Laszlo Krasznahorkai - Seiobo There Below

He had said enchanting, he had said ravishing, he had said unspeakable, but he was silent, however, about how in the course of the past years he increasingly felt the beauty of the Venus de Milo to be a rebellion, he was silent about this in the Louvre; only at home — reaching it by the one, then the four, and transferring at the Gare de l’Est, and then the seven to Aubervilliers, returning home at the end of one day or another, and quickly filling the wash-basin with cold water, and quickly pulling off his shoes and socks, and arranging the basin by the armchair and slowly lowering his feet into it, and there and thus sitting quietly — what he had related to a group of older American ladies or a young Japanese man that day in the chaotic crowd came into his mind, and he was ashamed, ashamed of himself for not telling the entire truth, because the entire truth was that the secret of the beauty of the Venus de Milo was its rebellious strength, if the secret of her beauty could be named at all, this was largely the attribution that he had arrived at in connection with the Venus de Milo in the past years, for it was futile to say to him, as Monsieur Brancoveanu did that time, that the entire valuation of the Venus de Milo was greatly exaggerated, it was the French who made her world-famous when they propagated the notion that it was the work of Praxiteles, and in general, Monsieur Brancoveanu noted, curling his lips, how could such an artwork as this — trite, falsified, enervated, gnawed down, grossly over-praised, over-aggrandized, and hence in this way made utterly commonplace — be deserving of the all-encompassing attention as he paid to her; he — namely, Brancoveanu — could not understand this in such an informed person as Monsieur Chaivagne, but the latter just smiled, and shook his head, and said that one must be detached from the circumstances, we cannot allow ourselves to be pressured to believe that just because humanity has for some reason or another placed a work of art upon the highest pedestal, it is already well on its way to becoming commonplace, Monsieur Brancoveanu should believe him, he stated; he looked at the statue almost uninterruptedly: it was possible to be detached from the crowd, to be detached from the statue’s unpleasant — as far as they, the French, were concerned — early history, it was possible to disregard every manipulated, mercantile, hence false, devotion weighing upon it, and possible just to look at the statue itself, and the Aphrodite within it, the god within the Aphrodite, and then one saw what an unsurpassable masterpiece the Venus de Milo was; but you really don’t think — his colleague, much more passionate than he, then raised his voice, that when you look at the Venus de Milo itself, that you are also seeing all the Aphrodites created earlier by Antiquity and then Late Antiquity and then all the other Hellenistic artists, you surely don’t think that?! — but of course, Chaivagne smiled at him, how could he not think that, well, that was the point exactly, in the Venus de Milo there was the Cnidian Aphrodite and there was the Belvedere Aphrodite and there was the Kaufmann head, everything was there, Chaivagne gave a broad movement with his arm, everything that happened from Praxiteles, from the presumed fourth-century original onward up until Alexandros or Hagesandros — then he gestured toward Venus, still in her old spot, that is to say on the ground-level Galerie de la Melpomène, and he said: but at the same time the sculptor of the Venus de Milo imbued his own Venus with such a kind of strength, as he nearly let the robes fall down upon her, a strength that does not originate from this Venus’ earthly sensuality, not from her alluring nakedness, not from her cunning eroticism, but from a higher place, from whence this Venus truly comes, and at that point — even today he remembered it well — he did not continue his train of thought, in part because he was not prepared to do so, in part because he was frightened by what he was thinking, for already at that time, at the time of Monsieur Brancoveanu, he was already aware that the existence of the Venus de Milo, that is to say, her being there in the Louvre, and how she stood there in proud sanctity — across from her were the crowds, lining up, jostling, surging with their cameras and their complete ignorance and vulgarity — in that place in this Louvre, exactly where she, the Venus de Milo, stood, a kind of distressing scandal erupted, it was just that Chaivagne didn’t dare express it, even to himself for a while, or even to formulate the thought that namely the Venus de Milo in the Louvre was. . unbearable, even to admit to himself, for a long time he even dismissed that word from his mind, trying to quickly think about something else, to think, for example, that he was a museum guard and nothing else, and it was not for him to be concerned about these matters, only with those things that pertained to being a museum guard, but well what could he do, he had become such a museum guard, and so, well, the thought just took shape more and more, as he looked, he looked at the statue, as when for example it was moved, due to reconstruction, one story higher, and turned up here temporarily in the Salle des 7 Cheminées, and they set the statue upon a high — and especially to Chaivagne’s taste, not particularly appropriate — podium, and then the scandal somehow just became all the more obvious, because the statue still rose above the people, but it was not very suitable here, because she, the Venus de Milo, in Chaivagne’s opinion, did not belong here, more precisely, she did not belong here nor anywhere upon the earth, everything that she, the Venus de Milo meant, whatever it might be, originated from a heavenly realm that no longer existed , which had been pulverized by time, a moldering, annihilated universe that had disappeared for all eternity from this higher realm, because the higher realm had itself disappeared from the human world, and yet she remained here, this Venus from this higher realm remained here, left abandoned, and this, as he explained to himself of an evening — while soaking his aching feet, he sat down in the armchair and tuned into the news on France 1 — he understood this abandonment to mean that she had lost her significance, and that all the same here she stood because that Yorgos dug her up, and that d’Urville had her brought here and that Ravaisson put her together and exhibited her, yet she had no meaning , the world had changed over the past two thousand years; that part of humanity, thanks to which it had not been in vain for the Venus de Milo to stand anywhere and to signify that there was a higher realm, had vanished; because this realm had dissipated, vanished without a trace, it was not possible to understand what the one or two remaining fragments or pieces dug up could even mean today, Chaivagne sighed — and he moved his toes in the cold water — there was nothing higher and nothing lower, there was just one world here in the middle, where we live, where the number one and the four and the seven run, and where the Louvre stands, and inside it is Venus, as she looks at an inexpressible, mysterious, distant point, she just stands there, they put her here or they put here there, and she just stands there, holding up her head proudly in that mysterious direction, and her beauty emanates, it emanates into nothingness, and no one understands, and no one feels what a grievous sight this is, a god that has lost its world, so enormous, immeasurably enormous — and yet she has nothing at all.

And yet she had nothing at all, not even any meaning — this was a very sad thought; Chaivagne even tried continually to drive it out of his head, he didn’t want to think about it, he tried to convince himself, well, why was it not enough that every morning he could get up and immediately stand there again in her presence? — of course it was enough; at such times, he relaxed, and sleep really did chase these thoughts out of his head, and once again the next morning he appeared at his workplace with the same little smile on his face, and he took up his designated position in the room entrusted to him, tactfully withdrawing into one of the inner corners — from where he could keep an eye on the visitors, but could simultaneously also see the rising figure of Venus — another year went by like that, and again it was autumn, and it frequently rained in the city, although he took virtually no notice of this, because he did not move from his place, and the Venus de Milo did not move either, the reconstruction was still going on down there, and no one could even predict when the statue would turn up in its old spot, and neither he changed, nor did the Venus change — nor did that long crack in the Parian marble, which extended from the back of the statue along the back contour of the right thigh, and which of course was kept under strict observation by the restorers, but no, nothing happened — and well, really, nothing happened even with him, nothing, the days came and went, the crowds flooded in every morning, and flooded out every evening, he stood in the inner right-hand corner, observing the eyes and face of Venus high above, but never where the eyes and the face were looking, he observed the crowd as they trampled on each other, then once again he raised his gaze to the statue, and he just stared on and on from one autumn to another autumn, he diligently soaked his feet, he went in with the seven, the four, then the one, then he went home with the one, the four, and the seven, he meticulously parted his hair in the middle of his head in the morning with a damp comb, he stood and stood with his hands always clasped behind his back in the inner right-hand corner, he always smiled a little, so that he was always being approached, now by a group without a tour guide, now by a solitary visitor, and he always started by saying — and never saying anything else but — Praxiteles, always just Praxiteles.