Category Archives: literature

Arcades Project blogathon

Volute

Galeries St. Hubert (1846), Brussels

Arcades Project (1927 – 1940) – Walter Bejamin

3. One book you would want on a desert island? Something large, omnivorous, digressive, its curiosity knowing no boundaries, a sort of uber-Merzbau that might serve as a microcosm of the world I left behind, “the theater of all my struggles and all my ideas,” Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. –girish
The Arcades Project site was created and is maintained by Heather Marcelle Crickenberger.

“It is part of a doctoral dissertation that is scheduled to be completed May 2006 at the University of South Carolina. Much of the bibliographic infomation required of such a project is yet to be included.” [Oct 2006]

Here is the list of convolutes she features.

Convolute is a multifaceted word that connotes “To make something unnecessarily complex; to fold or coil into numerous overlapping layers; to twist someone’s words to fit a desired meaning that was not intended by the speaker.”

If I understand correctly (without direct access to a paper copy (mine is on the way from Germany)), Walter Benjamin used the concept in his Arcades Project ; konvolutes were sections in a collection of thousands of index cards on which he transcribed quotations and notations. It was a cross-referenced system not shying away from ambiguity and ambivalence; seeking its power in opposition and confusion, an early version of fragmented modernity and harbinger of postmodernity.

I would like to call for an Arcades Project blogathon. There is no deadline. By way of inspiration I offer you the following concepts

in praise of convolution

in praise of variety

in praise of flânerie

in praise of juxtaposition

in praise of multifacetedness

and …

“Method of this work:
literary montage.
I have nothing to say only to show.”
(Passagenwerk (1927 – 1940) – Walter Benjamin)

The “rhizome” allows for multiple,
non-hierarchical entry and exit points
in data representation and interpretation.
—Mille Plateaux – Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari,
volume 2 of Capitalisme et Schizofrénie (1980)

Un pauvre honteux – Xavier Forneret

In the 1992 British horror film, Tale of a Vampire, a centuries-old vampire and scholar (Julian Sands) approaches an occult-specialist librarian (Suzanna Hamilton) when he sees her reading an antique volume of Forneret. He tells her that his favorite poem by Forneret (1809-1884) is “Le pauvre honteux”–about a starving man who eats his own hand.

Below is the poem in question:

Un pauvre honteux

Il l’a tirée
De sa poche percée,
L’a mise sous ses yeux ;
Et l’a bien regardée
En disant : ” Malheureux ! “Il l’a soufflée
De sa bouche humectée ;
Il avait presque peur
D’une horrible pensée
Qui vint le prendre au coeur.Il l’a mouillée
D’une larme gelée
Qui fondit par hasard ;
Sa chambre était trouée
Encor plus qu’un bazar.

Il l’a frottée
Ne l’a pas réchauffée
A peine il la sentait ;
Car, par le froid pincée,
Elle se retirait.

Il l’a pesée
Comme on pèse une idée,
En l’appuyant sur l’air.
Puis il l’a mesurée
Avec du fil de fer.

Il l’a touchée
De sa lèvre ridée. –
D’un frénétique effroi
Elle s’est écriée :
Adieu, embrasse-moi !

Il l’a baisée,
Et après l’a croisée
Sur l’horloge du corps,
Qui rendait, mal montée,
De mats et lourds accords.

Il l’a palpée
D’une main décidée
A la faire mourir. –
– Oui, c’est une bouchée
Dont on peut se nourrir.

Il l’a pliée,
Il l’a cassée,
Il l’a placée,
Il l’a coupée ;
Il l’a lavée,
Il l’a portée,
Il l’a grillée,
Il l’a mangée.

Quand il n’était pas grand on lui avait dit : Si tu as faim, mange une de tes mains.

Xavier Forneret (1809-1884) was a French dramaturge, poet and journalist. In the 1830s, he was a member of the Bouzingo, a group of poets which advocated a radical bohemian romanticism in life and art; contemporaries and kindred spirits included Gerard de Nerval and Theophile Gautier. His reputation was partly rehabilitated by Andre Breton, who included some of Forneret’s poems and aphorisms in his Anthology of Black Humor (1940).

Exploitation culture by region


Hank Janson pulp cover

American exploitation culture is well-known throughout the world, European exploitation culture less so.

The previous posts on Stewart Home and Richard Allen led me to Hank Janson [Google Gallery] and Reginald Heade [Google gallery], the latter two examples of 1950s British exploitation culture.

Exploitation by region: By region: American exploitation – British exploitation – European exploitation – French exploitation – German exploitation – Italian exploitation – Japanese exploitation

My interest in regional pulp culture is what it tells about the region where it is produced. In search of national stereotypes by way of their exploitation culture; regional stereotypes deduced from regional fears and desires (horror and eroticism).

Richard Allen and punk pulp

The Complete Richard Allen, Vol. 1 (1992) – Richard Allen
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

James Moffat, who wrote under the pen name Richard Allen, produced several pulp novels for the UK publishing house New English Library during the 1970s.

Many of his stories featured the often violent and sensationalist exploits of a fictional skinhead character, Joe Hawkins. Allen’s skinhead-related works include: Skinhead, Skinhead Escapes, Trouble for skinhead, Skinhead Farewell and Dragon Skins (about Kung Fu-fighting skinheads). He also wrote a number of other titles aimed at exploiting various youth subcultures, including Punk Rock, Teeny Bop Idol, Suedehead (a longer-haired offshoot of skinheads) , Smoothies (an even longer-haired offshoot of skinheads), Sorts (female versions of Smoothies), and Glam. The collected works of Richard Allen have been reissued in a six volume set by ST Publishing.

A BBC TV documentary about his life, “Skinhead Farewell”, aired in 1996. Allen’s formulaic and sensationalist writing style has been frequently mimicked by Neoist writer Stewart Home. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Moffat [Oct 2006]

See also: British literature

New Science (1725) – Giambattista Vico

New Science: Principles of the New Science Concerning the Common Nature of Nations (1725) – Giambattista Vico [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

James Joyce was influenced by Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), an Italian philosopher who proposed a theory of cyclical history in his major work, New Science. Joyce puns on his name many times in Finnegans Wake, including the “first” sentence: “by a commodius vicus of recirculation”. Vico’s theory involves the recurrence of three stages of history: the age of gods, the age of heroes, and the age of humans—after which the cycle repeats itself. Finnegans Wake begins in mid-sentence, with the continuation of the book’s unfinished final sentence, creating a circle whereby the novel has no true beginning or end. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return [Oct 2006]

See also Giambattista Vico

The Cannibal (1949) – John Hawkes

In search of plotlessness

The Cannibal (1949) – John Hawkes
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

“I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme, and having once abandoned these familiar ways of thinking about fiction, totality of vision or structure was really all that remained.”

John Hawkes (born John Clendennin Talbot Burne Hawkes, Jr., August 17, 1925 – May 15, 1998). Born in Stamford, Connecticut he was an avant garde American novelist and a postmodernist, known for the intensity of his work, which suspended the traditional constraints of the narrative.

Educated at Harvard, Hawkes taught at Brown University for thirty years. Though he published his first novel, The Cannibal, in 1949, it was The Lime Twig (1961) that first won him acclaim.

Hawkes died in Providence, Rhode Island. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hawkes

See also: American literature – experimental literature – postmodern literature – plotlessness

Conjugal Love (1947) – Alberto Moravia

Conjugal Love (1947) – Alberto Moravia
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

I just finished this short novel by Moravia, my second of his books, the first being The Voyeur, by which I had been impressed. It is to be re-published in English in 2007 and described thus:

Book Description
“A story of love, obsession, and betrayal from “the most important Italian creative writer [of the twentieth] century.”—The Times [London]

When Silvio, a rich Italian dilettante, and his beautiful wife agree to move to the country and forgo sex so that he will have the energy to write a successful novel, something is bound to go wrong: Silvio’s literary ambitions are far too big for his second-rate talent, and his wife Leda is a passionate woman. Antonio, the local barber who comes every morning to shave Silvio, sparks off this dangerously combustible situation when Leda accuses him of trying to molest her. Silvio obstinately refuses to dismiss him, and the quarrel and its shattering consequences put the couple’s love to the test.

Alberto Moravia earned his international reputation with frank, finely-observed stories of love and sex at all levels of society. In this new English translation of Conjugal Love, he explores an imperiled relationship with his customary unadorned style, psychological penetration, and narrative art.

Just as in The Voyeur the main theme of Conjugal Love is a wife unfaithful to her husband. In both cases the husband is the narrator. I identify the narrator with Moravia himself. In real life, Moravia’s wife was unfaithful to him with Klaus Kinski (Kinski Uncut: The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski). Instead of disliking or becoming angry at the unfaithfullness, the narrator gets a perverse pleasure from it reminiscent of candaulism.

Moravia is famous for another novel which bears the name Boredom. Now as you know boredom is a prerogative of the very rich. Poor people don’t have time to be bored, they have to work. In real life, Moravia was born into a wealthy family.

See also: adultery – marriage – Alberto Moravia – 1947 – 1900s literature – Italian literature

The Bays Are Sere (1888) – Édouard Dujardin

The Bays Are Sere (1888) – Édouard Dujardin
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Edouard Dujardin’s “The Bays are Sere”, first published in 1887, was the first novel written entirely in interior monologue or stream of consciousness. For a long time its impact was dormant, until James Joyce read it in 1903 and subsequently revealed its influence upon him. As a result it was republished to great acclaim in 1924, after which Dujardin wrote “Interior Monologue”, an essay on the origin of this style and how he came to adopt it. This book was freely translated into English by Joyce’s friend Stuart Gilbert and published in 1938 as “We’ll To The Woods No More”. The present completely new translation is faithful to the original and reproduces all Dujardin’s innovations. “Interior Monologue” is translated here for the first time. Edouard Dujardin (1861-1947) was editor of the “Revue Wagerienne”, one of the most influential literary journals in Paris in the 1885. He was a poet and playwright who also wrote on the history of religion. –from the publisher

Édouard Dujardin (1861–1949) was one of the early pioneers of the literary technique stream of consciousness, exemplified in his 1888 novel Les lauriers sont coupés (which remains in print into the 21st century). —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard_Dujardin [Oct 2006]

See also: French literature – stream of consciousness – 1888

Metamorphoses

Unknown engraving of Heliades turning into trees

Metamorphoses of any kind have always interested me because of their uncanniness. I recently re-viewed The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) by Roger Corman in which a plant becomes a carnivore, and after it has eaten a number of people, the last buds of the plant open and reveal the faces of the people it has eaten. Voilà, man is crossed with a flower –> metamorphosis.

Metamorphosis is a frightening and intriguing concept which can take many forms: crosses between humans and plants, objects and humans, etc…

A particular variety of metamorphosis is people turning into furniture. So I found two stories in which humans transform into chairs: the French libertine novel Le Sopha, conte moral (1742) by Crébillon fils and Japanese short story The Human Chair (1925) by Edogawa Rampo. In both stories a man becomes a sofa, in the former quite literally so (by a curse), in the latter, a man hides in sofa to feel the persons who sit in him.

Das Gespensterbuch (1569) – Ludwig Lavater

In search of the roots of Tales of the Dead.

Das Gespensterbuch (1569) – Ludwig Lavater
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Image sourced here.

The fullest and most influential work on angels and ghosts in the sixteenth century was Das Gespensterbuch by Ludwig Lavater, first printed in Zurich in 1569. The work was quickly translated into German and then French, Spanish and Italian. The English translation appeared in 1572 with the title, Of Ghostes and Spirites walking by Nyght, and of strange noyses, crackes and sundry forewarninges.

In a conflicting account on Wikipedia, where Gespensterbuch redirects to Tales of the Dead, there is no reference to an anterior version of Gespensterbuch (and maybe there are no similarities, but just the title, I don’t know).

The collection had its origin in Gespensterbuch (lit. “ghost book”), a five-volume anthology of German language ghost stories. The original anthology was published in Leipzig between 1811 and 1815. The stories were compiled by Friedrich August Schulze (1770 – 1849), under the pen name Friedrich Laun, and Johann August Apel (September 17, 1771 – August 9, 1816).

The latter is the one that was used by Byron and company in 1816 to scare and inspire:

On the night of June 16, after Lord Byron, John Polidori and the Shelleys had read aloud from the Tales of the Dead, a collection of horror tales, Byron suggested that they each write a ghost story. Mary Shelley worked on a tale that would later evolve into Frankenstein. Byron wrote (and quickly abandoned) a fragment of a story, which Polidori used later as the basis for his own tale. [Aug 2006]