Lulu: pantomime in one act by Félicien Champsaur

Lulu pantomime in one act by F6licien ChampsaurI First perfonned at the Nouveau Cirque October I, 1888 Director: M. AGOUST Arthur SCHOPENHAUER, Academy dignitary, burlesque scholar ........ M. AGOUST LULU, clown and dancer ...... Mile MASSONI HARLEQUIN, dandy ........ M. FOOTIT Scene: a public square. the moon on high, smiling Properties: a heart, a candle, a tub of water English translation by Albert Bennel Copyright © 200I by Albert Bermel Modern Drama. 43:2"(Summer 2000) 252 ChampsaUf's Lulu 253 [DEDICATION] To Arsene Houssaye Literal)' and worldly master of the elegant life, penetrating novelist of the "great ladies" and the lesser, what do you make of Lulu and her lost heart? Of a clown who studies love from books only and trades in dissections of fair hearts or dark? If you see in Lulu and her wordless adventure a lighthearted procession of sentences, noble Arsene Houssaye, let these pretty girls in their short skirts scamper toward love and poetry. Felicien Champsaur MORAL 2 To know woman, you must love her. A poet who did not start out by being betrayed, like Alfred de Musset, is no more than a dreamer who does not know woman - other than by hearsay. And Renan will be able to ask Champsaur why he gave the leading part to Schopenhauer rather than to him, Renan. Lulu Scene I The square is deserted. A heart languishes on the ground. A large tub, filled with water, in the middle of the square, reflects the moon. With slow steps, Schopenhauer appears. He holds a folio and seems absorbed in his reading. He walks, his eyes not leaving his book except in profound meditation. He contemplates the moon, seems to make ca1culations. puts his remarkably long nose back into his "volume." 254 ALBERT BERMEL Suddenly he stumbles as his feet meet an obstacle. He SLOpS, astonished. He looks in every direction - around him - in the air. Then he explores the square with a slow, automatic gait. He sees the abandoned heart - stoops gravely - picks it up, studies it inquisitively , walks off with it. But the scholar-clown soon looks embarrassed by his find. He sits, deliberates . ponders for some time. All of a sudden, as an idea flickers in his mind, he strikes his brow, traps the idea in flight, and displays great joy. The skin-purpled clown takes from his pocket a medical kit. He opens it cautiously in front of him, and removes some surgical implements. He takes the heart, which he had placed nearby, and prepares LO perform an autopsy on it. His efforts are all in vain. He is unable, cannot find a way, to open up the heart; it is hard; he breaks his implements on it; it is a heart of stone. How can he see what it contains? The clown Schopenhauer, skin veined with purple, despairs, and appeals to the moon, the friend of those who read and write, or even dream, the night away. Scene /I Lulu now enters, miming that she has lost her heart and is looking for it. "There will be a good reward." She searches all over, inspects the ground; as she steps backward, still looking , she bumps into the basin of water. Startled, fearful, she dare not move. Champsaur's Lulu 255 Then, with a finger on her lips, and a hand over the empty spot for her heart, she looks behind her, turning her fine, blonde-topped head with a playful, coquettish air, to see what frightened her; and with this movement elegantly emphasizes the curved and fanlike shape of her lower back. Lulu's ripples of laughter ring out; in the basin she notices the moon, a reflection in the water. But she moves away, piqued, gloomy, pouting. Who has found her heart? Oh lord, oh lord, in whose place did she leave it? forget it? - At Harlequin's, in his litlle upstairs flat? At Monsieur Cassandre the banker's? Oh, no! With a friend? She searches afresh; suddenly she notices the old pedant, who paid no attention to her arrival; he's examining the female heart with a magnifying lens, anxiously turning it ~ound and over and over. On seeing her heart in the hands of...