DOI Heft:
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DOI Artikel:Ewing, Campbell: Liszt's involvement in Manet's gypsy images
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51715#0123
aware of the poem. Moreover, the ideas it treats are
recognizably shared by Manet. In the process of
developing bis motif, the artist was creating “genetiť
links with not one but two previous works of art
from different disciplines. In fact, given the mystery
surrounding Manet’s intentions for this unpublished
print, its transpositional stratégy is perhaps the one
thing it is possible to be certain about, regarding it.
Callot’s images bring the Gypsies vividly close to
us. Their presence, piled up on the frontal picture
plane, implies a connection with the viewer. We are
invited to share ideas about the destination of their
journey by the pointing figure at the head of the
column in the first of Callot’s séries. By contrast,
Manet’s image shows some figures in the middle
distance, immersed in abundant natural surround-
ings. They amble aimlessly across our field of vision
passing between trees that stretch diagonally from
the right foreground to the left background, without
acknowledging their existence. Nothing in their pos-
ture or position on the picture plane suggests their
travelling has a determined bearing. They convey a
sense of detachment from the measures of civilized
life; their vagabondage is signified by their lack of
connection with the church spire in the distance,
almost at right angles to the line of their procession.
Nor do they seem to hâve any connections with the
housing, roughly indicated at the top left and bot-
tom right part of the print. As in Baudelaire’s poem
where the Gypsies are “casting upon the heavens aglance
weighed down by mournful regretsfor long-departed chimeraf,
Manet’s figures, too, appear to be cast adrift from the
ehimerical' consolations of home or religion. They
are immersed in “an open-ended, unceasing movement,
with unending variations and mutations in timd\ Their
lifestyle is a metonymy for music, which of ail the
arts “articulâtes the de-territorialpnnciple to a higher degree
than the otherarts”’.21
In both poem and print the Gypsies are sur-
rounded by abundant fertility. But again, in the two
Works, neither artist provides anything to suggest
MALVINNI 2004 (see in note 14), p. 68. He continues with
an observation drawn from Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of
the nomad: “... both music and nomadism contain the same essen-
tial element, that of movement through time; whereas sedentary
culture manipulâtes space and landscape, nomadic culture is a temporal
happening like music'.' — Ibidem, p. 68.
the Gypsies are responsive to this. Rather this detail
gives rise in both works to overt metaphors for
music. When Baudelaire wrote about the impact on
the environment generated by his travellers as they
were passing through it, he referred to the cricket:
from the depths of his sandy lair it redoubles his
song. This chance association of vagabondage and
natural music is also explicidy evoked by Liszt in his
book. In conjuring the sounds made by a travelling
troupe, Liszt through his use of language provides a
synecdoche for the musique concrète composed of the
passing horse-drawn transport and company, noise
which he said resembled a “formidable octave engaging
ail our auraiperceptions”" According to Sarga Moussa,
Liszt’s writing “manifestly searches to reproduce, stylistically,
the 'exubérant hubbub’ characteristic of Gypsy musiG?2
Manet’s interprétation of this inadvertent aspect
of Gypsy music-making takes the form of a boy
dragging a branch as the troupe passes through the
landscape. The sound of their passage is founded in
an image emphasizing the Gypsies physical connect-
edness to the environment is merely a matter of the
moment. At most, it evokes the artist inadvertently
creating “music” by scraping the wax of the copper
plate with his etching tool.
That the imagery Manet inherited from Callot
came to be changed as a resuit of his sensitivity
to ideas embodied in Baudelaire’s transposition is
further seen in the way both artists address the
absence of a discernible sense or direction in the
sauntering outlaw band. Baudelaire begins his poem
by describing the Gypsies as “the prophétie tribe with
impassionedpupil” as if their stare embodied a special
kind of vision, one that can be identified with the
ancient theory of extramission. These eyes provide
the only source of light in Baudelaire’s poem; noth-
ing suggests their vision has any relation to either
religion or immutable laws. Oblivious to the natural
miracles taking place around them (miracles whose
imagery is suggestive of the expériences of the
ancient Jews in the desert), the Gypsies can do no
22 LISZT 1999 (see in note 2), p. 117.
23 MOUSSA 2008 (see in note 14), p. 238.
115
recognizably shared by Manet. In the process of
developing bis motif, the artist was creating “genetiť
links with not one but two previous works of art
from different disciplines. In fact, given the mystery
surrounding Manet’s intentions for this unpublished
print, its transpositional stratégy is perhaps the one
thing it is possible to be certain about, regarding it.
Callot’s images bring the Gypsies vividly close to
us. Their presence, piled up on the frontal picture
plane, implies a connection with the viewer. We are
invited to share ideas about the destination of their
journey by the pointing figure at the head of the
column in the first of Callot’s séries. By contrast,
Manet’s image shows some figures in the middle
distance, immersed in abundant natural surround-
ings. They amble aimlessly across our field of vision
passing between trees that stretch diagonally from
the right foreground to the left background, without
acknowledging their existence. Nothing in their pos-
ture or position on the picture plane suggests their
travelling has a determined bearing. They convey a
sense of detachment from the measures of civilized
life; their vagabondage is signified by their lack of
connection with the church spire in the distance,
almost at right angles to the line of their procession.
Nor do they seem to hâve any connections with the
housing, roughly indicated at the top left and bot-
tom right part of the print. As in Baudelaire’s poem
where the Gypsies are “casting upon the heavens aglance
weighed down by mournful regretsfor long-departed chimeraf,
Manet’s figures, too, appear to be cast adrift from the
ehimerical' consolations of home or religion. They
are immersed in “an open-ended, unceasing movement,
with unending variations and mutations in timd\ Their
lifestyle is a metonymy for music, which of ail the
arts “articulâtes the de-territorialpnnciple to a higher degree
than the otherarts”’.21
In both poem and print the Gypsies are sur-
rounded by abundant fertility. But again, in the two
Works, neither artist provides anything to suggest
MALVINNI 2004 (see in note 14), p. 68. He continues with
an observation drawn from Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of
the nomad: “... both music and nomadism contain the same essen-
tial element, that of movement through time; whereas sedentary
culture manipulâtes space and landscape, nomadic culture is a temporal
happening like music'.' — Ibidem, p. 68.
the Gypsies are responsive to this. Rather this detail
gives rise in both works to overt metaphors for
music. When Baudelaire wrote about the impact on
the environment generated by his travellers as they
were passing through it, he referred to the cricket:
from the depths of his sandy lair it redoubles his
song. This chance association of vagabondage and
natural music is also explicidy evoked by Liszt in his
book. In conjuring the sounds made by a travelling
troupe, Liszt through his use of language provides a
synecdoche for the musique concrète composed of the
passing horse-drawn transport and company, noise
which he said resembled a “formidable octave engaging
ail our auraiperceptions”" According to Sarga Moussa,
Liszt’s writing “manifestly searches to reproduce, stylistically,
the 'exubérant hubbub’ characteristic of Gypsy musiG?2
Manet’s interprétation of this inadvertent aspect
of Gypsy music-making takes the form of a boy
dragging a branch as the troupe passes through the
landscape. The sound of their passage is founded in
an image emphasizing the Gypsies physical connect-
edness to the environment is merely a matter of the
moment. At most, it evokes the artist inadvertently
creating “music” by scraping the wax of the copper
plate with his etching tool.
That the imagery Manet inherited from Callot
came to be changed as a resuit of his sensitivity
to ideas embodied in Baudelaire’s transposition is
further seen in the way both artists address the
absence of a discernible sense or direction in the
sauntering outlaw band. Baudelaire begins his poem
by describing the Gypsies as “the prophétie tribe with
impassionedpupil” as if their stare embodied a special
kind of vision, one that can be identified with the
ancient theory of extramission. These eyes provide
the only source of light in Baudelaire’s poem; noth-
ing suggests their vision has any relation to either
religion or immutable laws. Oblivious to the natural
miracles taking place around them (miracles whose
imagery is suggestive of the expériences of the
ancient Jews in the desert), the Gypsies can do no
22 LISZT 1999 (see in note 2), p. 117.
23 MOUSSA 2008 (see in note 14), p. 238.
115