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L: Good Dogs
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96 l Good Dogs for Joseph Stevens I have never been ashamed, even among my century’s young writers , of my admiration for Buffon; but today it is not the soul of that painter of stately nature to whom I call for aid. No. I rather call on Sterne, to say, “Descend from the sky, or rise from the Elysian Fields, to inspire me in celebrating good dogs, poor dogs, a song worthy of you, sentimental jester, incomparable jester! Do come, astride the famous ass who always accompanies you in posterity ’s memory and above all let this ass not forget to carry, held delicately between the lips, his immortal macaroon.” Down with the academic muse! I have nothing to do with that old prude. I invoke the familiar, urban, living muse to help me sing the good dogs, the poor dogs, dirty dogs, those everybody chases off as plague-ridden or flea-bitten, except for the poor man, with whom they are partners, and the poet, who regards them with fraternal eye. Fie on the dandified dog, overbearing quadruped: great dane, pug, king-charles or cocker spaniel so enchanted with itself that it bounds indiscriminately against a visitor’s knees or up on his lap, as if sure to please; unruly as a child, silly as a tart, sometimes snarling, and insolent as a servant. Fie especially on those four-footed serpents, idle and shivering, called greyhounds, who don’t have enough flair in their pointed muzzles to track a friend or enough intelligence in their flat heads to play dominoes. To the kennel with all those tiresome parasites! Back to silky padded kennels with them! I sing the dirty dog, the poor dog, the homeless dog, the dog at large, the performing dog, the dog whose instincts—like those of poor people, Gypsies, ac- 97 tors—has been wonderfully honed by the good mother necessity, true patroness of intelligence. I sing the dog of calamities, whether wandering alone in the circuitous ravines of immense cities, or having declared, batting clever eyes, to some abandoned man, “Take me with you, and perhaps our two miseries will add up to a kind of happiness.” “Where are the dogs?” Nestor Roqueplan15 once wrote in an immortal column which he has no doubt forgotten, which I alone, and Sainte-Beuve perhaps, still remember. Where are the dogs? you ask, inattentive people. Tending their own business. Tending to business, tending to love. Through the fog, across snow, through mud, on gnawing dog-days, under pouring rain, they go, they come, they trot, they duck under carriages, moved by fleas, by passion, need, or duty. Like us, they’re up early, searching out their lives or high-tailing it for pleasure. Some sleep in wreckage in the boondocks and report each day, at a given hour, to claim alms at the kitchen of the Palais-Royal; others run in packs more than five leagues to partake of a repast prepared for them by certain charitable sexagenarian virgins, whose unoccupied hearts are given over to these beasts, stupid men being no longer interested. Others who, like runaway slaves, lovesick, on certain days quit their region to slip into the city, gambol for an hour with a pretty bitch, not terribly tidy but proud and grateful. And all quite exact, without notebook, without notes, without billfolds. Do you know sluggish Belgium, and have you admired as I have the vigorous dogs hitched to a butcher’s cart, or a milkman’s, or baker ’s, and who give witness with their triumphant bark to the proud pleasure they experience in rivalry with horses? Here are two that belong to an order still more civilized. Let me 15. Journalist, contemporary with Baudelaire. [3.238.233.189] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:28 GMT) 98 sneak you into the room of an absent saltimbanque. Painted wooden bed, no curtains, bedbug smirched covers in disarray, a couple of cane chairs, cast-iron stove, one or two damaged musical instruments. Ah, such sad furnishings. But notice, please, those two intelligent personages in frayed but sumptuous garments, their hair arranged like that of a troubadour or a soldier, who watch with witchlike care the nameless work simmering on the stove, whose center sports a long spoon like an aerial mast put up to signify a finished building. Isn’t it reasonable, how zealous actors don’t take to the road without a bellyful of strong substantial soup? And can’t one...