In a letter dated July 10, 1887 addressed to Caroline van Stockum-Haanebeek, Theo speaks of this new apartment in the following terms: "I now live with my brother Vincent, who studies painting with tireless assiduity. As he needs a lot of space for his work, we live in a rather large apartment at 54 rue Lepic [...]. What is remarkable about our apartment is that we have a magnificent view of the city, with the hills of Meudon, Saint-Cloud, etc. in the foreground and, above it, almost as much sky as when we are in the dunes. With the different effects generated by the variations in the sky, it's a subject for I don't know how many paintings.”
54 RUE LEPIC, VAN GOGH’S FLAT.
The Rue Lepic at the time marked an informal boundary between lower and upper Montmartre, between the recently developed urban areas of the Butte and those that had remained semi-rural. During his stay, Vincent was fascinated by the atmosphere, both pastoral and urban, of Montmartre’s maquis, a term then used to designate the unurbanized flanks of the hill, where vegetable gardens and shanties mixed with abandoned quarries and vacant lots. Unlike his contemporaries, such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec or Pierre-Auguste Renoir before him, who depicted the Montmartre of cabarets and popular balls, Van Gogh chose to depict the more bucolic and tranquil features of the area which contrasted with the hectic life of the city streets below.
One subject that particularly provoked the painter's interest at the time was that of the mills of Montmartre whose reference to the Dutch tradition must have pleased him. During his stay on La Butte, Van Gogh devoted nearly twenty works to the three principal mills which existed at the time within the enclosure known as the Moulin de la Galette. These buildings, which belonged to the Debray family, had long since ceased to function and had been transformed into places of leisure, mixing guinguettes, ballrooms, cafés and merry-go-rounds, that were very popular with Parisians. From Camille Corot to Paul Signac, via Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, they had been a source of inspiration for artists since the mid-19th century.
In the two years Van Gogh's spends in Paris his representations of the Moulin de la Galette would evolve significantly. In 1886, he first painted the most imposing and famous of mills, known as Blute-Fin, which was equipped with a wooden belvedere that allowed for a breathtaking view of the city below. He also painted the second mill on several occasions, which was at the corner of the rue Girardon, known as Moulin Radet. In all these compositions dating from 1886, the painter still used his so-called “Dutch palette” which consisted mainly of brownish tones and thick impastos.
During the months of February and March 1887, Van Gogh shifts his interest towards the third and smallest of the mills in Montmartre: the Pepper Mill. He represents it in three works painted at the same time: Le Moulin de la Galette (Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute), where it is seen from afar below the hill, and two compositions painted from the Impasse des deux frères: Scène de rue, le moulin à poivre (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum) and the present painting. In these last two compositions, which present very similar points of view, the painter set up his easel in the Impasse des deux frères (now a private street inside the enclosure of the Moulin de la Galette). The resulting paintings are moving testimonies to a Montmartre that has since vanished: the side entrance of the Moulin de la Galette, surmounted by lanterns, the wooden palisades, a carrousel on the left and the Pepper Mill itself which was built around 1865 and destroyed in 1911 with the piercing of the Avenue Junot.
The works from early 1887 reveal a radical evolution in Van Gogh's art. Scène de rue à Montmartre testifies not only to Van Gogh's fascination for a city in full mutation but also to his contacts with the Parisian artistic avant-garde. Indeed, from the moment he arrived in Paris, Van Gogh multiplied his interactions and visits to art exhibitions. Whether at the Académie Cormon, where he enrolled, or at the shop of the color supplier known as Le Père Tanguy, that was at the foot of Montmartre on the rue Clauzel. Van Gogh met and frequented many artists, including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard, Louis Anquetin and John Russell. Whether at the shop of the Père Tanguy or at the Boussod-Valadon gallery which his brother directed, he quickly familiarized himself with the art of Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and many others. Above all, in January 1887, just a few weeks before he executed this painting, Van Gogh befriended Paul Signac, who introduced him to the scientific theory of colors, the work of Seurat, and took him to paint with him on numerous occasions in Paris and Asnières.
All these encounters and influences led Van Gogh to abandon the dark tones of his early works and embrace a new more vibrant and colorful palette. His touch becomes lighter, his pigments blended to create effects of transparency and light. Kept for nearly a century in the same family, Scène de rue à Montmartre is a pivotal work in the oeuvre of Van Gogh. It is a testimony to his contact with a new city, Paris the capital of the XIXth Century, but also with the art of the Impressionists and the avant-garde which led him to abandon the dark tones of his early works and develop the unique coloristic palette and style that would consecrate him as one of the greatest masters of Modern Art.
C’est au mois de mars 1886 que Vincent van Gogh arrive sans prévenir à Paris, pour s’installer chez son frère Théo qui dirige alors la succursale parisienne du marchand d’art Goupil puis deviendra gérant de Boussot, Valadon & Cie. Théo vit alors au 25 rue Laval, ensuite rebaptisée rue Victor Massé, dans la même rue où le célèbre cabaret Le Chat Noir s’est installé au numéro 12 en 1885. Afin de favoriser le travail de son frère, Théo quitte la rue Massé en mai 1886 pour le 54 rue Lepic qui deviendra le refuge de Vincent et dont la vue, surplombant Paris, lui inspirera nombre de ses œuvres. Il y restera jusqu’en février 1888.
Dans une lettre datée du 10 juillet 1887 à Caroline van Stockum-Haanebeek, Theo parle en ces termes de ce nouvel appartement : « Je vis maintenant avec mon frère Vincent, qui étudie la peinture avec une assiduité infatigable. Comme il a besoin de beaucoup d’espace pour son travail, nous vivons dans un appartement assez grand au 54 rue Lepic […]. Ce qu'il y a de remarquable dans notre logement, c'est que l'on a une vue magnifique sur la ville, avec les collines de Meudon, Saint-Cloud, etc. au premier plan et, par-dessus, presque autant de ciel que lorsqu'on est dans les dunes. Avec les différents effets générés par les variations du ciel, c'est un sujet pour je ne sais combien de tableaux. »
La rue Lepic constitue alors une frontière informelle entre le bas et le haut Montmartre, entre le Montmartre urbain et le Montmartre champêtre. Pendant son séjour parisien, Van Gogh montre une fascination pour l’ambiance si particulière, à la fois pastorale et urbaine, du « maquis » de Montmartre, terme alors utilisé pour désigner la face encore non urbanisée de la butte Montmartre, où les jardins-potagers côtoient carrières abandonnées et friches herbeuses. Au contraire de ses contemporains qui, tels Toulouse-Lautrec ou Renoir avant lui, s’attachent à dépeindre le Montmartre des cabarets et des bals populaires, Van Gogh fait lui le choix de représenter un Montmartre bucolique et calme, tranchant avec la vie trépidante des rues alentour.
Un sujet en particulier suscite l’intérêt du peintre : celui des moulins de Montmartre, qui ne sont pas sans évoquer les moulins de sa Hollande natale, un thème profondément ancré dans l’histoire de la peinture hollandaise. Pendant son séjour montmartrois, Van Gogh va consacrer près de vingt œuvres à ces trois moulins réunis sous la dénomination commune de « Moulin de la Galette ». Ces bâtiments, qui appartenaient alors à la famille Debray, avaient depuis longtemps cessé de fonctionner et avaient été transformés en un lieu de loisir très prisé des parisiens, réunissant guinguettes, salles de bal, cafés et manèges. De Corot à Signac, en passant par Renoir et Toulouse-Lautrec, ils constituent depuis le XIXe siècle une source inépuisable d’inspiration pour les artistes.
THE MAQUIS OF MONTMARTRE AROUND 1890.
En l’espace de deux années, les représentations du Moulin de la Galette par Van Gogh vont significativement évoluer. Dès son arrivée à Paris en 1886, Van Gogh commence à peindre le plus imposant et le plus célèbre des moulins, dit « Blute-Fin », lequel était doté d'un belvédère en bois très apprécié des parisiens pour profiter d'une vue imprenable sur Paris. Il s’intéresse aussi à plusieurs reprises au deuxième moulin, qui faisait l’angle avec la rue Girardon, dit Moulin Radet. Dans ces compositions de l’année 1886, le peintre utilise encore sa palette dite hollandaise, faites de tonalités brunes et d’empâtements épais.
C’est durant les mois de février et mars 1887 que Van Gogh s’intéresse au troisième et plus petit des moulins de Montmartre, le Moulin à Poivre. Il le représente dans trois œuvres peintes au même moment : Le Moulin de la Galette (Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute), où il est vu de loin en contrebas de la butte et du principal moulin et deux compositions peintes depuis l’impasse des deux frères : Scène de rue, le moulin à poivre (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum) et le présent tableau. Dans ces deux dernières compositions, qui présentent un point de vue très semblable, le peintre a posé son chevalet dans l’Impasse des deux frères (aujourd’hui devenue une voie privée à l’intérieur de l’enceinte du Moulin de la Galette). Les tableaux en résultant sont un émouvant témoignage d’un Montmartre aujourd’hui disparu, où l’on découvre l’entrée latérale du Moulin de la Galette, surmontée de lanternes, les palissades de l’enceinte, un carrousel sur la gauche et le Moulin à Poivre, qui fut construit vers 1865 et détruit lors du percement de l'avenue Junot en 1911. Ces compositions du début de l’année 1887 sont révélatrices d’une évolution radicale dans l’art de Van Gogh. Scène de rue à Montmartre témoigne ainsi non seulement de la fascination de Van Gogh pour une ville en pleine mutation mais également de ses contacts avec les différentes avant-gardes parisiennes. Dès son arrivée à Paris, en effet, Van Gogh multiplie les contacts. Que ce soit à l’Académie Cormon, où il s’inscrit, ou chez le marchand de couleurs Julien Tanguy (dit le Père Tanguy), il fait la connaissance de nombreux artistes, au premier rang desquels, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bernard, Anquetin ou encore Russell. Que ce soit chez le père Tanguy ou chez Boussot Valadon que dirige son frère, il se familiarise avec l’art de Monet, Gauguin, Pissarro, Renoir et bien d’autres. Surtout, en janvier 1887, quelques semaines à peine avant l’exécution du présent tableau, Van Gogh fait la connaissance de Signac, qui va l’initier à la théorie scientifique des couleurs et l’emmener peindre avec lui à de nombreuses reprises, à Paris et Asnières.
Ces rencontres poussent Van Gogh à abandonner les tons sombres de ses premières œuvres pour développer une nouvelle palette, déjà visible dans la présente œuvre. Sa touche devient plus légère, ses pigments se diluent pour créer des effets de transparence et la lumière entre dans ses tableaux. Sans jamais totalement adopter les techniques de ses confrères artistes – Van Gogh ne deviendra jamais ni impressionniste ni pointilliste – le peintre développe une nouvelle maîtrise de la couleur et de la composition, forgeant son propre style pour entrer de plein pied dans la modernité. Cette révolution plastique est d’ores et déjà présente dans Scène de rue à Montmartre, où le bleu laiteux du ciel côtoie les verts et mauves de la barrière, tranchant avec le jaune des coiffes au premier plan. Sa technique évolue également, faisant contraster le caractère graphique de la palissade avec la touche libre et enlevée du reste de la composition.
Scène de rue à Montmartre s’impose ainsi comme une œuvre charnière dans l’art du peintre. C’est en effet à Montmartre, au cours de ce printemps 1887, que Van Gogh se façonne comme peintre. Au cours de cette période brève mais incroyablement féconde, il se confronte aux différentes avant-gardes et explore les différentes facettes de la modernité pour enfin poser les bases de son style inimitable.
Entretien |Un tableau inédit de Vincent Van Gogh est mis aux enchères ce jeudi 25 mars chez Sotheby's à Paris. Cette "Scène de rue à Montmartre" de 1887 est estimée entre cinq et huit millions d'euros. Le commissaire-priseur Fabien Mirabaud revient sur son histoire et sa valeur.
Le grand public a pu découvrir la toile à Drouot, à Paris, avant Sotheby's et la vente de ce jeudi, en association avec la maison Mirabaud Mercier. Une vente réalisée en France, selon la volonté de la famille propriétaire.• Crédits : Lisa Guyenne - Radio France
"Scène de rue à Montmartre (impasse des Deux Frères et le Moulin à Poivre)", 1887. Ce tableau de moyenne dimension de Vincent Van Gogh, de 46 cm sur 61 cm, a vécu caché des regards, propriété de la même famille parisienne pendant un siècle avant que ses membres ne se décident à le mettre en vente. L'œuvre, estimée entre cinq et huit millions d'euros, est mise aux enchères ce jeudi 25 mars 2021 chez Sotheby's, à Paris. La semaine passée, elle était exposée pendant quelques jours à l'hôtel Drouot. Nous y avons rencontré Fabien Mirabaud, commissaire-priseur de la maison Mirabaud-Mercier.
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Il était une fois cette "Scène de rue à Montmartre". Reportage de Lisa Guyenne à Drouot lors de la présentation de la toile au public
Comment analyser "Scène de rue à Montmartre" ?
Ce tableau est pour nous un manifeste de Vincent Van Gogh. Il y figure le moulin au poivre de Montmartre, que Vincent ne peint pas par hasard, mais parce qu'il connaît cette image. C'est un hommage à sa Hollande natale. Ensuite, il est installé impasse des Deux-Frères. Ce n'est pas pour rien. Vincent et Théo sont deux frères très liés. Vincent doit beaucoup à Théo dans l'aboutissement de son art, c'est Théo qui le fait venir à Paris en 1886. Ceci est pour nous une évidence claire, un manifeste évident de cet amour fraternel.
On y découvre également le Montmartre d'avant, très rural, un Montmartre qui n'existe plus. Aujourd'hui, cette impasse des Deux-Frères existe encore, mais elle se situe dans l'enclos du Moulin de la Galette, une copropriété privée. Il reste toutefois un petit charme pittoresque dans ce Montmartre protégé.
Les détails de "Scène de rue à Montmartre".• Crédits : Lisa Guyenne - Radio France
Que sait-on du passé de ce tableau et de son origine ?
Il provient d'une collection privée et était dans le même appartement depuis un siècle. Nous n'avons pas de traces de son acquisition. Nous pensons qu'il a probablement été acheté chez Bernheim, le premier marchand à exposer et vendre des toiles de Van Gogh, à partir de 1901. Mais il n'existe pas de preuve dans les archives, ce sont des supputations. C'est également ce que dit la tradition familiale des propriétaires.
Pour autant, il est attesté que ce tableau existait en 1920 : il était connu par une petite photographie, une reproduction en noir et blanc dans le catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre de Vincent Van Gogh réalisé au début du XXe siècle. La confrontation de l'œuvre avec la photographie a été rapide, et les experts du musée Van Gogh d'Amsterdam ont tout de suite déterminé qu'il s'agissait du tableau authentique. Le fait, pour nous, de redécouvrir cette image et de la confronter à la photographie en noir et blanc a été un choc émotionnel énorme.
Il existe aussi une autre version de "Scène de rue à Montmartre" au musée Van Gogh d'Amsterdam.
C'est une version assez similaire. Mais ce tableau que nous avons sous les yeux est le dernier tableau connu, en mains privées, de cette qualité-là, d'une peinture montmartroise très importante dans la vie de Van Gogh. Elle fait transition entre son passé et son avenir. On y découvre une touche plus libre.
"Impasse des Deux Frères", tableau de 1887 montrant la même scène que "Scène de rue à Montmartre". Il est exposé au musée Van Gogh d'Amsterdam• Crédits : Musée Van Gogh, Amsterdam (Fondation Vincent van Gogh) - Radio France
Cette lumière qui s'impose à Vincent n'est pas la peinture très empâtée d'Amsterdam. Ici, la peinture est très légère, la touche s'allonge. On constate aussi l'influence de Degas, avec ce cadrage très photographique. Nous connaissons les Ballerines de Degas, toujours peintes dans l'entrebâillement d'une porte. Or, nous voyons ici clairement l'influence de la photo, avec ce couple qui sort de la guinguette, la robe légèrement floue du personnage féminin et ses enfants pris sur le vif, avec ce cadrage un peu en retrait qui témoigne évidemment de l'influence de la photo et de Degas. Il y a aussi l'influence de Toulouse-Lautrec et de Steineim, deux grands amis de Vincent, avant qu'il ne parte vers la période arlésienne et Auvers-sur-Oise. C'est un tableau charnière, un tableau de transition, un tableau qui explique l'œuvre de Van Gogh, qui nous permet de comprendre d'où il vient et où il va.
Fabien Mirabaud, commissaire-priseur de la maison Mirabaud-Mercier.• Crédits : Lisa Guyenne - Radio France
Ce tableau date de 1887, trois ans avant son décès à Auvers-sur-Oise. Dans quel état d'esprit Van Gogh est-il à cette époque ?
C'est un Vincent heureux, qui vit avec son frère. Cela fait un an qu'ils sont à Paris. Il est très serein. Ce n'est pas le même Vincent que l'on retrouvera à Arles et à Auvers-sur-Oise. On peut imaginer sa joie de s'entourer ici de son frère, et de découvrir cette lumière parisienne. Nous voyons cette sérénité dans ce tableau et dans le choix de ce sujet.
Il faut comprendre qu'à l'époque ce type de sujet est un non-sujet. Les artistes d'alors - Cabanel, Cormon - peignent des sujets académiques, des commandes. Ici, nous avons des personnages qui ne sont pas des héros. Mais c'est un sujet personnel, celui de Vincent Van Gogh, qui n'a vendu de toute sa vie qu'un seul tableau. C'est donc un véritable œil de l'artiste que nous avons ici, et c'est assez émouvant. Il faut noter aussi qu'à cette période montmartroise, bien qu'assez serein et apaisé, il peint malgré tout près de 200 tableaux et a déjà en lui cette frénésie créative.
Si l'on considère l'ensemble des œuvres de Vincent Van Gogh, combien se trouvent encore dans le privé de nos jours ?
Il existe très peu de tableaux encore en mains privées aujourd'hui, du moins de cette qualité-là. La majeure partie de ses tableaux sont dans les collections publiques, pour beaucoup à Amsterdam et pour certaines au musée d'Orsay. Dans le privé, nous n'avons pas de véritable cartographie de la détention des œuvres de Vincent Van Gogh. Il existe néanmoins un intérêt de plus en plus prégnant sur le marché asiatique. Van Gogh est considéré comme l'un des plus grands artistes sur le marché international, au même titre que Picasso, Rembrandt et Léonard de Vinci. Les Américains ont également toujours été intéressés par Vincent, mais de nombreuses œuvres sont détenues dans des collections européennes.
Une visiteuse photographie "Scène de rue à Montmartre" à l'hôtel Drouot.• Crédits : Lisa Guyenne - Radio France
La vente de "Scène de rue à Montmartre" s'annonce comme une vente majeure sur le marché de l'art en 2021 ?
C'est en effet l'une des œuvres montmartroises les plus importantes de Van Gogh à ne pas se trouver dans un musée. C'est rarissime, d'autant plus qu'elle est vendue sur le marché parisien. Cela n'avait pas eu lieu depuis plus de cinquante ans. Le marché parisien n'avait pas vu des œuvres de cette qualité-là depuis très longtemps.
C'est probablement le tableau le plus important à être vendu cette année en France. Traditionnellement, les œuvres sont exportées pour être vendues à New York. Or, la famille, française a fait le choix de vendre ce tableau en France, lui qui a été peint à quelques centaines de mètres de l'hôtel Drouot. C'était un véritable choix et une aubaine pour le marché parisien, qui se montre capable de rivaliser avec le marché américain ou anglais.
En outre, c'est un événement culturel, en cette période de disette et de fermeture des musées. A Drouot, des visiteurs sont venus faire la queue sur plusieurs centaines de mètres pour observer le tableau.
À quel résultat peut aboutir cette vente aux enchères ?
Le tableau est estimé entre cinq et huit millions d'euros. C'est une estimation très prudente, mais attractive. C'est un signe que veut donner la famille. La dernière œuvre vendue de Van Gogh était une petite sanguine, un petit dessin qui s'est vendu huit millions d'euros à New York. Nous avons de forts espoirs pour "Scène de rue à Montmartre".
Est-il possible qu'un musée rachète le tableau ?
C'est possible, évidemment, qu'il s'agisse d'un musée français ou étranger. L'État français dispose d'un mécanisme d'acquisition, la préemption, lui permettant de se substituer aux derniers enchérisseurs. C'est également une question de budget : les musées étrangers ont des moyens, des mécènes peuvent venir aider des musées à acquérir cette œuvre… Nous souhaitons obtenir le juste prix. Nous serions très contents qu'un musée soit le dépositaire, mais c'est la rencontre de l'offre et de la demande qui décidera.
Between 1916 and 1917, a most unusual person makes a small number of fleeting appearances in Franz Kafka’s unpublished papers. One is in a diary entry dated April 6, 1917:
Today, in a little harbour, which apart from fishing boats is normally used only by the two passenger steamers that ply the lake, there lay a strange bark. A clumsy old craft, relatively low and very broad, as filthy as if it had been swamped with bilge water, which still see med to be dripping down the yellowish sides; the masts incomprehensibly tall, the upper third of the mainmast snapped; wrinkled, coarse, yellowish-brown sails stretched in confusion between the yards; patch-work, too weak for the slightest gust.
I gazed in amazement at it for a time, waited for someone to show himself on deck. No one appeared. A workman sat down beside me on the harbour wall. “Whose ship is that?” I asked. ”This is the first time I have seen it.” “It puts in every two or three years,” said the man, “and belongs to the hunter Gracchus.”’
No introduction or commentary accompanies these sentences, which Kafka most likely wrote while in his Prague apartment. They evoke a set of events and conversations that he had begun to record in his notebooks four months earlier.
A longer sequence in the so-called Oktavhefte, dated to December 1916, sets out a similar scene of arrival in fuller detail:
Two boys were sitting on the harbor wall playing dice. On the steps of a monument a man was reading a newspaper in the shadow of the sword-wielding hero. A girl was filling her tub at the fountain. A fruit-seller was lying beside his wares, looking out across the lake. Through the empty window and door openings of a tavern two men could be seen drinking their wine in the depths. Out in front the proprietor was sitting at a table dozing. A bark glided silently into the little harbour, as if borne on water. A man in a blue overall climbed ashore and drew the ropes through the wings. Two other men, wearing dark coats with silver buttons, carried out past the boatman a bier draped with a great tasseled cloth of flower-patterned silk, beneath which there evidently lay a human being. No one on the quay troubled about the newcomers; even when they lowered the bier to wait for the boatman, who was still busy with the ropes, no one approached, no one asked them a question, no one gave them a closer look.
This passage identifies the place of these occurrences. It is the town of Riva, on the northern shores of Lake Garda, where Kafka spent holidays in 1909 and 1913. It is striking that in both the diary entry and this sequence from the notebook, certain human beings are awaited and yet missing from the scene. The author of the text in the diary recalls expecting “someone to show himself on deck” before specifying this general absence: “no one appeared.” In the longer rendition in the notebook, the desertion is developed into a series of sentences about “no one.”
In both texts, however, the observation of absence gives way to the introduction of a name and title belonging to one person. Each time, the reader learns that the hunter Gracchus has arrived—or rather that he has returned in his customary fashion. Men in “dark coats and silver buttons,” in the notebook, proceed to convey the hunter’s bier to a “yellowish two-storied house that rose abruptly on the left close to the water.” Next, they carry it “through the low but gracefully pillared doorway” into a “cool, spacious room at the rear side of the building, from which no other house, but only a bare grey-black wall of rock was to be seen.” The “carriers” light candles at the head of the bier, but it seems that only a play of shades is perceptible. The candles “gave no light to the room; it was just as if shadows had been merely startled from their rest and sent flickering over the walls.”
It is striking that in both the diary entry and this sequence from the notebook, certain human beings are awaited and yet missing from the scene.
At this point in this longer sequence from the Oktavhefte, the “human being” aboard the barge is described. “The cloth covering the bier had been thrown back. Lying there was a man with wildly matted hair and beard, his skin sunburned, rather like a hunter in appearance. He lay there with his eyes closed, motionless and apparently without breathing, yet only the surroundings indicated that perhaps this man was dead.” The seemingly incidental word “perhaps” (vielleicht) soon shows itself to be crucial. A “gentleman” of considerable importance, “an old man with a top-hat and a mourning band,” enters the house, proceeds to the room, and steps up to the bier, laying “his hand on the brow of the recumbent figure.”
He kneels down to pray, indicating to the “carriers” as well as the solitary boatman that he is to be left alone with the body of the unknown “human being.” “At once” the man lying on the bier opens his eyes, turns “his face towards the gentleman with a painful smile,” addressing him: “Who are you?” That question is easily answered; the distinguished gentleman is Salvatore, burgomaster of Riva. Far less certain are the terms with which the reclining hunter himself responds to his interlocutor’s queries: ‘”Are you dead?’ ‘Yes,’ said the hunter, ‘as you see. Many years ago, indeed it must be an uncommonly long time ago, I fell from a rock in the Black Forest—that is in Germany—when I was hunting a chamois. Since then I have been dead.’ ‘But you are alive, too,’ said the burgomaster. ‘To some extent,’ said the hunter, ‘to some extent I am alive too.”‘
Undoubtedly deceased and yet also “to some extent” (gewissermaßen) alive, the hunter Gracchus has been forced to become a traveler. “My death boat went off course,” he avows. “A wrong turn of the wheel, a moment’s absence of mind on the part of the helmsman, the distraction of my lovely native country, I cannot tell what it was; I only know this, that I remained on earth and that ever since my boat has been sailing.” Gracchus is, in his words, “forever on the great stairway” to the other world. “On that infinitely wide and open stairway I clamber about, sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes on the right, sometimes on the left, always in motion. But when I soar up with a supreme effort and can already see the gate shining above me, I wake up on my old boat, still forlornly stranded in some earthly sea.” To the burgomaster’s pointed and far from uninterested question as to whether the hunter now means to take up residence in his lakeside city, Gracchus, making light of such a possibility, offers few assurances. “‘Now have you a mind to stay here in Riva with us?’ ‘I have no mind,’ said the hunter with a smile, and to excuse the jest he laid his hand on the burgomaster’s knee. ‘I am here, more than that I do not know, more than that I cannot do. My boat has no rudder; it is driven by the wind that blows in the nethermost regions of death.”‘
The hunter Gracchus is a diminished human being in a sense that is new in this investigation into variously missing persons. It would be imprecise and insufficient to consider him an “absentee” according to any traditional definition of that term, even if by his own account his whereabouts have been unknown for an unusually long time: “Fifteen hundred years,” as he wistfully recalls in one of Kafka’s other accounts of him. Unlike a missing person in the legal sense, he cannot be presumed to be alive; in his every appearance, he insists that he has died. It would be at least as dissatisfying, however, to infer that he is a nonperson after the manner of those who suffer a “decrease of the head.” Although it is likely that Gracchus may not lay claim to the rights and prerogatives of any ordinary subject of the law, it is certain that the death that he claims to have suffered is not exclusively civil. His case, in short, is neither that of the legal person crafted in the absence of a body nor that of the living body that persists in the diminution or nullification of the legal person.
Nonetheless, like the representation fashioned in the aftermath of the missing body and the peculiar status of the human being diminished by some formal legal or social procedure, the hunter Gracchus is, in a precise sense, a nonperson. For he is a being about whom—or which—it is impossible to maintain either of these contradictory propositions: that “he is a person” or that he “is not a person.” In his return to Riva, as in his intermittent appearances in Kafka’s papers, he raises a disquieting, yet intractable question: the question of what, in a human being, outlasts death, being “to some extent” alive.
Each time, the reader learns that the hunter Gracchus has arrived—or rather that he has returned in his customary fashion.
Any consideration of Kafka’s accounts of Gracchus must begin with the observation that they are unpublished and unauthorized; in principle, all were to be destroyed according to the author’s wishes. None of the surviving texts can be considered complete in any simple sense, and the variations, commonalities, and breaks among the extant “versions” of the material have been variously interpreted. It remains uncertain how many Gracchus texts there are. Some scholars argue for the existence of three versions of the material, others for five. Malcolm Pasley, the editor of the German critical edition, suggests, on the basis of a convincing study of Kafka’s papers, that there are four “Gracchus fragments.”
The surest point of entry into the universe of this multiple, yet insistently loquacious dead man may lie in the formal architecture of Kafka’s four narrations. They rely on a single set of grammatical possibilities: those afforded by personal pronouns. Each time, it is by means of an/, a you, or a he that Gracchus is announced.
The “fragments” can be ordered by means of the role these persons play. The diary entry consists first of sentences belonging to some third person’s perspective and then of an exchange in direct discourse, involving an / and a you. This sequence first relates the events that occurred “today, in the little harbour,” in an impersonal voice; then it introduces the view of a narrator, who appears as a witness to the arrival of the “clumsy old craft.” He recalls striking up a conversation, in perplexity, with a workman near the water: “I gazed at it in astonishment for some time, waited for someone to show himself on deck. No one appeared. A workman sat down beside me on the harbour wall. ‘Whose ship is that?’ I asked.” The passage ends with an answer, in direct discourse, which concerns neither the speaker nor the addressee, but the unseen owner of the bark: “‘It puts in every two or three years,’ said the man, ‘and belongs to the hunter Gracchus.”‘
By contrast, the longest of the Gracchus narratives in the notebooks lacks any reference to a narrator. This sequence begins resolutely in the third person, with sentences that seem to admit of no subjective perspective, according to the Flaubertian model of impersonality that Kafka admired and made his own. The scene at Riva is laid out absolutely, without any indication of time with respect to storytelling, such as “today,” and without any indication of perspective with respect to the origin of the discourse, such as “I” or “you.” No one recounts these few details: “Two boys were sitting on the harbour playing dice. On the steps of a monument a man was reading a newspaper.” It is only once the burgomaster and Gracchus are alone in the dark room that the discourse shifts. Diegesis gives way to mimesis. The first words are those of the man on the bier: “Who are you?” The two men begin to converse. Each addresses the other as a second person; each uses the first person for himself. This text ends with the words of the hunter, which do not explicitly evoke anyone: “My boat has no rudder; it is driven by the wind that blows in the nethermost regions of death.”
The notebooks contain a further account of Gracchus that possesses a different grammatical and literary form. This sequence begins and proceeds without any narration, consisting solely of the exchange of direct discourse in conversation. Everything occurs within one cabin on the “old boat.” The inception is a question that is addressed to the hunter and that refers to speech omitted from the text: ‘”What is it you say, hunter Gracchus, you have been sailing for hundreds of years now in this old boat?’ ‘For fifteen hundred years.’ ‘And always in this ship?’ ‘Always in this bark. Bark, I believe, is the correct expression. You aren’t familiar with nautical matters?'” Here there are only two persons, and both are speakers. Over a bottle of wine, Gracchus answers his interlocutor’s questions about his vessel, its recently deceased master, and his own origins, death, and survival—until he learns of his conversation partner’s ignorance. Belatedly, it occurs to the pensive hunter to pose a question whose answer proves the occasion for the end of the discussion:
“I say, do you know the Black Forest?” “No.” “You really don’t know anything. The little child of the helmsman knows more, truly far more, than you do. Who wafted you in here anyway? It’s a calamity. Your initial modest y was only too well justified. You’re a mere nothing I am filling up with wine. So now you don’t even know the Black Forest. And I was born there. Until I was twenty-five I hunted there. If only the chamois hadn’t led me on—well, now you know it—I’d have had a long and happy hunter’s life, but I was lured by the chamois! I fell and was killed on the rocks below. Don’t ask any more. Here I am, dead, dead, dead. Don’t know why I’m here.”
Any consideration of Kafka’s accounts of Gracchus must begin with the observation that they are unpublished and unauthorized; in principle, all were to be destroyed according to the author’s wishes.
This rapid summary of the syntax of three Gracchus texts suffices to define their permutations of grammatical and narrative form. There are, in short, two sequences that begin in a third person before passing into dialog and introducing speakers: the diary entry and the extended narrative from the notebooks. There is, moreover, one sequence that consists wholly of dialog: the conversation in the cabin. The fourth “fragment,” however, is of another form. It knows neither the third person nor the second; in it, narration and dialog remain equally absent. There, a first person writes alone. He reflects on his condition: “As I write this I am lying on a wooden board; I wear—it is no pleasure to look at me—a filthy winding-sheet; my legs are covered by a large woman’s shawl of flower-patterned silk with long fringes.” He recalls the origins of his state:
I have been lying here ever since the time when I, still the live hunter Gracchus at home in the Black Forest, was hunting a chamois and fell. Everything happened in good order. I gave chase, I fell, I bled to death in a ravine, I was dead, and this bark was supposed to convey me to the next world. I can still remember how cheerfully I stretched myself out on this board for the first time; never had the mountains heard such song from me as was heard then by these four still shadowy walls. I had been glad to live and was glad to die; before stepping aboard I joyfully flung down my miserable accoutrements, rifle, knapsack, hunting coat, that I had always worn with pride, and I slipped into my winding sheet like a girl into her wedding-dress. I lay there and waited.
The fourth version might seem to complete a circuit of narrative possibilities drawn out in the other three “fragments.” After texts of narration in the third person and texts of dialog in which each speaker addresses a second person, the reader encounters a statement in the first person. But the truth is that this fourth rendition stands apart. The others contain elements suggesting the possibility of a transition, in storytelling, between speaking subjects. From a third person, they move to a first person and to a second person; from a first person, they pass to a second person and conversely leave open the eventuality of a transition to a third. Yet the sequence in which Gracchus writes on his wooden board refuses the perspective of any third person; this recounting excludes any viewpoint but that of the solitary writer. For this reason, it precludes the possibility of an interlocutor, forbidding dialog as such. Alone, the writer draws out this consequence:
No one will read what I write here. No one will come to help me. Even if there were a commandment to help me, all the doors of all the houses would remain closed; all the windows would stay closed; all the people would lie in their beds with the blankets drawn over their heads; the whole earth one great nocturnal lodging. And there is sense in that, for no one knows of me; and if anyone knew of me, he would not know where I could be found; and if anyone knew where I could be found, he would not know how to help me. The idea of wanting to help me is a sickness, and it has to be cured in bed.
It has often been noted that by its structure, writing in general anticipates the vanishing of its author, being language crafted to survive the cessation of speech. This text renders that disappearance brightly visible. In the notebook, this passage appears to follow the statement, “I am the hunter Gracchus; my home is in the Black Forest in Germany.” But after those words of self-identification, Kafka draws a line. Only then does he write “No one will read what I write here.” As Roland Reuß has noted, the consequence is that it is not immediately evident to whom this statement belongs; only in the next folio is it referred to the hunter Gracchus. The most striking feature of this passage, however, concerns not the effacement of the writer, but the programmatic denial of the possibility of a reader. “No one will read what I write here” seems to be the statement of an uncompromising exclusion. The truth is that it is equivocal. In a first sense, it establishes a simple inexistence: there will be no reader for what is written. In a second sense, the statement has a different meaning: according to the paradoxically affirmative syntax of its form, it suggests that there is a reader—one who is, however, “No One.”
This rapid summary of the syntax of three Gracchus texts suffices to define their permutations of grammatical and narrative form.
This would be Kafka’s Roman hunter’s variation on Odysseus’s ancient ruse. Gracchus guarantees that even—or especially—where his words are heard, they will be perceived by someone utterly lacking in identity or individuality, or both. They are for No One. To the obvious question of who might this No One be? Gracchus suggests an answer: it is a person such as himself, the solitary writer. Reader and writer share in a single impossibility. Each is no one, either on account of being of no consequence, “a mere nothing being filled up with wine,” according to the dialogic sequence of the material, which casts the hunter’s conversation partner as an amiable Polyphemus, or on account of being so untimely as to be unknowable. Yet there is also a further sense in which the writer, like the reader he denies, is no one, and it is still more disquieting. Being someone or something that is “to a certain extent” alive past death, Gracchus eludes the very idea of a human being. He is not a person, but rather the indeterminate and indeterminable remains of one.
What is certain is that Gracchus writes, and he does so solely for himself, whoever or whatever he may be. Without troubling himself to add an indication of time or place, he composes a diary of a kind, if only on a single page, without preface or continuation. In this sense, he is not entirely unlike the writer called “Kafka,” which in Czech means “jackdaw” or, in the language of the Romans, gracchus. An imagined No One or the real and only author, a first person, a second person, or a third, the hunter Gracchus can in any case be only an absentee. Nonetheless—and for this very reason—he and the questions he raises make appearances and reappearances, visits and visitations, in Kafka’s own books and diaries and beyond them: in the variegated fields of law, mythology, ritual, and theology. From time to time, Gracchus returns to Riva, place and also “shore” (riva), living on, defying the power to name and to represent.
Daniel Heller-Roazen is the Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Comparative Literature and the Council of Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author, most recently, ofNo One’s Ways: An Essay on Infinite Naming,Dark Tongues: The Art of Rogues and Riddlers, andThe Fifth Hammer: Pythagoras and the Disharmony of the World.
