_________________

Naoya Hatakeyama ‘Blast’ (series)

‘Hatakeyama began photographing “Blast” in 1995. The series was shown in the exhibition “Aspects of Contemporary Photography – another reality” held during the same year at the Kawasaki City Museum. Since then, Hatakeyama has continued to work on the series and it has been presented in numerous exhibitions in Japan and abroad. For Hatakeyama, who has created works that carefully and poetically examine nature, the cities that we have built, and the philosophies that give them form, the photographing of “Blast,” which is coordinated with an explosives expert who accurately predicts where the shrapnel from the blasted boulders will fly, has been an invaluable experience that has allowed him to reexamine photography’s appeal and the foundations of its technology.’ — Taka Ishii Gallery

 

_______________

Carstein Nikolai ‘Future Past Perfect’

‘Conceived as the fourth part of the series under the name future past perfect, the fourth short film of the row is the result of a long-term fascination with clouds, their movements, structure/texture, and their potentially infinite variety of forms. Shot from the plane on various trips, the sequences of cloud imagery are edited and collaged in different ways to match the diverse qualities of constitution and behaviour of clouds. The short movie especially focussed on so-called stratus clouds, a category of clouds that usually appears rather flat, hazy and featureless. Their visual quality as seen from above may imply micro and macro structures at the same time thus potentially deceives the viewer’s perception.’ — C.N.

 

________________

Julia Ishtan ‘A Necessary change of heart’

‘A necessary change of heart’ contains what appears to be some kind of murder victim or human sacrifice, presented here in the form of a self portrait. Dissected beyond the point of recognition the sculpture of an incomplete body is based on the 17 century anatomical waxes of the Museo La Specola in Florence. Central to the work, the concept of anatomy and dissection forms a complex and purposefully sensationalised metaphor of the way in which not just science but institutions as a whole investigate and formulate their “world view” – which is effectively the same for all human thought and activity – at least all aspects of cognition.’ — kw-berlin.de

 

__________________

Takeshi Murata ‘Melter 3-D’

‘Takeshi Murata is known for distorting and manipulating videos into chaotic-yet-stunning pieces of colorful geometry, and while his new work, Melter 3-D, is short on color, it is undoubtedly a work of incredible form—especially as it never maintains a consistent one, despite being physical. Melter 3-D is by definition a zoetrope, a device that produce the illusion of motion from a rapid succession of static pictures, but it’s tangible. In other words, the installation is a sculptural animation. The 3D-object itself spins, creating a kinetic effect (with the help of some strobe lights) that makes it look as if it’s melting into itself. Murata spent months configuring the object on a computer before making a physical incarnation with a master fabricator and mechanical engineers who typically work on high-profile Hollywood CGI projects.’ — The Creators Project

 

________________

Matt Kenyon ‘Supermajor’

‘The perceptual structures of the human brain enable individuals to see the world around them as stable, even though the sensory information may be incomplete and rapidly varying. Some of these perceptual structures are highly susceptible to manipulation. Seeing is not believing. Especially when the refresh rate of our reality hides the truth about our macabre fossil fuel faith. All around us people simultaneously hope and fear that our material abundance may never come to an end. In the gallery a wire rack of vintage oil cans sits. One has a visible fissure out of which oil slowly flows, cascading onto the pedestal and the gallery floor. The only thing is, upon close inspection the oil isn’t flowing out of the can. Instead, oil appears to slowly flow, drop-by-drop, back into the can. At times the drops of oil seem to hover unsupported in mid-air. At other times, the drops are in the process of a reverse slow motion splash onto the pedestal.’ — SWAMP

 

________________

Markus Raetz ‘Yes — No’

‘The Markus Raetz ‘Yes — No’ piece is one of the moodiest structures to date. Ask it a simple yes or no question and it will provide you with both answers as you walk from one side of the piece to the other. This sculpture houses an extremely innovative design so that it changes its appearance depending on the angle it is being viewed from. By choosing the words “yes” and “no” as his main subjects, Markus Raetz has formed a piece of art that covers both ends of the deciding spectrum.’ — collaged

 

__________________

Massive underwater entrance discovered off the Malibu, CA coast

‘A massive underwater entrance has been discovered off the Malibu, CA coast at Point Dume which appears to be the Holy Grail of UFO/USO researchers that have been looking for it over the last 40 years. The plateau structure is 1.35 miles x 2.45 miles wide, 6.66 miles from land and the entrance between the support pillars is 2745 feet wide and 630 feet tall. It also has what looks like a total nuclear bomb proof ceiling that is 500 feet thick. The underwater base has been a mystery for many years with hundreds of UFO/USO sightings…many with photographs…but the entrance of the base has remained elusive…until now. The entrance can support nuclear sized submarines and massive UFO/USO activity and allow access to different military installations that are inside the US such as the China Lake Naval Base that is in the middle of the Mojave desert and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Hawthorne, NV between Las Vegas and Reno. The support pillars to the entrance are over 600 feet tall. Malibu, California, is known the world over for its scenic beauty and as the playground of the rich and famous. Few people know that it is also the land of UFOs.’ — Disclose.tv

 

________________

Biliana K Voden Aboutaam “Untitled (2014)’

‘Peinture digitale, ethnicité et contrôle numérique. Voici l’univers de l’artiste peintre bulgare Biliana K. Voden Aboutaam. Un vrai régal surtout quand il s’agit d’une artiste pour qui l’art a toujours été le moteur de ses actions. Dans son travail, elle allie pêle-mêle la fiction à la réalité, la fantaisie au sinistre. Ses peintures, présentant des costumes folkloriques berbères, sont réalisées de mémoire et révèlent à partir de tout et de rien une empreinte à la fois réaliste et digitale. «Pour Biliana K. Voden Aboutaam, une «structure numérique ethnique», c’est l’ethnicité (images de costumes folkloriques berbères) convertie en forme de processus de digitalisation au moyen d’un ordinateur. Les peintures digitales de cette série sont la visualisation de cette «structure numérique ethnique». Cette dernière traduit une histoire se situant exclusivement dans le monde du «réalisme digital», où la seule «véritable» histoire relève des nombres.’ — Liberation

 

_________________

Zack Doughterty ‘untitled’

‘Zach Doughterty is an unusual artist that many find difficult to define. Is he a photographer, a 3D artist, an animator? Instead of being any single style of artist Zach covers those three areas of art, and more, to produce his bizzare, strange, and interesting photographic creations. Zach’s works are not stagnant photographs, but vibrantly alive animated GIF’s that have us staring in astonishment. You are confused as you watch an astronaut spinning through the solid sidewalk. A statue in the park is captured slowly breathing, but no other movement is detected. A statue of the Mother Mary spins on her pedestal quietly rocking her baby. A short statue glances up to see what we are looking at.’ — indulgd.com

 

_________________

Makino Takashi ‘Space Noise’

Makino Takashi ‘2012, act 6’

‘Words feel woefully inadequate to describe Makino Takashi’s practice, where the abstract is drawn out of the real through the layering of images, flickers of light and the perpetual movement of dots and grains. Screen space is redefined with a flattened image surface that engulfs our peripheral vision and feels deeper the closer we focus our eyes. Pulsed drones by the foremost international talents of noise and soundscape music, including Jim O’Rourke, Machinefabriek and Makino’s own sound collages, not only accompany his visual cacophony but interweave to concoct a breathtaking audiovisual experience of transcendent measures.’ — ica.org.uk

 

__________________

Cai Guo-Qiang ‘Inopportune: Stage One’

‘Inopportune: Stage One, from 2004, is a large-scale installation work consisting of a meticulous arrangement of life-size cars and multichannel tubes that seem to blow up in sequence, symbolizing a series of car explosions. Guo-Qiang’s works are often politically charged and entertaining at the same time. He creates seemingly violent explosions that are visually attractive and dazzling despite their harrowing subjects. He feels the artist is “like an alchemist” who “has the ability to transform certain energies, using poison against poison, using dirt and getting gold.”‘ — seattleartmuseum.org

 

________________

Martin Sexton ‘The Head of John the Baptist – Acoustic Levitation’

‘Martin Sexton’s golden reliquary contains the levitating head of John the Baptist. Martin Sexton produces powerful and controversial art. He works at the interface of ancient history, metaphysics, the psychosocial aspects of ufology & the politics of aesthetics — all countered with an overpowering poetic vision that has echoes of the wilful extremism of rock n’ roll. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, including Tate Britain, Benaki Museum Athens & the Venice Biennale. He works with ice, fire, meteorites, sound, film and text.’ — collaged

 

________________

David Fried ‘Self Organizing Still-Life’

‘David Fried’s Self Organizing Still-Life (SOS) is a series of interactive, sound-stimulated kinetic sculptures. Whatever the scale or materials used for the SOS, they all consist of solid hand-made spheres, which are stirred into motion by ambient sound on a predetermined level object. Audible sound is transformed live into waves that silently stimulate each of the spheres into motion. The resulting action of the individual spheres and their interactions with one another are undetermined. No two spheres are alike – each is composed of either solid stone, or synthetic polymers layered with organic materials such as marble dust and rare earth, with no moving parts. The artist infuses them with unique bipolar qualities, and an ability to interact with each other in inimitable and unexpected ways on an elemental level, rather than a mechanical one. Fried is therefore able to give each sphere an individual personality, allowing them to respond and behave differently to sound, and with each new artwork, create an entirely unique interdependent family of individuals that we can influence, but not control.’ — D.F.

 

_________________

Heather Dewey-Hagborg ‘Stranger Visions’

‘Heather Dewey-Hagborg spends time collecting hairs, cigarettes and chewing gum shed in public spaces … and then sequencing the DNA therein to print 3D sculptures of what those hairs’ owners might look like. She sequences the DNA at the Brooklyn open bio lab, Genspace. She then determines gender, ethnicity and other factors and then uses a 3D printer to create a portrait. She can code for eye color, eye and nose width, skin tone, hair color and more. While critical of technology and surveillance, some critics have found her work disturbing.’ — collaged

 

________________

Regina Silveira The Saints Paradox (1994)

‘Even before I had come up with the idea for The Saint’s Paradox in 1994, my imagination had already been sparked by the equestrian monument to the Duke of Caxias, the official protector of the Brazilian Army. Pedestrians heading in the direction of the Luz subway station and passing by Princesa Isabel Square in downtown São Paulo are struck by the statue’s tall and impressive silhouette, a kind of huge shadow with very simplified interior volumes. Atop the high stone pedestal the military hero sits on a robust horse with a wavy tail, his right arm holding aloft a sword pointing skyward. What aroused my interest was not any aesthetic concern. This sculpture was a latter production of Victor Brecheret’s (1894–1955), who had emigrated from Italy to Brazil at the age of ten to become an artist celebrated by the younger group of Brazilian Modernist artists and the author of various monuments in the city of São Paulo. However, this monument to the Duke of Caxias, executed between 1941 and 1945 during the patriotic fervor of the Second World War, is a statue with a decidedly traditional stamp, out of keeping with the distinctive strong lines of Brecheret’s best production.’ — Regina Silveira

 

________________

Lindsay Seers ‘Sailors Bill’

‘The increasingly acclaimed practice of UK artist Lindsay Seers centres on a bizarre ‘autobiographical’ narrative in which Seers documents the use of her own body as both a projector and a camera – the latter achieved by inserting light-sensitive paper into her mouth. Ventriloquist dummies are a key motif in this complex conflation of image and utterance, serving as a kind of avatar for the artist herself. The eerie mannequin known as ‘Sailors Bill’  is electronically programmed to turns its heads to follow gallery-goers, then open a mouth to snap photographs of them.’ — modern edition

 

________________

John Isaacs Various

‘John Isaacs is well-known for his imagery of decay, abandonment and hopelessness. Working mainly on sculptures and installations, Isaacs is interested in the mentality and physicality of human beings. Their emotions, their scars, the way they keep going and the reason they stop.’ — Art Sheep

 

________________

Leandro Erlich ‘Swimming Pool’ (2008)

‘Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich created an illusory swimming pool that seems to be filled with water. Installed as a permanent exhibit at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, the water in the pool is actually only 10cm shallow, supported by a thick layer of transparent glass. Underneath is an aqua room that viewers can enter, inviting a shared experience of wonder at the constructed space both from above and below.’ — ignant

 

________________

Dike Blair Untitled

‘I think “impulse,” in terms of traditional photography perhaps in some romantic sense, would have something to do with “capturing a moment?” I don’t think I’m terribly sensitive to that since my subjects are almost never people; excepting for sometimes changing light, there’s not a moment to capture. Contemporary photography, thinking Instagram, etc., certainly feels impulsive in a different way, some internalization of the camera and the urge to communicate experience immediately. Since my painting of images requires a fair amount of rendering time, that kind of impulsive contemporary picture-taking doesn’t seem to be terribly applicable either. I guess I’m saying that impulsiveness doesn’t play large in my creative activity when it comes to making photo-based paintings. Certainly there’s more impulsiveness in the sculpture, although I might substitute “intuitive decision making” for “impulsiveness.”’ — Dike Blair

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. The Denmark-based curator and silent DC’s reader Julie Aude has taken my thing for thematic, art-based posts and run with it spectacularly for all of us today. Do poke around in her construction, please, and give her a little shout showing you paid attention and/or were interested to some degree and/or appreciated her work in the comments today, thank you, and many thanks to you, Julie. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. I wondered if you knew his work, but of course you do! ** Alistair, Hi, Alistair! Very nice to see you! Thanks for making my blog one of your hibernation’s exits. Me too re: Roussel = hope. Interesting. Oh, mm, no, I wasn’t thinking about Roussel consciously when writing ‘TMS’. My conscious goal was to not think about fiction as a model but rather about pretty much any other medium. Not that I necessarily succeeded, but that was the goal. I read ‘Pale Fire’ a long time ago and remember being immensely into it. How did your re-read find it? xo, me. ** Grant Maierhofer, My total pleasure, Grant. ** Robert Siek, Hi, buddy! Yeah, his films are really scarcely known in the States for whatever bad reason. I’m definitely too busy right now, but, thus far, it’s all for the good. And you? I’m really glad you enjoyed LA. I saw some photos from your trip on FB, and it looked like a seriously fun time. Cool! Stuff good? Writing, life, love, etc? ** rewritedept, I hope my hood had open arms. ODing should be the polar opposite of a goal, yes. Condolences about your cat, I’m so sorry. I’m not a big fan of birthdays either. Well, of mine. Others’ are perfectly legit. Uh, definitely not going to make it to LA for those shows. I got too much work, not enough money, and some solid shows going on here. Have fun. Uh, I would have to ask Zac about a still, but, honestly, I would say it’s unlikely considering the work that takes and the over-amount of work we have at the moment. But thanks for wanting it. ** Steve Erickson, I enjoyed your recent-ist review and interview muchly. I think it would be true to say I haven’t listened to a peep of Prefab Sprout in decades. Well, that album sounds curious, it’s true. I’ll try to find my rock hat, which must be lying around here somewhere, and put it on, and try it. Thank you. ** Dominik, Hey!! Truer than true!! I started poring through the new SCAB yesterday, and everything is fantastic so far! I hope to have time to read the whole issue today or tomorrow. Big kudos! There is much coffee pouring through my lips these days, yes! It seems that we will get the script finished by Friday at the latest, which would still be okay. We’ll see, but we have to because I have force-delayed going back to the TV script work until it is finished, and the TV people are not happy about that, but they are reluctantly waiting, but I think their ‘patience’ will end if we don’t hit our deadline. So, long story short, yes. Thank you about the poster! There are two posters, that one and another ‘friendlier’ (ha ha) one that our press attache has insisted must exist as well. I’m really happy you dipped into your writing! That is definitely an ultra-good sign. Enjoy that. Enjoy it all! ** Corey Heiferman, Oh, thank you! Without you, yesterday’s post would have been about amusement parks or some shit probably. He seems way earnest, no? And why not, really? I did, very strangely or not, enjoy those Soviet and Yugoslav music things, yes. So I’m grateful and trying not to get addicted to that sound given my no-free-time state. That Peppy Hare’s Quotes vid is so massively up my alley that I can scarcely believe it myself. Bookmarked! Expect to see it some future post. Granted my brain is toast right now, but the name Edgar Oliver does not ring a bell. It might well later though. Thanks in any case. Oh, and Steve Erickson asked you a question in the comments yesterday in case you missed it. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Yeah, but some Brit doomsayer was on CNN last night saying May is probably looking for a technically legit way to get it into parliament anyway, so breath still being held over here. ** Okay. Delve or delve further into Julie Aude’s terrific post until further notice, thank you. See you tomorrow.

 

Raymond Roussel (1877-1933) is one of the most distinctive and compelling French writers of the twentieth century, yet many aspects of Roussel’s life remain shrouded in mystery. An extremely wealthy and always exquisitely dressed homosexual dandy, Roussel was also a compulsive writer. Despite the strangeness of his work, he was convinced that it would make him as popular as Victor Hugo or Shakespeare. His suicide at the age of 56 was in part prompted by the continual disappointment of his hopes for fame.

The full extent of Roussel’s writing only became clear in 1989 when a trunk was unearthed in a furniture warehouse containing a vast trove of his manuscripts. The most exciting discoveries were the full draft of Locus Solus (over twice as long as the published version) and the typescript of what would have been his third novel, The Alley of Fireflies, which is translated here for the first time into English by the leading Roussel scholar, Mark Ford. Ford has also translated two haunting extracts from the drafts of Locus Solus, and versions of two of the young Roussel’s most intriguing short stories, “Chiquenaude” and “Among the Blacks.”

Roussel’s work was vociferously championed by Surrealist writers and painters such as André Breton, Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dalì, and later proved a significant influence on Oulipians (particularly Georges Perec), on nouveaux romanciers like Alain Robbe-Grillet, as well as on John Ashbery and Harry Mathews, who named their pioneering magazine of the 1960s Locus Solus, after Roussel’s second novel.

 

Quotes about Roussel:

Genius in its pure state. – Jean Cocteau

The President of the Republic of Dreams. – Louis Aragon

He who pointed the way. – Marcel Duchamp

It is true that there is hidden in Roussel something so strong, so ominous, and so pregnant with the darkness of “infinite spaces”… that one feels the need for some sort of protective equipment when one reads him. – John Ashbery

Things, words, vision and death, the sun and language make a unique form… Roussel, in some way, has defined its geometry. – Michel Foucault

 

 

Introduction
By Mark Ford

The photograph of Raymond Roussel used as the frontispiece for this volume was taken in Milan in October of 1896. Roussel was nineteen, and some months earlier had begun writing a novel in verse called La Doublure (The Understudy – although it is worth remembering that doublure can also mean the lining of a garment). While he was writing La Doublure – whose main character, Gaspard, is initially employed as an understudy in a Parisian theatre – Roussel became convinced that he was destined for the most extraordinary literary greatness:

One understands by some peculiar means that one is creating a masterpiece, that one is a prodigy; there are child prodigies who have revealed their genius at the age of eight – I was revealing mine at the age of nineteen. I was the equal of Dante and Shakespeare.

Indeed, so powerful was Roussel’s experience of inspiration, or la gloire as he termed it, that he would compose only in a darkened room:

Whatever I wrote was surrounded by rays of light; I used to close the curtains, for I was afraid that the shining rays emanating from my pen might escape into the outside world through even the smallest chink; I wanted suddenly to throw back the screen and light up the world. To leave these papers lying about would have sent out rays of light as far as China, and the desperate crowd would have flung themselves upon my house. But it was in vain I took such precautions, for rays of light were streaming from me and through the walls, I was carrying the sun within myself and could do nothing to impede the tremendous light I was radiating. Each line was repeated in a thousand copies, and I wrote with a thousand flaming pen-nibs.

La Doublure consists mainly of relentlessly precise descriptions, in somewhat monotonous alexandrine couplets, of the floats and gigantic papier-mâché figures that feature in the annual carnival at Nice, and wouldn’t find an appreciative audience until the emergence of nouveaux romanciers such as Alain Robbe-Grillet and Michel Butor in the 1960s. Nevertheless, when the book was published (at Roussel’s own expense) and attracted only two short reviews, one of which called it “more or less unintelligible” while the other complained that it was “very boring,” Roussel felt as if he had “plummeted to earth from the prodigious heights of glory”:

The shock brought me out in a kind of skin disease, which took the form of a rash covering my entire body; my mother, who believed I had measles, had me examined by our doctor. The shock resulted, most crucially, in my developing a dreadful nervous illness, from which I suffered for many years.

There followed a period of what Roussel later called ‘prospecting’, which eventually led to the development of his procédé, the bizarre compositional method that underlies his two novels, Impressions d’Afrique (1910) and Locus Solus (1914), and his two plays, L’Étoile au front (1925) and La Poussière de soleils (1927). Roussel only revealed his special method in a posthumously published autobiographical text entitled Comment j’ai écrit certains de mes livres (How I wrote certain of my books). In this short memoir Roussel ventured to hope that his compositional discovery might prove useful to succeeding authors, and outlined the various phases of its evolution.

The most elementary of these phases is on display in the two short stories that open this volume, Chiquenaude (literally, a flick of the finger) and Parmi les noirs (Among the Blacks). They belong to a series of stories that Roussel wrote, in the wake of the failure of La Doublure, in his early twenties, and which he punningly labelled “Textes de grande jeunesse ou Textes-genèse.”

The pun or homonym is at the heart of Roussel’s procédé, which is based on the fact that words can have more than one meaning. All of the Textes-genèse begin and end with the same set of words, with the exception of one or, in the case of Chiquenaude, two letters, but the meaning of each of the main words in these opening and closing phrases is different. Chiquenaude, for instance, begins with the sentence: “Les vers de la doublure dans la pièce du Forban Talon Rouge [avaient été composés par moi].” (The verses of the understudy in the play The Red-Heeled Buccaneer [had been composed by me.]) It concludes: “Les vers de la doublure dans la pièce du fort pantalon rouge! …” But here vers means worms, not verses, doublure means lining, not understudy, pièce means piece, not play, and Forban Talon Rouge has become fort pantalon rouge – making this final phrase mean: “The worms in the lining of the piece of strong red trouser! …” “Les lettres du blanc sur les bandes du vieux billard” opens Among the Blacks – “The letters (ie alphabetical letters) in white chalk on the cushions of the old billiard table.” In its concluding clause, billard has been changed to pillard: “Les lettres du blanc sur les bandes du vieux pillard,” meaning “The letters (ie. missives) from the white man about the hordes of the old pillager.” “The two phrases found,” Roussel comments in How I Wrote Certain of my Books “it was a question of writing a story that could begin with the first and end with the second.”

Roussel composed about twenty stories that make use of this primary phase of the procédé, but Chiquenaude was the only one that he allowed to see the light of day in his lifetime. It was issued by Alphonse Lemerre (a not entirely reputable firm who charged Roussel exorbitant sums to print, advertise and distribute his works) as a 24-page plaquette in the autumn of 1900. Alas, like the weighty La Doublure (which runs to over 5,600 lines), it failed to find the adoring readership that Roussel craved; as late as the 1930s Lemerre was still trying to dispose of unsold stock.

Roussel’s fascination with linguistic doubleness is explicit in the Textes-genèse, which may have been one reason why he chose not to publish while he was alive any of those that he composed after Chiquenaude. In my critical biography Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams (2000), I connected his obsession with the cryptic, with language’s doubleness or homophonic linings, with his secret life as an inordinately wealthy belle époque homosexual. Roussel was furnished by his mother with a maîtresse de convenance to preserve appearances, but he was also subject to blackmail by sailors and stable boys and chauffeurs. The procédé, in other words, might be seen as analogous to Oscar Wilde’s use of puns in The Importance of Being Earnest, as a form of linguistic bunburying. Like Wilde, Roussel discovered in the duplicity of language a means of transposing into his writing his own double life.

Is the point, both Roussel’s and Wilde’s puns prompt us to inquire, to reveal or to conceal the secret buried in the word’s lining? Or merely to signal its existence? Among the Blacks is accorded a special status by Roussel in How I Wrote Certain of my Books as the text that enabled him to move beyond the agonies of prospecting – agonies that became so acute that he would often roll around on the floor in fits of rage. Anticipating in subject matter Impressions of Africa, Among the Blacks initiated the binary between black and white that would become such a dominant feature of his imagination. Further, the story itself concerns the solving of a puzzle, and operates through a series of antitheses and parallels that look forward to the hall-of-mirrors effects achieved by Roussel in his later novels and plays. It is striking that he gives the story’s main characters names that are almost allegorical: Among the Blacks is the name of the novel written by the story’s character Balancier (which can mean pendulum or scale-maker), and on either side of his scales, or the swings of his pendulum, are the white captured sea captain Compas (a compass), who sends letters home by carrier pigeon to his wife (les lettres du blanc), and the old pillaging black chieftain Tombola, the triumphant feats of whose voracious hordes (les bandes du vieux pillard) are described in these letters. Balancier, it appears, depicts Tombola in his novel as a stereotypical cannibal out of a routine adventure story set in darkest Africa, yet his name connects him with Roussel’s conviction while writing La Doublure that he had won le grand lot, first prize in the great literary tombola. Cannibalism, in this instance, can be construed as a metaphor for the unleashed powers of the unchecked imagination, which need a compass and scales – or a procédé – to be turned into the all-conquering black words printed on the white pages of books that would, Roussel fervently believed, make him as famous as Dante or Shakespeare.

________________

1 On 30 May 1933, some six weeks before his death, Roussel wrote beneath this photograph: “En tête de tous mes livres sur les tirages posthumes” (To be used as a frontispiece on all posthumous editions of my books).
2 These quotations are drawn from the psychologist Pierre Janet’s diagnosis of Roussel in his study of nervous disorders of 1926, De l’angoisse à l’extase. Roussel chose to reprint Janet’s account of his case in the Citations Documentaires section of Comment j’ai écrit certains de mes livres.

 

 

Excerpt

Bertha the Child-Flower
An Episode from the Newly Discovered Drafts of Locus Solus

At that moment there advanced towards us a woman who looked like a well-built rustic. She carried in front of her, in both hands, a sort of rack painted pink, on which was stretched a body which was the same bright pink, and which greatly intrigued us, for it seemed half-human and half-vegetal.

‘This is Catherine Seyeux and her daughter Bertha,’ said Boudet, as he hailed the woman, who joined us at once. Stretched flat on the rack, Bertha was sleeping naked in the sun, and her mother was making no effort to shelter her from its burning rays. About six weeks old, the child had a perplexing and distressing appearance. Her skin, of an unheard-of delicacy and transparency, exactly resembled the petal of a flower, and was an entirely even rose colour all over. Within this incredible epidermis ran an equally strange network of veins, whose greenish hue contained hints of a tincture similar to that found in certain flowers. This skin was so completely diaphanous that it was possible to see through it the various organs of the body

Responding to the look of mute inquiry on our faces, Boudet explained to us how Catherine Seyeux came to give birth to such a strange creature.

For a long time Boudet had been haunted by the idea of artificially fertilizing a woman with the pollen of a flower. He had made several attempts at this, using peasant women he had carefully selected for their strength and fertility. But he found that whatever sort of pollen he used, these attempts always failed.

One day he was glancing through an illustrated newspaper and saw the portrait of a rural woman from Texas; she was thirty-eight years old and had no fewer than forty-five boys and girls, having given birth to twins or triplets every year since she was eighteen. The picture showed the smiling mother standing next to her husband and surrounded by their forty-five offspring, all in perfect health. The newspaper gave the woman’s name and that of her village.

Struck by her procreative abilities, Boudet decided she would be the ideal candidate for his experiment, and would present a better chance than any other of success. He wrote to her, explaining in detail what he expected of her, and offering her the most magnificent rewards if she would agree to come over to France and participate in his plans. Catherine showed the letter to her husband, who, although a well-to-do farmer, could not remain indifferent in the face of such a significant sum of money, given the costs of raising such a large family. He gave his consent to his wife, who took the first steamer available, and one fine morning arrived on Boudet’s doorstep.

The first attempt was made with the pollen of , and was successful. Overjoyed, Boudet followed the phases of Catherine’s pregnancy with great anxiety.

Six weeks before our visit, Catherine, after the usual gestation period, gave birth to the frail little girl before our eyes, who was half way between a flower and a child. It was impossible to dress her in clothing, for her skin was so fragile that the gentlest contact might tear it.

So that her vulnerable body might be touched as little as possible, Boudet had ordered constructed a sort of rack on which she could lie, and he had it painted a bright pink that was exactly the colour of the skin of the little girl, who had been named Bertha.

Stretched out on her rack that was, on account of her incredible lightness, not at all uncomfortable or sharp, Bertha had flourished. Her mother breast-fed her like a normal infant, but with much smaller quantities of milk than would usually be given.

During the day she was kept continually out of doors and as much as possible in the sun. The vegetal side of her nature meant that there was no danger of sunburn, and she adapted wonderfully to this regime. The least shadow falling on her head or body threw her into a state of discontent, but as soon as she was back in the rays of the sun the little creature recovered her equanimity and bloomed.

While Boudet was speaking, Bertha had been gently stirring, as if she were about to wake up. Finally she opened her eyes, whose strange glints resembled a little the tincture of her veins.

Consulting his watch, Boudet saw that it was time for her to be fed, and asked Catherine to breast-feed her in front of us, so that we could see how alert and animated she was.

Catherine opened her blouse and, holding the rack in one hand, carefully turned Bertha, who seized the proffered breast in her two little hands and directed it eagerly to her lips.

Thanks to the transparent nature of the tissues of this strange creature, we were able to see the milk, in a jet of pure white, pass gently down the oesophagus and eventually into the stomach.

After several seconds, Boudet, judging that we had seen sufficient evidence of the healthy appetite of the child-flower, made a sign to Catherine to continue her walk, and we set off again behind him.

________________
1 Boudet was the name given in the drafts of Locus Solus to the character Roussel eventually called Martial Canterel.

 

Raymond Roussel with his mother, Marguerite Roussel, c. 1910.

 

Buy the book
https://the-song-cave.com/collections/new-items/products/the-alley-of-fireflies-and-other-stories

 

Bios

Raymond Roussel was born in Paris in 1877 and died in Palermo in 1933. He is best known for his novels Impressions of Africa (1910) and Locus Solus (1914), and for his posthumously published account of his peculiar compositional techniques, How I Wrote Certain of My Books (1935).

Mark Ford is the author of Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams (2000), and of four collections of poetry: Landlocked (1992), Soft Sift (2001), Six Children (2011), and Enter, Fleeing (2018). His translation of Roussel’s final long poem, New Impressions of Africa (1932), was published in 2011. He teaches in the English Department at University College London.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. Thanks to the brilliant writer/dude Jeff Jackson and the truly stellar press Song Cave, we get to spend the weekend ushering an exciting new (!) book by the all-time great Raymond Roussel into the world. We’re very lucky, in other words. So please do scour the post and feast upon its subject matter during your allotted local time this weekend. Huge thanks to Jeff and to Song Cave for the honor! ** John Fram, Hi. Variegation, yes, so on point. I saw your email in my box, and I’ll get to it this weekend. Thanks for it, and enjoy your world’s portion of Saturday and Sunday’s show. ** David Ehrenstein, Ha ha, I don’t, but, yes, it does seem like half the world does these days. ** KeatonOhYeah, I’m trying to put the words ‘cute’ and ‘baby poop’ together and get where you’re going. Perhaps I’ll check in with the profiles of the ABDL loving set. I’ve never had a longing to be in Florida for its own sake, but it is the world capitol of amusement parks, which does give it holy status as a relative context at least. A cool thing about mole sauce is that it’s weird on non-sweet food, but it would be just as weird on sweet food, so it’s kind of an alien in the UFO sense. I bet the fingers of men who frequent escorts frequently smell like Dior. ** Bernard Welt, Oh, shit. I hate this blog’s glitch-based persnicketiness. You did not, unless I’m blanking, mention your talk on Klimt. Timing city! Oh, sure, a Klimt post, you bet, yes. Thank you if so. And for any Dream Day fixings that transpire. Sweet. That’s not ego-y to me, and I do pick up on the ego-y pretty well. I did not know the Soderbergh story, and, naturally, I am richer for it and all because of you. So same old. ** Sypha, Ha ha. Well, it’s proof that Goth still exists as a marketable erotic schtick at least. Goth is still pretty alive in a general sense LA, unless something drastic has happened since I was there last month. ** JM, Thanks for checking in. I have, of course, been thinking about you and how you are right now. What a fucking horror show. Jesus. ** Statictick, Greetings to you from within the frame of your presumably bright new screen. Enjoy Mark Eitzel, and I know you will. Cool. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. The photo looks nice, or I mean the show is photogenic. I sadly have to agree with you that my instincts about how Brexit will end align perfectly with you, which is just so grisly. ** Steve Erickson, Good question. I’m glad you’re feeling at least a bit more up. Seems like half of everybody is doing Patreon these days, which one presumes means it works? Yeah, that makes sense that curating just puts even more hierarchy between you and those who’d want what you curate. Urgh. Great, two pieces by you about films that I’m extremely interested to see! I’ll go get your take. Everyone, Mr. Erickson has weighed in critically about the much acclaimed Jia Zhang-ke film ASH IS PUREST WHITE here, and he has interviewed Mark Cousins mostly about his new and seemingly must-see documentary THE EYES OF ORSON WELLES here. ** Bill, Greetings to Taipei from you-know-where (um, Paris, in case there’s any question). I don’t think those were Culkin pix, but my guess wouldn’t win a lottery. Have fun! ** Corey Heiferman, Hi. Okay, it’s probably only a surprise to me that I in fact know Caleb Gray’s porn work a tiny bit. I did not however know about his Appalachian metal band, which is an irresistible description, and neither about his poems, which, at a glance, … oh, never mind, let him have his fun. Anyway thank you, kind, tangent-savvy sir! Everyone, If by chance you know, or know of, the twink gay porn star Caleb Gray, perhaps you would be interested in reading his poetry, or listening to some music he made, or checking out a t-shirt he altered. If so, you can thank our buddy Corey for hooking you up. Thanks, bud. ** Okay. and with that the weekend has officially begun around here. Please involve yourselves in this brand new book by literary god Raymond Roussel, and I will see you again on Monday.