Henry Miller, from the world of prostitution to the praise of the soul

From: Luan Rama

The famous American writer and essayist Henry Miller created himself as a writer only from his Parisian experience during the 30s, when many Americans and Englishmen came to Paris, such as Joyce, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Anderson, Stein , Orwell, and many others to get away from the puritanism of these societies. To become a writer for Miller was at first only a desire, but life in Paris gave him the opportunity to see and feel human society closely, to touch the end of a miserable, decomposed life, with screaming fates, drowned in drunkenness, sex and prostitution, to then create another literature, unlike the American literary tradition, a semi-autobiographical literature, where he tells experienced events and makes social and philosophical reflections. The books he wrote and published at that time in a publishing house in France were banned in America and England as decadent and unacceptable works. The reason was that the personal sexual experiences of the writer were also described there. His works were allowed only starting from 1961, i.e. after 30 years.

After several essays and short stories, real literary creativity began with "Quiet Days in Clichy", "Black Spring", "Tropic of Cancer", "Tropic of Capricorn" etc. On his first trip in 1928, as a tourist, he came with his wife, Junes Mansfield, whom he loved very much, but she soon left and he began the bohemian life in the Montparnasse area of ​​Saint-Germain-des-Près , then settling in Clichy, a very lively area which was considered a bastion of socialism in France, since the labor movement there was more powerful.

It was the year 1932. His literary descriptions, although autobiographical, are full of color, details, characters, characters of a time that is no longer today, a strange atmosphere of libertine life, for which, those who came across La Manche or from the other side of the Atlantic, it seemed to them a kind of paradise in relation to freedom. In fact, in his adolescence and youth he had been a very shy man, and even when he landed in Paris, he said to himself: “You are not good at doing anything… Then become a writer!… And I became a writer from despair", he writes.

In the book "Jours tranquilles à Clichy" ("Quiet days in Clichy"), among other things, he noted: "I am writing, night falls and people go to eat dinner. It's a gray day like those days you often see in Paris... Paris is essentially a gray city. I say this because in the field of watercolor, American painters use the prefab gray color excessively and obsessively. But in France, the range of gray seems endless and even for this, the effect of gray has lost its strength. On a day like this, at the same hour, I could see the 'Sacre-Cœur' from any kind of angle or along the 'Rue Lafayette' to be completely delighted. And, this happened even when I was hungry and when I had nowhere to sleep... On a gray day I often went for a walk in Clichy Square, in Montmartre. From Clichy to Aubervilliers there is an array of cafes, restaurants, theatres, cinemas, shirt shops, hotels and bordellos. It's the Broadway of Paris. Broadway is speed, deafening noise, dizzying lights, where you have nowhere to sit. Montmartre is sluggish, lazy, indifferent, somewhat neglected and a mess, rather attractive than fascinating. It does not sparkle with sparkles, but burns like a burning coal. Broadway provokes, sometimes has magical effects, but it is without flame, without warmth: it is a shining mirror frame, a publicity man's paradise. Montmartre is very tired, faded, abandoned... There are some small bistros that are frequented only by whores, pimps, gamblers and mobsters and if you go there more than once, you can end up falling into their trap. This deceptive charm of Montmartre is mostly linked to the exploitation of sex. But there's actually nothing romantic about this kind of sexuality, especially when it's commercialized. And, she can create something nostalgic, unlike the seduction and attraction that created a Gay White Way, one of the most famous women. It is obvious that sexuality develops in a soft, sweet light, at a restrained pace and not under neon lights. On one side of the square is the 'Wepler' cafe, which was my favorite for a long time. I sat outside or inside, all the time, at all hours of the day or night. It was an open book for me. There you saw all the faces: the waiters, the patrons, those who carried the cash register, the women who washed the dishes, which are etched in my memory like the images of a book that I would browse every day. I remember the first time I entered "Wepler" dragging my wife with me and when I saw a drunken whore fall to her death on the tables at the entrance and no one got up to help her. I was surprised by the indifference of the French, which I am still surprised by, although later I discovered many good things about them. "Eh, nothing! Just a whore! He's drunk!"... I still hear these words that always make me shudder..."

One of the friends who helped him in this difficult period of his life when he would experience daily hunger, in addition to an American lawyer, Osborn, who every morning left him a 10 franc note so that he could feed himself during the day; there was also the journalist Albert Perlès, who at that time worked as a journalist for the Parisian branch of the "Chicago Tribune" newspaper. When Perlès met him in Paris, he found him with a dollar in his pocket. Then Perles would give him some column about events from Paris where he would write first under Perles' name and then under his name, just to keep the spirit alive. It is with him, whose name in the book is Carl, that the most perverse and libertine episodes of their lives in Clichy take place. They lived on "Anatol France" boulevard.

"It was a stronghold of French communism", Perlès would write. "We spent a lot of time in the kitchen where we talked, a place which would be unforgettable for our world. The actress Lyanes used to come there when she left the theater. Anaïs Nin was also there, who also proved to be a wonderful cook. We drank and spent the nights in a kind of orgy, where our bank friend Osborn ended up dancing naked."

Miller was very fond of the French painter Rouault, whom he refers to in a book called "Smiles Under the Stairs" and where, among other things, he writes: "Thinking about Rouault's life and work, which has attracted me a lot, I thought about the kind of clown I had always been. I thought about my passion for the circus, certainly an intimate circus, in the way of that experience as a spectator and as an actor, deeply immersed in my consciousness". Once Henry Miller had met a Russian, a former captain of the "white army" so that he could find a place to sleep. One day the Russian invited him to his house on the outskirts of Paris, in Suresnes. He wanted Miller to teach him English. They put a mattress on the floor for him to sleep on, but when he went, he found there a large group of Russians drinking and getting very drunk, and three dogs at the head of the table. Because when he lay down without a worm, then he felt like vomiting and remained sleepless until morning. Since that night he did not appear again in the Russian's room... Another time, he was given shelter to sleep by an Indian who sold pearls on the "Rue Lafayette", on the condition that he cleaned his house of dust. But fortunately, since they wanted an English teacher in Dijon, after a few days Mellir left the pearl Indian and the cleaning of his house and went, to return some time later with some money in his pocket...

Americans liked French prostitutes very much because they found in them an unknown experience. He describes all the prostitutes in that neighborhood, among other things, he tells about a prostitute with a wooden leg who also had her own permanent clientele on the corner of a street. In one of the cabarets, there was what was called "Snow White", a 35-year-old woman with long hair and blue eyes. There were even women who, after sex, looked like crazy for a doctor, as they were in a constant state of ecstasy. Their names in the book are Adrienne, Colette, Nancy, Eliane, Mara... But the spectrum of prostitutes was quite wide, as prostitutes from all over the world flocked to Paris. In his descriptions, Miller talks about Belgian, Spanish, Polish, Swiss, Nordic, Luxembourgish, Yugoslav, etc. prostitutes. Once, with a prostitute, who was happy for him to speak to her in English, where there was always a bottle of wine by the bed, he discovered that she had a revolver in her bag, which he took from her for fear of killing her. Before she left the room, she saw his shock, and as Miller relates, she asked him:

"- Are you not disappointed in me? – Disappointed? What do you mean by this? - Don't I look very fat? - she added, looking from the navel. - Yes, you are wonderful, like a painting by Renoir..." She blushed. "A Renoir?", she had told him as if hearing this name for the first time. "Are you kidding? - Not at all... come a little closer to rub your sex!..." Another time, being in bed with two women, he had been seized with a convulsion, and had hardly been able to free himself from their fury, so much so that he thought he was dying.

"When I remember that era of Clichy", he recalled in his memoir, "I have the feeling that I still live in paradise. We had but one problem: how to feed ourselves. All other problems were imaginary... It was the time when the female sex was square, in the air: English women were in the 'Casino de Paris'. They ate regularly at a restaurant near Place Blanche. We became friends with that whole group of women. Then I went to bed with a wonderful Scotch. On one of those nights, she would take us both into her bed and say that it turned her on so much when the three of us did it…”

It was when he was in Clichy that he fell in love with the American Anaïs Nin, a story full of adventures and a literary subject for the writer Nin, who at that time wrote her "secret" notebooks. It was the time when in Paris, Miller's wife also met him, but she could not live with Henry in Paris. Nina's memories with Miller are many, as she recalls in her book "Henry et June" published in France. In one of the chapters, among other things, she writes: "I met Henry at the train station. It was somber and I instantly felt my emotions rise, recognizing the same in him. He told me that the idea of ​​going all the way to the station tired him because it was the desire that paralyzed him to go. I refused to go to his apartment since Fred is there and suggested we go to the 'Hotel d'Anjou' where Edward had taken me. I read the desire in his eyes. We walk together to the hotel. He wants me to speak to the receptionist. I am looking for room no. 3. She tells me she makes 30 francs, and I said: 'Do you give it for 25 francs?' And I got the keys. I started to climb the stairs. On his way, Henry stopped to kiss me. We are in the room. He cries out with that warm laugh, 'Anais, you're a demon!' I don't say anything. He is impatient and can't wait for me to undress. And here I am confused because I have no experience, shocked by the wave of ferocity of those hours. I only remember Henry's thirst, his energy, how he discovered my buttocks which he found quite beautiful, and then, ah, flowing honey, the climax of pleasure, sex for hours. The equality, the depth I was looking for, the dark, the bottom, the truth. The heart of my being is baked by a body that has invaded my body, which floods it and which moves its fiery tongue inside me with great power. He shouts: 'Tell us, tell us what you feel!' But I can't. Blood has invaded my eyes, my head. I am at a loss for words. I want to scream like a wild woman, without words, screams with indistinct words, without meaning, from the primitive depths of my being, screams that burst out of my womb like honey. A tearful joy that leaves me speechless, innocent, possessed, transformed into silence. Oh my god, what a day I have lived, what an hour of total subjugation of a woman, what a gift to myself so much that there is nothing left to give…”

His relationship with Anaïse was strange where his sexual and intellectual attraction basically prevailed. Not for nothing in her memories, Nin would also note the words that Fred Perles had written about his friend Henry: “Woe to you Henry. I feel sorry for you. You don't have gratitude because you don't feel love. To be grateful you must first know how to love..."

Miller adored Dostoyevsky, and when he talked about The Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot, it was like being in another world. In his book "Tropique du Capricorne" published in Paris, he wrote, among other things: "...That woman seemed so idiotic to me that I didn't pay attention to her at first. But this also has a sex like all the others, I thought... One evening we were at home and she had meanwhile entered the bathroom. Then I imagined something and looked at the keyhole. And I was surprised to see her standing, naked, in front of the mirror, caressing and teasing her little sex. I was so excited that I wanted to do it. I unzipped my pants and let my sex take in the night air…” And, he further describes in detail how they lay on the couch together and spent the night until morning. "In all my life I don't remember moving my hand in such liquid sex. Her goo was running down her legs. If I had stickers in my hands, I would have stuck who knows how many stickers. After a few moments, like a cow about to graze, she lowered her head and took it. Not a word between us. As if we were two lonely maniacs doing that work in a gravedigger's darkness. I had never had sex with such a girl. And every night, when she saw that I was alone at home, she would come down to me and melt into the darkness. But her sex was incredible. I put my nose inside that crack where it possessed a great silence, sweetness and peace... In the darkness of that great cave, a kind of organ music resonated..."

When he went to America, Miller then published a small book, entitled "The World of Sex", in which he wrote, among other things: "A new world is being born, a new type of man is emerging today. The great mass of humanity, destined to suffer today more thoroughly than ever, reaches the point of being paralyzed by fear and shrinking into itself, shaken to the core. He does not feel, but sees only the report of the urgent and daily demands of the body. This is how civilizations die. In the beginning it is the dying form. But even though we hardly manage to think about it, we must understand that the form would not die if the soul was not killed..."

Although sexuality plays a big role in his life and works, it does not obsess him, he does not become its slave, and he never equates it with the true feeling of love, with what is sublime in man. "Love", "it is the drama of perfection and union. Personal drama in the deepest sense that should make the chains of selfishness, the source of all evil, fall. Sex in itself is not personal and it may or may not be identified or joined with love. It serves to reinforce, deepen or destroy it. It is something helpful, an instrument, good or bad, it depends on how we use it. Usually love and sex are united and from this comes the suffering, the regrets, which today constitute the ruin of the world... Today sex, as a machine and symbol of our way of existence, works in an absolute and sterile vacuum. It is the highest sign of impotence. Creator of suffering, as it brings emotions and we are only handicaps in the affective field..."

Years later, Miller settled in "Villa Seurat", near the Alesia square, not far from Montparnasse. He often met with other American and French intellectuals in the nearby cafe, the "Café Zeyer", which is still there today. In 1940, in a difficult time for Europe that was threatened by the devastating war, one day, the writer George Orwell appeared at his door, who had published the book "Homage for Catalonia", also related to his participation in the volunteer brigades international to protect the new Spanish republic. Their meeting was somewhat honorable, as their opinions were opposite. Miller was a pacifist and stayed away from war on principle, whatever war it was. He was even a great fatalist, while Orwell was tough and believed in politics and social change. He fought for freedom and justice, which for him were the basis of democracy. Both were pacifists in fact, but as Perlès wrote, "while Miller rejected war, Orwell was ready to go to war to defend any cause he deemed just."