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In 1873 Paris, a poet entertains a café with a gladiator duel — then turns the joke into a provocation. What happens when the “academy” loses control of the story? Read on, then join our Write From Art challenge and the Ekphrasis Masterclass.
Bloodlust surged through the crowd, the swell of agitation rising to a fierce roar as the first of the gladiators stepped into the dusty arena. He was a vast tower of strength, at least six foot four, and his already substantial height was extenuated by the plumes adorning his helmet and by the gleaming spear wielded in his right hand. His bronze panoply shone as it caught the sun, and beneath it a crimson tunic flapped blithely in the breeze. In his left hand the Hoplite held an elliptical shield decorated with the proud emblems of his lineage and protecting him from knee to shoulder. At his waist was a sheathed sword that had sent many a foe screaming into the hands of Hades. With arms and legs of sculpted muscle this first champion appeared to be Achilles reborn, or else he was Alexander the Great, or perhaps he was noble King Leonidas guarding Thermopylae’s pass. The champion scanned the battleground, his face appearing immutable and merciless beneath the metal visage that transformed this mortal soldier into a god of war. Seeing that he was alone for now, the Hoplite raised his great spear in a silent salute to death, and all around him the audience bade for blood.
Their demands would soon be granted. A vast gate on the opposing side of the arena was drawn slowly open, revealing a dreadful darkness in its wake. The crowd fell to a hushed silence as each among them imagined the strength and skill of any warrior brave enough to contest their great champion.
Out of the darkness stepped the challenger. First the crowd saw a pair of boots, battered leather and worn into exhaustion through many years of hard labour. Then a pair of trousers that were grubby and threadbare at the knees. The challenger wore no helmet, and nor did he wear any armour over his chest. He wore an old white smock instead, discoloured by age and stained at the armpits. The ragged garment hung loosely around his bony frame. Emerging fully into the arena, the challenger lifted his head, whereupon the crowd beheld an elderly bespectacled man whose head was covered by a wrap of linen, tied with a bright blue ribbon, and whose crinkled face peered out keenly from beneath a sun visor. The old man held aloft his weapon of choice – a leafy cabbage – and a gradual rumble of applause soon echoed around the amphitheatre.
The great Hoplite raised his shield and lowered his spear, meeting the challenge with violent intent. In reply, the old man circled his opponent, using a vegetable knife to peel the cabbage leaves with each cautious shuffling sidestep, coughing and spluttering as he commenced to evasive shimmying.
“How will the old man fight, armed with a cabbage and a tiny kitchen knife?” an incredulous man shouts from the crowd.
“He will feed the cabbage to the Hoplite,” interjects a drunken woman. “It is old and very stringy. It doesn’t matter how strong the Hoplite is, the cabbage will stick in his throat and choke him to death.”
A ripple of laughter spreads, breaking the enchantment. Both champions fade, and with them all traces of the ancient days and their promises of primal combat. The audience finds that they have returned to a world that feels far less solid than the limestone amphitheatre and its proud Doric columns that they had been collectively imagining themselves in only moments before. They find themselves returning to an epoch that is far less confident in its destiny. They return to 1873, where the nascent days of the French Third Republic struggle to divine their purpose between the waning authority of the crown and the eagle, and where even the seditious emblem of the Tricolour has lost much of its zeal. They find themselves returning also to Paris, where the squalid medieval centre, so long a breeding ground for putrefaction and wild discontent, has finally been demolished, condemning bitter memories of the dark and desperate days of revolution to ash and rubble.
Under the direction of Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the new capital is a spacious vision of modernity and urban ambition: air and light now flow over sweeping avenues, leafy boulevards, and public parks. Sewer systems have been installed, providing clean water throughout the city. For the first time in a century, the canons have fallen silent. In place of the street fighting, barricades, and bayonets that the citizens of recent generations were, lamentably, all-too familiar with, Parisians today now explore the novel pursuits of peace. Gentlemen attired in shirts, waistcoats, and straw hats, accompany ladies in billowing dresses on their way to dances and games, and parties on the decks of river boats. They picnic leisurely beside the Siene on Sundays and spend their evenings eating and drinking gaily in wine shops and cafés across the city.
You join us in one such café, The Cabaret Andler-Keller. Packed to the rafters, the sour vapours of cheap wine and thin beer fill the air, along with the dense smog of pipe tobacco. At the centre of the room stands the poet whose words had conjured the scene of gladiatorial combat for the amusement of his fellow drinkers. Despite the drunken woman’s jape, and the laughter that it had elicited, our poet smiles wryly, for all eyes remain upon him and everyone present is waiting, with breath bated, for him to provide them with the satisfaction of a victor.
“The cabbage man will be skewered in an instant,” declares one man, slamming his drinking vessel onto his table to emphasise his point, and causing beer to slop across its surface.
“If you believe that, step out into the street and walk this city,” the poet replies. “As you go, count every Hoplite that you see. They are all gone my friends. The old man and his cabbage won the duel, and he is here today to brag of it.”
A ripple of deliberation spreads through the café, and, for a moment, it seems that the old man had indeed triumphed.
“Pernicious nonsense,” a further speaker interjects. “What nonsense the poets talk – conceited stories spun like the webs of spiders to ensnare impressionable minds.” This speaker is an older man, his whispering grey hair receding and backcombed. This man’s moustache is thick and waxed at each side into two points, while his chin and jawline are shaved smooth. His jacket and shirt are of good quality and ornamented with a bow tie made of white silk. “The Hoplites endure,” the speaker continues, “their armour has been traded for a blue uniform, their spears are now bayonets, and with them they defend the great republic – France, successor of Greece and Rome, and first country in all of the world!”
The older man’s peroration is greeted with an ironic rendition of La Marseillaise, the patriotism of the song over-emphasised in some quarters of the café, where it mixes with drunken laughter.
Affronted, the speaker stands and raises his voice for the benefit of all. “Never mock our anthem. It is the song of the First Republic: its words were writ in blood and sacrifice. Our forefathers sang it as they toppled tyrants and struck fear into the corrupt and fat-headed aristocrats who believed that they owned our country down to its last grain of wheat. Where once it was a battle cry, the anthem now stands as a proud commitment to the ideals of liberty, fraternity, and egality. We are the masters of ourselves. We are the citizens who shape the greatest country on Earth, evincing its supremacy in all things that matter: first in reason and in law; first in influence; and first in all matters of philosophy, art, and culture.”
“And first too in pornography!” shouts a woman from the back of the room. Her words are greeted with rancorous mirth. Buoyed by the laughter, the woman presses her point further: “They say that Monsieur Manet has transformed Venus into a prostitute. And everyone knows, when Corbet wasn’t visiting the whores, he had them visiting him! I heard he had them lie together in his studio. He sketched them in the act for his private amusement!”
“Monsieur Corbet was a savage,” snaps back the older, well-to-do, man. “He was like a guest, who appears uninvited to dinner – and drunk for good measure – who insists upon picking his teeth, belching, and resting his muddy boots on the host’s white cloth.”
“Monsieur Corbet might have been a good painter, if he had ever sobered up,” another man interposes as he scribbles onto a sheet of paper. “Behold! I have here in my hand a preparatory
sketch for his final masterpiece.” The man holds aloft a crude rendering of a chamber pot filled with human refuse. “He has told me himself of his intention to paint the subject – this great and lowly chamber pot – on the scale of Napoleon!”
“Monsieur Corbet is a hero of the people!” replies the poet, still standing. “All good citizens should band together to demand an immediate end to his exile. More than any of us, it was he who tried hardest to exorcise the lingering spectre of snobbery: he led the vanguard, fighting heroically against all those who believe that beauty is a thing to be taught like Algebra.”
“He was the hero of pigs and scoundrels, nothing more,” the well-to-do man insists. He takes to his feet and raises his index finger in hopes of obviating the need for any further discourse. “Monsieur Corbet courted scandal as if it were a beautiful heiress. He ruffled feathers and poked at bears until finally one day they bit him. Now he is no more. His malignant influence has been outcast, thankfully, from this great city. Only a grubby degenerative, of the kind such as he, could have ever hoped to see anything of value in his crude attempts at painting. Art is beautiful. It ennobles the soul. It is both the measure, and the expression of our civilization. Now, as for Monsieur Manet, I imagine that he will humiliate himself for the rest of his days, trying and failing to exhibit in the Salon while anyone with two functioning eyes that see could tell you he is no painter.”
“And you, Monsieur, are your eyes functional?” asks the poet.
“My eyes are exceptional, Monsieur. Indeed, people pay me to use them. I am a critic. The readers of Le Charivari –”
“– rag!” a man shouts in reply.
“– elitist rag!” another expounds.
“The intelligent and refined readers of Le Charivari,” the well-to-do man continues, ignoring the jibes, “will be familiar already with my columns and will have long associated the name of Louis Leroy with good taste, a ready wit, and an almost preternatural understanding of all matters of aesthetics. I have met Monsieur Manet personally – have any of you? I have seen many of his paintings. Let me assure you, behind the legend lies only a spoiled little fellow frustrated by his many failures. He is no outlaw. He is no messiah, though they say he has inspired a band of rag-tag followers who believe quite earnestly that high drama can be found in low subjects. I hear that they even work, en plein air, so to speak, setting their easels into the mud where they commence to painting – amidst cow dung and midges – with a total disregard for subject: flowers! fields! A wet Wednesday!” The well-to-do man scoffs at the notion as he makes his way to the café’s exit. As he reaches the door, he turns once more to address the room. “To return to your own metaphor, Monsieur, these delusional fools pose about as much threat to the Academy as that old
man and his cabbage did to the Hoplite. Indeed, I shall tell you how your duel shall end: the Hoplite will thrust the old fellow through the very moment that he is in range. He will gut the tedious little nuisance like a carp in shallow water, and serve his head on a platter, with the dull leaves of his cabbage for a garnish. You see if he doesn’t.”
Write From This Image.
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Link:
https://www.litromagazine.com/editors-pick/write-from-art-ekphrasis-prompts/
Jake Kendall is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh’s MSc programme in Creative Writing and he continues to live and work in the city. His work takes much inspiration from the visual arts. His debut collection of prose, “The Vanitas & Other Tales of Art and Obsession” (Neem Tree Press, 2024) refracts contemporary anxieties through the timeless imagery of Bosch, van Gogh, Géricault and others.
