Pierre Louÿs, Rodin, and Aphrodite: Sculpture in Fiction and on the Stage, 1895-1914
A spate of recent publications concerning Pierre Louÿs makes this a propitious moment to reassess his Aphrodite, which was one of the best-selling novels of the Belle Époque.1 Originally conceived as a three-act drama, the novel was serialized in Le Mercure de France between August 1895 and January 1896. The first edition of the book, published on 28 March 1896, dedicated to the painter Albert Besnard, sold out within ten days (ML, p. 201), and a review by François Coppée in Le Journal (16 April 1896) then helped promote it to a mass readership. Before the year ended, there was a collector's edition and a new illustrated edition with a first print-run of over 10,000 copies.2 The profits from Aphrodite would underpin the financial stability of the Mercure de France publishing house and Louÿs claimed in 1904 that, over the previous ten years, no other French novel had enjoyed comparable literary and commercial success (ML, p. 485).
Aphrodite is set in Mediterranean antiquity, where the author constructs an imaginary alternative to the physical and moral climate of his time, an intention made explicit in his Preface to the novel (first published in La Revue blanche, 15 March 1896): 'Hélas! le monde moderne succombe sous un envahissement de laideur. Les civilisations remontent vers le Nord, entrent dans la brume, dans le froid, dans la boue. Quelle nuit!'3 The novel is anti-modern, anti-Northern and anti-Protestant. Among its predecessors are Salammbô and Anatole France's Thaïs, but Aphrodite is also a precursor of French literary and artistic 'Mediterraneanism', manifest in the 'École romane' of Jean Moréas, a poet Louÿs much admired (ML, p. 797), or the writings of Charles Maurras. Unlike Maurras, however, Louÿs did not identify with the classical order of fifth-century Athens. His novel is set in 57 BC, in Alexandria, the great Egyptian centre of Hellenistic culture. His late Hellenism is oriental, syncretic, hybrid and hedonistic, allowing expression of a sensual, symbolist and decadent aesthetic. [End Page 57]
Louÿs claimed he was the first of Mallarmé's disciples to 'écrire en pleine clarté' (ML, p. 1103), and his readers were rightly susceptible to the subtle musicality of his prose. Debussy found the book 'très humain tout en étant délicieusement harmonisé'4 and Mallarmé congratulated Louÿs on his 'hymne à la volupté', composed in 'splendide et pure' language: 'Le coup d'aile est à chaque tournant de la page avec éblouissement léger'.5
Stripped of its digressions and dancing girls, the narrative tells of a young sculptor, Démétrios, who becomes the lover of Bérénice, Queen of Egypt. The Queen commissions a monumental statue of naked Aphrodite, for which she will be the model, to stand in a new temple, built in gardens near the sea. The marble sculpture stands on a plinth of pink stone and wears a seven-string necklace whose largest pearl hangs between her breasts, 'comme un croissant de lune entre deux nuages ronds' (pp. 74–75, and 144).
Démétrios falls in love with his beautiful sculpture, which shimmers in the moonlight, as if, through the miracle of art, the living, immortal spirit of Aphrodite has been materialized. He abandons the Queen, will sleep only with prostitutes, and his ethic becomes 'la volupté sans pensée ou le contraire, l'idée sans jouissance' (p. 291).
Subsequently, however, the sculptor encounters an exquisite Jewish courtesan, named Chrysis. A vivid dream reveals to him an imaginary night of love with Chrysis in a luxurious, labyrinthine villa. Consequently, he turns away from her too for, after such a dream, reality can only disappoint.
Chrysis is condemned for crimes Démétrios committed at her command...
