Poets’ Corner- The Mad Hatter 15^th Century France’s Francois Villon Whether They Claim Him Or Not

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Once, a long time ago, an old communist I do not remember which version of the creed he adhered to, although he had had some impressive documented revolutionary credentials in Germany before Hitler pulled the hammer down in 1933 and he just barely got out into American exile by a very long and circuitous route, told me that as far as culture affairs, you know art, novels, music and what I want to talk about here, poetry, is basically subject to whatever personal whims a person may have on these matters. The caveat to all this is that both creators and admirers should be left to their own devises except if they are actively engaged with counter-revolutionary activity. Now that I think about it he probably got the idea from Leon Trotsky himself who wrote about such matters in the 1920s in books like  Literature and Revolution although I am sure that he did not consider himself a follower of that great revolutionary who was exiled in the late 1920s.

The point today is that if a left-wing political activist like myself, say, were very interested in the poetry of Emily Dickerson or Wallace Stevens or Thomas Mann or Edna Saint Vincent Millay then what of it. Except those kinds of poets do not “speak” to me. Poets like Allan Ginsberg burning the pages with his negro streets, his clamoring against the industrial complex, his angel hipsters, his chanting against the fate of the best minds of his generation, the gangster-poet Gregory Corso blazing the hot streets with his words and taking no prisoners, old Rimbaud with his mad ravings, Verlaine too, Genet with his black soul they “speak” to me. The troubadours, the “bad boys and girls,” the waifs, the gangsters, the drifters, grifters and midnight sifters and those who act as muses for the fallen are what makes me sit up and listen.                  

 And that brings us to Francois Villon, the “max daddy” of bad boy poets (and brigands) from the 15^th century. Strangely while I have picked up on most of my favorite poets from some academic setting I learned of Villon from two maybe unusual sources. First from the 1930s film The Petrified Forest where the Bette Davis character, Gabby, was crazy for the Villon book of poems sent from her returned to home mother in France. More importantly the poet and what he stood for was brought up in the film in conversation with Leslie Howard’s character Alan who was a Villon-like misplaced out of sorts wanderer out in the Arizona desert. The other source was a poem by Villon used as a front-piece of an article by Hunter S. Thompson who used the sentiment expressed by Villon where he considered himself a stranger in his own country (as did Thompson back in Nixon times in America).

But back to the muses, back to the gangsta muses (sorry hip-hop nation for stealing your thunder but your sing-song lyrics definitely make me think you have drawn from the same well, the same Villon well, especially guys like Biggie, Tupac, 50 cent, and Brother Cole, a brother from the same damn “sew those worn-out pants” projects neighborhood in spirit as me). Old Villon must have gotten tripped up on his DNA finding the back streets of Paris and later exile spots more attractive than the court life, the scholar’s. Trouble followed the guy wherever he moved (granted he had little room to maneuver in those days since he was a city man and not some outlaw Robin Hood working the old rural pastures and forests). His poetry speaks of drunken sots, of quick upstairs flights with besotten wenches, of tavern dark corners to plan, plan the next caper, or the next poem to explain away his life led.         

Who knows what makes a man or woman a stranger in their own land, an internal exile. Maybe like Villon it was his dismissal of the vanities of court life, the vacuity of the student life, or the lure of the outlaw life when bourgeois society (and France in the 15^th century was reaping the beggar’s banquet of bourgeois society) and it took no Karl Marx to notice that the old ways had to give way to the new city ways with their gold and death to free spirits, to those who lived outside allegiances. Maybe like Ginsberg shattered by the smoke of downtown Paterson, maybe shattered by the hysterical cries of his beloved if discarded mother, maybe shattered by the square-ness of his father-poet. Maybe like Jean bon Genet born of some ancient mix of the crime that dared not speak its name and crimes that had names. Trolling waterfronts looking for rough trade, looking for his lady of the flowers. Strangers, strangers all looking for some new Algiers, some new Casablanca, some new city a-borning.

Villon, lord of the sneak away night, besotted with six wines, drunk with the fragrance of women. Women who reek of the kingdom’s perfumes and if Hilary Mantel is to be believed over in bedeviled England all the women worked lilac and lemon tree leaves into their skin so that guys, guys like Villon ready to seek a lady’s favor could stand to be within ten feet of them. Reeking of words too, Villon reeking of words that is, quick words, words with hidden messages, words heard in taverns, on wormy mattresses, in stinking hayloft barns, unholy holy words that would make men quake if they had the sense that their God gave them as a gift (or was it the son, the damn crazed son, Jesus, called bandit), stealthily grabbing whatever was to be grabbed and the hell with the lord business. Then writing in dark dungeon nights looking for reprieves from a wretched life.

Beautiful, a beat down brother, no wonder Alan the wandering homeless out of fashion intellectual in The Petrified Forest claimed him as kindred, and why he could have walked on steamy late night New York streets and found kindred among the midnight sifters. Beat, beatified before his time probably clamoring on some woe begotten trumpet, blowing out big medieval blow notes to the hard Seine, the hard Norman shores, to all who would listen, Yeah, Saint Villon, sanctified, man of misrule, man of the hidden cloth, beat, beat about six ways to Sunday if you believe his resume, if you believe his 15^th century be-bop wail. What did Kerouac, hell, a kindred, a Breton, said-yes, moan, moan long and hard for man, and Saint Villon grant us some sign, some path that we might come to rescue you in sotted, sweated dungeons, so that you too can walk the fetid streets singing, holy, holy, holy.

What was it that his literary descendants, guys like Jack Kerouac who I swear had Villon blood in him, guys like Alan Ginsberg who sang holy, holy, holy to the new age except he cried out in vain to dreaded Molochs, called those who listened to their own drummers, listened to the winds beyond the towns, beyond the cities, listened to the forest men, the men who earlier in their lives lived in towns and cities?  Oh yeah, “holy goofs.” Not goofs like you would call some guy walking down the street looking down and he hits his head on a telephone pole because he wasn’t watching where he was going. No, our holy goof, I think Kerouac used that term to describe, or rather used that term as one of the ways to describe mad man fellow traveler Dean Moriarty, and hence the model Neal Cassady as well, to his Sal Paradise in On The Road. A guy who is for the moment, an existential be-bop guy, a guy who knows the score, knows right from wrong even, knows it better than you and me, and says “what the fuck,” says you know, I know, and so let the mystery be, let the cloistered intellectuals in their sullen monasteries poring over the number of angel that can fit on the head of a needle sulk while he worked on the angles, looked for dough, dames and dope. See, I swear Villon from his hidden grave sent down to posterity the model for the holy goof, and these other guys picked it out of the fog-bound air.   

Le Testament: Rondeau

 

Death, I cry out at your harshness,

That stole my girl away from me,

Yet you’re not satisfied I see

Until I languish in distress.

 

Since then I’ve lost all liveliness:

What harm alive, to you, was she?

Death, I cry out at your harshness,

That stole my girl away from me.

 

Two we were, with one heart blessed:

If heart’s dead, yes, then I foresee,

I’ll die, or I must lifeless be,

Like those statues made of lead.