The Goncourt Brothers

They were Edmond (1822-96) and Jules (1830-70). They lived and worked in Paris as writers. They were inseparable.  

Their Journals, which they wrote together, are a delight to read, especially for a writer. They are chock-full of firsthand anecdotes about the era’s giant literary figures—Flaubert, Zola, Daudet, and so on. It was there that I read: "Flaubert told us that while writing the description of the poisoning scene of Madame Bovary, he had felt a pain as if he had a copper plate in his stomach, a pain which had made him vomit twice over."

Everything was fine until Jules (on the right) became very ill, possibly with MS.  Gradually, he became less able to fend for himself. Starting in 1870, the Journals were solely written by Edmond. Jules was no longer able to write. On April 18th, Edmond wrote about his deteriorating brother:

   "To witness, day by day, the destruction of everything that once went to mark out this young man…to see him emptying the salt-cellar over his fish, holding his fork in both hands, eating like a child, is too much for me to bear."

Then, this scene, which Edmond recorded on June 11:

   "We had nearly finished dinner at a restaurant.  The waiter brought him a bowl.  He used it clumsily.  People started looking at us. I said to him rather impatiently: 'Be careful, old fellow, please, or I shan’t be able to take you out to dinner any more.'  He promptly burst into tears, crying 'It’s not my fault, it’s not my fault!' And his tense, trembling hand sought mine on the tablecloth. 'It’s not my fault', he went on. 'I know how it upsets you, but I often want to and I can’t.' And his hand squeezed mine with a pitiful 'Forgive me'.

 "Then both of us started crying into our napkins in front of the astonished diners." 

Though it wasn't old age that killed Jules, the gradual helplessness that comes with growing old, accompanied by the various mind-destroying diseases that many of will face, seems, from everything I've seen, exactly the same. I look to my past to see my future. Who will be there to be tender toward me in my decline?

Rain

It's raining here in New Orleans. The sound is steady and beautiful. I have both French doors in my apartment open to it.  I can feel the freshness of the rain waft into the room where I'm working and I can smell the freshness as well. The way you can breathe rain even indoors. When rain falls, I always feel a kind of absolution. It means I can start anew. It's a kind of recurring baptism. 

Yes, there are rains that are not pleasant. I think of cold windy rainy March days in New York City. Or when you're driving at night and the rain is so brutal you can't see even beyond your windshield and your heart is about to exit your body.

All in all, though, everything about rain is mysterious and poetical. It's not a coincidence that Ernest Hemingway begins his memoir about Paris, A Moveable Feast, in rainy weather. This is is a cold, sad-producing rain, but nevertheless an inspiring rain. He walks from his apartment to the Place St-Michel to a good cafe. He takes off his damp coat, sits down, and begins to write. He's writing a story that we will all read one day, and, as the writer, he knows this, because he is writing this as a man of sixty or so, looking back.  So we are conscious of this and feel, in a way, intimate with the writer.

Hemingway writes,

"A girl came in the cafe and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin....."

If rain accompanies strong sensual moments, then you live a poem, you are fully alive. In college, years ago, I was in love with a beautiful, melancholy girl. Her name was Sarah. She would stay with me in my apartment off campus over the weekend. I remember, even today, one afternoon, together, in bed. I remember it started to rain. I remember the sound of the rain slapping against the leaves on the ground, and the damp smell of it breathing into the window and cooling our bodies. My arm was draped around her bare shoulder. The cascade of her soft hair fell onto my naked arm. I often think about the soft sound of the rain against the windowsill and on the leaves on the ground. Of us in bed together as we talked dreamily to the tat-tat-tat of rain against the leaves.

If we think about the wonders of being alive, so many are simple, straightforward. Rain is one. Replenishing, cleansing, encouraging. Making us poets at least for an hour or so. The beauty of those drops coming from the sky. The mystery of it. There are things in this world that are dark. Rain is not one of them.