My Maupassant Moment

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Literature and music present many examples of sudden, poignant awareness of the passage of time.  These "pincements au coeur," these sudden jabs at the heart, often occur when protagonists suddenly realize that the ground that underlies experience isn't, and has never been, solid; that the tar pit into which we mortals begin to sink at the moment of birth is inescapable.  We look up at the heavens and recall stargazing during a vacation decades and decades ago; the patterns of the constellations haven't changed--at least to us--but what about the observer?

These intimations of mortality are especially moving when older, active persons suddenly realize they can no longer keep up with the young and the days of wine and roses are coming to an end.  One thinks of the Marschallin in Strauss's opera, der Rosenkavalier.  She has had an affair with Octavian, someone young enough to be her son.  He loves her, but she realizes that they have no future together; she knows he will soon fall in love with someone his age.  Alone, after she has sent the confused Octavian away, she sings one of the most beautiful musical sequences about aging ever written; "Die Zeit ist ein sonderbar Ding," (Time is a strange thing).  For years one is hardly ever aware of the passage of time; and then, suddenly, clocks are everywhere.  And then...

One of my favorite examples in literature of the loss inevitably associated with aging is a very brief story by Guy de Maupassant entitled "Le Menuit".  (Age is  not all loss, mind you.  Mind having become an increasingly dim room, memory's Lost, Lost, Lost and Found, as it were; in this room there is not only room for thought, however. but room for joy and laughter as well. Nevertheless).

2. Le Menuit

The story is told by Jean Bridelle, a fiftyish bachelor, to an unidentified listener.  M. Bridelle has witnessed the horrors of the battlefield, but very few things in his life have moved him as much as the tale he is about to relate.  Many years ago, he had the habit of reading in a formal garden.  He noticed that an old man was making peculiar movements, evidently practicing a strange dance, every day.  They became friends.  M. Bridelle was curious. One day, the old man, in the company of his wife, informed him that the dance in question was the minuet:

"Excuse me," I said to the old dancer, "What is a minuet?"

He was taken aback. "The minuet, Sir, is the queen of dances and the dances of queens.  Sine there are no more kings. there are no more minuets."

Then he began, in a fustian style, a long account about the dance, which I didn't understand. I wanted him to describe the steps, the movements, and the poses.  He appeared confused, nervous, and upset, apparently exasperated by his inability to comply to my request. Then, suddenly turning to his old companion, who remained silent and grave, he said, "Elise, would you like, tell me, would you like for us to show the gentleman what it was? 

She glanced about uncomfortably, then stood up without saying a word and placed herself before the old man.

Then I saw something unforgettable.

They moved backwards and forwards, with ridiculous expressions on their faces that made them look like play-acting children; they smiled at each other, rocked and swayed, bowed and made little jumps as if they were two old mechanized puppets controlled by an apparatus that was slightly broken.

I looked at them with a troubled heart; my spirit had fallen prey to an indescribable melancholy. It was as if I had been witnessing something that was as pitiable as it was comical, the shadow of something out of fashion for a very long time.

They suddently stopped; they had completed the dance.  For a while they just stood there; then they embraced each other in tears.

                    from Le Menuit, by Guy de Maupassant
                    translated from the French by Thomas Dorsett



3. My Maupassant Moment

My Maupassant Moment begins with a prelude.  On the night of February 9, 2018, after working together at Nirmala's office that day, my wife and I attended the Friday Night Swing Dance Club, and danced till a little bit before 11 P.M. (We have been doing this for years.  The music the band plays, mostly rock 'n' roll standards, is as contemporary as the minuet was to Jean Bridelle's ears.  We are somewhat younger--I imagine that the fictive pair was in their eighties--we are also in much better shape).

We were in bed shortly after midnight; the next morning, after our usual breakfast of oatmeal, blueberries, and tea, we were off to the gym.  Every Saturday I take an hour's spinning session conducted by our friend, Sushil Sharma, who is younger than us by a few years and in great shape. During my time on the bike, Nirmala takes a Zumba course--not Zumba Gold, mind you--which takes place next door to the bicycle room.  After that, we usually do some weight training by ourselves; we finish our morning at the gym with an hour's yoga session--yes, most participants are much younger, and no, we do not do "The Crow."

This time we decided to do something different.  I had informed Nirmala that there was going to be a Met Simulcast at a theatre within walking distance.  The opera to be performed was Donizetti's potboiler, L'Eliser d'Amore.  I had seen it performed many times, and wasn't all that keen to see it again.  But it is a potboiler for a very good reason: it is a tuneful, winsome, dramatically effective masterwork. Nirmala  had seen snippets of a performance in the Great Performances public television series, in which Pavarotti sang the tenor lead.  She liked what she had heard, so we decided to go.

When we arrived at the theatre, we realized that we still had the atavistic habit of buying tickets at the box office, instead of ordering them online: there was a long line; nearly everyone on it was in their teens.  When we finally got to the box office, about five minutes before the opera was scheduled to begin, we were informed that all tickets had been sold except for a few in the first row.  Looking up at feet while listening to what the heads, appearing to be bird-sized from our perspective, were up to did not seem like a good idea.  After having made the effort of rushing about and having a very quick lunch at Starbuck's, however,  we decided to attend the performance, nevertheless.

The first row wasn't all that bad.  The seats were comfy recliners--what will they think of next?  At first we must have looked as uncomfortable as Margaret Dumont did in the tipped-back dental chair in that iconic scene from a Marx Brothers film--you remember the one I'm referring to, don't you? We soon settled in and began to feel downright cozy.

The performance was stellar.  Matthew Polenzani sang exquisitely, and brought down the house with his rendering of the most famous aria of the opera, una furtiva lagrima.  Pretty Yende, a South African soprano, who is not only pretty but is in possession of a very beautiful voice, sang the role of Adina.  A dashing young Italian singer by the name of Davide Luciano was very effective in the comic role of Belcore.

It was the singer, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, who performed the role of Dr. Dulcamara, the quack who sells the snake-oil elixer to Nemorino, pining for Adina; it was he, the Italian bass baritone, who elicited my Maupassant moment.  D'Arcangelo incorporated a classic basso buffo role; Dr. Dulcamara takes the stage--or at least should take the stage--in his scene in the first act, in which he hawks his wares to a gullible public, including, of course, the love-struck Nemorino.  It is a wonderful opportunity for an basso buffo to shine.  D'Arcangelo has a full, sonorous voice; he sang well, but something was missing...

...Zoom!  In a flash, I was transsported to the Metropolitan Opera House, listening to the incomparable Fernando Corena sing this role.  How could I remember the details so well--the performance took place fifty years ago!  I hadn't thought of him, nor listened to a recording of him, for many decades.  My mind's eye didn't see him at first, but my mind's ear heard him as if he returned from the dead--he died of a heart attack in his native Switzerland in 1984, at the young age of 67.

I had heard, in my years as an opera fan, many fine performers, such as James McCracken, Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, Franco Correlli, Jesseye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Albanese, Pavarotti, Cesare Siepi, etc. etc.; I count Corena among the best.  He did not have a very versatile voice, but he had what Gerard Manley Hopkins attributed to Purcell, a high degree of inscape, that is, a striking singularity.  He was a consummate actor as well, and commanded the stage whenever he was on it.  His phrasing and timing were unforgettable.  Listening to him sing the role of Dulcamara was an unforgettable experience.

Yet I had forgotten it. 

The then of a half century ago became now once more--how could there be such a wide gulf of time between the two events?  What happened to that young man in the standing-room section listening to Corena with rapt attention?  It's as if it were yesterday.  And where will this old man, listening to beautiful music next to his lovely wife of nearly fifty years, be, many years prior to fifty years hence?  Guess.

Nirmala and I are not like the tragic couple in Maupassant's story; we are active and enjoying life.  Tomorrow, in fact, we will be attending a performance of Hamlet in Washington D.C., in the company of her sister, Romila, and our brother-in-law, Sudhir. 

I will leave you with a quote from the second act of Hamlet, in which Hamlet describes the way he feels (at that time) about humanity:

What piece of work is a man--how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals--and what to me is this quintessence of dust?

                                             Hamlet, 2.2, lines 264-269

Adam didn't get a chance to taste the fruit from the tree of Eternal Life. There's the rub; we are mortal. This quintessence of dust--

I don't know what it is, anymore than you do.  Let's not forget, however, that Hamlet is destined to transcend his melancholy: he becomes enlightened in the end, recognizing his own mortality, accepting life as it is, transcending the mere personal with the realization that everything is connected. Not a bad example to follow..

My Maupassant moment jolted back into my awareness the fact  that our time on earth is limited and provided me with a much needed  dose of reality. While alive, we are in possession of the greatest known gift in all creation: consciousness--and the height of consciousness is wisdom. Wisdom and love, while not neglecting the needs of the self, are the only means we have to transcend the limited self and its accompanying "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."  It is a good thing when death reminds us of our mortality--provided that we wake up and use whatever time we have left more wisely and more lovingly.

Whether you will live more than fifty years or less--perhaps much less, who knows?--ask yourself this: isn't it time to appreciate, celebrate, and accept life as it is? Isn't it time to really live, and to help others to really live as well?  If not now, when?  It's later than you think.