Emile Saladin, "The Fandango" (1834)

This poem describes the fandango being danced in a club or ball – a dance, it should be noted, still of dubious legality when this was published (along with the cancan and cachuca, see Rêvenance No. 5) which gives the piece a political edge that isn't apparent anymore. The poem emphasizes exactly the reason for the prohibition: the unrestrained sexuality that was practiced in dance halls and to which the dance gave expression. The Fandango had recently been imported from Spain, and was danced both by touring professional troupes and by hardcore Parisian dance-freaks (known as chicards, débordeurs, badouillards, etc.) at balls and dance clubs. It's Spanish origins were also in large part Arabic and Muslim origins, a heritage which Saladin emphasizes and attempts to celebrate in this poem.

   

It's an interesting and very musical poem by a very interesting poet who I'm very ambivalent about – and who does not seem to have been published or written about in any language since 1845. This intro's a bit long so feel free ton skip to the poem if/when you wish.

   

First the problematic aspects: orientalism and a heavy dose of the male gaze. A big focus of the poem (and part of what made his work in general difficult to publish) is the unrestrained sexuality that permeated underground dance culture, but almost inevitably given the time, it's a pretty unreflectively misogynist perspective of it. As so often in French Romanticism (cf. Delacroix) this is tied to an equally unrestrained appropriative Orientalism treating Andalusia (Muslim Spain) as a kind of wonderland for the European imagination. In fact its author, the obscure avant-garde poet Emile Saladin, seems on the basis of his seven surviving poems to have been one of the most fanatical and dedicated proponents of the self-declared "Orientalist" current within French Romanticism.

  

I have no intention of clearing him on any of the above charges, but he's complicated in other ways too. First, my sense is that despite all the problematic aspects of his orientalism (which seem obvious to us now, 190 years later, but would not have occurred to most Europeans a century after his time) I get the sense from all his work that he meant well, in his own head at least – that he was attempting to celebrate cultural difference; the centrality of these themes, as well as references to multiple non-European cultures at a time when such things were still difficult to track down, make this seem like more than a fashion (by 1860, that would be different) while there is a complete absence in his work of the degrading stereotypes available to him from mainstream French culture – barbarity, rapacity, greed, tyranny, dogmatism, etc. Sensuality, though equally problematic as a stereotype, is clearly a positive trait in his eyes. 

  

His poetry is so steeped in Orientalism that I had assumed his name was a pseudonym – but more interestingly, it is not. His family name of Saladin apparently derives from the Crusades, which while clearly an issue from the colonialist side of things raises the question (I hate to say this but...) of Templar history? There was another French Saladin family, possibly another branch of his own, who were prominent engineers for three generations after him, and all also orientalist scholars, explorers, and diplomats; so the tantalizing question is raised of whether he in fact grew up in a family micro-culture of relative or aspirationally multicultural nature.... 

  

Saladin was also a radical leftist, described in the only biographical notice I've found (written during his life) as a "democratic poet" which in our parlance would translate roughly to a proto-anarchist insistence on direct rather than representative democracy. In the early 1840s his poetic activity gave way to journalism, and the newspaper he co-edited published work by Fourierist-associated writers, raising the possibility that his emphasis on sensuality may have its roots in radical political theory. 

  

He's also an example of provincial Romanticism – he seems to have been based in Bordeaux throughout his career, and thus represents the less-spoken of Romanticist and underground communities outside of Paris, connected by networks of correspondence, and traded journals. He is also part of the smaller network of extremist/avant-garde writers pushing the more formally and thematically eccentric aspects of the movement into experimental territory. As the single notice referred to above notes, his poetry is "very difficult", partly through its often short lines which destabalize the metric structure of French verse (long story...) and which derive from Troubadour poetry which is in turn inflected by Muslim forms from Spain, partly because of the heavy interior sound-patterning which further destabilizes the metric effects while paradoxically creating an intensely rhythmic, musical effect, and finally the often fractured and fragmentary syntax and occasionally bizarre imagery. Not easy to translate! This poem appeared in the avant-leaning anthology Annales romantiques in 1834, one of the first books I bought for the Revenant Archive.

 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE FANDANGO
-Emile Saladin

Dance on! ô youthful girls!
Dance onward, youthful gents!
To your jubilant quadrilles
unite inviting trills;
Dance on, dance on, coquettes,
to pleasure ripened yet;
to din of castanets
may all your songs be wedded.

What bayadere’s[1] physiques!
And so divinely smiling!
As if each one was easy,
all these flirtatious Genies!
Do you perceive them, pining,
upon the fields verdant,
those Andalusians fervent,
to glide off, tawny Virgins…

Tis those of grenadines,[2]
of billowing bouquets,
of sugarcane in wreathes,
with such seductive moves;
of Andalusian blooms
so ravishing that Asia’s
poetry offers us
no thing as marvelous.

Detached indifferent
on pale naked necks,
their heads are gently bent,
and heaving are their breasts;
all humming with the rhythm,
all rush to take position,
the next fandango’s launched,
its surges and its vaults.

Ephemeral and sprightly,
you sylphs, as you are flying,
in your light-hearted stances,
evoke a love expiring.
Now just like supple branches,
you’re thrusting out your hips
As well as throats so pallid
from which the eye can sip.

What frisky merriment!
What eyes so dark and rending!
Now, alabaster and jet
are fluttering and blending.
Now how their skin is reddening,
their lissome waists are bending,
their breath is like perfumes,
and every sense confused!

O! You pearls of Spain,
how well you entertain,
beneath the flowering olive,
as you cavort and frolic;
to see you as you twist,
your sweaty bodies slick,
revealing as you leap,
til sapped, you take your seat.

Then, see the ball jam-packed,
complexions bright and burning,
when enervated dancers
back to their seats are dragged:
the Madonna out of view,
there, many a voice is purring,
and safe behind the fans
set amorous rendez-vous.

Go, you youthful band,
Go, and laugh forever;
this is the Age to gather
your blissful days and pleasures;
while life is acrobatic,
and on your roofs of clay
so frail and prone to stray
abide thee with the passions.

How fair it is my sweet ones,
in Alhambra far to spy
the myriad Moorish spires
dismembered by the seasons;
with grace they play and run
where multitudes of races
have printed fleeting traces
devoured by the sun.

Hard by Xenaralife[3]
engulfed in rushing breezes,
Caliph’s strongholds ancient
so doted on in dreaming;
hard by such fine dominions
and in the bracing shade
that Abyssinians
grant sanctuary in.

Dance on! ô youthful girls!
Dance onward, youthful gents!
To your jubilant quadrilles
unite inviting trills;
Dance on, dance on, coquettes,
to pleasure ripened yet;
to din of castanets
may all your songs be wedded.
 
          – trans. Olchar E. Lindsann
 

NOTES:

[1] Bayaderes: Hindu religious dancers. This reference reflects the intense interest in Hinduism then burgeoning within French Romanticism, as evidenced also by Auguste Bouzenot\’s description of the Hindu Durga Puja festival that was published in the same issue of the Annales romanrtiques anthology as this poem. Though Saladin’s Orientalism was focused on the Islamic world, he indicates here his engagement with a broad range of non-Western cultures – in both cases problematically promulgating the association with sexuality common in European colonial portrayals.

[2] “grenadines”: possible pun on “grenadine” as a loose silk garment. 

[3] Seems to be an archaic designation for the labyrinthine garden or park of Alhambra; see the 1833 description in an Orientalist novel serialized in the Romanticist Revue de Paris, which is likely to have influenced Saladin’s evocation: Le Duchesse Abrantès, “Hernandes.” Revue de Paris, Tome Quarante Sixième. Paris: 1833.