Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [119]
The poet Louis Aragon, Dadaist and founding member of surrealism, observed in Reverdy’s eyes “that fire of anger unlike any I ever saw.” Unlike Gabrielle, Reverdy was unable to use his towering pride as a spur. But like Gabrielle, he was a character of great paradox, and while exhibiting that overweening pride, he was also deeply modest. Finding balance almost impossible, he oscillated between indulgence and extreme ascetic abstinence. He was a brilliant talker, but his silences could be deadly, and everything was done by extremes: eating, drinking, smoking and women. Having overindulged in all these, he was led by turns from revulsion to an inexorable sense of self-loathing. Yet these tendencies and their corresponding darkness did nothing to reduce Reverdy’s ability to love women, no matter that afterward he was overcome by remorse. It wasn’t remorse alone, however, that periodically made him flee Gabrielle and the Faubourg Saint-Honoré and return to his wife in Montmartre. Gabrielle brought out in him a dread at the thought of being tied.
While Reverdy’s vacillation between an obsession with Gabrielle and resisting her must have been emotionally taxing for both of them, she was prepared to suffer his erratic behavior and ferocious rages. One day, Gabrielle was entertaining at the Hôtel de Lauzan. Among her guests was Aimé Maeght, art dealer and friend to most of the significant artists of the period, including Braque and Giacometti. Reverdy appeared with a basket on his arm. Completely ignoring Gabrielle and her guests, he walked down the steps onto the lawn and calmly proceeded to collect snails and place them in his basket.
His disquiet about good living and wealth put Gabrielle right at the center of Reverdy’s doubts. But his love for her emerged from somewhere far more significant than her exemplification of refinement. There are a good many who make an art out of living, and while this is an undeniably important contribution to life, it should not be confused with art. But what drew Reverdy back to Gabrielle more than the lifestyle she represented was her strength, her joie de vivre, her imagination and her creativity. Reverdy also understood that an essential part of her was just as austere as he was.
Gabrielle accused him of masochistically refusing even fleeting possibilities of happiness, telling him he made his unhappiness into a “principle.” But Reverdy’s sense of isolation was almost impregnable; he believed that our most durable links with one another are the very barriers between us. He asked, “What would become of dreams if people were happy in their real lives?” It wasn’t that Gabrielle herself had ever been a particular devotee of the notion of happiness. Indeed, as time went on, she grew exasperated at the growing belief that one had a right to it. Nonetheless, she had a great urge toward life, and the positive, creative forces that this implied. More firmly grounded than Reverdy, she was not tempted by the mysticism gaining a hold over her poet. Battling to nurture him and nullify his remorse, Gabrielle tried to keep Reverdy by her, to tether him more firmly to this earth.
Offering her strength and capabilities as support, she helped him with great tact and generosity, made visits to his publishers, paid them grants to pass on to him, and also bought his manuscripts. It was Gabrielle who financed his first major book of poems, Cravates de chanvre (the hempen rope used for hangings). And all this she did in secret so as to save his terrible pride. Reverdy alienated a growing number of his friends, including the surrealists who had idolized him and sometimes Gabrielle tried to mediate. Eventually, there were few left who would support his dreadful rages: Picasso, Gris, Braque, Max Jacob—friends Reverdy and Gabrielle had in common. One senses, too, that Gabrielle and Reverdy must have each caused the other emotional torment.
Gradually,