Prédiction de Cassandre

Overview

Prédiction de Cassandre is a comic poem in refrain form that Marie composed in Nice on 6 October 1875 and reworked on 1-2 December 1875. It prophesies that Émile d'Audiffret -- the young man she calls Girofla and is fixed on that autumn -- will leave Nice for Paris, spend his money on restaurants, dance halls and women, make a scandal, and in the last line of every stanza "pourrira" (rot). The title borrows the myth of Cassandra, whose true prophecies nobody believed.

Form and content

Each stanza is four lines of rhymed future tenses ending on the refrain "Et pourrira, et pourrira !" The first stanza (046.0156) sets it up: "Ton fils d'ici partira / Et très grand bruit mènera / Chantera, criera, rira, / Mais pourrira, mais pourrira !" The following stanzas name Bignon (a Paris restaurant), the Bois de Boulogne, "tous les sales lieux", a "Moulin Rouge" (an anachronism for 1875, as the RSR note at 046.0159 records), the Bal Mabille, yellow gloves and a crushed top hat, and so on through 26 stanzas. The addressee is the father: "Ton fils" speaks to Léon d'Audiffret. Whether Émile really was Léon's son is not established by the diary (see that entry); the poem simply assumes it.

Marie and this work

The first version has 26 numbered stanzas (046.0156-0181) and was made on a terrace, with Olga, watching for a man in white seen coming down the lane to the château (046.0186-0188). That evening she keeps it to herself; on 11 October (046.0345) she lists her "chefs-d'œuvre" -- "La valse, la prédiction de Cassandre et la complainte du très malheureux Girofla" -- which she has refused to show although "Nina a demandé hautement: La valse !". The Complainte is its companion piece: Complainte de Girofla.

On 1 December 1875 (050.0359) she reads it to Collignon, "qu'elle trouve très bien mais fort lancée" -- very good but rather bold. The next day she titles it "Prédiction de Cassandre à M. Léon d'Audiffret" and writes out an expanded text of 38 stanzas (050.0380-0417): "J'ai comme on a pu le voir augmenté et revu ce poème de trente-huit couplets. Nous avons fait cela avec Collignon qui est une femme sérieuse. J'ai déjà commencé à copier et l'on recevra cette beauté sous peu de temps" (050.0418-0420). The last stanza (050.0417) closes: "Comme une pâle ombre errera / Chavirera et tournera / Mais pourrir toujours devra / Et pourrira et pourrira." The diary does not say whether the fair copy was in fact posted.

The poem is the best surviving example of the mock-letters and verses she aimed at the Audiffret family in the autumn of 1875; compare the Rosière letter of the same weeks.

References in Diary

Related Entries

Sources