In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Read Online Free PDF

studying the part of the wife of
Theseus was wasted. But a second actress now responded to the first. I
must, then, have been mistaken in supposing that the first was Berma,
for the second even more closely resembled her, and, more than the
other, had her diction. Both of them, moreover, enriched their parts
with noble gestures—which I could vividly distinguish, and could
appreciate in their relation to the text, while they raised and let
fall the lovely folds of their tunics—and also with skilful changes
of tone, now passionate, now ironical, which made me realise the
significance of lines that I had read to myself at home without paying
sufficient attention to what they really meant. But all of a sudden,
in the cleft of the red curtain that veiled her sanctuary, as in a
frame, appeared a woman, and simultaneously with the fear that seized
me, far more vexing than Berma's fear could be, lest someone should
upset her by opening a window, or drown one of her lines by rustling a
programme, or annoy her by applauding the others and by not applauding
her enough;—in my own fashion, still more absolute than Berma's, of
considering from that moment theatre, audience, play and my own body
only as an acoustic medium of no importance, save in the degree to
which it was favourable to the inflexions of that voice,—I realised
that the two actresses whom I had been for some minutes admiring bore
not the least resemblance to her whom I had come to hear. But at the
same time all my pleasure had ceased; in vain might I strain towards
Berma's eyes, ears, mind, so as not to let one morsel escape me of the
reasons which she would furnish for my admiring her, I did not succeed
in gathering a single one. I could not even, as I could with her
companions, distinguish in her diction and in her playing intelligent
intonations, beautiful gestures. I listened to her as though I were
reading Phèdre , or as though Phaedra herself had at that moment
uttered the words that I was hearing, without its appearing that
Berma's talent had added anything at all to them. I could have wished,
so as to be able to explore them fully, so as to attempt to discover
what it was in them that was beautiful, to arrest, to immobilise for a
time before my senses every intonation of the artist's voice, every
expression of her features; at least I did attempt, by dint of my
mental agility in having, before a line came, my attention ready and
tuned to catch it, not to waste upon preparations any morsel of the
precious time that each word, each gesture occupied, and, thanks to
the intensity of my observation, to manage to penetrate as far into
them as if I had had whole hours to spend upon them, by myself. But
how short their duration was! Scarcely had a sound been received by my
ear than it was displaced there by another. In one scene, where Berma
stands motionless for a moment, her arm raised to the level of a face
bathed, by some piece of stagecraft, in a greenish light, before a
back–cloth painted to represent the sea, the whole house broke out in
applause; but already the actress had moved, and the picture that I
should have liked to study existed no longer. I told my grandmother
that I could not see very well; she handed me her glasses. Only, when
one believes in the reality of a thing, making it visible by
artificial means is not quite the same as feeling that it is close at
hand. I thought now that it was no longer Berma at whom I was looking,
but her image in a magnifying glass. I put the glasses down, but then
possibly the image that my eye received of her, diminished by
distance, was no more exact; which of the two Bermas was the real? As
for her speech to Hippolyte, I had counted enormously upon that,
since, to judge by the ingenious significance which her companions
were disclosing to me at every moment in less beautiful parts, she
would certainly render it with intonations more surprising than any
which, when reading the play at home, I had contrived to