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Jean Christophe: In Paris by Romain Rolland

R >> Romain Rolland >> Jean Christophe: In Paris




He went out. There was a range a few yards away from the house. Christophe
asked for a pistol, and had it explained how he ought to hold it. With his
first shot he almost killed his instructor: he went on with a second and a
third, and fared no better: he lost patience, and went from bad to worse. A
few young men were standing by watching and laughing. He paid no heed to
them. With his German persistency he went on trying, and was so indifferent
to their laughter and so determined to succeed that, as always happens,
his blundering patience roused interest, and one of the spectators gave
him advice. In spite of his usual violence he listened to everything with
childlike docility; he managed to control his nerves, which were making
his hand tremble: he stiffened himself and knit his brows: the sweat was
pouring down his cheeks: he said not a word: but every now and then he
would give way to a gust of anger, and then go on shooting. He stayed there
for a couple of hours. At the end of that time he hit the bull's-eye. Few
things could have been more absorbing than the sight of such a power of
will mastering an awkward and rebellious body. It inspired respect. Some of
those who had scoffed at the outset had gone, and the others were silenced
one by one, and had not been able to tear themselves away. They took off
their hats to Christophe when he went away.

When he reached home Christophe found his friend Mooch waiting anxiously.
Mooch had heard of the quarrel, and had come at once: he wanted to know
how it had originated. In spite of Christophe's reticence and desire
not to attach any blame to Olivier, he guessed the reason. He was very
cool-headed, and knew both the friends, and had no doubt of Olivier's
innocence of the treachery ascribed to him. He looked into the matter, and
had no difficulty in finding out that the whole trouble arose from the
scandal-mongering of Colette and Lucien Levy-Coeur. He rushed back with
his evidence to Christophe, thinking that he could in that way prevent
the duel. But the result was exactly the opposite of what he expected:
Christophe was only the more rancorous against Levy-Coeur when he learned
that it was through him that he had come to doubt his friend. To get rid of
Mooch, who kept on imploring him not to fight, he promised him everything
he asked. But he had made up his mind. He was quite happy now: he was going
to fight for Olivier, not for himself!

A remark made by one of the seconds as the carriage was going along a road
through the woods suddenly caught Christophe's attention. He tried to find
out what they were thinking, and saw how little they really cared about
him. Professor Barth was wondering when the affair would be over, and
whether he would be back in time to finish a piece of work he had begun
on the manuscripts in the _Bibliotheque Nationale_. Of Christophe's three
companions, he was the most interested in the result of the encounter as
a matter of German national pride. Goujart paid no attention either to
Christophe or the other German, but discussed certain scabrous subjects
in connection with the coarser branches of physiology with Dr. Jullien, a
young physician from Toulouse, who had recently come to live next door to
Christophe, and occasionally borrowed his spirit-lamp, or his umbrella, or
his coffee-cups, which he invariably returned broken. In return he gave him
free consultations, tried medicines on him, and laughed at his simplicity.
Under his impassive manner, that would have well become a Castilian
hidalgo, there was a perpetual love of teasing. He was highly delighted
with the adventure of the duel, which struck him as sheer burlesque: and
he was amusing himself with fancying the mess that Christophe would make
of it. He thought it a great joke to be driving through the woods at the
expense of good old Krafft.--That, clearly, was what was in the minds of
the trio: they regarded it as a jolly excursion which cost them nothing.
Not one of them attached the least importance to the duel. But, on the
other hand, they were just as calmly prepared for anything that might come
of it.

They reached the appointed spot before the others. It was a little inn in
the heart of the forest. It was a pleasure-resort, more or less unclean, to
which Parisians used to resort to cleanse their honor when the dirt on it
became too apparent. The hedges were bright with the pure flowers of the
eglantine. In the shade of the bronze-leaved oak-trees there were rows
of little tables. At one of these tables were seated three bicyclists:
a painted woman, in knickerbockers, with black socks: and two men in
flannels, who were stupefied by the heat, and every now and then gave out
growls and grunts as though they had forgotten how to speak.

The arrival of the carriage produced a little buzz of excitement in the
inn. Goujart, who knew the house and the people of old, declared that he
would look after everything. Barth dragged Christophe into an arbor and
ordered beer. The air was deliciously warm and soft, and resounding with
the buzzing of bees. Christophe forgot why he had come. Barth emptied the
bottle, and said, after a short silence:

"I know what I'll do."

He drank and went on:

"I shall have plenty of time: I'll go on to Versailles when it's all over."

Goujart was heard haggling with the landlady over the price of the
dueling-ground. Jullien had not been wasting his time: as he passed near
the bicyclists he broke into noisy and ecstatic comment on the woman's bare
legs: and there was exchanged a perfect deluge of filthy epithets in which
Jullien did not come off worst. Barth said in a whisper:

"The French are a low-minded lot. Brother, I drink to your victory."

He clinked his glass against Christophe's. Christophe was dreaming: scraps
of music were floating in his mind, mingled with the harmonious humming of
insects. He was very sleepy.

The wheels of another carriage crunched over the gravel of the drive.
Christophe saw Lucien Levy-Coeur's pale face, with its inevitable smile:
and his anger leaped up in him. He got up, and Barth followed him.

Levy-Coeur, with his neck swathed in a high stock, was dressed with a
scrupulous care which was strikingly in contrast with his adversary's
untidiness. He was followed by Count Bloch, a sportsman well known for
his mistresses, his collection of old pyxes, and his ultra-Royalist
opinions,--Leon Mouey, another man of fashion, who had reached his position
as Deputy through literature, and was a writer from political ambition: he
was young, bald, clean-shaven, with a lean bilious face: he had a long
nose, round eyes, and a head like a bird's,--and Dr. Emmanuel, a fine type
of Semite, well-meaning and cold, a member of the Academy of Medicine, a
chief-surgeon in a hospital, famous for a number of scientific books, and
the medical skepticism which made him listen with ironic pity to the
plaints of his patients without making the least attempt to cure them.

The newcomers saluted the other three courteously. Christophe barely
responded, but was annoyed by the eagerness and the exaggerated politeness
with which they treated Levy-Coeur's seconds. Jullien knew Emmanuel, and
Goujart knew Mouey, and they approached them obsequiously smiling. Mouey
greeted them with cold politeness and Emmanuel jocularly and without
ceremony. As for Count Bloch, he stayed by Levy-Coeur, and with a rapid
glance he took in the condition of the clothes and linen of the three men
of the opposing camp, and, hardly opening his lips, passed abrupt humorous
comment on them with, his friend,--and both of them stood calm and correct.

Lucien Levy-Coeur stood at his ease waiting for Count Bloch, who had the
ordering of the duel, to give the signal. He regarded the affair as a mere
formality. He was an excellent shot, and was fully aware of his adversary's
want of skill. He would not be foolish enough to make use of his advantage
and hit him, always supposing, as was not very probable, that the seconds
did not take good care that no harm came of the encounter: for he knew that
nothing is so stupid as to let an enemy appear to be a victim, when a much
surer and better method is to wipe him out of existence without any fuss
being made. But Christophe stood waiting, stripped to his shirt, which was
open to reveal his thick neck, while his sleeves were rolled up to show his
strong wrists, head down, with his eyes glaring at Levy-Coeur: he stood
taut, with murder written implacably on every feature: and Count Bloch, who
watched him carefully, thought what a good thing it was that civilization
had as far as possible suppressed the risks of fighting.

After both men had fired, of course without result, the seconds hurried
forward and congratulated the adversaries. Honor was satisfied.--Not so
Christophe. He stayed there, pistol in hand, unable to believe that it was
all over. He was quite ready to repeat his performance at the range the
evening before, and go on shooting until one or other of them had hit the
target. When he heard Goujart proposing that he should shake hands with his
adversary, who advanced chivalrously towards him with his perpetual smile,
he was exasperated by the pretense of the whole thing. Angrily he hurled
his pistol away, pushed Goujart aside, and flung himself upon Lucien
Levy-Coeur. They were hard put to it to keep him from going on with the
fight with his fists.

The seconds intervened while Levy-Coeur escaped. Christophe broke away from
them, and, without listening to their laughing expostulation, he strode
along in the direction of the forest, talking loudly and gesticulating
wildly. He did not even notice that he had left his hat and coat on the
dueling-ground. He plunged into the woods. He heard his seconds laughing
and calling him: then they tired of it, and did not worry about him any
more. Very soon he heard the wheels of the carriages rumbling away and
away, and knew that they had gone. He was left alone among the silent
trees. His fury had subsided. He flung himself down on the ground and
sprawled on the grass.

Shortly afterwards Mooch arrived at the inn. He had been pursuing
Christophe since the early morning. He was told that his friend was in the
woods, and went to look for him. He beat all the thickets, and awoke all
the echoes, and was going away in despair when he heard him singing: he
found his way by the voice, and at last came upon him in a little clearing
with his arms and legs in the air, rolling about like a young calf. When
Christophe saw him he shouted merrily, called him "dear old Moloch," and
told him how he had shot his adversary full of holes until he was like a
sieve: he made him tuck in his tuppenny, and then join him in a game of
leap-frog: and when he jumped over him he gave him a terrific thump.
Mooch was not very good at it, but he enjoyed the game almost as much as
Christophe.--They returned to the inn arm-in-arm, and caught the train
back to Paris at the nearest station.

Olivier knew nothing of what had happened. He was surprised at Christophe's
tenderness: he could not understand his sudden change. It was not until
the next day, when he saw the newspapers, that he knew that Christophe
had fought a duel. It made him almost ill to think of the danger that
Christophe had run. He wanted to know why the duel had been fought.
Christophe refused to tell him anything. When he was pressed he said with
a laugh:

"It was for you."

Olivier could not get a word more out of him. Mooch told him all about it.
Olivier was horrified, quarreled with Colette, and begged Christophe to
forgive his imprudence. Christophe was incorrigible, and quoted for his
benefit an old French saying, which he adapted so as to infuriate poor
Mooch, who was present to share in the happiness of the friends:

"My dear boy, let this teach you to be careful....

"_From an idle chattering girl,
From a wheedling, hypocritical Jew,
From a painted friend,
From a familiar foe,
And from flat wine,
Libera Nos, Domine!_"

Their friendship was re-established. The danger of losing it, which had
come so near, made it only the more dear. Their small misunderstandings
had vanished: the very differences between them made them more attractive
to each other. In his own soul Christophe embraced the souls of the two
countries, harmoniously united. He felt that his heart was rich and full:
and, as usual with him, his abundant happiness expressed itself in a flow
of music.

Olivier marveled at it. Being too critical in mind, he was never far from
believing that music, which he adored, had said its last word. He was
haunted by the morbid idea that decadence must inevitably succeed a certain
degree of progress: and he trembled lest the lovely art, which made him
love life, should stop short, and dry up, and disappear into the ground.
Christophe would scoff at such pusillanimous ideas. In a spirit of
contradiction he would pretend that nothing had been done before he
appeared on the scene, and that everything remained to be done. Olivier
would instance French music, which seemed to have reached a point of
perfection and ultimate civilization beyond which there could not possibly
be anything. Christophe would shrug his shoulders:

"French music?... There has never been any.... And yet you have such fine
things to do in the world! You can't really be musicians, or you would have
discovered that. Ah! if only I were a Frenchman!..."

And he would set out all the things that a Frenchman might turn into music:

"You involve yourselves in forms which do not suit you, and you do nothing
at all with those which are admirably fitted for your use. You are a
people of elegance, polite poetry, beautiful gestures, beautiful walking
movements, beautiful attitudes, fashion, clothes, and you never write
ballets nowadays, though you ought to be able to create an inimitable art
of poetic dancing....--You are a people of laughter and comedy, and you
never write comic operas, or else you leave it to minor musicians, the
confectioners of music. Ah! if I were a Frenchman I would set Rabelais to
music, I would write comic epics....--You are a people of story-tellers,
and you never write novels in music: (for I don't count the feuilletons
of Ghistave Charpentier). You make no use of your gift of psychological
analysis, your insight into character. Ah! if I were a Frenchman I would
give you portraits in music.... (Would you like me to sketch the girl
sitting in the garden under the lilac?).... I would write you Stendhal for
a string quartet....--You are the greatest democracy in Europe, and you
have no theater for the people, no music for the people. Ah! if I were a
Frenchman, I would set your Revolution to music: the 14th July, the 10th
August, Valmy, the Federation, I would express the people in music! Not
in the false form of Wagnerian declamation. I want symphonies, choruses,
dances. Not speeches! I'm sick of them. There's no reason why people
should always be talking in a music drama! Bother the words! Paint in bold
strokes, in vast symphonies with choruses, immense landscapes in music,
Homeric and Biblical epics, fire, earth, water, and sky, all bright and
shining, the fever which makes hearts burn, the stirring of the instincts
and destinies of a race, the triumph of Rhythm, the emperor of the world,
who enslaves thousands of men, and hurls armies down to death.... Music
everywhere, music in everything! If you were musicians you would have
music for every one of your public holidays, for your official ceremonies,
for the trades unions, for the student associations, for your family
festivals.... But, above all, above all, if you were musicians, you would
make pure music, music which has no definite meaning, music which has no
definite use, save only to give warmth, and air, and life. Make sunlight
for yourselves! _Sat prata_.... (What is that in Latin?).... There has been
rain enough. Your music gives me a cold. One can't see in it: light your
lanterns.... You complain of the Italian _porcherie_, who invade your
theaters and conquer the public, and turn you out of your own house?
It is your own fault! The public are sick of your crepuscular art, your
harmonized neurasthenia, your contrapuntal pedantry. The public goes where
it can find life, however coarse and gross. Why do you run away from life?
Your Debussy is a bad man, however great he may be as an artist. He aids
and abets you in your torpor. You want roughly waking up."

"What about Strauss?"

"No better. Strauss would finish you off. You need the digestion of my
fellow-countrymen to be able to bear such immoderate drinking. And even
they cannot bear it.... Strauss's _Salome_!... A masterpiece.... I should
not like to have written it.... I think of my old grandfather and uncle
Gottfried, and with what respect and loving tenderness they used to talk
to me about the lovely art of sound!... But to have the handling of such
divine powers, and to turn them to such uses!... A flaming, consuming
meteor! An Isolde, who is a Jewish prostitute. Bestial and mournful lust.
The frenzy of murder, pillage, incest, and untrammeled instincts which is
stirring in the depths of German decadence.... And, on the other hand,
the spasm of a voluptuous and melancholy suicide, the death-rattle which
sounds through your French decadence.... On the one hand, the beast: on the
other, the prey. Where is man?... Your Debussy is the genius of good taste:
Strauss is the genius of bad taste. Debussy is rather insipid. But Strauss
is very unpleasant. One is a silvery thread of stagnant water, losing
itself in the reeds, and giving off an unhealthy aroma. The other is a
mighty muddy flood.... Ah! the musty base Italianism and neo-Meyerbeerism,
the filthy masses of sentiment which are borne on by the torrent!... An
odious masterpiece!... Salome, the daughter of Ysolde.... And whose mother
will Salome be in her turn?"

"Yes," said Olivier, "I wish we could jump fifty years. This headlong
gallop towards the precipice must end one way or another: either the horse
must stop or fall. Then we shall breathe again. Thank Heaven, the earth
will not cease to flower, nor the sky to give light, with or without music!
What have we to do with an art so inhuman!... The West is burning away....
Soon.... Very soon.... I see other stars arising in the furthest depths of
the East."

"Bother the East!" said Christophe. "The West has not said its last word
yet. Do you think I am going to abdicate? I have enough to say to keep
you going for centuries. Hurrah for life! Hurrah for joy! Hurrah for the
courage which drives us on to struggle with our destiny! Hurrah for love
which maketh the heart big! Hurrah for friendship which rekindles our
faith,--friendship, a sweeter thing than love! Hurrah for the day! Hurrah
for the night! Glory be to the sun! _Laus Deo_, the God of joy, the God of
dreams and actions, the God who created music! Hosannah!..."

With that he sat down at his desk and wrote down everything that was in his
head, without another thought for what he had been saying.

* * * * *

At that time Christophe was in a condition in which all the elements of his
life were perfectly balanced. He did not bother his head with esthetic
discussions as to the value of this or that musical form, nor with reasoned
attempts to create a new form: he did not even have to cast about for
subjects for translation into music. One thing was as good as another. The
flood of music welled forth without Christophe knowing exactly what feeling
he was expressing. He was happy: that was all: happy in expanding, happy in
having expanded, happy in feeling within himself the pulse of universal
life.

His fullness of joy was communicated to those about him.

The house with its closed garden was too small for him. He had the view out
over the garden of the neighboring convent with the solitude of its great
avenues and century-old trees: but it was too good to last. In front of
Christophe's windows they were building a six-story house, which shut out
the view and completely hemmed him in. In addition, he had the pleasure of
hearing the creaking of pulleys, the chipping of stones, the hammering of
nails, all day long from morning to night. Among the workmen he found his
old friend the slater, whose acquaintance he had made on the roof. They
made signs to each other, and once, when he met him in the street, he took
the man to a wineshop, and they drank together, much to the surprise of
Olivier, who was a little scandalized. He found the man's drollery and
unfailing good-humor very entertaining, but did not curse him any the less,
with his troop of workmen and stupid idiots who were raising a barricade
in front of the house and robbing him of air and light. Olivier did not
complain much: he could quite easily adapt himself to a limited horizon:
he was like the stove of Descartes, from which the suppressed ideas darted
upward to the free sky. But Christophe needed more air. Shut up in that
confined space, he avenged himself by expanding into the lives of those
about him. He drank in their inmost life, and turned it into music. Olivier
used to tell him that he looked like a lover.

"If I were in love," Christophe would reply, "I should see nothing, love
nothing, be interested in nothing outside my love."

"What is the matter with you, then?"

"I'm very well. I'm hungry."

"Lucky Christophe!" Olivier would sigh. "I wish you could hand a little of
your appetite over to us."

Health, like sickness, is contagious. The first to feel the benefit of
Christophe's vitality was naturally Olivier. Vitality was what he most
lacked. He retired from the world because its vulgarity revolted him.
Brilliantly clever though he was, and in spite of his exceptional artistic
gifts, he was too delicate to be a great artist. Great artists do not feel
disgust: the first law for every healthy being is to live: and that law
is even more imperative for a man of genius: for such a man lives more.
Olivier fled from life: he drifted along in a world of poetic fictions that
had no body, no flesh and blood, no relation to reality. He was one of
those literary men who, in quest of beauty, have to go outside time, into
the days that are no more, or the days that have never been. As though the
wine of life were not as intoxicating, and its vintages as rich nowadays as
ever they were! But men who are weary in soul recoil from direct contact
with life: they can only bear to see it through the veil of visions spun
by the backward movement of time, and hear it in the echo which sends back
and distorts the dead words of those who were once alive.--Christophe's
friendship gradually dragged Olivier out of this Limbo of art. The sun's
rays pierced through to the innermost recesses of his soul in which he was
languishing.

* * * * *

Elsberger, the engineer, also succumbed to Christophe's contagious
optimism. It was not shown in any change in his habits: they were too
inveterate: and it was too much to expect him to become enterprising enough
to leave France and go and seek his fortune elsewhere. But he was shaken
out of his apathy: he recovered his taste for research, and reading, and
the scientific work which he had long neglected. He would have been much
astonished had he been told that Christophe had something to do with
his new interest in his work: and certainly no one would have been more
surprised than Christophe.

* * * * *

But of all the inhabitants of the house, Christophe was the soonest
intimate with the little couple on the second floor. More than once as he
passed their door he had stopped to listen to the sound of the piano which
Madame Arnaud used to play quite well when she was alone. Then he gave them
tickets for his concert, for which they thanked him effusively. And after
that he used to go and sit with them occasionally in the evening. He
had never heard Madame Arnaud playing again: she was too shy to play in
company: and even when she was alone, now that she knew she could be heard
on the stairs, she kept the soft pedal down. But Christophe used to play to
them, and they would talk about it for hours together. The Arnauds used to
speak of music with such eagerness and freshness of feeling that he was
enchanted with them. He had not thought it possible for French people to
care so much for music.

"That," Olivier would say, "is because you have only come across
musicians."

"I'm perfectly aware," Christophe would reply, "that professed musicians
are the very people who care least for music: but you can't make me believe
that there are many people like you in France."

"A few thousands at any rate."

"I suppose it's an epidemic, the latest fashion."

"It is not a matter of fashion," said Arnaud. "_He who does not rejoice to
hear a sweet accord of instruments, or the sweetness of the natural voice,
and is not moved by it, and does not tremble from head to foot with its
sweet ravishment, and is not taken completely out of himself, does thereby
show himself to have a twisted, vicious, and depraved soul, and of such an
one we should beware as of a man ill-born...._"

Obituary: Donald Westlake

The disputed Holocaust memoir which was dropped from Penguin Group's publication schedule at the end of December is set to appear as a work of fiction.

Herman Rosenblat's memoir - which Oprah Winfrey called "the single greatest love story" she had heard in two decades in television - recounted how as a teenage boy in a Nazi concentration camp, he was kept alive by the food which was thrown to him by a young girl, Roma Radzicky. Penguin's US imprint Berkley Books had planned to publish the story, which sees Rosenblat reunited with Radzicky on a blind date years later, as Angel at the Fence: the True Story of a Love That Survived, next month.

But a Holocaust historian said it would have been impossible to approach the fence in the Schlieben concentration camp to throw food over it, concluding that this part of the story was made-up. Berkley initially defended the book, saying it was a work of memory, but then decided to cancel its planned publication, and demanded the return of the advance it had made to Rosenblat. A $25m film based on the book, to be called The Flower of the Fence, is still going ahead, with production due to start this year.

Publisher York House Press based in White Plains, New York, has entered into a tentative agreement with the film production company to publish a novel based on the film script early this spring. It said the book would be "grounded in fact", and would rise "to the proper levels of artistic value, ethical conduct and social responsibility".

A spokesperson for York House Press condemned the attacks which were made on the 80-year-old Rosenblat after the veracity of his story was questioned, describing them as a "savage" response to what was otherwise "a credible, heart-wrenching, and verifiable account" of his time in the concentration camp.

"No deliberate untruth is permissible, but beneath any fabrication is motivation and intent. We believe Mr. Rosenblat's motivations were very human, understandable and forgivable," the spokesperson said. "It is beyond our expertise to know how Holocaust survivors cope with their trauma. Do they deny, try to forget, rationalise or fantasise and promote fiction along with truth? Perhaps the coping mechanisms are as individual as the survivors themselves."

The president of the company producing the film, Harris Salomon from Atlantic Overseas Productions, said the book, "regardless of its shortcomings", would "challenge, educate and enlighten" readers about the horrors of the Holocaust. "The documented fact, acknowledged by his critics, is that Herman is a survivor of concentration camps," he said.

But Rosenblat's agent, Andrea Hurst, said that neither she nor Rosenblat were involved with this version of his story. "Usually book rights from films come out after the movie is released," she told guardian.co.uk. "I think the timing on this is very insensitive."

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Obama to feature in Marvel comic

We do not know the women's names, but their voices are quite distinct. All are pregnant. But while the first woman awaits the birth of her baby with a moon-like serenity, the other two are not so lucky. One, whose previous pregnancies have failed to go to term, is experiencing a heartbreaking late miscarriage; the other is a young student whose accidental pregnancy will end in her child being put up for adoption.

Sylvia Plath's only play was never intended for the stage, being broadcast instead on BBC radio in August 1962. Less than six months later, Plath killed herself, but not before the burst of astonishing creative energy that produced her extraordinary, terrifying Ariel poems.

Anyone who knows Plath's poetry will see the connection between Three Women and Plath's subsequent poems, particularly in the way she talks about the agony of childbirth, the rush of love for this tiny alien being, and both the wonder and wounded rawness of motherhood. It is a beautiful piece, full of startling imagery that draws you in through the sheer intensity of its femaleness, and because it so precisely articulates the emotions that are often thought but seldom voiced by women - certainly not in the early 1960s - about men, motherhood and our relationship to our bodies.

It's been 20 years since there has been an attempt at a professional stage version and - in a theatre world that happily accepts the poetic offerings of Sarah Kane and Debbie Tucker Green, or the staged possibilities of The Waves, one of Plath's own inspirations for the piece, I see no reason why it shouldn't be brought to life. Sadly, it doesn't breathe here, in a production by Robert Shaw that is clearly a labour of love, but which never finds a way to give the internal a physical reality. Plath's poetry, like most babies, is more robust than it appears - and won't break if treated with a little less reverence and considerably more grit.

Instead, what we are offered is tinkling piano music, mournful mood lighting, an innocuous pale setting, as well as three perfectly good but indisputably ladylike performances that capture none of the wounded redness of Plath's poetry, and do her the disservice of making her sound bleached and somewhat prissy. It's a pity. What might have been a wonder ends up a mere curiosity.

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Climbing the walls

Barack Obama is teaming up with Spider-Man in a comic from Marvel, which will see the future president exchanging a fist-bump with the superhero. The story sees one of Spidey's oldest enemies, the Chameleon, trying to stop Obama being inaugurated. Spider-Man's alter ego, Peter Parker, is covering the event as a photographer, and saves the day.

"Ya hear that, Chameleon?" Spider-Man says as he thwacks the villain in the face. "The president-elect here just appointed me ... secretary of shuttin' you up."

He tells Obama: "This is your day, and I know it wouldn't look good to be seen palling around with me" - in a nod to Sarah Palin's comment that Obama had been "palling around with terrorists".

"When we heard that president-elect Obama is a collector of Spider-Man comics, we knew that these two historic figures had to meet in our comics' Marvel Universe," said the publisher's editor-in-chief, Joe Quesada.

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