Harlequin checks the clown with Stromae
Sonian and Zenniker poet
maestro of the street arts ignotae
such as mime and dance - no song inchoate
but congruent with the course at Soignies
which Brussels hates to moon-walk and trawl
an underground Lethe nothing like Swannee
where L’Isle des Esclaves murders and brawls
Harlequin calls to mind what’s been lost
in dark water - while atrocious clowns mock
misfortune regardless of the cost
thanks to Stromae the Zenne’s been unblocked
Trivelin’s isle back to role reversal
its Prince ordering failure’s dress rehearsal
Blackwell’s
Oxford
26 August 2018
Stromae ( Paul van Haver b. 1985) is a Belgian musician and creative artist of genius. He has captured the discontents of the Age and the disappointments in people’s lives. His father, who came from Rwanda, was killed in the genocide of Tutsis in 1994.
I have identified him with the closely related Commedia dell’Arte characters of Harlequin and Trivelin in this poem. It was received wisdom in the Atellan Farce of Rome to balance the contrasting characters of Maccus and Boccus, and in the Commedia dell’Arte tradition to balance similarly the contrasting pair of Harlequin and the Clown. This was certainly the case in Victorian pantomine. It has also been suggested that Maccus and Boccus were the same-sex fathers of Pulchinello.
Trivelin appears as the ruler of the island in “L’ Isle des Esclaves” (1725) by Pierre de Marivaux (1688-1763), a one act play with eleven scenes, where Trivelin prescribes role reversals of Athenian masters and their white servants. Maybe Pitcairn Island lay at the back of my mind here where the “Bounty” mutineers landed in 1789. I also refer to Stephen Foster’s controversial and sentimental song ” Swannee River” of 1859.
The River Zenne or Senne in French flows through Brussels largely underground as a sewer and stormwater drain. The suburb or town of Soignies on the outskirts of the city takes its name from the Senne. Sonian is an adjective from that toponym and the Sonian Forest or La Foret de Soignies is a great beech forest outside Brussels. A Zennike is a Zenne-sider, a cosmopolitan inhabitant of Brussels associated with diversity and inclusion. And the Sonian poets were Lord Sepulchrave’s favourite school of poets in Mervyn Peake’s ” Titus Groan”.