A Miscellany (Revised) by e. e. cummings

Author:e. e. cummings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2018-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

From Vanity Fair, August 1926.

VIVE LA FOLIE!

An analysis of the “revue” in general and the Parisian revue in particular

In the old days—not the very old days either, but the long-lost days of a few years ago—your correspondent was no more addicted to the so-called “Serious drama” than he is at present. Although at that time, even as now, inhabiting Paris (which metropolis takes the serious drama super-seriously) he never willingly met an honest-to-God footlight face to face. But this does not mean that he neglected the theatre. Far from it! There were and are, in Paris, plenty of dishonest-to-God footlights, plenty of plotless dramas, plenty of “light” spectacles—and our article is devoted to a few of their many seductions and intricacies.

Be it added, that, to employ the adjective “light” with reference to the art of the Concert Mayol, the Casino de Paris, the Moulin Rouge and (last but far from least) the Folies Bergère, is to be guilty of a somewhat atrocious inaccuracy. For the type of spectacle which flourishes within said temples of mirth and amusement and which is universally designated by the word “revue” is extremely fundamental—no more light, forsooth, than the stupid trickeries and clumsy alexandrines of a Théâtre Français are dramatic. Nor do we speak as the scribes; having for some years, more or less, devoted ourselves to the glorious art of the plotless drama in general and the Parisian revue in particular.

During these highly agreeable years, we have frequently asked ourselves “what is the revue?” And justly so; since the revue, like everything else worth while, is constantly changing. In the aforesaid old days, for example, a typical Parisian revue was a jumble of extraordinarily ill-staged “sketches,” of sumptuously indecent ditties, of highly confused convolutions on the part of a tastelessly costumed chorus and—finally—of incredibly immobile nudes, the least ponderous of whom looked as if she could very easily quell an eruptive volcano merely by sitting on it. What women! Not even the Old Howard, of Boston, Mass., could furnish their rivals in ugliness, nor were Billy Watson’s Beef Trust Beauties to be compared with them on the score of avoirdupois. One was reminded slightly of Rubens, more of the Eden Theatre in Madrid and most (ah, most) of the Oedipus Complex.

As a matter of fact, these old time nudes differed absolutely from the stupendous ladies in the canvases of Rubens; the essence of Rubens’ females being their hurled weight, their velocity and momentum, whereas the essence of the Parisian nudes was their immobility. The naiads of Rubens’ Debarkation of Marie de Médicis, for instance, copiously squirm as we watch them. The dryads of the old Parisian revue—and the woods were full of them—only stood around.

That was in the old days.

Et ça change. Gone are the snows of yesteryear. The hippopotami have melted: each has become a dozen fashionably formed and alluringly moving gazelles. Vivid, occasionally precise scenery has everywhere replaced the uncertain planes and flyspecked tones of the ancient music-hall scenery. That typically French,

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