During the summer of 1974, Louis Aragon – the “last of the giants of our time, whom I admire more than anyone”, as Jean d’Ormesson wrote – was present in sunny Lebanon, in Baalbeck. It was on the occasion of the show that Alain Werner gave of his Fou d’Elsa, a title directly inspired by the popular Arab history of the thwarted loves of Leïla al-Amiriya and her cousin the poet Qaïs al-Moulawah, the latter gone mad (majnoun) by dint of repeating like a whirling dervish “La Ilah”, confused with the divine name, and no longer recognizing the physical object of a passion that has become mystical: his earthly “Leïla”. This true story, beautiful and at the same time terrible at the same time regarding blindness to beauty, has inspired many authors over the centuries, among other notables: Nizami in Persia (12th century), Ahmad Chawki in Egypt (19th- 20th century), and of course William Shakespeare in England (16th-17th century).
Brought before the caliph of the time, who intrigued demanded to look closely at a woman inspiring such mystical desperate love, the Bedouin Leila did not seem particularly attractive, and the sultan was even disappointed. To this disenchantment, Qaïs gave the flawless explanation to his master: “Sire, you do not have my eyes, which alone can perceive her eternal and real beauty, it is because my love for Leïla is infinite. . »
“Le Fou d’Elsa” in Baalbeck in 1974. Photo archives Baalbeck International Festival
What finer homage might Louis Aragon pay to Arabic poetry, to Baalbeck, to Elsa, to women, and of course to mad love, than to agree to have his personal interpretation of the story of Majnoun represented there? , which has defied time so well, since Aragon himself also very concretely raised his wife Elsa to the rank of supreme star? We will see, in the selected excerpt, that far from celebrating a purely metaphysical entity, Aragon paid homage to the earthly female beings that we perhaps encounter on a daily basis, who without even knowing it can nevertheless be modest but true admirable heroines.
On the occasion of the fortieth year of the death of Louis Aragon, who was one of the three essential founding fathers of the surrealist movement (André Breton, Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault), the fine review, Let the infinity enter, founded by the singer Jean Ferrat and the Society of Friends of the Poet, published in its number 72 and in its entirety the interview that Fady Stephan had had with the author of Le Fou d’Elsa, in July 1974 at the Palmyra Hotel in Baalbeck , where Aragon had come to attend in person the spectacle of his work.
Having climbed, during the intermission on the night of July 17, 1974, the steps of the superbly lit temple of Bacchus, Fady Stephan obtained without difficulty from Aragon, for Saturday July 20 noon at the Palmyra hotel, an interview of more than one hour, which focused mainly on the Dadaist, Surrealist and contemporary literature movements, three essential sources of inspiration from which Aragon himself proceeded. The meeting focused mainly on the so-called “new criticism”, but just as much on Elsa.
The magazine reproduces, in ten pages embellished with suggestive photos of the exceptional site of the festival, the grandiose architecture and the grace of the choreography. They were kindly offered by the committee of the Baalbeck International Festival. The magazine bears on the cover both the name of Fady Stephan and that of the Greek writer Melpo Axioti (1905-1973), who wrote in demotic and in French, of the composer Serge Nigg (1924-2008), one of the first of his discipline to plunge into the adventure of dodecaphonic music, finally of the poet and playwright Jean-Pierre Siméon, the current director of the Poetry collection at Gallimard. It can be obtained from the Society of Friends of Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet, at 23, allée Paul Langevin. 78210 Saint-Cyr-l’Ecole. Yvelines. Ile-de-France.
Portrait of Louis Aragon. Bibliothèque nationale de France Wikicommons
Excerpts: Mystery of Elsa
FS – Could we talk regarding a person who was dear to you, whom you made us love in your poems and your novels? Elsa aroused jealousies. We did not understand that you wanted to impose your passion for her on the universe. Is “Elsa” of poetry a particular woman: Elsa Triolet, or does she carry the myth of the woman?
A. – She was my wife… We lived together for 42 years. I suffered what she suffered, and once morest people, for simple reasons: she was Russian, Soviet. She was not a party member, she was never a communist. So they reproached me for not, being a communist, having convinced my wife to join the party. I didn’t convince her, okay. How absurd one can be on this kind of subject! But there is one thing certain, she was extremely persecuted in France at this time by hostility towards foreigners, especially before our marriage. We didn’t get married very quickly. Before we were together, she had married a first Frenchman who was called Monsieur Triolet. It was from there that she took this name that she kept to write, but she only began to write in French in 1938. She therefore had eighteen years of life in France, ten with me, but eight before. And she always had the police come and bother her. People didn’t want to take her seriously, and I felt that very strongly. And in front of the filth of people, I took this tone to talk regarding her. I diverted the thunder from her on me: because, yes, it’s a fact, I was the ridiculous character who writes poems for his wife. It is an absolutely grotesque thing!…
FS – Incredible… people…
A. – It’s incredible, but already happened to some. You know it’s stories. For me it’s even worse, because in the end we lived eleven years without being married! (Moved) but following eleven years, Elsa told me that we should get married. I always said to him: “You have to do it, it would be easier, wouldn’t it? but she didn’t want to, because you had to get up in the morning to go to an attorney who had done a divorce before and who only wanted to see people at eleven o’clock in the morning. She was like, “No! I will not go to this gentleman at nine o’clock in the morning! Never mind ! We don’t need to get married! »
But in October 1938, when there was Munich… Elsa was convinced that war was going to break out and she said: “Under these conditions, you have to get married. And she got up before nine o’clock in the morning, and we did everything. The divorce had to be pronounced, the divorce was not difficult: Monsieur Triolet made no difficulty. He was someone with whom we were very good, but he generally wanted her not to divorce him, simply for one reason, which was that, as he was a rather fast-paced man, when he had an affair with a woman and that woman wanted him to marry her, he said: “I can’t, because I’m married and my wife refuses me a divorce” (he laughs). But there he made no fuss. We got married at the end of February 1939, so a few months before the war, because she said: “If the war comes, I mightn’t even bring you parcels to prison!” Life was like that, for us it was of that order. We lived in conditions of persecution that people do not imagine.
FS – I read somewhere that Elsa wrote a novel with various colored inks. Has it appeared?
A. – With colored inks?
FS – It may be a journalist’s myth!
A. – (Laughing) you know, it’s very strange: it happened to Elsa to change her characters, and where there was a man, for example, to put a woman, or the opposite, but she didn’t changed pen!
During the summer of 1974, Louis Aragon – the “last of the giants of our time, whom I admire more than anyone”, as Jean d’Ormesson wrote – was present in sunny Lebanon, in Baalbeck. It was on the occasion of the performance given there by Alain Werner of his Fou d’Elsa, a title directly inspired by the popular Arab story of the thwarted loves of…
