The Uncannily Strange and Brief Life of Amedeo Modigliani E-Book

Velibor Colic

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

The life of the modernist painter Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) was chaotic and tragically brief. Spanning the last months of Modigliani's life, this evocative novel conjures up the strange workings of the painter's troubled - and often drug-fuelled - mind, and the manner in which his eccentricity expressed itself in his art. Colic's evocative novel captures the full essence of Modigliani's Bohemian lifestyle, and the colourful visitors who came and went through his Paris studio: among them his lover, Jeanne Hébuterne, and the prostitutes who occasionally modelled for him; and succeeds in conveying something of the intense artistic life of Paris in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Leseprobe

THE UNCANNILY STRANGE AND BRIEF LIFE OF

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI

A MOSAIC NOVEL

VELIBOR ČOLIĆ

Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth

What does it matter if radiance, which was once so vivid, has now been forever banished from my sight. And although nothing can bring back that instant of brilliance in the grass and splendour in a flower, we shall not regret it, but rather we shall draw strength from all that has been left us. We shall draw strength from primeval compassion which, since it has always existed, will continue—in the dying thoughts that well up from human anguish, in the faith that devours death, in the years that bring a philosophical understanding of the world.

For Mary-Jane [1956–90] with all my love that proved inadequate …

Contents

Title Page

Epigraph

Paris, Rain

Poppies, Dream

Fear, Dream I

Morning, Hunger I

Carmelita, Children

Crime, Punishment

Night, Day

Fear, Dream II

Gentleman, Gentleman I

A Letter, Jeanne

Painter, Butterfly

Liberty, Eyes

Gentleman, Gentleman II

Gabriel, Feathers

Jeanne, Intimacy

Convex, Concave

Friends, Parents

Knives, Pearls

Morning, Milk

Morning, Hunger

Béatrice, Dante

Doe, Intimacy

Paris, Fog

Apples, Wine

Jeanne, Motherhood I

Dream, Kandinsky

Renoir, Star

Paris, Dada

Circus, Silence

Montparnasse, Night

Jeanne, Motherhood II

Montparnasse, Snow

Leopold, Béatrice

Giovanna, Emigrés

Amedeo and Béatrice

Amedeo, Angel I

Spring Comes Quietly.

Amedeo, Angel II

Amedeo and Béatrice

Amedeo, Trial I

Clara, Candles

Amedeo, Clara

Fear, Dream III

Paris, Spawning Ground

Amedeo, Rats

Amedeo, Trial II

Amedeo, Pathos

Amedeo, Children

Cocteau, A Walk

Cocteau, Explanation

Amedeo, Soutine

Amedeo, Port

Evening, Hunger

Towns, Tears

Amedeo, Death

Post Scriptum

Acknowledgments

Also Available from Pushkin Press

About the Publisher

Copyright

Paris, Rain

AT LAST, on the twelfth of August 1919 AD, it rained. Lolotte came along the west side of the street, bringing a scorched wreath, virtually dry, of cows’ eyes for lunch.

The first morning shadows—those clearest ones, the most sharply defined—occasioned by the unexpected gloom outside—played over the wall, and then over the long, tormented face of Amedeo Modigliani, fading on the unfinished canvas where there was a prostitute with a pockmarked face. Eyes without pupils.

Then the painter, coughing, dishevelled reached for a knife with an ornamental handle of soft rosewood and drove it despondently into the angelic and sensuous left arm of the girl who screamed. I watched as though hallucinating, said Leopold Zborowski later, as a piece of flesh, white as mutton, fell onto the wet street, alarming the drunken Cocteau, some prostitutes and a bow-legged Arab angel. Then I bounded up the stuffy stairway at a run to find the drunken Amedeo and the frightened Miss Lolotte in a tortured and indecorous position of animal coitus, while a thin red thread trickled down the girl’s left arm, leaving marks like rust on the floor.

Dusk found the three of them drinking wine and discussing Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and the delicacy and elongated form of African statuettes. Then Amedeo Modigliani talked about Lodovico di Vartemi, a nobleman from Bologna, who wanted to reproduce faithfully something he had seen in 1505 on a journey to Calcutta, a celebration of the festival of the twenty-fifth of December consisting of a circle of illuminated fir trees placed around a temple.

Zborowski hiccuped and reminded them that he was a Catholic.

Lolotte laughed and went to pee in another part of the room.

The two men closed their eyes.

Poppies, Dream

MONTPARNASSE, AFTER RAIN, breathing deeply. Two men who are immigrants bring into that same room a considerable quantity of opium from Afghanistan, which makes the thinner and taller of the two, Nekrasov, leaning on the door-post, find it hard to breathe—he coughs yellow mucus into a stained handkerchief.

He asks about the rust on the floor.

The ones who live there say nothing.

The two men who are immigrants leave the opium and vanish with a ’bye into the darkness of the stairwell. In the street the thinner and taller of the two, Nekrasov, steps with a rat’s caution round a lusty ultramarine lady, who has eyes without pupils, who is in fact the embodiment of death—the worst kind: immigrant death. Death with no funeral service, no requiem, death with foreign clay in one’s mouth. Inside, Zborowski and Lolotte are kissing.

Modigliani, high by now, sees a vision of poppies in his native Livorno. Since they have no champagne left, Zborowski and Lolotte move closer together.

Intimately.

Afterwards Zborowski places Amedeo Modigliani on his low, fairly dirty iron bed.

But Amedeo’s head falls off the pillow.

Zborowski puts it back.

Fear, Dream I

WITH A COMB, the woman removes the top of the angel’s head. Jeanne Hébuterne tattoos poppies and marigolds on the inner side of her waxy thigh.

It is summer but there is no sun in the sky.

Her eyes have no pupils either.

He dreams that he is stepping between his eccentric fellow countrymen, Italians, who are carrying a Madonna, naked, raped, on an improvised cross.

She bears an incredibly close resemblance to Jeanne.

He tries to explain that they are wrong.

They tell him to fuck off, signore.

Utterly confused and terrified, Amedeo Modigliani turns and runs across a field full of poppies. He looks up and sees the angel with no top to his head painting the sky blue.

He hears his eccentric fellow countrymen, Italians, praising their own masculinity.

He wakes and goes over to the table.

The water is stale.

He drinks it and glances outside, at the sky.

The sky is grey.

Morning, Hunger I

JEANNE HÉBUTERNE is not the same as she was in the dream—

In reality she is far less real.

And then, as though compressed by the morning, the two of them have breakfast, the lascivious red-haired woman with eyes without pupils, Jeanne Hébuterne, and the thin, hung-over painter, the Italian vagabond Amedeo Modigliani. They eat the sparse cockroaches from behind the wallpaper, knights of the kitchen table, with salt, and drink stale water on the surface of which float fat drowned flies, black, almost dark blue with their legs turned towards the sky.

Jeanne lifts up her skirt and shows him the bird.

And then, as though compressed by the morning, they put salt on the young pheasant’s tail, scatter ashes over its head and big peppercorns on its impotent wings.

Then, they tear it apart and eat it greedily, while it’s still warm.

There are feathers everywhere.

Oh well, fuck it, she says, it’s raining at last.

Of course, he says.