The Chrysantheme Papers: The Pink Notebook of Madame Chrysantheme and other Documents of French Japonisme

Madame Chrysanth

… 127 … Madame Chrysanthème by PIeRRe LotI ChaPter i At the break of dawn, we spied Japan.1 Just at the predicted time, it appeared: a point still far away but precise in this ocean that had been for so many days a great void. At first it was no more than a series of pink mountaintops (the foremost archipelago of Fukaï in the rising sun). But behind these, all along the horizon, we soon saw, like a thickness in the air or a veil hovering on the water: this was it, the real Japan, and little by little from this great muddled cloud emerged the altogether solid outlines that were the mountains of Nagasaki. The wind was against us, a fresh breeze that grew steadily stronger, as if the country were blowing with all its strength to push us away from it.—The sea, the ropes, the whole ship pitched and throbbed. exCerPt from ChaPter ii By three o’clock in the afternoon, everything in the distance had pulled closer, close enough for rocky outcroppings and masses of greenery to hang over us. 1. This translation presents all of Chapters 1 and 33 and the first parts of Chapters 2 and 51. All ellipses are in the original; nothing has been omitted from this translation. [cr] … 128 … Madame Chrysanthème And now we entered into a kind of shadowy corridor between two very high mountain ranges that progressed with a bizarre symmetry —like the painted wings of a stage set simulating great depth, very beautiful, but not very realistic.—One might have said that this Japan had opened itself before us, magically ripping apart to allow us to penetrate into its very heart. At the end of this strange, long bay was supposed to be Nagasaki, but that was still out of sight. Everything was wonderfully green. The brisk sea breeze suddenly slackened, giving way to calm. The air, now very hot, was filled with the smell of flowers. And from this valley rose the astonishing music of crickets calling from one shore to another . All the mountains echoed their innumerable chirpings so that the land seemed to produce a noise like perpetually vibrating crystal. In the passage we brushed past a small tribe of large junks, which glided along very gently powered by an imperceptible breeze. They were silent on the barely stirring water; their white sails, stretched out on horizontal ropes, sagged weakly, falling into a thousand folds like window shades; their intricate decks rose up like castles in the style of ships of the middle ages. Surrounded by the intense green of the mountain walls, they looked white as snow. What a land of greenery and shadow, this Japan, what an unexpected Eden! . . . Out on the great ocean, it must have been daylight still, but here between the banks of this valley it seemed like evening already. Up above, the summits were brilliantly lit; below the wooded areas bordering the water were in the shadow of twilight. The junks passing by so white against the dark leaves were piloted noiselessly—marvelously —by little yellow men, completely naked with their hair combed and parted like women.—As we gradually pushed through the green corridor, the scents became more penetrating and the chirping of the crickets swelled like an orchestral crescendo. Up high in the luminous slit of sky between the mountains soared some kind of falcons crying “Han! Han! Han!” with the resonance of a human voice. Their cries fell sorrowfully, prolonged by the echo. All this fresh, exuberant nature carried with it a Japanese strangeness located in the indefinably bizarre mountaintops and, if one may say so, the unreality of things that are too pretty. The trees arrange themselves like bouquets with the same graceful preciousness as on lacquered panels. Great rocks rise up on end in exaggerated poses right next to breastlike hills covered with soft grasses. The various … 129 … Madame Chrysanthème elements of landscape find themselves thrown together as if they were artificial. . . . And, looking carefully, we saw here and there—usually built out over a cliff—some kind of mysterious little old pagoda half hidden in the greenery of the overhanging trees. For new arrivals such as ourselves, this, more than anything else, from the beginning struck a distant note and gave the feeling that in this country the Spirits, the woodland Gods, the classical symbols charged with guarding over...