alfred Pinner.People persuaded Amdo Modigliani to go elsewhere and avoid her.But Amdo still attended. He entered the door and paid six francs, thinking that after paying the money, he had the right to watch a good show.After warmly greeting the surrounding guests, he went straight to Beatrice Hastings and began to recite the poems of the Italian poet Dante and the French poet Rimbaud in her ears.When the sculptor was about to intervene, Amdo Modigliani raised his fist and tried to knock him to the ground.In this situation, the sculptor drew his Browning automatic.His move frightened all the people present, and the atmosphere suddenly became very tense.Max Jacobs and Apollinaire came forward to try to make a ruling, and the panicked Juan Gris stared blankly at the two fighting cocks, blushing and yelling, like a madman possessed by the devil .Mattis, with a mustache and glasses, stepped out with steady aplomb to calm the situation.In the end, everyone worked together to push Amdo Modigliani out of the door and onto the street, and the matter was considered over. But Picasso was sitting in a corner of the hall, talking mysteriously in the ear of Paclet, his beloved model he found at Povalet's house.However, his idyllic love affair did not last long and ended short-lived. A month later, the painter disappeared from Paris.He went to Italy, first visited Naples and Pompeii, then went to Rome to find Diaghilev, and fell into Olga's arms.Picasso returned to the stage of the Chatelet Theater in Paris on May 18, 1917. There was a one-act play, Les Fartes, with Jean Cocteau as a brief, Eric as music and Picasso as costumes. Many of the aristocratic class came that night, hoping to enjoy the warm beauty of cubism that Cocteau so fiercely defended in his program.The result was far beyond expectations, and the audience was quite frightened.The opening "La Marseillaise" has nothing to criticize.Tricolor curtains, clowns, actresses in circuses and other jugglers are barely acceptable.But next: the girl in the pointed hat!Black waiter!That winged horse!A shepherd boy with a skyscraper on his back!Plus that music that has no tune but just noise!Simply unacceptable! Princess Eugene Murat fidgets in her tiara.Whenever her servants and the servants on her left and right did not echo the booing whistles and yelled, she called her servants "my dear" and fanned her left and right servants.The Countess of Chabrien and the Marchioness of Ouissan shouted: "Gringoes! Deserters! Shame on you! Don't be ashamed!" All this is extremely provocative!The women of the common people prowled for vulgar entertainers, and poked and teased them with hat clips; some dame in black frocks, panicked, clutched at the arms of gentlemen in frock coats or in the sash of honor. put.In order for Guillaume Apollinaire to understand that he was not the only one who served in the army, other women, such as Princess Polignac, also wore nurse costumes.Because Guillaume Apollinaire had a bandage on his head, indicating that he had not only participated in the army, but also been wounded, in order to protect the interests of his kind of people.Cocteau, who was next to Apollinaire, jumped up from time to time, wondering whether the hall was filled with the target audience of his screenwriting, and whether these people still support his position and views.He happened to bump into a gentleman up his sleeve.The gentleman said to his neighbor: "If I had known this play was so stupid, I would never have taken my children to see such a farce!" The next day, criticism with much fanfare in the media unfolded.The Burlesque was considered the best publicity for German art, and it would be warmly received by the Germans.Columnists write a lot of articles and bombard them.They made public all the scandals about Diaghilev, who had the misfortune to hide The Firebird in the Bolshevik Red Riding Hood a few weeks before.They hope to nail him to the pillar of shame from now on, so that he will never stand up again. The first target of the journalists' attack was Eric Satie. "Weekly News" criticized him on the one hand for insulting the interests and hobbies of the French, and on the other hand said that he lacked the talent and imagination necessary for his profession.In an interview with a columnist for the newspaper, Satie seems to have given the following answer: Sir, dear friend, You are a bastard, a very boring bastard! Reporters took him to misdemeanor court for insulting journalists and desecrating their profession.Satie was sentenced to prison with a suspended sentence.He was as shocked as Picasso was when he was summoned before the examining magistrate for stealing an ancient Iberian statue.He watched as his name was also put on a criminal record, his copyrights were seized, and he was banned from traveling (which was limited to commuting between Paris and Arcueil, the headquarters of their genre).He has no money, cannot afford a lawyer to defend him, and cannot appeal the verdict.Friends, led by Gris, Cocteau and Max Jacobs, are looking for connections to help the composer. During this period, in May 1917, the President of the French Republic, Poincaré, appointed Philippe Pétain Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, because the troops fighting in the northern plains at that time, despite heavy losses, came out of the trenches to make their last struggle. In order to show the monkeys the slaughter of chickens, Petain ordered the shooting of 400 deserters.In addition to these 400 soldiers killed by their own countrymen, at Chemin de Damme, the French army also wiped out 40,000 men by the Germans.