Patti Smith and Villette

An unexpected Brontëite today. Some days ago, last June 11, Patti Smith gave a concert in Brussels as part of her current tour, Twelve. Le Soir reviews the concert and we read the following, where she links Villette and Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit:

Et elle parle de Bruxelles. La Grand-Place. « Près de là, il y a 150 ans, Rimbaud et Verlaine se sont disputés et ont créé la plus belle des poésies. Là où, auparavant, Charlotte Brontë sombrait dans la folie. Elle était amoureuse d'un professeur, d'un Bruxellois, mais il était marié. Alors, un soir, elle sort, Bruxelles est illuminée, elle est Grand-Place, elle voit une de ces lumières prendre forme, c'est le grand cygne dê la belle maison ? Non, c'est un lapin blanc, un grand lapin blanc de trois mètres de haut... » Et voilà la superbe chanson psychédélique de Jefferson Airplane, « White Rabbit », le lapin blanc, mélange d'hymne à la drogue et à Lewis Carroll... « Feed your head », scande Patti Smith. (Jean-Claude Vantroyen)

Babelfish translation->

And she speaks about Brussels. La Grand-Place. "Close from there, 150 years ago, Rimbaud and Verlaine disputed and created the most beautiful of poetries. Where, before, Charlotte Brontë sank into madness. She was in love with a professor, an Inhabitant of Brussels, but he was married. Then, an evening, she leaves, Brussels is illuminated, she is at Grand-Place, she sees one of these lights taking form, she is the large swan d of the beautiful house? Not, it is a white rabbit, a large three height meters height white rabbit... "And here is the superb psychedelic song of Jefferson Airplane," White Rabbit ", the white rabbit, a mix of a drug anthem and Lewis Carroll..." Feed your head ", Patti Smith stresses.

Patti Smith knows what she's talking about. These are the relevant passages from Villette:

I went upstairs. Presently I was in my bed -- my miserable bed -- haunted with quick scorpions. I had not been laid down five minutes, when another emissary arrived: Goton came, bringing me something to drink. I was consumed with thirst -- I drank eagerly; the beverage was sweet, but I tasted a drug.

'Madame says it will make you sleep, chou-chou,' said Goton, as she received back the emptied cup.
Ah! the sedative had been administered. In fact, they had given me a strong opiate. I was to be held quiet for one night. [...]

Hush! -- the clock strikes. Ghostly deep as is the stillness of this convent, it is only eleven. While my ear follows to silence the hum of the last stroke, I catch faintly from the built-out capital, a sound like bells or like a band -- a sound where sweetness, where victory, where mourning blend. Oh, to approach this music nearer, to listen to it alone by the rushy basin! Let me go -- oh, let me go! What hinders, what does not aid freedom?
There, in the corridor, hangs my garden costume, my large hat, my shawl. There is no lock on the huge, heavy, porte-cochère; there is no key to seek: it fastens with a sort of spring-bolt, not to be opened from the outside, but which, from within, may be noiselessly withdrawn. Can I manage it? It yields to my hands, yields with propitious facility. I wonder as that portal seems almost spontaneously to unclose -- I wonder as I cross the threshold and step on the paved street, wonder at the strange ease with which this prison has been forced. It seems as if I had been pioneered invisibly, as if some dissolving force had gone before me: for myself; I have scarce made an effort. [...]

I took a route well known, and went up towards the palatial and royal Haute-Ville; thence the music I had heard certainly floated; it was hushed now, but it might re-waken. I went on: neither band nor bell music came to meet me; another sound replaced it, a sound like a strong tide, a great flow, deepening as I proceeded. Light broke, movement gathered, chimes pealed -- to what was I coming? Entering on the level of a Grande Place, I found myself; with the suddenness of magic, plunged amidst a gay, living, joyous crowd.
Villette is one blaze, one broad illumination; the whole world seems abroad; moonlight and heaven are banished: the town, by her own flambeaux, beholds her own splendour -- gay dresses, grand equipages, fine horses and gallant riders throng the bright streets. I see even scores of masks. It is a strange scene, stranger than dreams. But where is the park? -- I ought to be near it. In the midst of this glare the park must be shadowy and calm -- there, at least, are neither torches, lamps nor crowd? (Vol. 3, ch. XXXVIII)

Elizabeth Gaskell in her biography mentions having asked Charlotte Brontë about that passage:

I asked her whether she had ever taken opium, as the description given of its effects in Villette was so exactly like what I had experienced,--vivid and exaggerated presence of objects, of which the outlines were indistinct, or lost in golden mist, etc. She replied, that she had never, to her knowledge, taken a grain of it in any shape, but that she had followed the process she always adopted when she had to describe anything which had not fallen within her own experience; she had thought intently on it for many and many a night before falling to sleep,--wondering what it was like, or how it would be,--till at length, sometimes after the progress of her story had been arrested at this one point for weeks, she wakened up in the morning with all clear before her, as if she had in reality gone through the experience, and then could describe it, word for word, as it had happened. I cannot account for this psychologically; I only am sure that it was so, because she said it. (Life, ch. XXVII)

Categories: Brontëites, Brussels, Villette