Pynx - The Artist

The 20th of April 1920Pynx will undoubtedly arrive soon, just like he arrived yesterday and every day, every week and every month of every of the last years. Fever and anxiety infringe upon the depth of feelings.My home? What do I call home? It is wherever I am; it is, at the same time, a shelter, a starting point and a place to return. A poem, a scenery, a fantasy and a strong reality. It is done and undone according to where I'm taking it and to the elements out of which I recompose it, in one place or another.One by one, a palace, a humble house or a little room may become the vast realm of my dreams and the limitless domain of my thoughts. I take it with me everywhere just like a drifter carries his tent all over the world. In the silence of rooms, or of one single chamber, there is always latent music in the air and a certain ardor specific to those particular places where one loves and prays.In the iris and lilac flooded drawing room Pynx bends his dark figure over his scores, replete with liveliness and unfailing sounds. He is particularly handsome today, since a renewed outbreak of his usual magnetism gives him the appearance of a rapturous fallen angel. Could it be a reflection of what he is writing? His anguishing mask of amber and light would make the joy of a Rembrandt.Pan is there, under my windows, a young and crazy Pan. I love his being there, although his exuberance makes me smile a little. He disappeared, frightened undoubtedly by my pretentious conversation with myself and also, maybe, by the shrill cries of the tram passing by the walls of the property for the night shift between Chamblandes, Pully and Place Saint-François. The 30th of AprilPynx and Kellert, a talented cello player, talk about music, profession, disappointments, inspiration, work, public. Obscure, Pynx's silhouette lights up the room and the world with what seem to me the innumerable flames of the genius. Kellert, small and stout, but full of life, is complaining about the Swiss flatness of character, and is eager to travel with his cello to Buftea and fully dedicate himself to Nadage, whom he met last year at Gstaad and has been dreaming of ever since. I am wearing my long velvet plum-colored interior dress and my silver belt. I keep silent, I listen, and I'm waiting for my five o'clock soup; my favorite meal here. The tapioca soup, with a stuffed egg floating in it, fills the room of the poor and indiscrete odor of the Maggi broth, which is agreeable to my housewife nostrils, even more careful about the food economy these days – it's a sign of the times we're going through.Pynx, however, is served normal meals and his Thursday beefsteak and his Sunday mutton are particularly well prepared. It is only to prompt him to eat peacefully that I feign a total lack of appetite and pretend to be abhorred by the very sight of meat.Pynx plays his Symphonie concertante en si mineur for Kellert. It was written in 1901-1902, when I hadn't yet met him, since I had just got married. Under his inspired fingers, the flow of sounds sings, cries, roars, calms down or explodes in aggravation, in a prodigious discharge of vitality transformed into art. This symphony has the force of the elements and it seems as real as the wind to me, as intense as the storm and the murmurs of water springs. When it was first played in Paris, where it was directed by Chevillard, since the author was taken ill with scarlet fever, it was puzzling to the audience, and this is why colleagues and musical critics scorned him by calling it "the puzzling symphony". The 1st of MayThe flames are burning in the fireplace; in front of me Pynx is writing his Quatuor en si bémol. In his sublime effort towards perfection, he keeps scraping his paper; he sifts through its small holes, using gouache as a stopgap only to cover it later in signs that may become immortal. The 12th of MayI have given the only maid of Châtelet a three-day vacation, during which I have to take the entire care of the household upon myself. I am pleased to be now in charge of everything: cleaning the rooms, preparing the usually frugal meals, tending and arranging the flowers.The maid – the "pearl" – was later to swindle me of an amount, which I had actually paid to her and which she diabolically demanded of me, claiming that she had never signed a receipt. The conflict got us in front of the local judge, who ruled in favor of his compatriot and against the foreign "Princess", although he was privately convinced of my being right. Was it maybe a wrongly directed spirit of democracy? Tescani, June 1935A troubling matter: which are the occult ways through which Edmond Fleg, the author of the Juif Errant, the Mur des Lamentations and Ecoute Israël, so essential in his Jewish spirit and loyalty, managed to secure such a character of calm and faithful redemption for the last scene of Oedipus? The work is profoundly linked, through its structure and sound, to the Greek myth, and the pagan Antiquity and the sobriety and purity of the Attic ideas are imprinted in it. Was it the books? The museums? But his triple and tyrannical career of composer, conductor and virtuoso does not allow him the time to read or visit museums!So one comes to the conclusion that everything meaning Belief, Inspiration, Art, Thought comes from one and the same source… The Divine God, to speak the language of the humble ones, the unique inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven.


by Maria Cantacuzino