Words and Worlds

by Alison Lurie

  The environment of Babar is that of the prosperous, well-educated, art-loving French bourgeoisie. Babar and his family go to the theater and hear concerts of both classical and popular music. They favor upper-class sports: they sail, play tennis, swim and ski, practice yoga, go to the races, and camp and hike in the mountains. Good manners are important, and so are good clothes. Jean de Brunhoff’s brother was the editor of French Vogue and his brother-in-law a famous fashion journalist, and the costumes of Celeste and her daughters are consistently chic. The first thing Babar does after he is befriended by the Old Lady is to go to a large, apparently expensive department store, where he buys a bright green suit, a derby hat, and shoes. His first gift to his subjects is two sets of apparel each—one for work and one for play. Before they put these outfits on, the elephants walk on all fours; afterwards they stand upright. In The Travels of Babar (1932), when Babar and Celeste lose their clothes and are stranded on a reef in the ocean, they also lose their quasi-human identity, and the captain of the ship that rescues them can sell them to a circus.

  Babar’s is an ideal world, a kind of upper-middle-class French Utopia whose capital is literally a heavenly city—as its name, Celesteville, indicates. Its inhabitants have various occupations, but they only work in the mornings—the afternoons are devoted to sports, recreation, and the arts. They live in identical grass-roofed cottages, except for Babar and the Little Old Lady, who have larger houses at the top of a hill, near public buildings that include a school, a library, a sports complex, and a theater. During the over seventy years since the founding of Celesteville the city has grown considerably: it now includes substantial mansions, skyscrapers, and a large art museum.

  Though no one ages in Celesteville, modern inventions and modern attitudes gradually appear. Styles in fashion and car design change; motorbikes, television, helicopters, and hang-gliders become visible, and computers and cell phones are surely on their way. Queen Celeste remains a traditional wife and mother who stays home and devotes herself to her children; her older daughter Flora is at first conventionally feminine, passive, and fearful; but in later books she gradually gains in courage and enterprise. Her younger sister Isabelle is a thoroughly modern little girl, slimmer and more active than Flora. She wears in-line skates, listens to music on a portable device, and is eager to explore the world. Eventually, in The Rescue of Babar (1993) she journeys to a strange civilization and helps to free her father from captivity.

  As Ann Hildebrand, who has written a recent study of Babar, points out, the ambiance of the books is generally Gallic. The illustrations show berets, Citroens, Peugeots, crêperies, and croissants, and the signs on the buildings are in French. Babar and his family visit Paris, a seaside resort that suggests Normandy or Brittany, and a chateau in the Dordogne. Ariel Dorfman, in The Empire’s Old Clothes (1983) has suggested that the attitude towards childhood in the early Babar books is also typically French. “[U]niversal bliss is assured by grown-up figures who never make mistakes, and are unsusceptible to criticism.” For Americans, he believes, childhood is an age for fun and adventures, an end in itself, whereas for the French it is a period of probation. This may be so in the early Babar books, but as time passes (or rather stops), the implied message changes, and in the later books Babar’s children and his cousin Arthur enjoy a perpetual happy and adventurous youth.

  In the Babar books, the kingdom of the elephants is not the only possible society. Besides the human world, containing recognizable places like Paris, New York, Chicago, and North Africa, there are separate civilizations of birds and monkeys and a planet in outer space whose inhabitants look rather like elephants. All these places have much in common with Celesteville. Their citizens are friendly to strangers; they live in comfortable and attractive dwellings under the care of a benevolent ruler, and they enjoy public events.

  In Jean de Brunhoff’s Babar and Zephir (1936) ,the Republic of the Monkeys is ruled by a President, General Huc. He sports a Napoleonic hat and has a fairly large but not very efficient army whose uniforms suggest those of nineteenth-century France or Italy: his soldiers wear red pants, white jackets, and plumed kepis. The principal city, Monkeyville, is on the sea and in a temperate climate. The monkeys wear fashionable clothes and live in small but comfortable houses hung from trees: they have a railway station, cars, a restaurant, and a hairdresser. On a nearby island there is a collection of strange-looking but essentially harmless “monsters,” whose greatest fear is boredom. Zephir manages to entertain them brilliantly, telling stories, dressing as a clown and doing tricks, and playing waltzes and polkas on his violin. The overall impression is of a Mediterranean seaside resort with an offshore island populated by eccentric and demanding tourists.

  Laurent de Brunhoff’s Babar’s Visit to Bird Island (1951) portrays a simpler and more rural world. It is a strikingly beautiful and colorful book, and one of the author’s favorites: according to him, it was inspired by childhood visits to Cap Ferret, south of Bordeaux. The island is roughly bird-shaped and ruled by a king and queen who resemble crested cockatoos. As in Babar the King, the inhabitants all have different and appropriate trades: the pelican, with his large beak, is a postman; the pheasants are tailors; the long-legged flamingo and stork are dancers; the parrot and the peacock are actors; the vulture is a butcher; and chickens manage the dairy. There are no monsters, though at one point Babar’s daughter Flora is threatened by an enormous fish. It is a freer and less organized society than that of the monkeys; entertainment and the enjoyment of life are foremost, and only Babar and his family wear clothes. The suggestion is of a small semi-tropical island, with colorful, pleasure-loving inhabitants of many races, where one can enjoy deep-sea fishing and outdoor banquets.

  Twenty years later Laurent de Brunhoff took Babar and his family to outer space, in Babar Visits Another Planet (1972). This time the elephants were not politely invited, as with Bird Island and Monkeyville, but kidnapped. They were sucked into an unmanned rocket ship that took many days to reach its goal: a strange reddish planet where the ground is soft and mushy like caramel and all buildings are hung from red balloons. The inhabitants look like small, thin, pear-shaped elephants with curly ears; they wear clothes and walk on their hind legs. Civilization is highly developed, with indoor swimming pools, an automatic fountain that serves cakes and soft drinks, and a supermarket/shopping mall with motorized carts. It is a crowded urban culture, with an emphasis on competition and material goods, and the city has an Oriental appearance. Babar’s children sleep in “little wall niches” that resemble the mini-hotels in Japanese cities, and the signs in the supermarket appear to be written in Asian characters. It is also a highly ordered and homogeneous society: the curly-eared elephants “speak as with one voice, which sounds like a clarinet.”

  The reddish planet is in many ways more alien, and possibly more perilous, than the worlds of the monkeys or the birds—just as Japan is less familiar to French children than a French or Italian seaside resort. In Monkeyville and on Bird Island there was no language barrier, but here Babar cannot understand anyone until the end of the story. And though the curly-eared elephants are friendly and hospitable at first, they become very upset when Arthur accidentally breaks one of their red balloons, and Babar and his family are advised to return to Earth immediately to avoid danger.

  The most interesting, though least agreeable, alternative society in the Babar books is that of the rhinos. It also, unlike the other alien worlds, appears many times. The rhinos’ territory borders that of the elephants, but though they are Babar’s neighbors, they are often opposed to him. They are large, clumsy, and subject to fits of aggression and impulsive greed. They have bad manners and no apparent interest in art or music. When they first appear, they, like most of the elephants, walk on four legs and do not wear clothes, but later they, too, appear to have become civilized. They have very bad taste, however: they like vulgar patterns and silly hats. Their king, Rataxes, wears loud-print suits and co
mic-opera uniforms.

  The city of the rhinos is a large metropolis, with square brutalist public buildings that seem to be constructed of gray cement in a semi-Egyptian style. There are no flower gardens, and most of the houses have the shape of square lampshades; the palace resembles an Inca temple crossed with a bunker. Rataxes’s name is carved on each side of the palace steps, with a letter left off from the beginning or the end each time, so that it deconstructs into words that include TAXES, AXES, and RAT.

  Some readers have suggested that the country of the rhinos—which is more or less next door, and whose army wears black helmets and black boots that recall the costume of German soldiers in both World Wars—represents Eastern Europe, or even specifically Germany. Laurent de Brunhoff has denied this, but he agrees that the rhinos are essentially the opposite of the elephants, who are known for their peaceful nature, polite behavior, and love of beauty, flowers, recreation, and the arts. The rhinos, by contrast, are crude, impulsively aggressive, and prejudiced, lacking in both good taste and good manners.

  We first hear of the rhinos in the second book of Jean de Brunhoff’s original series, The Travels of Babar. While Babar and Celeste are on their honeymoon, their young cousin Arthur plays a trick on Rataxes, tying a firecracker to his tail. Though the wise old elephant Cornelius tries to make peace, Rataxes, who is “revengeful and mean,” refuses his apologies and declares war. At first, the rhinos are victorious, and when Babar and Celeste return, they find the countryside devastated in a manner that recalls the battlefields of World War I: “A few broken trees! Is that all that is left of the great forest? There are no more flowers, no more birds. Babar and Celeste are very sad and weep as they see their ruined country.”

  Many elephants have been wounded, and are being treated in an outdoor field hospital by nurses in World War I costumes. Meanwhile, Rataxes is preparing another attack. Babar saves the day by a stratagem: he paints eyes on the rumps of his biggest soldiers, and colors their tails red, while Arthur makes red and green wigs for them out of leaves. Now, when they advance backwards, they look like monsters. The rhinos are terrified and retreat in disorder—essentially defeated by innovative fashion design.

  The antagonism between the elephants and the rhinos increases in Laurent de Brunhoff’s Babar and the Wully-Wully (1975). In this story, Babar’s daughter Flora discovers a small, friendly, very rare creature with soft green fur. The Wully-Wully is so totally lovable and desirable that he is kidnapped by Rataxes and imprisoned in the city of the rhinos, from which he has to be rescued by Zephir. But almost as soon as the Wully-Wully returns to Celesteville, the rhino soldiers attack, “sweeping through Celesteville like a hurricane,” and carrying off the Wully-Wully again. War is about to be declared, but Flora saves the day by going alone to see King Rataxes and persuading him that the Wully-Wully needs his freedom. Amazingly, the king agrees, and the last picture shows Flora and Rataxes together, rocking the Wully-Wully in a rope swing.

  In 1978, in Babar’s Mystery, one of the most exciting stories in the series, another disagreeable rhino appears. This time he is the leader of a criminal gang of low-life crocodiles; he wears a loud checked suit and smokes cigars. (The crocodiles are equally inelegant, in shabby tailcoats and sneakers.) He hangs out at the seaside resort of Celesteville-by-the Sea, which seems to be located in Brittany, near Mont-St-Michel, a picture of which appears in one double-page spread. The piano from the hotel is stolen, then Babar’s red convertible, and finally the statue of an elephant from the town square. But in the end Arthur, with Babar’s help, catches the thieves.

  Out in the human world, as time passed, borders came down, and both France and Germany joined the European Union. Laurent de Brunhoff’s attitude towards the country of the rhinos also seems to have changed. “I wanted to show that not all rhinos are bad,” he recently told me. The result was Babar’s Little Girl Makes a Friend (1990), in which Babar’s youngest daughter Isabelle meets the agreeable Vic, the little son of King Rataxes. But not all rhinos are good, either, and when Rataxes discovers the friendship, he is furious. “We don’t like elephants in Rhino City!” he shouts, and his wife is “terribly angry.” “You cannot be friends with that little elephant,” she tells her son. At the end of the story Rataxes is somewhat reconciled, but Lady Rataxes remains enraged and prejudiced. “Keep your daughter away from our son!” she says to Babar. But the next day the children are back together. The moral seems to be that though adult rhinos are often aggressive and prejudiced, there may be hope for the younger generation.

  In Babar’s world, women are not necessarily more tolerant and peace-loving. A couple of years later, in Babar’s Battle (1992), Babar remarks that Rataxes hasn’t bothered the elephants for a long time. He is contradicted by Celeste, who says “that could change in a second … Rataxes has caused trouble before, and he could again. I don’t trust him.” And in fact a “rhino witch” named Macidexia, who lives in a cave underneath the lake near Celesteville, and has terrible taste in clothes, has been urging Rataxes to destroy the elephants for some time. She inspires him to drain the lake, causing fish and plants to die. Babar discovers the plot and telephones Rataxes to complain, but Rataxes replies by declaring war. The elephants and the rhinos prepare for battle, both sides wearing medieval armor, whereupon Babar challenges Rataxes to single combat. He wins by blinding Rataxes with the reflections from his shield: metaphorically, reflected aggression destroys the aggressor. Peace and order are restored—though (at least according to the illustrations) no rhinos have been invited to the big swimming party at the end of the book.

  Though Babar does not apparently age after the first three books in the series, he does change. When he first becomes king, as Ann Hildebrand says, he is “a courteous, responsible adult, a benevolent, honest leader, and a faithful, caring husband and father.” In the face of loss or danger he remains steady, rational, and capable. But in the sixties, seventies, and early eighties he does not always retain his calm self-confidence. In Babar Loses His Crown (1967) he also loses his cool: he becomes sad and disturbed and unable to eat dinner, and declares that he cannot go out in public. “What will it look like, this evening at the Opera?’ he asks pathetically. “The king of the elephants, without his crown?” Later, in Babar and the Ghost (1981), he is baffled and confused by a mischievous spirit that only the very young can see. His children take advantage of the situation to become rude and play tricks on adults, and life in the capital city is disrupted by traffic jams and fender-benders caused by an apparently driverless car. It is not until the very end of the story that Babar manages to get the ghost to leave Celesteville.

  A few years later, in The Rescue of Babar (1993), our hero undergoes what might be called a midlife crisis. Hidden within the crater of an extinct volcano not far from Celesteville, it turns out, is a beautiful city. Its steep hills and semi-classical architecture, Laurent de Brunhoff says, were inspired by Borabadur in Java. To me, however, the city closely resembles San Francisco. The elephants who live there have striped ears and wear togas. They are especially fond of the arts: Isabelle pays for a double ice-cream cone by singing “Happy Birthday.”

  Isabelle has come to this city alone to rescue her father Babar, who has been kidnapped by the striped elephants so that he can tell them stories. He is imprisoned on a high ledge, where he sleeps in a hammock like the one he was rocked in when he was a baby in the first picture of The Story of Babar. But when Isabelle tells him, “We have to get out of here, back to Celesteville,” he does not want to go.

  “What for?” said Babar. “It’s very pleasant here, and the striped elephants treat me with the greatest courtesy. Their music is enchanting, their food is delicious, and they only want me to tell them stories. Why should I leave?” “But you are King of the Elephants in Celesteville!” exclaimed Isabelle. “Let someone else be king,” said Babar, and he fell back asleep.

  At this point Babar has apparently regressed to childhood, abandoning h
is responsibilities as a ruler. It turns out later that in fact he has been drugged by doctored watermelon smoothies, and when their effect wears off he is willing to escape and return to Celesteville. But in the picture of Babar sneaking away from the city of the striped elephants at night, with Isabelle and her three animal companions, he is the only one who looks back—and while they appear happy and determined, his expression is one of doubt and regret.

  Some readers who know that a few years before this book appeared, Laurent de Brunhoff moved from France to America, have seen The Rescue of Babar as a roman à clef. The striped elephants, in this view, are the Americans whose enthusiasm for the storyteller is so great that they want him here among them, in a country isolated from the rest of the world by its geography. However, since The Rescue of Babar our hero has clearly regained his poise and self-confidence.

  Ann Hildebrand, in fact, connects this change to the end of Laurent de Brunhoff’s first marriage, and his subsequent move to America and happy second marriage to the American writer and professor Phyllis Rose. In fact, the text of The Rescue of Babar, like all the books that follow, is copyrighted in the name of Phyllis Rose, and for her the real point of the story is that it has a brave and active female protagonist.

  Some fans of the Babar books have interpreted them as social, political, or personal fables; others have not hesitated to consider them as art and literature on the highest level. Nicholas Fox Weber, in The Art of Babar (1988), points out that both Jean and Laurent were art students and serious painters, and sees parallels between their work and that of classic European artists. There are comparisons to (in alphabetical order) Bonnard, Dufy, De Kooning, Delacroix, Giacometti, Klee, Matisse, Rubens, Jan van Eyck, and Pop Art. Laurent de Brunhoff says that in his view some of these comparisons “go too far.” But it is also true that the landscape panoramas of Jean de Brunhoff’s books sometimes recall the paintings of Dufy, and that the colors in many of Laurent de Brunhoff’s illustrations—the intense reds and pinks and golden yellows, the flat greens—suggest Bonnard or Matisse.