REMBRANDT

Jean Genet

HANUMAN BOOKS
Madras & New York
1988
el 1958, 1988 Editions Gallimard
English translation e 1985
by Bernard Frecbtman
English translation e 1988
by Randolph Hough
e 1988 Hanuman Books

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ISBN: 0-937815-21-7

Frontispieces Photo by
Douchan Stanimirovitcb
CONTENTS

What remains of a Rembrandt

Torn into Four Equal Pieces
And Flushed Down
The Toilet . . . 9

Rembrandt's Secret 53
 WHAT REMAINS OF A
REMBRANDT TORN INTO
FOUR EQUAL PIECES,
AND FLUSHED DOWN
THE TOILET ...
 WHAT REMAINS OF A
REMBRANDT TORN INTO
FOUR EQUAL PIECES,
AND FLUSHED DOWN
THE TOlLET ...

A work of art should exalt

only those tru ths which are not
demonstrable, and which are even
"false," those which we cannot
carry to their ultimate conclu­
sions without absurdity, without
negating both them and ourself.
They will never have the good or
bad fortune to be applied. Let
10 JEAN GENf.-r

them live by virtue of the song

that they have become and that
they inspire.

Something which seemed to

resemble decay was in the process
of cankering my former view of
the world. One day, while rid­
ing in a tra in , I experienced a

revelation : as I looked at the

passenger sitting opposite me, J
realized that every man has the
same value as every other. I did
not suspect (or rather, I did
I was obscurely aware of it, for
suddenly a wave of sadness welled
up within me and, more or less
bearable, but substantial, remain-
WHAT R�M... INS OF ... ltEMBRANOT . . • 11

ed with me) that this knowledge

would entail such a methodical
disintegration. Behind what was
visible in this man, or further­
further and at the same time
miraculously and distressingly
close-] discovered in him (grace­
less body and face, ugly in certain
details, even vile: dirty moustache,
which in itself would have been
unimportant but which was also
hard and stiff, with the hairs
almost horizontal above the tiny
mouth, a decayed mouth; gobs
which he spat between his knees
on the ftoor of the carriage that
was already filthy with cigarette
stubs, paper, bits of bread, in
12 JEAN GENET

short, the filth of a third-class

carriage in those days), I dis­
covered with a shock, as a result
of the gaze that butted against
mine, a kind of universal identity
of all men.
No, it didn't happen so quickly,
and not in that order. The fact
is that my butted (not
gaze
crossed, butted) that of the other
passenger, or rather melted into
it. The man had just raised bis
eyes from a newspaper and q uite
simply turned them, no doubt
unintentionally, on mine, which,
in the same accidental way,
were looking into his. Did he,
then and there, experience the
WHAT REMAINS OF A llEMBRANDT.. • IJ

same emotion-and confusion­

as I? His gaze was not someone
else's: it was my own that I was
meeting in a mirror, inadvertently
and in a state of solitude and
self-oblivion. I could only ex­
press as follows what I felt:
I was flowing out of my body,
through the eyes, into his at the
same time as he was flowing into
mine. Or rather: I had flow ed ,
for the gaze was so brief that lean
recall it only with the help of that
tense of the verb. The passenger
had gone back to his reading.
Stupefied at what I had just
discovered, only then did I think
of examining the st ranger. My
14

examination resulted in the im­

pression of disgust described
above. Under his drab, creased,
shabby clothes his body must
have been dirty and worn. His
mouth was flabby and protected
by an unevenly clipped mous­
tache. I thought to myself that
the man was probably weak ,

perhaps cowardly. He was over

ftfty. The train continued its
indifferent way through Fre nch
villages. Evening was coming on.
l was deeply disturbed at the
thought of spending the minutes
of twilight, the minutes of com•
plicity, with this partner.
What was it that had fl.owed
WHAT RlMAINS OF A REMDRANDT. , • 15

out of my body-I had ft •and• .-

what had flowed out of his?

This unpleasant experience was
not repeated, neither in its fresh
suddenness no r its intensity, but
its reverberations within me never
ceased . What I had experienced
in the train seemed to resemble a
revelation: over and above the
accidents-which were repulsive­
of his appearance, this man con·
cealed, and then let me reveal,
what made him identical w i th me.
(I first wrote the preceding sen·
tence, then corrected it by the
following, which is more accurate
and more disturbing: I knew
that I was identical with that man.)
16 · JEAN GEN£T

Was it because every man is

identical with another?
Without ceasing to meditate
during the journey, and in a kind
of state of self-disgust, I very
soon reached the conclusion that
it was this identity which made
it possible for every man to be
loved neither more nor less than
every other, and that it is possible
for even the most loathsome
appearance to be loved, that is,
to be cared for and recognized­
cherished. That was not all,
My train of thought also Jed me
to the following: this appearance,
which I had first called vile.
was-the word is not too strong-
WHAT REMAINS OF A REMBRANDT, • • 17

was willed by the identity (this

word recurred persistently, per­
haps because I did not yet have
a very rich vocabulary) which was
forever circulating among all men
and which a forlorn gaze account­
ed for. I even felt that this
appearance was the temporary
form of the identity of all men.
But this pure and almost insipid
gaze that circulated between the
two travellers, in which their
wills were not involved, which
their wills would perhaps have
prevented, lasted only an instant,
and that was enough for a deep
sadness to fill me and linger on.
I lived with this discovery for
18 HAN Gl\NfT

quite a long time. I deliberately

kept it secret and tried not to
think about it, but somewhere
within me there alw ays lurked
a bl ot of s adn ess which, like an
in flated brea th would suddenly
,

darken everything.
"Behind his charming or, to us,
monstrous appearance," I said
to myself, "every man-as has
been revealed to me-retains a
quality which seems to be a kind
of ultimate recourse and owing
to which he is, in a very secret,
perhaps irreducible area, what
every man is."
I e ven thought I found this
equivalence at the Central Market,
WHAT RFMAIN� OF A REMllRANDT • • . JC)

at the abattoirs, in the fixed but

not gazeless eyes of the sheep­
heads piled up in pyramids on
the sidewalk. Where wa s I to
stop? Whom would I have
murdered if I had killed a certain
cheetah that walked with long
strides, supple as a hoodlum of
old?
I h ave written elsewhere that
my dearest friends took refuge­
! was sure they did-in a secret
wound, in a very secret, perhaps
"

irreducible realm." Was I speak­

ing of the same thing? A man
was identical with every other
man, that was what I had dis­
c overed But was this knowledge
.
20 J f_� ._- GENF.T

so rare as to warrnnt my
amazement, and what could it
profit me to possess it? To
begin with, knowing a thing
analytically is different from
grasping it in a sudden intuition.
(For I had, of course, heard
people say, and had read, that
all men were equal, and even
that they were But
brothers.)
in what way could it profit me?
One thing was more certain:
I was no longer able not to
know what I had known in the
train.
I was incapable of te ll i ng how
I moved from the knowledge that
every man is like every other
WHAI lllMAINS OF A KEMllRANDT • • . 21

man to the id ea that every man

is aH the other�. But the idea

was now within me. It had the
presence of a certainty. It could
have been stated more clearly­
though I will be deflowering it
somewhat-in t he following
aphoristic way; "Only one man
exists and has ever existed in
the world. He is, in his entirety ,

in each of us. Therefore he is

ourself. Each is the other and
the others. In the l a x ity of the
evening, a clear gaze that was
exchanged-whether insistent or
fleeting-made us aware of this.
Except that a phenomenon of
which I do not even know the
22 JEAN GENET

name seems to divide this single

man ad infinitum, apparently
breaks him up in both accident
and form, and makes each of the
fragments foreign to us."
I expressed myself clumsily,
and what I felt was even more
confused and stronger than the
idea of which I l1ave spoken.
The idea was dreamed rather than
thought; it was engendered and
drawn along, or dredged, by a

rather woolly reverie.

No man was my brother: every
man was myself, but temporarily
isolated in his individual s hell.
This observation did not lead
me to examine, to review, all
WHAT R�MAINS or A REMPllANDT • • • 23

ethical notions. I felt no tender­

ness, 110 atfection, for that self
which was outside my individual
appearance. Nor for the form
taken by the other-or its prison.
Its tomb? On the contrary, I
tended to be as pitiless toward
that form as I was toward the
one that answered to my name
and that has been writing these
lines. The sadness that had settl­
ed on me was what disturbed
me most. Ever since the re­
velation that I had experienced
when looking at the unknown
traveller, it was impossible for
me to see the world as in the past.
Nothing was sure. The world
24 JEAN GENET

suddenly wavered. For a long

time I remained, as it were, sick­
ened by my discovery, bu.t I felt
that it would soon force me to
make serious changes, changes
which would be in the nature of
renunciations. My sadness was
an indication. The world was
changed. In a third-class car­
riage between Salon and Saint
Rambert d'Albon in had j ust
lost its lovely colors, its charm.
I was already bidding them a
nostalgic farewell, and it was
not without sadness or disgust
that I was e n te ri ng upon ways
which would be increasingly
lonely and, more important, was
WHAT Rf.MAINS m A REMDRANDT.,. 25

entertaining visions of the world

which, instead of heightening
my joy, were causing me such
dejection.
"Before long," l said to myself,
.. nothing that once meant so
much will matter, love, friend­
ship, forms, vanity, nothing that
involves charm and appeal."
But perhaps the gaze with which
I had looked at the traveller,
a gaze so dreadfully revealing,
had been possible owing to a very
old cast of mind that was due to
my life, or for some other reason.
I was not very sure that a n other
man could have felt himself
flowing through his eyes into
2fi JEAN Gf.N.ET

someone else's body, or that the

meaning of this sensation would
have been the same for him as
that which I have been ascribing
to it. I who bad always been
tempted to doubt the fullne.ss
of the world was perhaps now
trying to slip into particular
envelopes, the better to deny
individuality,
"Before long, nothing more wil l
matter . . . " Or perhaps nothing
would be changed. If each enve­
lope preciou sly sheathes a single
identity, each envelope is indi­
vidual and succeeds in estab­
lishing in us an opposition that
seems irremediable, in creating
WHAT REM/\INS OF A REMBRANDT • • • 27

an innumerable variety of in­

dividuals who are equivalent:
each-other. Perhaps the only
precious, the only real thing
that each man had was this very
singularity: "his" moustache,
"his" eyes, "his" clubfoot, "his"
ha relip A11d what if his only
.

sour ce of pride were the size of

"his" prick? But this gaze went
from the unknown traveller to
me, and what of the immediate
certainty that each-other were
only one, both either he or 1 and
he and I? How could I forget
that mucus?
Let us continue. The knowl­
edge of what I had just learned
21! JEAS GENH

did not require that I direct my

effects accordi ng to the revel­
atimt in order to dissolve myself
in an approximate contempla­
tion. Quite simply, I could no
longer avoid knowing wh at I
knew, and, come what may,
I had to pursue the consequences,
regardless of what they were.
Since various incidents in my
life had forced me i nto poetry,
perhaps the poet would have to
make use of this discovery that
was new to him. But ahove all
I had to note the following: the
only moments of my life which
I could regard as true, ripping
WHAT REMAl!'iS OF A REMHRANDT • • - 29

apart my appearance and expos­

ing .. what?
.

A .solid l'Gcuum that kept per­

petuating me? I had known those
moments during a few bursts
of really holy anger, in equally
blessed states of fear and in the
,

rays-the first-that shot from

a y o ung man's eyes to mine, in
our exchange of glances. And
in the traveller's gaze that en­
tered me. The rest, all the rest,
seemed to me the effect of a
false point of view induced by
my appearance, which itself was
necessarily fake. Rembrandt was
the first to expose me. Rem­
brandt! That stern finger which
30 JL"N OENF.T

thrusts asi de the finery and shows

. . . what'? An infinite, an m·

fernal transparency.
1 thus felt deep disgust for
what I was moving toward and
was unaware of and what I could
not, thank God, avoid, and then
a great sadness about what I was
going to lose. Everything around
me was losing its enchantment,
everything was decaying. Eroti­
cism and its transports seemed
rej ected, definitively. How could
I be unaware, after the experience
in the t rain that every charming
,

form is, if it contains me, my­

self? If I wished to recapture
this identity, every form, whether
WHAT Rf.MAINS OF A RD.\llR41'DT • • . JI

monstrous or agreeable, lost its

power over me.
••The erotic quest," I '\aid
to myself, .. is possible only when
one supposes that each human
being has his own individuality,
that it is irreducible, and that
the physical form accou nt s for
it, and it only."
What did I know about the
significance of the erotic? But
I felt disgust at the thought that
I circulated in every man, that
every man was myself. If, for
a short time thereafter, every
conventionally beautiful male
form retained any power over
me, it was, so to speak, by
32 JEAN GENET

reverberation. This power was

the reflection of the on e to which
I had so long yielded. A nostal­
gic farewell to it too. Thus, each
person no longer appeared to
me in his total, absolute, magni­
ficent individuality: as a frag­
mentary appearance of a single
being, it disgusted me more.
Yet I wrote what precedes with­
out ceasing to be troubled, to
be haunted, by the erotic themes
that were familiar to me and that
dominated my life. I was sincere
in speaking of a quest on the
basis of the revelation "that every
man is every other man, as am
l"-but I knew I wrote that too in
WHAT REMAINS Of A REMBRANDT, • . J)

order to rid myself of eroticism,

to try to get it out of my system,
in any case to keep it at a distance.
A congested, eager penis, stand­
ing erect in a thicket of black
curls, and what continues it:
the thick thighs, then the torso,
tbe whole body, the hands, the
thumbs, then the neck, the lips,
the teeth, the nose, the hair,
and lastly the eyes, which cry
out for the transports of love as
if asking to be saved or annihi­
lated-and does all of this fight
against the fragile gaze which is
perhaps capable of destroying
tbat Omnipotence'?
34 JUN GENET

Our gaze can be quickor slow

,
depending on what we look at
as much as on us-perhaps more.
That 1s why I speak of the quick­
ness, for example, that thrusts
the object toward us, or of a
slowoess that makes it ponderous.
When our eyes rest on a painting
by Rembrandt (on those he did
in the last years of his life), our
gaze becomes heavy, somewhat
bovine. Something holds it
back, a weighty force. Why do
we keep looking, since we are
not immedia te ly enchanted by the
intellectual liveliness that knows
WH4 T REMAIN� Of A R�MBll.Al"Df. , • 35

everything an d all at oncc­

about, for example, Guardi's ara­
besque? Like the smell of a
barn: w hen I see only the bust
of the sitters (Hendrijke, in the
Berlin Museum) or only the head,
I cannot refrain from imagining
them standing on manure. The
chests breathe. The hands are
warm. Bony, knotted, but
warm. The table in The Syndics
rests on straw, the five men smell
of cow dung. Under Hcn­
drijke's skirts, under the fur­
cdged coats, u nder the painter's
extravagant robe, the bodies arc
performing their functions: they
digest, they are warm, they are
36 Jt:.AN GEN ET

heavy, they smell, they shit.

However delicate her face and
serious her expression, The
Jewish Bride has an ass. You
can tell. She can raise her skirts
at any moment. She can sit
down, she has what it takes.
MevroM' Trip too. As for Rem­
brandt himself, the fact is even
more obvious: starting with the
first self-portrait, the mass of
flesh increases from one painting
to the next, until the very last,
which it reaches in definitive
form, though not void of sub­
stance. After losing what was
most dear to him-his mother
and his wife-it is as if this
WHAT REMAINS OF A R�MBRA.NDT • . . 37

strapping fellow were trying to

lose himself, unconcerned about
the people of Amsterdam, to
disappear socially. "To want to
be nothing" is an oft-heard
phrase. It is Christian. Are we
to understand that man seeks to
lose, to let dissolve, that which,
in one way or other, singularizes
him in a trivial way, that which
gives him his opacity, in order,
on the day of his death, to offer
God a pure, not even iridescent,
transparency? I don't know and
don't care. As for Rembrandt,
his entire work makes me think
that he had· not only to get rid
of what encumbered him in his
38 JEAN GENET

effort to achieve the aforemen­

tioned transparency, but also to
transform it, to modify it, to
make it serve the work. (To free
the subject from his anecdotal
self and to place him in a light
of eternity. Recognized by to­
day, by tomorrow, but also by
the dead. A work that was
offered to the living of today
and tomorrow but not to the
dead would be what? A painting
by Rembrandt not only stops the
time that made the subject flow
into the future, but makes it flow
back to the remotest ages. By
means this operation Rem­
of
brandt achieves solemnity. He
WHAT �EMAINS 0� A KEMBRANDT ... 39

thus discovers why, at every

moment, every event is solemn:
he knows it from his own soli­
tude. But he must a lso get this
solemnity down on canvas, and
it is then that his taste for the
theatrical-which was so keen
when he was twenty-five-serves
him.) It may be that Rembrandt's
immense grief-the death of
Sasikia-turned him away from
all ordinary joys and that he
observed his mourning by meta­
morphosing gold chains, swords
and plumed hats into values, or
rather into pictori al fetes. I don't
know whether th i s beefy Dutch­
man wept, but around 1642
 Jt:J\1' GENTT

he experienced the baptism nf

fire, and his early nature, which
was bold and conceited, was little
by little transformed. For at the
age or twenty the fellow does
not look as if he were easy to
get on with, and he spends his
time before the mirror. He likes
himself, he thinks a lot of himself,
so young and already in the
mirror! Not to spruce up and
rush off to a dance, but to gaze
at hims.::lf, complacently, in soli­
tude: Rembrandt with the three
moustaches, with the puckered
brows, with the uncombed hair,
with the h aggard eyes, etc. No
anxiety is visible in this sham
WHAT REMAll"S or " RFMDRANDT • • • 41

quest of self. If he paints archi­

tectural settings, they arc always
operatic. Then, gradually, with­
out departing from his narcissism
or ta s te for the theatrical, he
modifies them: the former in
order to attain the anxiety, tlie
fren zy, which he will transcend;
the latter, to derive from it the
joys-also haggard-of the sleeve
of the "Jewish bride." With
Saskia dead-I wonder whether
he didn't kill her, in some way
or other, whethi.:, he wasn't glad
she died-anyway, his eyes and
hand are free. From then on,
he launches out into a kind of
extravagance as a painter. With
42 JEAN GENET

Saskia dead, the world and social

iudgments have li ttle weight. One
must imagine him-while Sa�kia
is dying-perched on a ladder in
his s tud i o
, grouping the fi�ures
in The Nightwatt·h.Whether he
believes in God? when he
Not
paints. He knows the Bible and
uses it. Obviously, all I have
just said is of any importance
only if one accepts thefact that
all was, by and large, false.
Intellectual play and insights on
the basis of the work of art are
not possible if the work is finish­
ed. The work would e ven seem to
confuse the intelligence, or to
restrict it. The fact is that I
WHAT REMAINS OF A REMBRANl>T • • . 43

have been playing. Jn a certain

way, works of art would make
fools of us were it not that their
fascination is proof-unverifiable,
though undeniable-that this
paralysis of the intelligence com­
bines with the most luminous
certainty . What that certainty
is I do not know. The origin of
these lines is the emotio n l felt
(in London, t we lve years ago)
in the presence of Rembrandt's
finest works. "What's wrong
with me? Why do I feel like
that? What are those paint­
ings that I can't shake off? Who
is that Mevrow Trip? That
Mynheer... "
44 JEAN GENET

No. I never wondered who

those ladies and gentlemen were.
And it is perhaps this more or
Jess definite absence of questions
that shook me. The more I
looked at them, the fess the
portraits referred me to anyone.
To no one. No doubt it took
me some time to reach the dis ·

heartening and thrilling conclu­

sion that the portraits done by
Rembrandt (after the age of
fifty) have no reference to identi­
fiable persons. No detail, no
cast of features, has reference to
a trait of character, to an indi·

vidual psychology. Are t hey

schematized and thus deperson-
WH/\T REM ... INS or A lllMDRA.NDT • • • 45

alized? Not at all. One has

only to recall the wrinkles of
Margaretha Trip. And the more
I lo oked at them, hoping to grasp
or approach the personality, as
it is called
to discover their
,

individual identity, the more they

fled-all of them-in an infinite
flight and at infinite speed. Only
Rembrandt himself-perhaps be­
cause of the acuteness with which
he scrutinized his own image­
rctained an element of indi­
viduality: at least attention. But
the others, if I had regarded that
profound sadness as negligible,
fted without allowing anything
of themselves to be grasped.
46 JEAN GU.:U

Negligible, that sadness? The

sadness of being in the world'!
Nothing other than the attitude
which human beings adopt
naturally when they are alone,
waiting to act, this way or that
way. Rembrandt himself, in the
self-portrait at Cologne in which
he is laug h in g . The face and
background are so red that the
whole painting makes me think
of a sun-dried placenta. You
don't have room enough to
move far back in the Cologne
Museum. You have to take a

d ia gon a l view, from an angle,

That is how I looked at it, but
head down-my hea d -turn ec:\
WHAT REMAINS OF A REMBRA�DT.,. 47

around, if you like. The blood

rushed to my head, but how sad
that laughing face! It is when
he starts depersonalizing his
models, when he prunes objects
of all identifiable characteristics,
that he gives them the most
we ight the greatest reality. Some­
,

thing important has happened:

the eye recognires the object at
the same t ime as it recognizes
the painting as such. And it can
never again see the object other­
wise. Rembrandt no lo nger de­
natures the painting by trying
to merge it with the o bj ect or
face that it is supposed to re­
present: he presents it to us as
48 Jf.AN GENET

distinct matter that is not asham­

ed to be what it is. Candor of
the ploughed, steaming fields in
the early morning. I do not yet
know what the spectator gains,
but the painter ga i n s the freedom
of his craft. He presents him­
self as the mad dauber that he is,
mad about color, thus los i ng the
hypocrisy and pretended superior·
ity of the fabricators. This is
perceptible in the late paintings.
But Rembrandt had to recognize
himself as a man of flesh-of
flesh'?-rather of meat, of hash,
of blood, of tears, of sweat, of
shit, of intelligence and tender­
ness, of other things too, ad
WHAT REMAINS OF A RfMBRANDT • • • '49

infinitium, but none of them

denying the others, in fact each
welcoming the others. And I
need hardly say that Rembrandt's
entire work h as meaning-at least
for me-only if I know that what
I have just written is false.

Translated from the French

by Bernard Frechtman
REMBRANDT'S SECRET
 REMBRANDT'S SECRET

A fierce generosity. l em­

ploy these words to get right to
the heart of the matter. Rem­
brandt's last self-portrait seems
to say this: " I will be of such
co mpl icity that even savage ani­
mals will know my benevolence."
This e thic is not just a vain
attempt to sp r uc e up his soul;
his work requires it, or rather
brings it about. We know this
because for perhaps the first
time in the history of art, a paint­
er posing before a mirror with an

almost narcissistic self-satisfact­

tion, has left us, parallel to his
54 JEAN GENF.T

other work, a series of self-porl·

raits in which we can trace the
evolution of his method and the
action of this evolution upon
man. Is that it, or is it the
opposite?
In those paintings executed
before 1642, it is as if Rembrandt
were in love with splendor, but
a scenic splendor only The .

sumptuousness (of, for example,

the portraits of Orientals, the
biblical scenes) is in the decor,
is in the clothing; Jeremy, wear·
ing a very pretty frock, poses his
foot on a luxurious tapestry, the
vases on the boulder visibly in
gold. We get the impression that
IU.MBllANDT'S SECRET .5.5

Rembrandt is happy to invent

or to represent a conventional
sumptuousness, as if happy to
paint an extravagant "Saskia in
Flora," or himself with Saskia
on his knees, magnificently dress­
ed, raising his glass. Of course,
ever since his youth, he had
pa inted people of modest condi�
tion-often decking them out in
flashy and luxurious rags-but it
seems that this splendor was
only part of a dream, at the same
time he seemed partial to faces
expressing humility. The sensua­
lity which flows (except on rare
occasions) from the hand when
he paints fa bric , for example,
56 ll'.AN GENET

ebbs as soon as he tries to paint

a face. Even as a youth, Rem­
brandt prefered age-ridden faces.
Perhaps it was out of sym­
pathy, perhaps it was due to a
taste for painting difficult (or
easy?) things, perhaps in response
to a problem posed by a fore­
father's face? Who lnows? At
any rate, these faces are chosen
for their "picturesque quality".
He pa i nts them tastefully with
sensitivity, but he paints them
(even the one of his mother)
without love. The wrinkles are
scrupulously noted, the crow's
feet, the folds in the skin, the
wart,, but tbese traits do not
REMBRANDT'S SECRET 57

penetrate any deeper into the

canvas, they are not nourished
by a living organism's warmth:
the y arc ornaments. The ones
painted with the greatest love
are the two portraits of Madame
Trip in the National Gallery;
two old and decomposing faces
rotting before our eyes. Further
on, I'll tell you why I employ the
word love, just when the painter's
method becomes so cruel. The
decrepitude (in these two paint­
i n gs) is no longer seen and re­
produced for it s colorfulness,
but as something as lovable as
anythingelse. \Vere we to wash
"His Mother Reading'', we would
5R JEAN GENET

find, under the wrinkles, the

charming young girl that she
continues to be. We could never
w ash out Madame Trip's decrepi­
tude, for she is only that: decrepi­
tude in all its splendor. Mani­
fest. Dazzling. So evident that
it bursts through the picturesque
veil.
Agreeable to the eye or not,
decrepitude is. Therefore it is
beautiful. And rich in ... To gi v e
you an example: have your ever
had a cut on the elbow that be­
came infected? There's a scab.
You lift it up with your finger­
nails. Underneath, the threads
of pus that nourish the scab go
REMBRANOT0S SECRET 59

much deeper. Why, the entire

organism is at work on this cut.
Well, it is the s ame thing with
each square centimeter of
Madame Trip's metacarpus or
of her lip. And who was it who
succeeded in expressing all that?
A painter who wanted only to
render what is, and who by
painting it with precision, couldn't
help but rend er it in all its force,
and so in all its beauty. Or maybe
it's a man who, having under­
stood (by dint of meditation), that
each thing possesses its own
dignity, decided to devote himself
to painting that which in appear­
ance s eems to be lacking dignity.
60 J[AS GENF.T

It's been written that, contrary

to Hals (for example), Rembrandt
did n 't really know how to capt­
ure, the likeness of his models ;
in other words, he could n't re·
ally see the difference between
one man and another. If he
didn t see the difference, maybe
'

it is because it does n ' t exist?

Or maybe it is an i llusion '? I n
fact, h i s portraits rarely reveal
model character trails : a priori,
his figures are neither spi neless,
nor cowardly, nei ther big nor
small, neither good nor bad,
but are capable of being ail that
at any given moment. But never
does there appear the caricatured
R foMDRl\NDl0S SECRIT 61

trait th a t is the result of a

prev i ous j udgement. N o r d oes
there ever a pp ea r , that sparkling
but fleeting temperament we find
i n Franz Hal s ' pai n t i ngs. It
would, nevertheless, b e possible.
but like the rest.
Titus, Rembrandt 's smiling son,
is the only figure with a calm
expression. A ll the other faces
seem to contain an extraordinarily
heavy and dense drama. But
this d rama is almost alwa ys
camouflaged by a calm and
collected attitude, like a tornado
momentarily held in check. Their
faces express a precisely assessed
and dense destiny which will
61 J EA'lol G �NFr

eventually be acted out t o the

bitter end . Whereas Rem­
bra ndt's d rama seems to be
ent i rely in his vision of the world.
He wants to find out what is
behi nd the surface, to get beyond
appearances, in order to free
himself fro m them. All of h i s
figures have been hurt, and take
refuge in th ei r pai n . Rembrandt
is conscious of hi s wound, but he
wants to get well. That 's why
his self-portraits give us the im­
pression of vulnerabili ty, whereas
his other paintings give us the
i mpression of a confident strength.
There is no doubt but that,
long before reaching maturity,
MEMDRANl.H's SfCltfT

Rembrandt bad already realized

that even the most J owly object
or being possesses its own dignity,
but i n t he beginning, this reali­
zation was due to a kind of s ent i ­

mental attachm ent to his origins.

Io his drawings, h e treats the
most familiar attitudes with a
tenderness noc exempt from senti­
mentality. At t he same t i m e
his ima gination combined with a
n at u ral sensuality made him
desire luxury and dream or
splendor.
Reading the Bible exalts h i s
imagination : architecture, vases,
weapons, furs, carpets, turbans . . ·

He is particularly i nspi red

 ltAN GENET

by the Old Testament and its

theatricality.He paints. He is
famou s . He becomes rich. He
is proud of his success. Saskia
is smothered in gold and velve t . . ,

She dies. If nothing other than

the world remains, and painti ng
the only way to approach it,
the world no longer has but one
merit-or to be more precise,
is no l onger of but one value.
And this is neither anythi ng
more nor anything less than
that.
But one doesn 't get rid of so
many mental habits, or so much
sensuality in one night. It seems,
nevertheless, that little by little
REMBRANDT'S SECRET 65

he does, by transforming them

to fit h is own needs. Resplend­
ency (I'm talking about an
imaginary, dreamed of splendor)
is still very important to him,
as is a certain theatricality. To
protect himself from these habits,
he submits them to curious treat­
ment : he exalts conventional sum­
ptuousness, while at the same
time distorting it, thus rendering
it impossible to identify. He
goes even further, passing the
radiance, which makes this
sumptuousness seem precious,
into the most miserable materials
in such a way as to confuse
everything. From this moment
66 JEAN GENET

on, nothing will be any longer

what it appea rs to be : the un­
quenched passion of an old
taste for splendor, which in­
stead of being on the canvas
or the object represented will
now be put into them , and will
silently illuminate the most
humble subject matter.
This operation, conducted
slowly and perhaps even ob­
scurely, will teach hi m that one
face is as good as another ; each
one refers to-or leads to-a
human identity as worthy as any
other.
As far as painting goes, thi s
millo r's 11on, who at 23 knew
REMBRANDT'S SECRET 67

how to paint wonderfully, no

longer knew how at the age of
37. At this age be would relearn
,

everything wi th a somewhat
awkward hesitation, never taking
a chance on virtuosity . Slowly,
he discovered yet another thing :
that every object possesses its
own magnificence; to this pur­
pose he proposes the singular
magnificence of color. We can
say that he is the only painter
in the w orld equally respectful
of both painting and the model,
exalting both at the same ti me,
one by way of the other. But what
i s really moving about these paint­
ii:�gs, which �end so desperately
68 J[A>; GENET

to exalt with no
everything
concern hie ra rc hy is a
for ,

kind of reflection, or more

precisely, a kind of inner ember,
perhaps a kind of nostalgi a not ,

yet entirely extingui:.hed, which

is all that remains of a dreamed
splendor, and of an almost enti·
rely consumed theatricality, signs
of a life caught up like any
other in convention, a convention
transformed to fit his own needs.
Not by destroying it, but by
transforming it, by twisting it, by
wearing it out, by consuming it.
From this point on, the signs of
an outer splendor are capable
REMBRANDT'S SECRET fi9

of i l lumi nating anyth i ng, but

from the inside out .
Rembrandt? Everyt hing, from
his youth on, reveals a restless
man purs u i n g a fleeting truth.
The sharpness of his eye is not
ent irely expla i ned by the necessity
of staring at the mirror. At
times, he almost seems mean
(let 's not forget that he went so
far as to pay to have a credi tor
put in prison), or even vai n
(the arrogance of the ostrich
feather in his velvet hat . . . and
the golden necklaces . . . ), but
l ittle by little hls face becomes less
severe. In fro nt of the m i rror,
the narci ssistic self-satisfaction
70 JEAN GENET

has turned i n to a restlessness ; a

passionate and quavering search.
He had been living with Hen­
drijke for some time and this
marvelous woman (the portrai ts
of Hendrijke are the only ones
-besides those of Titus-which
seem steeped in the old sublime
bear's tenderness and gratitude)
had to gratify his sensuality and
his need for tenderness at the
same time. In his last self­
portraits, we no longer find any
psychological i ndications what­
soever. If we really wanted to,
we could see something like a
look of goodness in these last
self-portraits. Or an air of
REMBRANDT'S SECRET 71

detachment ? Whatever, here it's

all the same.
Toward the end of his life,
Rembrandt became a good per­
son. Between hi mself and the
world , malici ousness acts like a
screen ; it either makes him with­
d raw breaks him down, or dis­
,

guises him. Maliciousness, and

all other forms of aggressiveness,
and all that we call character
traits : our moods, our desires,
e ro t ici sm and vanity. Slash the
screen to see the world approach­
i ng ! But he didn't seek out
thi s goodness (or detachment, if
you prefer) merely to observe a
moral or religious code (it is
72 JlAN Cf.NET

only in times of abandonment

t hat an artist can have faith,
if he ever do es), nor to win o v er
a couple of virtues. If Rem­
brandt does away with character
traits, it is in order to purify hi s
vision of t he world, and thus to
create a more just work. I sup­
pose that, deep down, Rembrandt
didn't give a damn about being
good or bad, short-tempered or
patient, money-grabbing or gen­
erous. . . He had to be nothing
more than an eye and a hand.
Moreover, by following this self­
ish path, he was bound to atta in
(what a word !) the ki nd of purity,
so obvious in his last portrait,
llEMllRA�DT"s srcCRrT 7J

that i t a l most hurts. lt is indeed

by follow i ng the narrow path of
paint i ng that he attains i t .
ff 1 had to roughly outl i n e .
or coarsely characterize this pro­
cess (one of the most heroic of
modern times), J wou l d say that
in 1 642 (of cou rse, Re mbrandt
was already an yth i n g but banal),
a young, amb i t i ous man, full
of talent, but also ful l of violence,
vulgarity, and an exquisite refine­
ment, is surprised by m i sfort u ne
and driven to despair.
Without any hope of one day
wi tnessing happ i nesses' reappear­
anee, he attempts, w ith a t re­
mendous effort, si nce painting is
74 JEAN GENET

all he has left, to destroy, both in

his work and in hi mself, every
sign of his old vanity, signs also
of his happiness and his dreams.
He see'ks both to represent the
world (which is after all the aim
of painting) and to render it
unrecoiinizable at the same time.
Is he then aware of it? This
double requirement leads h im
to consider the material aspects
of painting to be equally as im·
portant as its representational
aspects, then little by l i t tle this
,

exaltation of painting, as it can­

not be conducted abstractly (but
the sleeve in "The Jewish
Fiance" is an abstract paintin g ! ),
REMBRANDT'S SECRET 75

leads him to exalt everythin g

represented in h i s painting, which
he nevertheless seeks to render
unidentifiab1e.
This effort causes him to get
rid of everything in himself which
could bring hi m back to a differen­
t i ated , discontinuous, hierarchi·
cal vision of the wor1d : a hand
is as worthy as a face, a face is
just as good as a
a corner of
table, a corner of a table as worthy
as a stick, a stick as good as a
hand, a hand every bit as good
as a sleeve . . . all this is per haps
true of other painters as well-but
which painter has, to this degree,
destroyed matter 's identity, in
76 JEAN GESrT

order l o bette r exa l t it ?-all this,

it seems to me, bri ngs u s back to
the hand, to the sleeve, then
u n doubtedly to paint ing, but
from that moment on, unceas­
i ngly going from one to th e
other, in a breathtak i ng chase.
t owards nothing.
Theatricality, conventional sum­
p tuousness, ha vc also passed
through the same process, but
now, burned out and consumed,
they are only there for solemnity.
There must have been so me·
t h i n g else in A msterdam, around
1 666 to 1 669, besides an old con
man 's paintings (if it's true, it's
the old etch i ng plate story again)
REMBRANDT'S SECRlT 77

and the city. There was what was

left of an i ndi vidu al , reduced to
almost nothing, a phantom going
from the bed to the easel, from
the easel the toilet-where
to
he must have scribbled aga in with
his dirty fingernails-and what
was left of this man must have
hardly been anything other than
a cruel kindness, something like,
or close to imbecility. A chapped
hand holdi n g brushes dunked i n
red and brown paint, a n eye
pmed on the objects, nothing
more, yet a hopeless complicity
linked his eye to the world.
In his last self-portrait, he
�cems to be having a go od laugh,
78 Jl!AN Gl!NET

but softly, subtlety . He knows

everything that a painter can
learn. And to begin with, this
(well, maybe?): that a painter is
nothing more than an eye going
from an object to the canvas,
a nd especially a gesture of the
hand going from a little puddle
of color to the canvas.
The painter is entirely con­
centrated in the calm and sure
course of his hand . Nothing
else any longer exists : splendor,
sumptuousness, and his obses­
sive fears have all been trans­
formed i nto a calm and quivering
va-et-vient movement of the eye
and hand. He no longer legally
REMBRANDT'9 SECRET 79

possesses anything. A simple

manipulation of the accounts,
and everything has passed into
Hendrijke The Admirable 's and
Titus ' hands. Rembrandt no
longer even possesses the paint­
i ngs he pai n ts.
A man has jll5t passed entirely
i nto his work. All that ' s left
of the man, is ready for the d ump,
but before that, just before that,
he will paint "The Return of
the Prodigal Chi ld."
He d ies before being tempted
to act the fool .

Tran.slated from the French

by Randolph Hough
Designed & Printed by
C. T. Nachiappan of the
KALAKSHETRA PRESS
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