All language subtitles for Genet - documentary by Antoine Bourseiller

An interview
with Antoine Bourseiller

Summer 1981

I don't know why I shouldn't
talk about myself.

I'm the person who knows
the most about myself. Right?

His birth certificate says:

"born at 7:45pm on
December 19th, 1910, in Paris,

of Camille Gabrielle Genet
and an unknown father."

Except for his books,
we know nothing of him,

including the time of his death,
which he expects to be near.

What mattered the most--

what mattered the most to me,

I've put in my books...

not because
I was the narrator--

in this instance,

the "I" isn't anything

but a slightly
magnified character.

I am closer to what I wrote,

I am truer in what I wrote...

because I wrote it in jail,

and I was convinced
I would never get out.

Why I never went back to jail?

I'll try and give you an answer,

for what it's worth.

I think that by age 30--

30-35,

I had already fully enjoyed...

the erotic appeal
I found in prisons--

male prisons, that is.

I've always liked the darkness,

even as a kid...

probably to the point
of going to jail.

I'm not saying I stole

in order to end up in jail--

I stole so I could eat--

but I think that intuitively
led me to the darkness,

to jail.

Then, around age 35-36,

I had the desire to travel.

I was drawn to the far East.

Before you guys did,

I felt like
checking out Katmandu.

But hardly had I reached Istanbul
than I was tired of traveling.

Traveling was boring to me,
so I backtracked to Greece.

There, I saw something amazing:

the darkness,
mixed with light.

The four years I spent in Greece

were probably the sunniest
years of my life...

but mixed with darkness.

In this instance,
I found the darkness...

in bath houses,

or in cinemas
filled with soldiers--

very attractive soldiers.

I liked Greece also because...

along with the Arab nations,

it is the most

erotically-charged
place on Earth.

That's probably why I spend
so much time there.

That said, my attraction
to prisons was over.

There's one more reason
why I liked Greece so much.

It was, and it still is,
the only place on Earth

where the people

was able to worship
and honor its gods,

and mock them
at the same time.

What the Greeks did to Olympia,

no Jew would
ever do to Yahweh,

no Christian to Christ,

no Muslim to Allah.

The Greeks were able

to poke fun at themselves
and at their gods.

I find that amazing.

I was raised Catholic,

but God--.

Well, God was
more like a picture:

some guy nailed to the cross,

the young woman...
what's her name, again?

Mary getting pregnant
thanks to a dove--

all that didn't seem
very reliable to me. Right?

I was about 15,
14-15 years old,

when I got sick.

The idea of God was not
to be taken seriously,

it had no place in my life

when I was a kid,
from age one to 15.

So when I was 15, I got sick
and went to the hospital.

I don't know
if it was serious or not.

So I was staying at the hospital

and was taken care of
by the health department,

and every day, the nurse would
give me a piece of candy,

telling me it was a gift

from the little boy
staying next door.

Then I got better after a while,

and I wanted to see
and express my gratitude

to the guy who had been
sending me candy.

So I saw this 16-17 year old guy

who was so handsome

that everything I had experienced
before him didn't matter anymore--

God, the Virgin Mary,
whatever, were gone

because he was God.

And do you know
what his name was?

That kid's name was "Divers,"

and it might as well
have been "Nobody."

And that guy--

if he's still alive,
he's got to be 74-75 years old--

and that guy led
to a bunch of replicas,

all the lovers I've had

up to about 10 years ago.

They weren't faded
replicas, mind you.

It was quite the opposite:

the replicas were sometimes
more beautiful than the original.

So regarding God...

I must say that Greece offered me
the most vivid experience.

Greece, as well
as Arab countries.

"The Tightrope Walker"

Some animal tamers
resort to violence.

You can try and tame
your rope, but beware:

the rope, like the panther
and the people,

has a thirst for blood.

Why not conquer it instead?

Death--.

The death I'm referring to

will not follow your fall,

but precedes
your walk on the rope.

For it is before stepping
on the rope that you die.

The dancer will die,
looking for beauty,

ready for the ultimate beauty.

Your face is pale
as you appear.

No...

it is not fear.

On the contrary.

You're filled
with invincible audacity.

Your face will
eventually turn pale.

In spite of the makeup
and the glitter,

you will turn white;
your soul will fade.

Only then will your dexterity
reach its peak.

Free from the ground,
you will dance without falling.

Make sure you die, though,

before death walks
that tightrope.

I must add you are risking
physical, irreversible death.

This circus drama demands it.

That cruel game remains--
one of the few

with poetry, war
and bullfighting.

Danger has its reason

and your muscles will have
to act with precision;

the slightest mistake will cause your fall
and break or kill your body.

In that precision will thus lie
the beauty of your dance.

Which leads me to say
that one should love the circus

and despise the world.

An enormous beast
come from diluvian times

has landed on the city.

Enter and you will see
the monster,

filled with cruel,
mechanical wonders:

horse-riders, clowns,
lions and their tamers,

a magician, a juggler,
German trapeze artists,

a horse that speaks and counts

and you.

You all are the remains
of legendary times,

of a distant era.

Your fathers feasted
on broken glass and fire;

they tamed snakes and doves,
they juggled with eggs;

they put words
in the mouths of horses.

Don't ever leave
that enormous canvas belly.

It is pointless, tactless
advice I'm giving you.

Who could follow it?

All I wanted to do
was write a poem

that would make
your cheeks blush.

My goal was to tease you,
not to teach you.

I met Abdallah

and I took him
to Greece with me.

He was a deserter.

He was half German,
half Algerian--

so half French, at the time,

since his father was from Algeria,
which was French at the time.

He was supposed to do his mandatory
service during the Algerian war

and I helped him desert.

So we went to Greece,

where he learned to dance
on a tightrope.

Adballah is such
a big part of my private life

that I'd rather not talk
about him on camera,

the same way I'd rather
not talk about Jean Decarnin,

who was a 21-year-old
Communist

who lost his life
to the Germans.

They both died:
Abdallah committed suicide

and Jean Decarnin was
killed by the Germans.

They died in different
circumstances

but of equally heroic deaths,

and all that I keep to myself.

I won't say any more.

Can you talk about Giacometti?

Of course!

I can still feel the wicker

from the kitchen chair

he had me sit on for 40-plus days
to draw my picture.

I was not allowed
to move or smoke.

I could turn my head
a little, that's all.

But I must say he made

beautiful conversation.

When I'm not working

and I'm trying to think
of my next project,

I can picture the finished face
like it's right before my eyes.

But once I start working,
it's a different story.

Things get confused.

I like the whole face,

but what I'm most
interested in now

is to give the eye
a more precise aspect.

The material

the eye is made of

is completely different
from the rest of the face.

The features of a face
are not very delimited,

they're actually not clear,

but the eye appears
like a distinct object,

almost like an optical
instrument.

What is surprising, though,

is that if the eye
is too well defined,

it goes against
what you're trying to show,

which is the expression
of the eyes.

The eyes themselves
don't express anything.

What's funny is
that in "exotic" sculpture--

I can't remember
if it is in Africa or Oceania--

I've seen a sculpted face
where the eyes were made of seashells,

and that sculpture
had a life to itself.

It was made of wood

with two seashells
for the eyes.

It looked absolutely real,

except with two shells
for the eyes.

It seems obvious

that one should never sculpt
the face as it appears.

At least to us.

I think that today,

and since the end
of the 19th century,

it is impossible to reproduce
what the eye sees

and to call the result
"finished."

Some did "finish" their paintings.

At least they thought they did.

For us, that is not possible.

There can't be a finished piece,

because the closer you get
to your subject,

the more you see.

And the closer I get,
the farther you look.

So the distance between what I'm doing
and what I'm aiming to do

remains essentially the same,

and might even increase.

If I observed you
for 1,000 years,

I am convinced
that, in the end,

I would tell you
that it's all wrong

but that I was starting
to see something.

He speaks rugged words.

He seems to favor
intonations and words

from ordinary conversations,
as a cooper would.

Him:
"You've seen the plaster ones?

You remember
the plaster ones?"

Me:
"Sure."

Him: "Do you think
bronze is not appropriate?"

Me:
"Not at all."

Him:
"Do they look their best in bronze?"

I hesitate to utter the words
that best describe my feelings.

Me:
"You're going to make fun of me.

It's a strange feeling:

I wouldn't say that
they look their best in bronze,

but that bronze looks
its best as them.

For the first time,
bronze looks its best.

Bronze has won

against itself maybe."

Him:
"That's what it should be."

Speaking about bronze,

one of his friends made a joke
during a dinner party--

I don't recall who--
and he said:

"Really, could a normal brain

fit into a head this flat?"

Giacometti knew that a brain
could not live in a bronze head,

even ii he had known the exact size
oi Mr. Rene Cow's.

Since the head is
to be made of bronze

and has to come to life,
along with the bronze,

it has to...

It's quite clear, right?

Of course I remember Alberto.

You told me he was one of the men
you admired most.

- The only one.
- The only one?

Yes.

I am grateful to have spent time
in Greece, if you will,

because I've learned
two things there:

smiling and incredulity.

Alberto taught me to be
sensitive to anything--

dust, things like that.

I mentioned earlier...

that Greece was the place
where I felt the most free.

I mentioned the two young men
I've loved the most:

Abdallah and Decarnin.

I mentioned the man
I've admired the most,

and that's Giacometti.

My life is coming to an end--
I am 71--

and before you

stands what's left of all that,

of my life and
of my traveling.

Nothing more.

That's really not much.

I was born in Paris,
on December 19th, 1910.

Since I grew up
without parents,

that's all I knew
about myself.

When I turned 21,
I was given my birth certificate.

My mother's name
was Gabrielle Genet.

My father's name is unknown.

I was raised by peasants
in Burgundy.

When I happen to see flowers
we call "genét"

on my way back
from Gilles de Rais' s castle,

now in ruins,

I feel the most heartfelt
sympathy for them.

I have the highest
regard for them.

Nature seems
to take a hold of me.

lam all alone and I might
as well be the king.

Or maybe I am a fairy
to these flowers.

They salute me as I go by,
without moving...

they recognize me.

They know I am
their human counterpart--

moving, agile,
strong to the wind.

They are my natural emblem,

and they are my roots
in this soil,

nourished by the crushed bones
of the children

sodomized, killed and burnt
by Gilles de Rais.

"O let my keel split!

O let me sink to the bottom!"

What's--.

What's surprising is that...

the boat says
"O let my keel split!"

in "The Drunken Boat."

In French slang,
a keel is a leg.

So at the age of 17,

Rimbaud said,
"Oh let my keel split!"--

oh let my leg..

And at the age of 37, his leg was
amputated, by the seaside, in Marseille.

That's all I wanted to say.

I can't prove it, but it seems
that all human beings--

every one of them,
poet or not,

even though that doesn't
mean anything--

but every human being seems
to have, at some point in life,

something like a prophetic
vision about himself

that he doesn't even see.

lam sure Rimbaud

meant to say,
and really said,

that his leg would
be amputated.

I am convinced
he wanted to be anonymous.

To continue with poets,

I am convinced
Racine wanted to be anonymous.

lam convinced...

Shakespeare wanted
to be anonymous.

And so did Homer.

So what makes it that...

every human being...

can, at some point in life,

unveil or bring that out?

I have no idea.
Maybe nothing at all.

What remains sacred to me--

and I've deliberately used
the word "sacred"--

is time.

Space doesn't matter to me.

A space can...

get smaller

or bigger...

sometimes to the extremes,

but it doesn't matter to me.

Time, however--

I have felt in the past,

and I still do,

that a certain numbers
of years to live

were given to me at birth.

Given by whom?
I don't know.

Of course.

But they seem to have been
given to me by a god.

In any case,

even if it's not
a god that dances,

don't picture a god

that judges, like you,

and that looks bleak,
like you can imagine.

It's not that at all.
It's a smiling god

who guides me and helps me win
chess games, for instance.

Finally,

and that's what I was
saying yesterday,

it's a god I have created,

the same way rules
are created.

I talk about him,
and that's a given, but--

I talk about him
and I invent him.

That's all I can tell you.

But he doesn't know
how to dance,

like...

the god Nietzsche
wants to believe in.

He doesn't dance,
but he's having fun.

He's having fun with me.

Constantly.

Even the most
anonymous of men

gets his years--
in various numbers--

and that gift of time
is sacred.

Not only should I not touch it,

while others can--
they can kill me--

but I shouldn't touch it.

And during that time,

those 70 years now,

I've had to work with time.

I couldn't let it lie fallow,

so to speak.

I couldn't let it sit there.

I had to...

work it hard,

night and day.

But that's just me.

One could say that...

my main purpose
was to turn that time

into volume.

Into several volumes.

There will be nothing left.

When I die,
when I am completely gone,

there will be nothing left,
since I'll be gone.

So, volumes or not,
it's all a joke.

Posterity

only means something
to itself.

It means nothing

to us.

I would like to talk
about the Black Panthers.

They were...

not just a phenomenon,

but a major poetic

and political event

in the United States.

Imagine those poor
white folks...

stuck in the metro

or in an elevator

with people with long
hair and beards--

men and women
with vertical hair,

horizontal beards...

all that hair
and all those beards

tickling those white people,
who were dying to leave

but who were stuck there.

Once, I was invited
to give a talk

at an American university,

50 miles from New York.

The name was...

Stony Brook, I think.

The university is located...

right in the woods.
It's a very nice place.

So we were driving there.

There were three or four cars
driving the Panthers and myself there.

So I tell David,
"Come with us,"

and he replies, "Never."

He finally added,

"No. There are still
too many trees."

Only an African-American man
could have said that.

For him, the tree was

first and foremost used

to hang negroes.

What I have kept from that,

and the reason why I am
interested in that country,

is because Black people

are like the black characters
on a white page.

They are the Black characters

on the canvas
of white America.

In a region about 30 miles
from Amman,

almost on the Jordan River,

there was a conflict
between the fedayeen,

who were Palestinians,
and the...

Jordanians,

King Hussein's troops.

A French movie-maker

had asked Arafat,

or his buddies, most likely,

authorization
to film the conflict,

knowing he was to be
filming from the inside,

very close to the combat zones.

Authorization was denied.

Military officials
refused to grant it.

That movie maker
may have thought...

that those officials were
concerned about his welfare.

Well, not at all.

I think it was something else.

The Palestinian officials realized

the camera was dangerous

and could "seduce"...

any narcissist.

Knowing they were being filmed,

some soldiers' performance
could have been altered,

they could have lost
some of their abilities.

They could have favored
their narcissism

over their instinct to live.

See how beautiful
the fedayeen are.

I certainly side
with their rebellion--

with the Black Panthers' too--

but I'm not sure I could have spent
as much time with them

had they not been
that attractive.

I think people who fight
for the same cause

are reduced to their brains.

Bodies and faces disappear.

I'm not sure I could
make love with a militant.

I'm not sure I could embrace
a body and a face

lacking any kind of charm.

Charm has nothing
to do with beauty,

but is more related
to a certain demeanor.

I won't go into details.

There are bodies
and faces making war,

unable to find an agreement,

who never will.

But that's not the point.

Without being in love with them,
I chose them as models.

"Miracle of the Rose"

The first directors at Mettray

had probably noticed the magnificence
of the penal colony's courtyard,

especially when it was
decked with French flags.

Indeed, any celebration
was an excuse

to stick flags in the trees,

on the walls, in the rose
bushes and the wisteria.

Red muslin stained
the chestnut trees,

their green branches mingled
with the red and blue,

but most importantly
the color white,

because the penal colony never forgot
its founders were noblemen.

Their names are still
inscribed on the chapel walls:

"His Majesty the King,"
"Her Majesty the Queen,"

"Their Royal Highnesses
and Princes of France,"

"The Royal Court of Rouen,"
"The Royal Court of Nancy"--

a list of 500 or 600 noble
names, in plain view.

Under the courtyard trees,

and without thinking of the botanical
apotheosis in the branches,

a population of horny
young men gathered--

their eyes as ferocious
and hateful as their affairs--

spitting abominable insults
through their white teeth,

their souls covered in dew.

The foresight of the founders
of the Mettray penal colony

was to know

not to build
a wall around it.

Still today, there is
no wall around it.

When we were in Mettray--

and it was more convincing--

there were only laurel hedges

and flower beds
of carnations and pansies.

It's more difficult to--

it's more difficult to escape

crossing a flower bed

than climbing a wall.

So, in a way, the founders of Mettray
weren't completely dumb.

They created some kind of poetry.

They terrorizes us with pansies,
carnations and laurels.

Cement blocks are laid
against the wall,

six feet apart.

They're rounded and smooth,

like mooring posts.

That's where the unruly could
sit for five minutes per hour.

A provost-- one of the unruly,
but physically stronger, detainees--

kept watch and gave orders.

In a corner, behind a small trellis cage,
some guy read his paper.

At the center of it all,

sat a shit bucket,

a three-foot tall container

in the shape of a truncated cone.

Two footrests lay on its sides,

and a short back, similar to an Arab
saddle, sits at the top,

giving the one using the craper the majesty
of a barbaric king sitting on a metal throne.

The detainees who needed to go,
raised their hand in silence.

The provost signaled the unruly,
who left the rank,

unbuttoning his pants,
which had no belt.

Sitting on top of the cone,

his feet resting to the sides,

his balls hung from under him.

Without seeing him, the unruly
continued their round in silence,

interrupted by the sound
of shit dropping in urine,

splattering his bare bottom.

His urine followed gravity

as the smell rose.

You visited Mettray,

you filmed it, you took pictures,
you explored it:

you saw it for what it is.

You experienced
a certain array of feelings

and so did I.

Those who founded it,
baron Demetz in particular,

and his descendants,

made tremendous
amounts of money.

So we knew that...

all that was a major swindle,

organized by people
way above us.

That was beyond the petty thefts
we had been arrested for.

We also knew

that the trades we were
taught there, were bogus.

Mettray, which was
a prison for children,

changed its name several times
in the three years I spent there.

First, it was called
"the Mettray penal colony."

Then, it became a "youth
reformation institution."

Then, it turned into
a "supervised education institute."

After that...

I forgot some of the names,

but they became
sweeter and sweeter.

We were never
sentenced by a judge.

We were children

and we had
committed petty theft,

nothing serious, nothing
bigger than we were.

Those were petty crimes,
and we were acquitted

because we had acted
out of bad judgment,

to finally be sent
to the Mettray penal colony.

But that was a prison.

It seems to me

that the judges
didn't think of this:

kids who go to jail once...

always go back to jail...

because why not?

Kids who have never been
to jail are scared of it;

kids who go back to jail
don't think it's a big deal.

Jail is way scarier

when you haven't been to jail.

So what are you going to do?

What is the government
going to do

to rehabilitate--
one of their favorite words--

petty delinquents?

What is it they want
to take out of them,

what poetic beauty?

If they steal,
big things or small things,

if they run away,

if they do the things
15-year-olds do

to end up in jail
for three to six months,

it is because society
is not adapted to them.

So, if we really want
to rehabilitate them...

isn't it a shame...

to send them to jail?

I would say that nowadays,
good people are sent to jail.

Young people...

or men who find themselves
in situations...

they weren't prepared for

and that got them confused.

Those who steal,

because they're hungry,

because they want
a motorcycle

or things like that...

didn't want
to get away from society.

They wanted to be a part of it.

The true prisoners...

and I'm tempted
to quote Baudelaire:

"But the true voyagers
are only those who leave

Just to be leaving."

The true prisoners
are only those

who go to jail
because they hate society.

Because they don't give a shit.

And those never
commit suicide.

I think the only ones
who commit suicide

are those
who've never liked jail.

I can assure you

that there are people,
and I was one of them,

who enjoyed being in jail.

Probably...

because they hated society

as it was

and as it still is.

The children in Mettray

had already rejected

moral standards

as it was dictated
by your society,

because as soon
as we got to Mettray,

we were ready to accept

the medieval moral standards

according to which the vassal
obeyed the suzerain.

It's a well-defined hierarchy,

based on power, on honor,

on what we called honor,

and on one's word.

That was crucial.

Now, everything is based
on written agreements,

on signed and dated contracts

issued by lawyers
and various authorities.

Quite often, you know,
within an order

lies another, smaller one.

In that colony for children
aged eight to 21,

resided a group of poor children,
about 300 of them,

who were petty delinquents,

as well as 15 to 20 rich kids

who attended what was called
the "reformatory school"

and who were
deemed "rebellious."

They didn't work, but were
taught military discipline

to turn them into Navy
or Foreign Legion officers.

The Mettray penal colony
is such a rich, unique entity

with its fields, its forests,
its own cemetery,

its own history and legends,

that I have little to say
about myself.

When I was locked up there,

forests, parks, rivers, fields,
meadows and cemetery

were mine.

Paradoxically,

in the hellish world
you have filmed and seen,

I have known happiness.

I experienced...

those feudal moral standards

that are still applied to kids

in juvenal prisons,
in France today.

I lost something
when what I wrote

brought me financial gains.

I lost some kind of purity.

What's brought back
some of that purity--

if I ever had any--
is...

uncertainty.

I'll venture...

a guess as to why that is.

To write is your last resort
when you've betrayed someone.

There is something else
I'd like to say.

Very early on...

when I was about 14-15...

I knew that all I could ever be
was a Vagabond or a thief--

an untalented thief,
of course.

Otherwise, my only social accomplishment
would have been something like

becoming a ticket controller...

or a butcher's assistant,
or something like that.

Since the idea terrified me,

I trained myself,
from a very young age,

to experience
such strong feelings

that all they could lead to
was writing.

If writing means experiencing
emotions or feelings

so strong...

that they will guide
your whole life;

if they're so strong

that only describing them,

repressing them,
or analyzing them

can lead you
to acknowledging those feelings,

then I can say that I started
writing in Mettray,

at the age of 15.

Writing might be
the only thing left

when giving your word
is not enough anymore.