For Love's Ache

In 1902 Iréne married Camille Erlanger the celebrated composer-in-residence at the Opéra Comique of the hit musical "The Polish Jew". 

A year later their son, Philippe was born and raised while at the Opéra Comique Camille's lead soprano Marthe Chenal suggested that the two women share his favours in a modern domestic arrangement. By 1912, after a protracted and public scandal, Irène won a divorce settlement. According to son Philippe and perhaps to spite Ms. Chenal, his mother secretly  kept his father as her lover until his sudden death in April, 1919 at her home.

Chenal sings "La Marseillaise"

In December 1919 Irène published in the journal "Littérature" a caustic and plainly autobiographical satire/lament in the style of a script clearly in her ex-husband/lover's domain; a bittersweet musical fantasy  (with variations) called "Par amour" about celebrity, the screen, the serials and "Love". 

The Palm Grove

Oh, what joy to know that we will (surely) have it all tonight at that gilded hour.

To know (surely) that we are expected at that hour, there – where we are happiest.

When also with certainty, the day too often without fantasy, is congested

like rush hour in the underground.

Like it, indifferent to the colour of the sky.

– If, – in place of this nasty oxidized spiral

“how will I enjoy myself this evening?” you offered this golden guidance:

“this evening I will feel fine, and follow my heart” –

as this day so fresh and free (we saw them at times)

slides magically,

on polished rails,

to its luminous station.

– Imagination!

– Certainly

Life, this succession of images and our restless heart.

from "Voyages en Kaleidoscope": Georges Crès, Paris, 1919

A Family

The Sephardic Camondo family of bankers migrated from Iberia during the pogram of 1492 via Venice and Constantinople to Paris with a distinguished record in commerce and of liberal causes, some of which caused the elders to determine that Paris indeed was most fertile ground upon which to embrace and expand their faith, business and artistic enterprises.
In 1902, Irene Hillel-Manoach was married to the popular composer of light opera, Camille Erlanger at the height of his career establishing her as a socialite with a townhouse and salon in the fashionable 16th arrondissement.
As her later writing attests, she had a view of the times from both social privilege and the avant-garde milieu which she adopted whole-heartedly as a patron and participant .

The extended family branched into the liberal arts as patrons and collectors of such painters as Degas, Monet, Renoir and given Irene's interests, dadaists and surrealists Andre Breton and Louis Aragon and many more.

The family lineage over five centuries of remained faithful to its origins religious and cultural. Irene's son, Philippe describes in his autobiographical "France sans Etoiles" (Paris, Plon, 1974)  his own Camondo aunties in black riding white horses in the Bois de Bologne chatting in their fifteenth century dialect. The Camondo fortune was depleted by Irène Cahen d'Anvers a divorcée of Erlanger's cousin Moishe de Camondo after the Nazi pogrom in Paris put the entire Camondo family to death. She was the subject of Renoir's famous 1890 portrait "Mademoiselle Irène Cahen". Erlanger's son Philippe enjoyed a distinguished career as a "Plenipotentiare" in various ministerial capacities in government including the founding of the Cannes Film Festival.
 

On reading:

Enigmas Signs

You are everywhere

if only

we:

knew how to read 

knew how to see 

but then

we are

carnal readers

and

blindly presumptuous

(from "Par amour", Littérature, Paris, December, 1919)

Paris, 1919, the artistic millieu.

Paris, 1919, Par Amour

Irene Hillel-Erlanger; (1878-1920) Poet, literary innovator, film script writer and patron in the creative revolution of early twentieth century literature and film remains all but unknown to the English speaking world and not much more so in France.

Born into the wealthy Parisian banking family Camondo, she entered Parisian society as the bride of Camille Erlanger, a popular composer at the Opéra-Comique. She became a well regarded poet published under the pseudonym Claude Lorry. Their only son Philippe Erlanger grew up to become a cultural force in France who also founded the Cannes Film Festival.

Her husband’s affair with his lead soprano, superstar diva Marthe Chenal. who roused patriotic fever in support of France’s fighting forces with “La Marseilliaise”, resulted in a scandalous divorce. The proceedings were resolved in 1912 in Irène’s favour, an exceptional outcome for the day. She then, according to son Philippe, secretly took him back as her lover until his death seven years later of a heart attack at her apartment.

She frequented the avant-garde and esoteric circles of the day, providing a salon and financial backing for such innovative and epoch-defining enterprises as André Gide’s “Nouvelle Revue Francaise” and André Breton and Louis Aragon’s dadaist journal “Littérature” from which the surrealist movement was launched. In 1915 she became the script writer and business partner in H-D Films with the pioneering film maker Germaine Dulac, ("La Belle Dame sans Merci" 1920) producing films that signaled the arrival of the avant-garde and feminism in film. Her veiled and multi-layered Dadaist work "Voyages en Kaleidescope" was published under her real name in Paris by Georges Crès, 1919. In November of 1919, Louis Aragon wrote a commentary of it in Littérature.

“Par Amour” appeared in the following (December) issue along with contributors Tristan Tzara (Dada founder), André Breton (Surrealism founder) and Igor Stravinsky (musical revolutionary). During this time with the Versailles treaty talks in progress she also hosted salons for numerous diplomats advocating politically liberal stances.

On March 21, 1920, Irène Hillel-Erlanger died after several days of illness. Her death is said by some to have resulted from typhoid fever, caused by oysters Irène had with a friend. Since the oysters did not make her friend ill, the hypothesis of poisoning appeared plausible to others ... as soon after her death unsold copies of “Voyages en Kaleidoscope” disappeared from bookstore shelves. Her own letters, notes, journals, scripts written for film and biographical accounts by contemporaries of her personal life and work similarly vanished.

What survives is work especially in her last year at once contemporary, radically innovative and deeply faithful to esoteric tradition.

Dedication

In Memoriam,

Irène Hillel-Erlanger.

b: 1878 - d: 1920                                                      

A minor poet who after abandoning her male pseudonym Claude Lorrey embarked in 1915 on a career as "cinéaste" and business partner with the director Germaine Dulac. Her audacious and iconoclastic "Voyages en Kaleidoscope" projected a remarkable vision of a technological future fraught with calamity. Erlanger's spiritual self "Grace (naturally)" is locked in battle with her body self "Vera (voluptuous)" over the sanity of the genius inventor "José" (I dare) with only the innocent "Gilly" (salt of the earth) to program the technology.

With a cast voiced like a string quartette, (Soprano, Alto,Tenor, Bass) Erlanger unsparingly explores Parisian society circa 1919 where humility and hubris clash. 

From her introduction: 

FRONTISPIECE


               in which the author would like to shed light
                   
                                 on her intentions


                                                         and on


                                                  THE IMAGES


                                                                     that follow

This is not a novel

even less a character study 

we have tried simply and fervently 
to grasp and fix a few Signs.