The rain in Paris

 

I as a reader in this twenty first century am bonded to the text by the lesser boredom of the text in contrast with the greater boredom outside the text of other things to read or even, horrors, to do. It is in the balance of boredoms that this little superannuated smartass, this me, shares with the Zeitgeist of other readers of newspapers and magazines and social media and even sometimes print in what used to be called, for the yucks, the meat-osphere. Meat, humans that is, on one side, silicon on the other.

Ennui was once the kind of thing we find in the great Mallarme line, “La chair est triste, hélas ! et j'ai lu tous les livres.”  

But some say the age of all the books has passed. I don't believe it. But I do believe that ennui results from something like a reading or looking too long. The optical equipment sifts through the same content, or content that begins to seem the same, from the office job to the commute, from the same old dinner to the same old tv series. Ennui, in Paris this spring, was the weather. I call it spring because that is the official title of this time between March and June, but a winterish must never really left Paris for the first half of the year. The number of days it rained was an amazing 3,000,000, 000 – or maybe that is just what it seemed like. When I finally cast off my winter coat, about three weeks ago, I quickly had to rethink my decision.

A. tells me that they predict a heat wave soon. So from winter mush we will be tipped into New Delhi hell.

The great Paris poem about rain is Baudelaire’s fourth Spleen poem, which begins:

« Je suis comme le roi d'un pays pluvieux,
Riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant très vieux,
Qui, de ses précepteurs méprisant les courbettes,
S'ennuie avec ses chiens comme avec d'autres bêtes. »

It occurred to me that this poem must reflect a rainy season in Paris, some time in the 1850s when it was written. I have not found evidence for the date of the composition, so I cannot connect it, exactly, in all of its Poe funk, with something like our non-spring. However, it does seem like 1852 stands out as a rainy year. It was the year that a man named Vener, who wrote little articles for Le Corsair, the paper Baudelaire contributed to when it was called Le Corsair By

-Satan in 1847. It was edited, then, by a man named LePoitevan, who wanted to fill it with 40 to 60 line little essayettes. He called them vade retor.

By 1852, much ink and blood had gone under the bridge, including a revolution and a coup d’etat which gave France another Napoleon for “emperor”. The Corsaire was still published, and they still favored the vade retor, or what would be called the chronicle. Among their house writers was a hardworking man named Vener.  On June 9, 1852, his little piece was entitled: It rains. It is a clever bit of handwork, and it makes me think of Baudelaire – Benjamin was right to see Baudelaire as both a poet and an atmosphere, a general sensibility among writers. He begins by comparing different types of rain to different types of government: “ – when water falss with that monotone regularity that tells us that the whole sky is taken; it is like a bad government; one sadly awaits, with pain, without hope, for a near end; it seems like it will continue forever.”

Vener makes the rain the subject of the article that is not the article he should be writing – he should be writing “reflections on the budget, on Belgium, on the Empire, on the new state of France; impossible! The rain is against it.

It imprisons my will, it paralyzes my spirit, it conquers me by a negative force, it annihilates me; it might be said that its secret power washes away ideas, words, color, images!”

I rather agree. The rain, this non-season, has kept me inside our apartment. I lie on the couch. I sit at the table. I type to no avail, I read to no avail, I age to no avail.

All of this non-availing, though, is broken by one pleasant day, one spring day, one glimpse of sunlight on the plants on the terrace, one breath of fresh breeze running its fingers over the leafery in the pots. And that spring day is today!

I could be king of infinite space, today.