Cheeks on Fire

by Raymond Radiguet

English, French (translation)

Genres: Poetry, France

113 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1976

About the author

Raymond Radiguet was born in Saint-Maur, Val-de-Marne close to Paris, the son of a caricaturist. In 1917 he moved to the city. Soon he would drop out of the Lycée Charlemagne, where he studied, in order to pursue his interests in journalism and literature. He associated himself with the Modernist set, befriending Picasso, Max Jacob, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris, and especially Jean Cocteau, who became his mentor. Radiguet also had several well-documented relationships with women. An anecdote told by Ernest Hemingway has an enraged Cocteau charging Radiguet (known in the Parisian literary circles as "Monsieur Bébé" – Mister Baby) with decadence for his tryst with a model: "Bébé est vicieuse. Il aime les femmes." ("Baby is depraved. He likes women." [Note the use of the feminine adjective:]). Radiguet, Hemingway implies, employed his sexuality to advance his career, being a writer "who knew how to make his career not only with his pen but with his pencil."

In early 1923 Radiguet published his first and most famous novel, Le Diable au corps (The Devil in the Flesh). The story of a young married woman who has an affair with a sixteen-year-old boy while her husband is away fighting at the front provoked scandal in a country that had just been through World War I. Though Radiguet denied it, it was established later that the story was in large part autobiographical. Critics, who initially despised the intense publicity campaign for the book's release (something not normally associated with works of literary merit at the time), were finally won over by the quality of Radiguet's writing and his sober, objective style.

His second novel, Le bal du Comte d'Orgel, also dealing with adultery, was only published posthumously in 1924. Radiguet had died the previous year, aged 20, of typhoid fever, which he contracted after a trip he took with Cocteau. In reaction to this death Francis Poulenc wrote, "For two days I was unable to do anything, I was so stunned" (Ivry 1996). Alongside these two novels, Radiguet's works include a few poetry volumes and a play.

Reviews

[Matthieu · Rating 3 out of 5]

From childhood to adolescence, from adolescence into (young) adulthood. Two novels surrounded by verse. Bookends. A young man's light touch, an adolescent's light touch, a child's fear of ink and typesetting. The evolution of a poet, of a writer, of a young man. Ambiguous prose poems are refined into sonnets. Venus in windows and fountains. Sixteen to nineteen. A novel about a masked ball. The Pelicans. When the lungs are filled, one simply stops. An eye overflows. Cocteau, the winedark Mediterranean. Bébé est vicieuse. Il aime les femmes. Death punctuates.

[Alor Deng · Rating 2 out of 5]

Radiguet's gift was in storytelling, not poetry. Or perhaps I'm not as attuned to the subtler art. But also, as the foreword by Radiguet himself says, these were written when he was sixteen and seventeen. An obscure age when the senses begin to stir but Love remains dormant.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Sad that Sunday’s free from extra chores,
Let’s skip these puzzles and chew gum instead.
Smile for me a little, fickle dawn;
A dunce’s cap looks stunning on your head.

Over vacation, there’s ample time to blush,
Then after reading all the hottest books
Croon sentimental ballads out of tune
And sneer at dwarfish roses in the bush.

One by one, my songs give way to sighs.
‘Lovers’ nest’ – but now the signpost fades;
That doesn’t bother me, so long as skyscrapers
Tomorrow jolt my castles in the skies.

In the midst of ecstasy, I see your face.
A stream, beneath the bridge which straddles it,
though violated, heaves with sobs of rapture;
In the end those sobs are all I can embrace.”
—
“In her evening gown, the infanta of the wintry dunes proffers me her milk. She teaches me how to walk on the sand without leaving footprints behind. We talk in mostly dead tongues. Meanwhile, the cavalier – whom the ocean fits like a glove, his future drowned, his ears pressed to the waves – hears them settle upon his fate but fails to grasp their meaning.”
—
“By your own fair image stayed.
Lest some intruder spy you
I appoint the Marne as guardian
Of all your charms, O wanton boy;
See, its waters more slowly run.

Although the watchful Marne may seem
More chaste and pure than other streams
Its yearnings are the same as ours:
To watch as your virginity
(At teatime, in white breeches)

Steams in vapour to the sun.”
—
“Bouquet of flames (which stolen
Kisses make more bright)
How grand, on Midsummer Day
To drown, with the doves, in your light.

Streams which toss in their beds,
Murmuring ceaselessly,
And restless fires that fume
Far from where Venus treads,

Coo to the waves, and mime
In their adorable fit,
A breast grown full with milk.
Or with desire? That’s it.”
—
“Echo, you’re lying, or something’s amiss,
For through the chimney sweep’s tunnel,
As if in a funhouse mirror,
Ever-changing phantoms of bliss

Come softly creeping past my chair
As soul and body gasp for air.
– Rapture, I only knew it was you
From the hiss you made as you went up the flue.

Lie back, my soul, one can’t avoid
The march of time, or your own flight;
My greedy ear, athirst for sound
And straining at whispers in the void

Hears only the farmyard’s rural king.
Rooster, with the knife that kills
Stuck in your throat, hoarsely sing:
I’d like to think it’s early still.”
—
“Venus not only reveals to me
Her secrets, but those of her mother too:
Long ago, I’d gaze at the sea
The way a child who couldn’t read

Might skim through the pages of a book.
Venus boasts a pedigree
From lofty skies, denying the debt
She owes her mother. Goddess, admit

That a teen-aged novice belies your tale.
I’m really not impressed by your boasts
Because you’ve taught me how to read
The booming waves, those soft maternal

Wrinkles on the ocean womb.
But I’ll repay you as befits
An artless youth: since you let me enrol
As a pupil in your risky school,

I’ll teach you how to read my soul.”
—
“Undine, you’ll say I’m just a child
If politely I ask you to

Loan me one of those penknives
Which glisten like slippery sardines
Nibbling open the choicest shellfish.
In exchange for the silver blade

Of your knife, undine, I’ll try to carve
Words to you and your sisters on
The bark I couldn’t penetrate
Before, whether prone or erect,
Crushed by a force I couldn’t direct.”

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Poems of love and death written by the teenage wunderkind Radiguet. The strongest here are the odes to Venus, although often peppered with adolescent sexual fantasies and double entendre, as well being a bit heavy-handed on the womb imagery. Another case of “what could have been” if the poet had lived beyond the age of twenty. Mostly a curiosity for anyone interested in French literature or wanting to read everything published by Radiguet: two novels, a one-act play, and this poetry collection.

[Jack Killeen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good

[polce · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75