War shatters the glass bell. The boy becomes the master, consumes the cheese, survives the fall. Childish ignorance prevents him from recognising the wartime affair as something commonplace, while childish manipulation of the woman he claims to love forces her hands onto the broken glass, not his. For this he shows little remorse.
The Devil in the Flesh has twice been adapted as a film, in 1947 by Claude Autant-Lara, and in 1986 by Marco Bellocchio. The boy’s age, lack of patriotism, but above all his lack of tenderness, continues to make the story commanding. The first time he sleeps with Marthe, he is distressed at not finding a halo about her face “as in religious paintings”. Again, envious of the husband who had been there before him, he “resented Marthe’s grateful face”. The novel, almost entirely linear in plot, is carried by this intensifying hammering of confession and declaration — confession the boy can only voice as a result of his utter detachment from emotion and feeling.
With a fine eye for aphorism, Radiguet proved himself the master of the psychological novel, marrying his rich but spare prose to the sociopathic detachment of his protagonists. He was just as capable of maintaining his intense focus on their intentions over the space of 50,000 words as he was over 50.
Denise, a short prose piece, is a masterpiece in cold concision. Through boredom, and little else, the male protagonist pursues Denise, a “Venus” of negligible beauty, whom he insists must lose her virginity before coming to his bed — “I wanted someone other than myself to leave her with unpleasant memories.” When it is his turn, he lies in bed thinking, “As others take communion at this time, I like to smoke a cigarette in order to imagine, before eating, the bitterness this hour must hold for someone about to be guillotined.”
The Birth of Venus, “which must not be confused with the Birth of Love”, had been the theme of a series of poems he wrote while holidaying with Cocteau. In Cheeks on Fire, the resulting collection, we find much the same detachment as characterises Denise and The Devil in the Flesh, but it is veiled beneath richer lyricism. In the first poem of the collection, “The Language of the Flowers or the Stars”, the poet is allowed to dance with 12 young girls, “each of whom resembled a month of the year”, but to go no further. As the collection progresses in soothing octosyllabics, Venus fades in and out of view. The imagery develops from Botticelli’s Primavera, with its dancing Graces, to the more lustful Birth, with all the sexualised imagery Botticelli bestowed upon it:
Radiguet was able to use the language of the classical poets, in this case Propertius, to communicate the crudest intentions. In one respect, his efforts represented a return to tradition. Ronsard, La Fontaine, Malherbe were the poets he admired, more so than the avant-garde writers who surrounded him.
The Devil in the Flesh has twice been adapted as a film, in 1947 by Claude Autant-Lara, and in 1986 by Marco Bellocchio. The boy’s age, lack of patriotism, but above all his lack of tenderness, continues to make the story commanding. The first time he sleeps with Marthe, he is distressed at not finding a halo about her face “as in religious paintings”. Again, envious of the husband who had been there before him, he “resented Marthe’s grateful face”. The novel, almost entirely linear in plot, is carried by this intensifying hammering of confession and declaration — confession the boy can only voice as a result of his utter detachment from emotion and feeling.
With a fine eye for aphorism, Radiguet proved himself the master of the psychological novel, marrying his rich but spare prose to the sociopathic detachment of his protagonists. He was just as capable of maintaining his intense focus on their intentions over the space of 50,000 words as he was over 50.
Denise, a short prose piece, is a masterpiece in cold concision. Through boredom, and little else, the male protagonist pursues Denise, a “Venus” of negligible beauty, whom he insists must lose her virginity before coming to his bed — “I wanted someone other than myself to leave her with unpleasant memories.” When it is his turn, he lies in bed thinking, “As others take communion at this time, I like to smoke a cigarette in order to imagine, before eating, the bitterness this hour must hold for someone about to be guillotined.”
The Birth of Venus, “which must not be confused with the Birth of Love”, had been the theme of a series of poems he wrote while holidaying with Cocteau. In Cheeks on Fire, the resulting collection, we find much the same detachment as characterises Denise and The Devil in the Flesh, but it is veiled beneath richer lyricism. In the first poem of the collection, “The Language of the Flowers or the Stars”, the poet is allowed to dance with 12 young girls, “each of whom resembled a month of the year”, but to go no further. As the collection progresses in soothing octosyllabics, Venus fades in and out of view. The imagery develops from Botticelli’s Primavera, with its dancing Graces, to the more lustful Birth, with all the sexualised imagery Botticelli bestowed upon it:
Those marble breasts, my swollen fruit,
ripened by the sultry sun,
if they turn red, the deed is done
— hence I christen them apples of love.
Radiguet was able to use the language of the classical poets, in this case Propertius, to communicate the crudest intentions. In one respect, his efforts represented a return to tradition. Ronsard, La Fontaine, Malherbe were the poets he admired, more so than the avant-garde writers who surrounded him.
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