Siddhartha: the birth of a writer: Victor Segalen.
Around the drama: The historical, social and artistic context of the time.
The 19th century witnesses an “oriental renaissance” which was first
characterized by a linguistic revolution. Until then, only Hebrew and Arabic works
had been translated but an interest in Sanskrit texts made its appearance then. The
discovery of Indian texts occurring at that time is characterized by several stages and
one of them is the translation of Buddhist texts after 1840. The Introduction to the
History of Indian Buddhism by Burnouf is considered a key publication, in that it
greatly influenced philosophers such as Nietzsche and artists such as Wagner.
German romanticists were fascinated by India because it represented "the
different." In France, at a time when positivist philosophy and eclectic spiritualism
was in full development, the interest for India brought a lot of controversy. Was
Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? Many saw Buddhism as a threat and
philosophers perceived it as a nihilist and pessimistic philosophy. At the end of the
19th century, the rejection of Buddhism as a philosophy led to the rejection of India
as a whole and many turned back towards Greece. The philosophy of India was
rejected at the time when its knowledge was being constituted and it became the
exclusive field of an elite of specialists.
Ironically, it was at that time that the science of religions was created, and a
section of religious science was opened at the Ecole Pratiques des Hautes Etudes in
1887. This indicated a radical shift in the attitude toward the Catholic Church;
religion was no longer studied as theology, but as science and it is no surprise that it
happened at the time the Church and the State were about to separate in France
(1905).
A strong interest for ancient and foreign religions pervaded at that time. In
1889, the Musée Guimet opened in Paris, partly because the Municipal Council felt
it would promote "Free thought."
Several musical and dramatic attempts to depict Buddha’s life were
undertaken in the 1880's, and in particular The temptation of Buddha ordered by the
Princess of Polignac to the musician Fauré who had major difficulties in finding a
librettist capable of writing on that theme. After several unsuccessful attempts with
Verlaine, Maurice Bouchor and Albert Samain, the project failed.
Several attempts both in music and poetry to relate Buddha’s life preceded
Segalen’s own. However it is only after he came with his own project Siddhartha
that Segalen became aware of these. Segalen followed his own route to the
discovery of his Buddha and he arrived at his Siddhartha through Tahiti.
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Music and colors, a desire of elsewhere
Soon in his life, Segalen displayed a keen interest in music, and in particular
for the music of Wagner. He was a composer, a performer and a music lover. He
wrote several musical pieces in which many colored songs were inspired by poems
written by his friends or by famous artists. Later, Segalen became interested in other
art forms: poetry (Rimbaud), literature (Huysmans) and painting.
As a navy medical student he tried to tie his passion for art to his study of
medicine in his thesis, the topic of which was first Hysteria and Hypnotism in
Wagner’s work. In 1901, a year later, due to his new interest in colored audition, he
changed his thesis topic to Neuroses in Contemporary Literature and he pulled out
the chapter on synesthesia to be published as his first article in the Mercure de
France.
In 1902, he was sent to Tahiti on his first assignment as a doctor in the Navy
although he had not thought of Tahiti as a favorite destination. On his way there, he
stopped in New York where he wrote his first poem: La Tablature, in which he
evokes his own birth as a poet.
At the time Segalen was in Tahiti, Gauguin was living on Atuona in the
Marquesas Islands but due to circumstances and distance, Segalen never had the
chance to meet with Gauguin before he died. It is only after his death that Segalen
discovered Gauguin, first as a writer and later on as an artist. Gauguin and his work
were going to allow Segalen to take birth as an artist.
The empty socle
Segalen was sent by the colonial administration to Atuona, the island on
which Gauguin had lived, to collect his works that were to be auctioned in Tahiti.
Most of Gauguin’s works had already been wrapped up with the exception of five
wood reliefs and a clay statue named Te Atua which had a posture typical of Buddha
statues, but with Marquesian features. The Buddha had become an integral part of
Gauguin's iconography in Tahiti and he was no longer identifying himself to a
suffering Christ but to a joyful Buddha born in Tahiti. Segalen intentionally left the
statue behind, but he took with him its socle. Gauguin and his work were an
illumination for Segalen.
Back in Tahiti, Segalen acquired most of Gauguin’s paintings that where on
sale. In 1904, Segalen wrote his first article on Gauguin: "Gauguin dans son dernier
décor" in which he mentally reconstituted Gauguin’s house and his clay statue Te
Atua which he named at first "a Maori Buddha." Segalen had kept the socle and the
emptiness left by the absent statue allowed his imagination to re-create his own
illumination. He substituted his own vision to Gauguin's Te Atua.
The socle and the statue allowed Segalen to be born as a writer and his future
work Siddhartha to bud. In Siddhartha, Segalen tells the story of a Buddha which is
reminiscent of Gauguin and his statue, but which is also an auto-portrait of the
author himself. "The foetus-god," the new name which Segalen later gave to
Gauguin’s statue Te Atua in his article "Hommage à Gauguin" in 1916, was the
coming to life in his own work. In Siddhartha, Segalen would allow Gauguin and
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his god Te Atua to be born again. Segalen would leave Tahiti with a renewed
interest in Buddha due to his discovery of Gauguin's work.
To lift up again a reclining Buddha
In 1904, Segalen left the Marquesas Islands for France and on his way; he
stopped in Ceylon where he spent over six weeks. Segalen took this stop-over in a
Buddhist country as an opportunity to walk into the steps of the founder of
Buddhism and to discover Buddha and his teachings.
He visited the Buddhist High School, the Oriental Library and the Malivatta
monastery where he meet with a young priest Selananda whom he later described as
"his initiator." The atmosphere of their conversation was a real illumination for
Segalen. In the course of this conversation, Selananda gave a new name to the
Buddha, the name of a man, Siddhartha. Segalen would set this new name on the
empty socle of Gauguin's statue. It became the name of Segalen's own Buddha, the
name of his drama Siddhartha.
Segalen visited the temple of Kelani where he saw frescos depicting the most
significant moments in Buddha's life. In this temple, he also found a huge statue of a
reclining Buddha which illustrates Buddha's last moments before his death. At the
moment of death Buddha appeared calm, serene and full of joy. What a contrast for
Segalen with the Catholic God of his country who had been crucified and suffered
excruciating pains. Segalen was seeking joy, and he preferred to identify himself to
this man who had searched for illumination and had achieved Enlightenment. In
Atuona, Segalen had left behind Gauguin's statue and substituted his own creation.
In the same manner, he was going to replace a reclining Buddha on his way to death
by a reclining Siddhartha on his way to life. In identifying himself with Siddhartha,
Segalen had chosen a hero who, like himself, had left his family, and his country to
reach his goal: illumination. Segalen anticipated such a similarly successful quest
for himself as he already had cut off his initial ties with his country and his religion.
Siddhartha: The novel of a chick opening its eye
The reclining Buddha of Kelani is transforming into a Siddhartha taking
birth. Siddhartha is Segalen and the book tells us the story of Segalen's life-long
work. He writes about the life of another, he writes a drama as his own awakening.
Segalen writes about his life through the intermediary of the other to whom he gives
birth or a new birth as he himself is born through the act of writing. At his birth,
Siddhartha resembles Segalen more than Buddha himself. Both Segalen and his
Siddhartha were characterized by difference at birth: Segalen was too small and
Siddhartha refuses to open his eyes.
If Siddhartha appears to us as a regular newborn baby, he starts his life with a
great disadvantage: he refuses to open his eyes and is perhaps blind. This refusal to
open his eyes constitutes the core of the drama. This drama is about the delayed
opening of the eyes. The eyes of Siddhartha at birth are turned inward, they
illuminate the inside. The blind child refuses to open to the world; he has started an
independent life which is turned inward, toward the inside. He is turned toward
himself, inaccessible. Siddhartha's life starts with an experience of obscurity. His
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face is white like the snows covering the nearby Himalayas, like the white page. It
appears virginal, a promise of many things to come while being nothing yet. The
blind Siddhartha resembles the poet seeking his internal light. To start the drama
with the awakening of the newborn baby Siddhartha is to insist on the importance of
the eyes, of perception in the knowledge of self. When Siddhartha opens his eyes,
his mother has already died. Because of a prophecy that was told at his birth--he
would flee in the jungle if he saw the three terrors: disease, old age and death-- the
world his father presents to him when he finally opens his eyes is devoid of ugliness
and suffering. The world Siddhartha sees is perfect just like a paradise where
knowledge is impossible. He is born in an illusory world and although he has
opened his eyes, he remains blind. His eyes are large and dark like a pond, a
darkness that symbolizes his lack of clarity at birth. Siddhartha ignores his situation
in the world. His situation is problematic and to the point of being absurd, it
becomes emblematic of the situation in which modern man finds himself.
Khrisha: reflections in the crystal
Segalen’s most fascinating invention in his Siddhartha is the feminine
character of Krisha Gautani who is as important as Siddhartha in the drama. She is
his Siddhartha's muse, the woman-image who led him to illumination. As Segalen
explains "There are two Krishas. She is the ignorant and lively child of Act I who
becomes in Acts III and IV the all too pushy and feminine wife whom Siddhartha
despises and kills. In Act II and Act V, the epilogue, she is immaterial, yet more
potent as the very essence of Siddhartha’s thought. She is "his thought" (71).
Krisha has multiple emanations: there is the Kisa of Pali literature, the child-Krisha
who sings the "Delivered," the woman-Krisha and finally the ideal-Krisha who
uncovers the changing reflections of nature, reveals the unsaid and becomes the
companion of Segalen’s poetic quest.
I. Kisa Gotami from the Pali literature
Kisa Gotami, who belonged to the same clan as Siddhartha Gotama,
tragically lost her son and later became a nun and entered the Order of Buddha. She
became one of the most well-known women disciples because of her ascetic
temperament and wrote poetry.
Certain texts also refer to the words she said before Siddhartha left his
palace, the words which supposedly led him to renounce his family life and abandon
everything to find the route to liberation.
II. Krisha’s song in the first act of Siddhartha
Segalen kept that historical reference, and from it created Krisha’s song
found in the first act of his drama. The song "Delivered" provoked Siddharta’s quest
by showing him the route to illumination. Segalen insists on the creative error from
which Sidhartha started his quest. Siddhartha saw in Krisha “his messenger”
although the words she said were merely those of a child. He perceived in her words
thoughts that were reflective of his own thoughts. Virgin and white, Krisha is a
reveller to Siddhartha.
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When she first appears in the drama, her very complexity is apparent. She is
the Kisa of the Buddhist literature; she is a manifestation of Western art's
representations of woman at the end of the 19th century. She is the virgin-child, the
other, the misunderstood who allows to creator to find himself. Krisha is the first
example of sexual exoticism in Segalen’s work. She is Siddhartha’s muse. She is
the involuntary messenger of a light that is projected on her rather than by her.
Segalen’s Krisha desires to be Siddhartha’s wife, like Gotami in Beal’s story The
Romantic Legend of Sakya Buddha. Segalen took elements he found in his readings
to create his Krisha, a Krisha who owes certain of her characteristics to characters in
Buddhist stories of Buddha’s life, to Western art's depictions of woman yet she
remains profoundly unique and original.
III. Krisha the ascetic in a brown coat
In Act II, Siddhartha sees a form that he identifies as an ascetic who remains
silent. Later on, after answering the questions he asked the silent form, he discovers
that this form is in fact the veiled Krisha. Once again, he projected his thoughts on
the other, the veiled woman, making her into what his thoughts wanted her to be.
She allowed him to find out who he was. Krisha the ascetic is very much like Teura,
the Tahitian woman Gauguin had compared to a Buddhist monk. In creating his
Siddhartha, Segalen had placed both Siddhartha and Krisha on Gauguin's empty
socle. The way Segalen created his Krisha is also very reminiscent of how Gauguin
created his Eve Exotique. In his notes, Segalen wrote that Krisha was partially
modelled after his own cousin Alice, the woman-lis, whom he had hoped to marry
but who had married another and come to symbolize the unreachable, the queen of a
kingdom of elsewhere.
IV. The call of the desiring woman-Krisha
After making of the veiled form an ascetic, Siddhartha discovers a woman
burning with desire. He prefers the immaterial woman to the real one. She guided
his thoughts; she allowed his dreams and his imaginary constructions to be projected
on something that looked like an ascetic. She made possible the birth of the new
Siddhartha; she became for him a spiritual mother who allowed him, thanks to her
virgin thought, to discover himself. After seeing her as his mother, he makes her a
virgin-wife. She becomes for him very much like a Virgin Mary. The union of
Siddhartha to Krisha is to remain platonic, a perfect poetic marriage. His refusal to
know Krisha carnally constitutes his first refusal. He breaks the chain by rejecting a
link. He loves Krisha in her absence. The real Krisha is an enemy, an oppressing
reality. Krisha is deeply hurt, but for Siddhartha it is his triumph over his sexual
desires: he has abandoned a link (marriage/sexual act) and retained the beauty of an
idea. As he leaves the City, he covers himself with the coat left behind by Krisha,
the veil of his vision and carries with him his Marian vision.
V. Krisha, the temptress
In act III, Krisha reappears when Siddhartha is a yogi who is going through
ecstasy. Siddhartha the yogi is like a romantic or symbolic poet who wants to
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discover beauty in ugliness, who transforms his vision by taking opium to see exotic
worlds. However he is an "exote" of a new kind who, like Segalen, is looking for the
different in himself.
For Siddhartha the yogi, just as for many Western men in search of
transcendence at the turn of the century, women represented Evil, the Temptress, and
an obstacle to man's spiritual quest.
Krisha came to the jungle to convince Siddhartha to return to the City. But
Siddhartha does not care about her. He remembers another Krisha, little childKrisha, and he does not listen to the real Krisha any more than he did the first time.
She is disappointed that he will not follow her. Krisha finally accepts the role she
was given by Siddhartha as a child. She wants to be his guide, his inspiration. She
thinks that if she helps him, he will follow her and go back to the City with her. She
appears motivated by the glory of the prestigious name Siddhartha would make for
himself in becoming "the Sage of the Sakya clan." Krisha again appears similar to
Western depictions of women as seekers of fortune and gold. Siddhartha rejects her
offer but, in memory of the child-Krisha she was, he offers her a miracle.
VI. Krisha, the woman-liana
In Act IV, Siddhartha refuses to perform a second prodigy. The crowd leaves,
but Krisha stays. Siddhartha does not see or hear her. He despises her as an "evil
vision." He only sees in her a "woman" and he despises the woman-wife, the
woman-mother. The woman he loves and recalls, the little chid-Krisha, is a poetess,
an imaginary vision, the Krisha of his thought. Siddhartha clearly opposes the adult
Krisha, the demon-temptress, to Krisha-the child, the saint, his absent muse.
Krisha-the desiring woman loves him as a wife and is typical of traditional Indian
women and Western depictions of woman of the time. She holds him in her arms
but Siddhartha frees himself of these liana-arms that seek to imprison him and he
finally kills her. Krisha-liana resembles the depictions of woman at the turn of the
century in Europe where clutching women where a familiar theme in art and
literature. The death of the adult Krisha is a necessary preliminary step before
Siddhartha can open his eyes. When she dies, Siddhartha's Marian vision reappears.
VII. The blue Krisha
At the beginning of act V, Siddhartha is about to give up his quest. Nature
mocks him. Nature calls him in women’s voices. It is Segalen's personal
representation of the daughters of Mara, the demon. Nature and women are united in
an attempt to sway man from his goal. Siddhartha is seduced by these women-forms
that perform a dance of Salome before him. They desire his head and he fails to
resist them.
A blue light emanates from Krisha’s dead body and the other forms
disappear. Once again Siddhartha's Marian vision comes to his rescue; her blue
color is an indication of her purity. In a Buddhist context, this blue vision can be
interpreted as being Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of wisdom which is often
represented as a blue goddess. Prajnaparamita is blue like the coat of the Virgin
Mary. The blue form will show to Siddhartha the real nature of all phenomena, their
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illusory nature. The grace of the blue light allows Siddhartha, obsessed with sight, to
change the direction of his gaze.
When Siddhartha reintegrates with the blue light-Krisha, he realizes that the
blue vision, like the evil visions, has no true reality, they all emanate from his mind.
Woman remains other, escaping all idealization; her representations in art reflect
only the male artist's projections. She, therefore, becomes for Segalen the ideal
subject of exoticism, as he conceived it, for she remains ever unknown, always
conceived other than she is.
For Siddhartha-Segalen, the ideal woman is the one whose name is not fixed
by man, by marriage, the virgin, the young girl. She is the one to who all is
promised, the one who exists as potential and therefore inspires the seeker-poet.
Rich in unknown potential, she has not been defeated. She remains multiple, silent
and out of reach at a far away distance that is non-existence itself.
As Segalen had left Gauguin’s statue behind, Siddhartha must leave the
child-Krisha behind to allow his own transformed vision, his blue Krisha, to take
birth in him. The woman that Segalen-Siddhartha pursues hides, she cannot be
reached; she is the untamable absent who says "no." She is the queen of a far away
kingdom. Like "A-lis," she is the "absent of all bouquet," and it is about her, that
Segalen will sing in his many poems from Stèles to Thibet.
The no-name of Debussy (In French no and name are pronounced exactly the
same)
Segalen met with Debussy in 1906. Like Segalen, Debussy wanted to
explore virgin areas. In his opera Pélléas et Mélisandre, he was mixing music and
silence, seeking to tell the unexpressable. His opera was a musical and visual
illumination for Segalen. It was something completely new at the time.
The music of Debussy appeared to Segalen to be the ideal complement, the musical
illumination that would make his Siddhartha a complete synesthesia, a visual and
musical illumination. He was looking for someone who could hear the music of his
Siddhartha. Debussy had also a vision of the woman close to that of Segalen.
Mélisandre has a fragile and unreal beauty like the child-Krisha.
When Segalen met with Debussy, he mentioned his plans to put Siddhartha
to music. Soon Debussy, who had been fairly receptive at first, expressed doubts as
to the possibility of writing an opera out of the play Siddhartha. In 1907, Debussy
finally gave Segalen his answer. He felt that Siddhartha was "an impossible dream,"
and although he could envision musical illustrations for certain moments of the
drama, he could not imagine a whole opera.
However, in 1907, he wrote an Image for piano entitled And the Moon
Descends Onto the Temple That Once Was which is filed under the title Bouddha at
the Pierpont-Morgan Museum in New York. As he refused to associate his name
with Segalen’s drama, Siddhartha, Debussy was creating his own "Bouddha," his
own Image in secret. This image bearing a hidden name could just as well have been
called Siddhartha. If the young poet Segalen had been able to inspire to Debussy a
beautiful Image, the "no" of Debussy would resonate in his work. The "no" of the
composer had made him aware that he needed to create his own name while keeping
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within himself his hidden names, his Gauguin and his Debussy. In refusing to
associate his name to Segalen's drama, Debussy was saying no to the opera,
pronouncing the failure of the play. This failure at the beginning linked to the name
Debussy, this drama on which Debussy had refused to put his name, would allow the
birth of Segalen-the poet. From then on, he would inscribe only his name on his
poetry, his Stèles and Thibet, keeping the names of Gauguin and Debussy hidden
within.
The Unnameable by way of non-conclusion
From his visit to Gauguin’s hut to the discovery of the statue Te Atua and its
socle, the question of the name was always at the centre of Segalen’s poetic
preoccupations. He kept the illumination of Gauguin and his statue and he replaced
their hidden names with new names. While he was staying in Ceylan, he rejected the
names of Buddhism and Buddha which did not correspond to his vision, and in his
conversation with Selananda, the name Siddhartha, the name of a man came to him
as an illumination. As he chose the name Siddhartha, Victor Segalen orientalized his
own name; Victor became the Oriental Victor, his own Buddha.
In the play Siddhartha, Segalen insists on the importance of the name. In Act
I, Siddhartha first refuses to name his child. A name is like the promise of a destiny
and Siddhartha does not care about his son. Pushed by the crowd and Krisha, he
finally calls him “Fetter.” The name given at birth is hindrance and one needs to
discover one's own name. Siddhartha projects his feelings on his unknown child.
He sees in his son a chain, an obstacle lying between him and his desire to be free.
For Siddhartha, the name "Fetter" is not a prediction, it does not mean anything, for a
prediction can only be a name that resonates in oneself. Sidhartha took his new
name from Krisha's song "the Delivered," he had chosen his own name.
In Act III, when Siddhartha meditates, his disciples name his realization, and
say he has reached his goal.
When looking for him, Krisha had a hard time finding him for no one knew
"Siddhartha's real name," his family name. People were calling him the "Sage" or
the "Solitary," they had given him a name that corresponded to his calling. Hidden
under these new names, Siddhartha had remained unreachable for Krisha.
After performing his prodigy, the crowd had given Siddhartha a new name:
"Sakya-Muni" but Siddhartha had refused to please the crowd; he had refused to be
called a yogi. Asked by his disciples to name himself, he had only been able to say
that he was a suffering man seeking joy. His disciples had retracted the name
"Master" that they had given to him for he had refused to play the role they had set
for him. For Siddhartha, the real name was not public and it was still hidden even
from himself.
When Siddhartha had realized the illusory nature of all phenomena, he had
used a name to symbolize his domination of Nature which he has called: "The
Illusion of the World."
Later on, he had refused the name of "Creator of Light" a godly name which was still
not the name he was seeking to make for himself.
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At the time of illumination, he had again been given a new name by Gods
and men: "the Buddha." But he had not revealed his real name which had remained
hidden from all. In reaching his goal, he had attained the Unnameable.
The central place given to the name, to the hidden name and to the
Unnameable in Siddhartha illuminates the entire work of Segalen. The impossibility
of saying the name and the will to inscribe names will come again and again in
Segalen's future works. Segalen will become the poet of the name and of the
impossibility to say the name, of the Unnameable. In creating his Siddhartha, his
first action as a budding writer had been the choice of a name but inside the work
itself he had said the impossibility of revealing the real name. In that way, Segalen
was inscribing in this work of his youth what would become the ideal route of his
whole life as a poet, a succession of names displaced and replaced by other names in
an incessant quest for the unnameable, a creative process by way of dis-orientation.
In his poetry work of 1912, Stèles, Segalen insists on the inscription of the name on
the stone, the poetic stelae, while affirming that the most beautiful name can only
remain absent. In his second article on Gauguin, in 1916, "Hommage à Gauguin,"
which precedes the writing of his last work Thibet, Segalen was coming back to the
question of the name and to Gauguin's statue Te Atua to say that "one hesitated to
give it a name" and to re-name it as " foetus-god." He was coming back to the socle
of Gauguin before creating his own socle, his mountain, Thibet. He was now
refusing to let his own name disappear and was inscribing it on a summit, on his
Thibet. In his last work, his last exotic travel to a country he never visited, Segalen
was passing from the name of Buddha which he had transformed in a man
Siddhartha, to a name of place, Tibet, which he was making his symbol, his god.
Segalen wanted now to take birth as a rock, to make of Thibet his ultimate stelae
where he was writing his name for it never to be erased. There, Segalen wanted to
meet his ideal woman, his unreal Krisha, "the one that is not." He was defining his
poetic quest, speaking of himself as the one "who looked but could not find the
name." At the same time, he was inscribing his name, Victor Segalen, on his poem,
on his mountain, on his Thibet. However it is in Po-Youl, the ultimate part of the
poem, the most fragmentary, "the territory of the unnameable" that the white name of
Segalen had taken refuge. As in Siddhartha whose real name remained forever
unknown, it is in the unsaid of Po-Youl, the unfinished poem of the unnameable, the
country that cannot be reached that resonates the name of Segalen, a "no" to all name
which rings in the domain of absence, in the unfinished work.
In his white Thibet, this immense domain of absence and the unexplored,
Segalen was realizing his perfect synesthesia of absence where the unseen/the noname of Gauguin and the unsaid/the no-said by Debussy were exalted in a refusal of
all senses, of all colors and sounds, to allow the perfectly white illumination to
appear. An illumination, from which all names had been effaced, whitened, hidden.
Segalen had finally married his Krisha of the unreal and the young writer of
Siddhartha had made for himself a name of poet, a white name in the Thibet of the
unnameable. The difficult birth, the failed work, Siddhartha, had allowed the birth
of the unnameable, the success of the poet, of Thibet.