tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82884893185372541892024-03-13T22:09:32.563-04:00Resurrecting the BouzingoAlso known as the Bousingot, Bousingo, Bouzingot, Jeunes-France, Petit-Cénacle, and the Brigands of Thought, c. 1829-1834.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger70125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-74972962748102471942020-09-02T21:03:00.005-04:002020-09-02T21:08:34.570-04:00Louis Boulanger, "To my Friend Saint-Beuve" (1836<p>Though Louis Boulanger was known as one of the standard-bearers for visual Romanticism – considered within the community as equal to his comrade Delacroix for a number of years – he also had a strong literary bent. Here is one of his few surviving poems, dedicated to the Romanticist literary critic Saint-Beuve and originally published in an anthology published by the female Romanticist poet Marie Mennessier-Nodier, whose father Charles Nodier was one of the movement's chief strategists and thinkers:<br /> <br /><b>To My Friend Sainte-Beuve</b>, (1836)</p><p>No, I have not received that highest gift of grace<br />That makes the work, when all else dies and is effaced<br />Stand yet, immortal, so that at some distant date <br />The glory of the author scintillates as bright<br />As on those grand days where the town, with solemn rites,<br />Parades his compositions brought to consecrate.<br />But nonetheless these Florentines, Genius' elect,<br />That true to life your Muse before my view projects,<br />Come often with their light that drowns and leaves me stunned,<br />And then at times, alas! My spirit has aspired<br />To believe, poor fool, that one ray of that fire<br />Piercing through its shade, would render it fecund.</p><p> <span class="oi732d6d ik7dh3pa d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql a8c37x1j irj2b8pg enqfppq2 jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto"></span></p><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> <br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="oi732d6d ik7dh3pa d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql a8c37x1j irj2b8pg enqfppq2 jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</div></span></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">from Aristide Marie, <i>Le Peintre Poète: Louis Boulange</i>r. 1925. La Vie et l’Art Romantiques, Floury, Éditeur: Paris. p. 45.<br /></span></div></div></div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-66558763712976487022020-09-02T20:47:00.003-04:002020-09-02T21:05:16.916-04:00Newly Translated Note from Gautier to Boulanger<p>Here is a very fun & poetically playful little note from the Jeunes-Freance co-founder and poet Théophile Gautier to his fellow co-founder, the painter Louis Boulanger, written about 2-3 years (timelines are hazy) after the group stopped functioning as a defined unit – though as we see here the members remained dedicated to the networks of interdisciplinary collaboration that they had established through it and had already become a defining element of the avant-garde or otherstream community. I've tried to be as playful with my translation as Théo was in the original:</p><div><div dir="auto"><div class="ecm0bbzt hv4rvrfc e5nlhep0 dati1w0a" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id="jsc_c_44"><div class="j83agx80 cbu4d94t ew0dbk1b irj2b8pg"><div class="qzhwtbm6 knvmm38d"><span class="oi732d6d ik7dh3pa d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql a8c37x1j irj2b8pg enqfppq2 jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto"><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">14 Jan., 1836 </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> My dear Louis,</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> I’m exceedingly vexed at having made you wait like this; but here’s how it all went down; I was horribly stuffed up with a cold and forced to fold myself up in a domain of sweetsoftness, at the gushing fountain of herbal tea and marshmallow. The lovely child[1] has come twice to my place in Paris, I was in Passy,</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> With my disgruntled lungs in huge surges immersed</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> In those smooth creamy syrups Charlard thought up first.[2]</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> Upon returning I discover your letter, moreover an epistle of more of the unfortunate’s elegiacs,[3] which breaks my heart two times for the two of us missing one session here. I’ll sneak up on you from behind with the aforementioned beauty Friday or Saturday. We’ll get to work lighting the studio with our gaze if daylight doesn’t do it, and I think that the model’s eyes shall model passing well[4]. Incidentally should it have gone dark as in an oven,[5] your canvas is so dazzling and luminous that you’ll see everything else by it. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> I yearn for you to have cash, women, street cred (you’ve got that), fitness, inheritances out of the blue, all the wonders of the world, could you only take to heart each day twenty cartloads of enviers all frozen flat with rage.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> Théophile Gautier.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><i> <span class="oi732d6d ik7dh3pa d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql a8c37x1j irj2b8pg enqfppq2 jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto"></span></i></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><b><i>NOTES</i></b></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">[1] A model who they seem to have been employing jointly, thus implying that Théo (trained as a painter but kicked out of art school for distributing Romanticist propaganda) was still painting a bit on the side, at least; or, if he was finding her for Boulanger alone, we are glimpsing another often-overlooked form of communal and interdisciplinary collaboration.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">[2] The chemist and pharmacist Antione François Boutron Charlard, an early proponent of hydrotherapy. As far as I can tell this is an off-the-cuff improvisation by Théo.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">[3] plus une épitre des plus élégiaques de l’infortunée</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">[4] sufficans, an archaic orthographical distortion used only in verse, resurrected by Gautier and other ultra-Romantics.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">[5] The french for oven, four, may be an anglophone pun extending his french wordplay upon one (une) and two (deux) in this passage.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> <br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="oi732d6d ik7dh3pa d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql a8c37x1j irj2b8pg enqfppq2 jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</div></span></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">from Aristide Marie, <i>Le Peintre Poète: Louis Boulange</i>r. 1925. La Vie et l’Art Romantiques, Floury, Éditeur: Paris. p. 63.<br /></span></div></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-21998709912903767922020-09-01T20:09:00.009-04:002020-09-01T20:20:56.012-04:00Auguste Bouzenot, "The Durga" – 1834 Avant-Romanrticist Comparative Theology<p style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">This description of a Hindu religious festival was published in the seminal anthology Annales Romantiques in 1833, and bears witness to the early avant-garde’s attempts to engage meaningfully with Eastern religion. Like most such attempts, it fails to fully escape a Eurocentric perspective. Its author Bouzenot [pronounce: Booze-e-know] was a young Romanticist philosopher, Liberal social theorist, and historian of thought whose experimental essay veers into list-poetry recalling Rabelais’ medieval satirical lists and looks forward to those of the Surrealists and otherstream poets. Here he compares a Hindu festival to the local traditional festivals (often with Pagan roots) familiar to French readers. The exercise in comparative religion manages to make a nod, both in content and style, to each of the main strains within ultra-Romanticism at the time: the Orientalist, Medievalist, and Frenetic tendencies. The autumn festival being described is Durga Puja, dedicated to the benevolent maternal war-deity Durga. Local versions of the festival are celebrated across Eastern and north-eastern India. The broad outlines of the festival as described here seem fairly accurate. </span></i></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Durga</span> (1834)</b></span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b>by Auguste Bouzenot</b></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>translated by Olchar E. Lindsann </i></span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s safe to say there are few families so negligent of time-honoured customs and paternal festivals, as not to elect in the chapel of Notre-Dame, on December 26, the day of St. Stephen, ancient patron of that chapel, a bishop of fools from among the sub-deacons, or rather as uncouth tongues would say, the drunk deacons of the cathedral. </span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Not to appropriately celebrate on the first of January the festival of fools, by causing old shoes to be burned in a censer and forcing the bishop to inhale this noxious odour;</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Not to chow down on the cake of kings at the epiphany,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Not to march on Fat Thursday alongside the veiled, violated, violed ox,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Not to go watch the giant set aflame in the Rue aux Ours,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">The wicker dragon of Notre-Dame, the day of Rogation,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">The gaping maw of the good St. Vermin in Poitiers, </span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">The growlie at Metz,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">The gargoyle in Rouen,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">The tarasque in Tarascon,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">The salted chair in Troyes,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">A Goliath or a Ferrand made of straw on Ash Wednesday and so many other dragons, that of the Rock of Turpin, that of St. André, that of St. Bernard de Comminges;</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Not to lend a hand at the University’s festival of fools.</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">At the bonfire of St. Jean [Cathedral] and at that of St. Pierre,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">At the festival of the ass,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">At the festival of the abbot of cuckolds,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">At the festival of kalends,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">At the festival of idiots,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">At the festival of the abbot of the peanut gallery,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">At the festival of the innocents,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">And other revelries said to be barbarities;</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Not to crack walnuts in St. Michel,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Send love-knots in St. Valentin,</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Not to… not to…</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Not to hurl one’s durga into the Ganges in the great festival of August 25.</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">The Hindus have in general religiously preserved the dogmas and rites of Brahma. Nor is he truly faithful who does not piously preserve his domestic gods, gods of the mat where he finds his repose, gods of the weapons which serve to repel his enemies, god of his hearth always welcoming to the stranger. Everybody has his idol in the most appropriate part of the house, everybody has his great gods uncannily decked out with the head of a crocodile, serpent or cow, with the stout plug on the chief, elegantly multicoloured, blues, yellows, reds, whites or greens, silent emblems, fantastic, insistent, who grimace marvelously with all of the human emotions, gods of the cradle and the tomb, gods of the young spouse and the old man, of water and fire, faithful friends whom everybody approaches each evening to confide their most secret thoughts quietly in the ear, gods of harvests, who cause to blossom the roses of cashmere and sonebac with which you perfume your hair; splendid gods! indeed.</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">The festivities begin at the new moon in the month of August and last three days. As soon as the sun on the first day leaps radiantly upon the Ganges’ current, you intone, face against the earth:</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Brahma, Brahma, Brahma, the god of evil is powerful, and I myself am small!</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Brahma, Brahma, Brahma, the god of evil is powerful, and I myself am small!</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Brahma, Brahma, Brahma, the god of evil is powerful, and I myself am small!</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Thus you purify the house, you render it white and clean;</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">You chase off the evil spirit who blows upon the harvest, who casts curses in passing and who the night visits in the gardens to rip away the leaves of magatelli leaves which make the serpents die;</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Then the family assembles, you take council, you make prayers together; </span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Then you don the Durga in rich clothing, in long veils of garlands; your great sword is in its left hand, in the other is the head of the malicious angel. Next commence the lamentations and wailings; you prostrate yourself at the feet of the god, you strike the earth with your brow, you shed many tears; the offerings and prayers rival those of the first two days. The god’s going to have to be abandoned, divine mercy! And you continue to produce a profusion of sobs and of gifts; it’s then that you must set yourself to drying that depthless reservoir of woes that we retain at the root of the soul in order to find nothing but joy from now on. The third day arises.</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Ring out, you clarions, trumpets, fanfares, cymbals, bells, tambourines, with forceful clamour, to bear witness to my joy; everything’s mad with pleasure, drunk with ecstasy, everything’s upset, stirred up, thrashed about, twisted. And the orchestra spreads its great flood of music and its uproar of tom-tom tumbling like cataracts, oh! how beautiful it is then, the Ganges, my river of wide banks, of majestic blue waters so transparent! It would be difficult to perceive them overlain as they are by thousands of barges bedecked and mantled in rich array. One would call it an immense robe strewn with clusters of blooms; my variegated barges must be seen, going two by two naught but two, and joined by a moveable plank in the middle of which is the god.</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Someone is about to give the signal, listen: it is the high priest in person!</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Baren, zamet, fouchi.</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">And suddenly the boats part from each other, and with the god who vanishes into the waves, with a thousand peals of trumpets, a thousand cries of joy, it’s up to anybody who shall catch some shred of the Dourgha’s garments, some flowers from his garland in order to offer them to it next year.</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">from <i>Les Annales romantiques: Recueil de morceaux chosis de littérature contemporain,</i> ed. Charles Malo. 1834. Janet: Paris, pp. 30-35. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">from the collection of the <a href="https://revenant-archive.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Revenant Archive</a>. </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-45730341382743929252020-06-13T11:31:00.001-04:002020-06-13T11:31:56.269-04:00Rêvenance #8 – NOW AVAILABLE!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://monoclelash.wordpress.com/2020/06/13/revenance-no-8/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><i>Rêvenance<span style="font-size: large;">: A Zine of Hauntings From Underground Histories</span></i><span style="font-size: large;">, <span style="font-size: x-large;">No. 8</span></span></b></span></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSMw80G7vESZYXs8_Hw1_GSi-bgyF4YZyb44McnjTFLP7ErJNLQGuorYf_HLK8wsYEhKfWou0-i5laAv9qpCk1Zp2A39XjaZ7Ao2tDhnytCt40cqTvwESJVExKZv8BEjx8e4Y8zPFaWpk/s1600/revenance+8+cover+for+web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1312" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSMw80G7vESZYXs8_Hw1_GSi-bgyF4YZyb44McnjTFLP7ErJNLQGuorYf_HLK8wsYEhKfWou0-i5laAv9qpCk1Zp2A39XjaZ7Ao2tDhnytCt40cqTvwESJVExKZv8BEjx8e4Y8zPFaWpk/s640/revenance+8+cover+for+web.jpg" width="523" /></a></div>
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This magazine is the main printed venue for new research and translations concerning the Bouzingo, and the flagship journal of the Revenant Editions series, dedicated to the forgotten or untold histories of 19th Century avant-garde and other countercultures. It includes essays, translations, and many experimental forms of historical writing and research that connect those traditions to continuing radical communities today.</div>
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Jeunes-France/French Romanticist stuff in the new number includes a spread about <i><b>Gérard de Nerval</b></i> in prison (letter and poem), a <i><b>Boulanger</b></i> print of <i><b>Paganini</b></i> in prison, a frenetiuc poem by the female Romanticist <i><b>Anaïs Ségalas</b></i>, and an <i><b>avant-Romanticist essay</b></i> comparing a Hindu ceremony to local French peasant festivals. </div>
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This issue contains more recent <i>and</i> more early work than any yet, with a Dada review by Louis Aragon & Dada poetry by Tristan Tzara & Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes; Russian Futurist poetry by Aleksei Kruchyonykh and Vasilisk Gnedov, an anti-survey of mid-20th Century underground poetry by Jim Leftwich, and contemporary “revenant collaborations” between living and dead poets including Michael Dec, Volodymyr Bilyk, Dirk Vekemans, Retorico Unentesi, Olchar Lindsann, Nina de Callias, & more, an essay by John Wilkins on Con-Lang from 1668, texts by Gérard de Nerval on his stay in prison and his Louis Bouanger's lithograph of Paganini in prison, skeletal drawings & texts by Moloch and the feminist romantic Anaïs Ségalas, and an 1834 avant-garde attempt at comparative religion.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Featuring</b>: </span><br />
<b><i>The Dead:</i></b> Gérard de Nerval / John Wilkins / Tristan Tzara / Anaïs Ségalas / Vasilisk Gnedov / Louis Boulanger / Alecksei Kruchyonich / Nina de Callias / Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes / Niccolò Paganini / Moloch / Louis Aragon / Auguste Bouzenot<br />
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<b><i>& The Living</i></b>: Jim Leftwich / Michael Dec / Gleb Kolomiets / Olchar E. Lindsann / Dirk Vekemans / Volodymyr Bilyk / Retorico Unentesi<br />
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25 pgs on folded 8.5”x14”. May, A.Da. 104/A.H. 189 (2020)<br />
$4.50 + $2.00 s/h<br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Soft deadline for contributions to the next issue: Aug. 15.</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>send to</i> <a href="mailto:monoclelash@gmail.com">monoclelash@gmail.com</a><b><i> </i></b></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-25928675324446570852020-06-06T21:46:00.002-04:002020-06-06T21:48:20.819-04:00Philothée O'Neddy, Preface & Epilogue to "The Enchanted Ring"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Here's the verse preface and afterward to Philothée
O'Neddy's 1842 novel "The Enchanted Ring", which<a href="https://www.raintaxi.com/the-enchanted-ring-a-romance-of-chivalry/" target="_blank"><b> I reviewed in Rain Taxi awhile back</b></a>.<br />
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One of my few reservations about the translation (which didn't make it
into the published article) is that it does not include his long preface
in verse, which is a key document in understanding O'Neddy's theory and
practice as well as an odd and tongue-in-cheek text like the rest of
the book, and includes the verse afterward only in a bare
transliteration (a much lesser sin).<br />
<br />
So here are both of those at
last – if you take MY advice, you'll<a href="https://www.snugglybooks.co.uk/the-enchanted-ring/" target="_blank"><b> order the book</b></a> and read these in
the appropriate places – down the line I'll likely publish them as a
chapbook with just that in mind. (It's like translation fanfic for
another publisher – fantrans?):<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
PREFACE<br />
<br />
At the unwonted birth of a preface in verse,<br />
kind reader, I wager, here you’ll sit quite morose:<br />
–“Ha!” say ye, “if thus far these prefaces in prose, <br />
in abusing their right to sedate the universe,<br />
Fear not to join to their one thousand quirks<br />
that of donning a tone lyric and grandiose,<br />
to mount up to the heights to prognosticate,<br />
to create, to explain the arcana, the lore,<br />
to delimit[1] both man and god, both to abrade <br />
in pointless eloquence, in limitless ardours,<br />
What say now, what do now, what will this one dare!<br />
Why, what will be the verse if the prose begins there!<br />
Verse! . . . innate dialect of symbol and of dream,<br />
whose most devoted goal, exclusive mission’s<br />
to outrage, to exhaust, doubling hyperbole,<br />
exaggerate the tip of exaggeration! . . .”<br />
<br />
Hold on, dear reader, settle down, let me plead!<br />
Your fear foundation lacks; on my alexandrines<br />
deign to bind your eyes less sternly and less maudlin;<br />
They act bourgeoisly, no aristocracy,<br />
no formal chariots to drive some theory,<br />
no triumphant tambourines, no noble clarions;<br />
Abdicating at will their right to be rhapsodes,<br />
naught in them imitates the lofty pomp of odes;<br />
no resplendent robes burdeneth their kidneys.<br />
<br />
Elsewise, wanting just to arm this peristyle<br />
with a brief overview of the opus at hand,<br />
I don’t think I could find here however I scan<br />
motif of puffed-up noise in the data or style,<br />
matter for monument; for all in question’s<br />
just a fable, alas! quite flippant and futile,<br />
just a humble novel whose whole narration<br />
here in folly disputes its whole conception. <br />
<br />
Ah! if this were, reader, a book puritanical,<br />
one of those knights of justice and of verity,<br />
whose eloquence files away tenaciously<br />
cast-iron prejudice, the ancient manacle<br />
which garrottes the corpus of society,<br />
such great books as we call humanitarian<br />
thinkers,[2] neo-christian, moral, utilitarian;<br />
Were this one of those tomes where the gnostic cult[3],<br />
within gothic tombs the slabs’ carved words consults,<br />
resurrects the doctrine of feudal ways, <br />
the blazon, the dagger, the sandals, tomes of praise,<br />
the monk, the noble, the convent, and the rook;<br />
Were this one of those tomes which, with a kindly look, <br />
endeavouring to read in th’enigmatic book<br />
of two sphinxes we call both the head and the heart,<br />
construct for bourgeois taste the genre intimate,[4]<br />
(that maudlin genre which the reviews in choral parts<br />
refused the gift of their respect not long ago;)<br />
Then indeed might you fear the prefacer arrogant,<br />
I’d fashion myself a princely portico!<br />
<br />
But no; let not your thought be so stupefied there;<br />
Neither can I nor would I burst into fanfare,<br />
for my tale boasts of no other pretension,<br />
in its absurdity than common sense condemned,<br />
than that of seeming, on the mould of Donkeyskin,[5]<br />
A frivolous thing here spun from fiction.[6]<br />
Yep, my goal, my intent, my oath, ’tis to amuse;<br />
for no other concern did I pester my muse:<br />
Modest, I wished quite simply to augment <br />
the Thousand and One Nights with scraps of supplement.<br />
Thus, ’tis a fanciful and off-the-wall saga,<br />
’tis, this candid stunt, in full chimera[7],<br />
an unrealistic work, a flight ebullient,<br />
’tis a steeple-chase, no guide-line, no baluster . . .<br />
May at least some small bit of vigour and talent<br />
on the style and form have projected some luster!<br />
<br />
Yet, if my pronouncement were made law, – I’d assert<br />
when one shapes epic systems and uncanny art,<br />
you’ll find that a hundred, a thousand more charms<br />
does the steeplechase hold than the olympic course;<br />
That it calls for a truer arm and surefire hocks,<br />
that it must be graced with more impregnable heart<br />
into arcane[8] of forests to hurl its horse,<br />
over rocks girded round by an anemic fog,<br />
all athwart the rough shrubs, all athwart fallow balks,[9]<br />
along cramped gorges, aslide from a greedy scarp,<br />
and amidst all the perils, the pitfalls of bogs,<br />
– Than in tracks to make a chariot hurtle, <br />
on the smooth arena, secure between the hurdles.<br />
– And I think the audacity that spurs my speech<br />
will leave all my contemporaries really pleased;<br />
especially the sons you find by myriads<br />
spoofing Alcibiades’ mood rash-spirited.<br />
<br />
[The following sections were cut from the published version]<br />
<br />
I should wrap this thing up: these remarks are drawn out. <br />
But grant me one last word, if I may? I’ve avowed<br />
nothing to you that’s true, dear reader, my master. <br />
The things I’ve claimed to you may have been more than patter<br />
when noising it abroad, while standing here smugly, <br />
that the volume you hold holds nothing relevant.<br />
Strewn across all its chatter of frivolous study,<br />
Under its irreverence, scarcely malevolent,<br />
a few tricks, I’ll admit, edify for brief moments<br />
with altruistic thought and noble sentiments. <br />
You’ll sense dwelling therein a bit of melancholy;<br />
bits of reason mixed with the foundations its folly.<br />
<br />
Among its teasing trifles there fain would gleam through it<br />
unaffected amour that speaks its language sacred.<br />
The volatile creases of its moorish tunic<br />
conceal there a chivalric heartbeat’s palpitations.<br />
At least (for I should here be a tiny bit shyer),<br />
to keep it there concealed has been my utmost aim.<br />
I desired, I aspired that an Ideal flame<br />
should penetrate this tale and shape it like a soul.<br />
<br />
[The published version resumes here:]<br />
<br />
Little tome,[10] now what good’s all this clamour and fire?[11] <br />
Why haggle with your life like this, ô little tome?<br />
When I know well, alas! your life shall stay so low!<br />
When I don’t even know that you merit your life!<br />
The prelates, our elite criticism’s doctors,<br />
Shall they admit you to their baptism benign?<br />
Where are, to guide you there, your godparents, your sponsors?<br />
If you must go without, you shall soon be a pariah!<br />
suffocated to hush . . . or by abuse assailed!<br />
O my wretched canoe[12], without your guiding stars<br />
rely upon my reason’s upsetting prognosis<br />
that never shall you last, with your so-feeble sail,<br />
to reach publicity’s high seas you see afar.<br />
It scarcely can descry one modicum of hope<br />
that the port governors, relinquishing their bias,<br />
might license you, so frail, to cruise a couple days<br />
without the fear of feuds with covetous pursuers,<br />
among the titanic competition of canooers<br />
that ever check and block the harbour from your eyes.<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
NOTES TO PREFACE:<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] réglementer. Modern dictionaries suggest “regulate,” but that sense
of the term seems to have developed after Dondey’s time; not only does
it seem contextually discordant, but the 1828 Boniface French-English
dictionary available to me does not even include the word, suggesting
that 14 years later when these lines were written, it was still new and
in flux (thus seductive to Dondey’s Romanticist sensibilities). My
rendering is based on the 1828 definitions of Règlement, règlementaire,
and regler.<br /> [2] The use of the noun penseur as an adjective seems to
have been something of a Romanticist key-word; one of the few online
dictionaries who list its adjectival sense gives as its examples, three
Romanticist texts from the 1830s (two by Dondey’s acquaintance Balzac
and one by his close friend Borel) and one by the proto-Romantic
Chenier, a major influence on them all, plus one by the Oulipian poet
Raymond Queneau, who later engaged in research into avant-garde
Romanticism: <a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy" href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnrtl.fr%2Flexicographie%2Fpenseur%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR2omSTPOczqtWvvLE4jw61y81C2lIU5-EuWKty8Kb7PVQqCEoOb7KII5HA&h=AT3yMghYTW3Lkiav7AmEvsLtauWXHaA-MW5Ifd-0sUxN_qnhJzMRfxq5STLZ6Cs0Pa0gwfjrC2GPLcg3ABZkE-R2NnEKYf-pvvzcBAsPl4tC_fu4Tazkx1Xk9sdUJZlqeK5RF0vRJf5s-EZJmIN1vgAsTEIYoif3oQ" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.cnrtl.fr/lexicographie/penseur</a><br /> [3] A rather daring rendering of culte savant.<br />
[4] A term kicked around a fair bit in the early 19th Century, whose
precise definition seems to have been evasive even at the time, based on
contemporary references. Likely novels based on the analysis of
individual psychology, such as those of Stendhal and Balzac–the
characteristic that has gone on to define the modern Bourgeois novel.<br />
[5] A fairy tale first written down by Perrault in the seventeenth
century, combining a Cinderella motif with that of threatened incest.<br /> [6] or, “in fact of fiction” Une chose amusante en fait de fiction.<br /> [7] O’Neddy employs the noun as an adjective, as he often does.<br /> [8] O’Neddy employs the adjective profond as a noun.<br /> [9] guérets, “balks”, the unplowed ridge between the furrows in a field.<br /> [10] In O’Neddy’s manuscript revised post-publication; the published version reads: “O my tome”<br />
[11] Line 107 ends with flamme / flame, this line with feu / fire,
evoking the title of O’Neddy’s seminal collection of avant-garde poetry,
Feu et flamme / Fire and Flame.<br /> [12] canot, here and below in the
neologism canotins (canooers). Though in contemporary french the word
has a broader connotation of small boats in general, both the 1835
Dictionnaire de l’Academie (and all earlier editions to 1694) and the
1828 Boniface French-English Dictionary refer specifically and
exclusively to the canoes of Native American tribes – rendering this
extended nautical analogy considerably more odd (particularly as this
canoe sports a sail!).</span><br />
<br />
~~~~~~<br />
<br />
EPILOGUE<br />
<br />
There’s a golden-hued dream by which oft I’m consoled<br />
for the void you’re to meet, ô my frivolous trifle!<br />
for the void without waking you’ll live in tomorrow. –<br />
– ’Tis on a summer’s eve, beneath a roman sky.<br />
I conjure, within a marble villa’s Eden,<br />
a Lady and her page beside some tree’s foot seated.<br />
The page, thanks to the final fires of the day,<br />
to his fay is now reading, to the Dame he loves,<br />
my tale where is portrayed love and the land of fays.<br />
Now they both, roused in soul and with voices be-hushed,<br />
are rushed in their keen haste to lavish me with praise.<br />
Such pampering is found in spheres fortuitous!<br />
When they’ve lauded him well, well exalted the poet,<br />
they are caught up by bliss – tis mute and luminous –<br />
wherefore the lady-love – grips the finger of her lover<br />
who exults on his knees – with magic ring bestows it.<br />
Then between them hovers a flame, a mystery:<br />
flame which must remain veiled, a mystery untold…<br />
as one veils the gods, keeps their grace under cover,<br />
for the Muse and the Priest share a like modesty.<br />
<br />
Then, the cloud descends, – and the pair arise…<br />
<br />
While respiring the vast forest’s balsamic sap,<br />
at random through the shadowy paths they ramble.<br />
All across the network of tenebrous brambles,<br />
upon horizon’s edge the moon, who reclines,<br />
looks down and smiles on them like a Lady in White.<br />
Each with other enlaced, they’re blithely wandering…<br />
Just like two seraphim who, – while briefly they deign<br />
to tread our lowly soil – even yet feel their wings.<br />
Unceasingly their eyes are interweaving beams.<br />
On a whim – in her voice of azure – now the Dame<br />
stitches a tune by Cimarosa or of Weber …<br />
anon she falls quiet, quite delighted to hear<br />
The page who then declaims this sonnet fond and grave:<br />
<br />
“I’m owner of a ring whose gold, a mirror sacred,<br />
assimilates my thought and heart and soul entire.<br />
Tis a charming talisman of sympathetic fire<br />
that’s mine by way of love from a dark-eyed fay.<br />
“I’m owner of a ring whose jurisdiction chaste<br />
makes any but my Lady strike my eyes as vile<br />
while making her for me the only maid alive,<br />
who only may be stirred by dint of my embrace.<br />
“I’m owner of a ring whose sacred fairie keeper,<br />
from all my reveries of love and chivalry,<br />
has made it manifest the whole ideal proud.<br />
“I’m owner of a ring! . . . – should it be snatched away then,<br />
when in the coffin’s midnight I shall be laid out,<br />
to make them give it back to me shall I awaken!!”<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
This version based mainly on Philothée O’Neddy, <i>Poésies posthumes</i>,
1878, Charpentier: Paris, pp. 216-218, but retaining some elements from
Théophile Dondey de Santeny, <i>Histoire d’un anneau enchanté: Roman de
chevalerie</i>, Undated [1841], Boulé: Paris, pp. 45-46.</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-63601363126379754032020-06-05T22:57:00.002-04:002020-06-05T22:58:22.608-04:00Emile Saladin, "The Fandango" (1834)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This poem describes the fandango being danced in a club or ball – a dance,
it should be noted, still of dubious legality when this was published
(along with the cancan and cachuca, see Rêvenance No. 5) which gives the
piece a political edge that isn't apparent anymore. The poem emphasizes
exactly the reason for the prohibition: the unrestrained sexuality that
was practiced in dance halls and to which the dance gave expression.
The Fandango had recently been imported from Spain, and was danced both
by touring professional troupes and by hardcore Parisian dance-freaks
(known as chicards, débordeurs, badouillards, etc.) at balls and dance
clubs. It's Spanish origins were also in large part Arabic and Muslim
origins, a heritage which Saladin emphasizes and attempts to celebrate
in this poem.</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It's an interesting and very musical poem by a very
interesting poet who I'm very ambivalent about – and who does not seem
to have been published or written about in any language since 1845. This
intro's a bit long so feel free ton skip to the poem if/when you wish.</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
First the problematic aspects: orientalism and a heavy dose of the male
gaze. A big focus of the poem (and part of what made his work in
general difficult to publish) is the unrestrained sexuality that
permeated underground dance culture, but almost inevitably given the
time, it's a pretty unreflectively misogynist perspective of it. As so
often in French Romanticism (cf. Delacroix) this is tied to an equally
unrestrained appropriative Orientalism treating Andalusia (Muslim Spain)
as a kind of wonderland for the European imagination. In fact its
author, the obscure avant-garde poet Emile Saladin, seems on the basis
of his seven surviving poems to have been one of the most fanatical and
dedicated proponents of the self-declared "Orientalist" current within
French Romanticism.</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I have no intention of clearing him on any of
the above charges, but he's complicated in other ways too. First, my
sense is that despite all the problematic aspects of his orientalism
(which seem obvious to us <i>now</i>, 190 years later, but would not have
occurred to most Europeans a century after his time) I get the sense
from all his work that he <i>meant</i> well, in his own head at least – that he
was <i>attempting</i> to celebrate cultural difference; the centrality of
these themes, as well as references to multiple non-European cultures at
a time when such things were still difficult to track down, make this
seem like more than a fashion (by 1860, that would be different) while
there is a complete absence in his work of the degrading stereotypes
available to him from mainstream French culture – barbarity, rapacity,
greed, tyranny, dogmatism, etc. Sensuality, though equally problematic
as a stereotype, is clearly a positive trait in his eyes. </div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
His
poetry is so steeped in Orientalism that I had assumed his name was a
pseudonym – but more interestingly, it is not. His family name of
Saladin apparently derives from the Crusades, which while clearly an
issue from the colonialist side of things raises the question (I hate to
say this but...) of Templar history? There was another French Saladin
family, possibly another branch of his own, who were prominent engineers
for three generations after him, and all also orientalist scholars,
explorers, and diplomats; so the tantalizing question is raised of
whether he in fact grew up in a family micro-culture of relative or
aspirationally multicultural nature.... </div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Saladin was also a
radical leftist, described in the only biographical notice I've found
(written during his life) as a "democratic poet" which in our parlance
would translate roughly to a proto-anarchist insistence on direct rather
than representative democracy. In the early 1840s his poetic activity
gave way to journalism, and the newspaper he co-edited published work by
Fourierist-associated writers, raising the possibility that his
emphasis on sensuality may have its roots in radical political theory. </div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
He's also an example of provincial Romanticism – he seems to have been
based in Bordeaux throughout his career, and thus represents the
less-spoken of Romanticist and underground communities outside of Paris,
connected by networks of correspondence, and traded journals. He is
also part of the smaller network of extremist/avant-garde writers
pushing the more formally and thematically eccentric aspects of the
movement into experimental territory. As the single notice referred to
above notes, his poetry is "very difficult", partly through its often
short lines which destabalize the metric structure of French verse (long
story...) and which derive from Troubadour poetry which is in turn
inflected by Muslim forms from Spain, partly because of the heavy
interior sound-patterning which further destabilizes the metric effects
while paradoxically creating an intensely rhythmic, musical effect, and
finally the often fractured and fragmentary syntax and occasionally
bizarre imagery. Not easy to translate! This poem appeared in the
avant-leaning anthology <i>Annales romantiques</i> in 1834, one of the first
books I bought for the Revenant Archive.</div>
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>THE FANDANGO</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>-Emile Saladin</i></span><br />
<br />
Dance on! ô youthful girls!<br />
Dance onward, youthful gents!<br />
To your jubilant quadrilles<br />
unite inviting trills;<br />
Dance on, dance on, coquettes,<br />
to pleasure ripened yet;<br />
to din of castanets<br />
may all your songs be wedded.<br />
<br />
What bayadere’s[1] physiques!<br />
And so divinely smiling!<br />
As if each one was easy,<br />
all these flirtatious Genies!<br />
Do you perceive them, pining,<br />
upon the fields verdant,<br />
those Andalusians fervent,<br />
to glide off, tawny Virgins…<br />
<br />
Tis those of grenadines,[2]<br />
of billowing bouquets,<br />
of sugarcane in wreathes,<br />
with such seductive moves;<br />
of Andalusian blooms<br />
so ravishing that Asia’s<br />
poetry offers us<br />
no thing as marvelous.<br />
<br />
Detached indifferent<br />
on pale naked necks,<br />
their heads are gently bent,<br />
and heaving are their breasts;<br />
all humming with the rhythm,<br />
all rush to take position,<br />
the next fandango’s launched,<br />
its surges and its vaults.<br />
<br />
Ephemeral and sprightly,<br />
you sylphs, as you are flying,<br />
in your light-hearted stances,<br />
evoke a love expiring.<br />
Now just like supple branches,<br />
you’re thrusting out your hips<br />
As well as throats so pallid<br />
from which the eye can sip.<br />
<br />
What frisky merriment!<br />
What eyes so dark and rending!<br />
Now, alabaster and jet<br />
are fluttering and blending.<br />
Now how their skin is reddening,<br />
their lissome waists are bending,<br />
their breath is like perfumes,<br />
and every sense confused!<br />
<br />
O! You pearls of Spain,<br />
how well you entertain,<br />
beneath the flowering olive,<br />
as you cavort and frolic;<br />
to see you as you twist,<br />
your sweaty bodies slick,<br />
revealing as you leap,<br />
til sapped, you take your seat.<br />
<br />
Then, see the ball jam-packed,<br />
complexions bright and burning,<br />
when enervated dancers<br />
back to their seats are dragged:<br />
the Madonna out of view,<br />
there, many a voice is purring,<br />
and safe behind the fans<br />
set amorous rendez-vous.<br />
<br />
Go, you youthful band,<br />
Go, and laugh forever;<br />
this is the Age to gather<br />
your blissful days and pleasures;<br />
while life is acrobatic,<br />
and on your roofs of clay<br />
so frail and prone to stray<br />
abide thee with the passions.<br />
<br />
How fair it is my sweet ones,<br />
in Alhambra far to spy<br />
the myriad Moorish spires<br />
dismembered by the seasons;<br />
with grace they play and run<br />
where multitudes of races<br />
have printed fleeting traces<br />
devoured by the sun.<br />
<br />
Hard by Xenaralife[3]<br />
engulfed in rushing breezes,<br />
Caliph’s strongholds ancient<br />
so doted on in dreaming;<br />
hard by such fine dominions<br />
and in the bracing shade<br />
that Abyssinians<br />
grant sanctuary in.<br />
<br />
Dance on! ô youthful girls!<br />
Dance onward, youthful gents!<br />
To your jubilant quadrilles<br />
unite inviting trills;<br />
Dance on, dance on, coquettes,<br />
to pleasure ripened yet;<br />
to din of castanets<br />
may all your songs be wedded.<br />
<br />
<i> – trans. Olchar E. Lindsann</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>NOTES:</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] <i>Bayaderes</i>: Hindu religious dancers. This reference reflects the
intense interest in Hinduism then burgeoning within French Romanticism,
as evidenced also by Auguste Bouzenot\’s description of the Hindu Durga
Puja festival that was published in the same issue of the Annales
romanrtiques anthology as this poem. Though Saladin’s Orientalism was
focused on the Islamic world, he indicates here his engagement with a
broad range of non-Western cultures – in both cases problematically
promulgating the association with sexuality common in European colonial
portrayals.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> [2] “grenadines”: possible pun on “grenadine” as a loose silk garment. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">
[3] Seems to be an archaic designation for the labyrinthine garden or
park of Alhambra; see the 1833 description in an Orientalist novel
serialized in the Romanticist <i>Revue de Paris</i>, which is likely to have
influenced Saladin’s evocation: Le Duchesse Abrantès, “Hernandes.” <i>Revue
de Paris</i>, Tome Quarante Sixième. Paris: 1833.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-23057659178602348682020-05-29T19:24:00.003-04:002020-05-29T19:24:58.696-04:00A 19th century phonetic poem & Frenetic Romanticist radical fiction from 1833!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="_5pbx userContent _3ds9 _3576" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-testid="post_message" id="js_9">
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here's an excerpt from the novel "The Cunning of Trialph" by Charles Lassailly,
one of the leading proponents of experimental neo-gothic Frenetic
Romanticism. I've got three sections here:<br /> </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
1.) The text from the
book's frontispiece, which needs to be considered an integral part of
the novel; it includes another example of Romanticist sound poetry, not
included in the mOnocle-Lash chapbook (though I may need to do a second
edition...). It is arranged concretely in the form of a centered
pyramid, and as you see is framed as a nihilist "profession of faith". <br />
Interesting to note first that there are some other examples of
phonetic/onomatopoeic epigraphs by Borel, Janin, and others, that I'm
now considering part of this early micro-tradition, and furthermore
that all of these examples of Romanticist sound poetry, including the
epigraphs, come from specifically the Frenetic sub-current of the
movement...<br /> </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
2.) The first section of the long preface, an
unrelenting example of frenetic romanticism. The Preface was the
Romanticist version of what the modernists would call a manifesto, and
this is one of the most fully-developed manifestos of frenetic
romanticism. Yes, this is the very beginning of the manifesto; in medias
res.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
3) Chapters 8 and 9 of the novel; these sections don't
delve into the horror aspect of the movement as much as the radical
political side of it. Lassailly's acidic satire is applied here to
himself and his own community, and gives a cynical yet whimsical
insiders-look into the radical political scene, focused on the Polish
anti-imperialism movement which was one of the galvinizing issues for
French liberals at the time. He was closely allied with the <a class="profileLink" data-hovercard-prefer-more-content-show="1" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=100002684322503&extragetparams=%7B%22__tn__%22%3A%22%2CdK-R-R%22%2C%22eid%22%3A%22ARBIumyQ_Y0znD8dzGuvtKifgb8RzhsW7WKVDcNInxqU7Wds3LhbncxMTGQj77MKww7nCTq6479l1Rk3%22%2C%22fref%22%3A%22mentions%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/jeunesfrance.bouzingo?__tn__=%2CdK-R-R&eid=ARBIumyQ_Y0znD8dzGuvtKifgb8RzhsW7WKVDcNInxqU7Wds3LhbncxMTGQj77MKww7nCTq6479l1Rk3&fref=mentions" title="Jeunes-France Bouzingo">Jeunes-France Bouzingo</a>
group, and the conversation in Chapter 9 bears striking similarities to
conversations at ultra-Romanticist "orgies" (think party+happening)
recorded in O'Neddy's 'Pandemonium' and Gautier's 'The Bowl of Punch'.
(a number of Frenetic Romanticists were technically medical students and
thus possible candidates for the character here, including Gérard de
Nerval and Hector Berlioz). </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There's some play with spacing and formatting that gets lost in this format; you'll have to wait for the eventual anthology of Frenetic Romanticism for which this is destined. </div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>#1 TITLE PAGE:</b></span></div>
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[from Title Page]:<br /> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">The </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Cunning</b></span><br /> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">of</span> <br /> <span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Trialph</b></span>,<br /> <b>Our Contemporary Before his Suicide</b></div>
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Ah?<br /> Eh! hey?<br /> Hee! hee! hee!<br /> Oh!<br /> Hou! hou! hou! hou! hou!<br /> – Profession of Faith by the author –</div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>#2 FROM THE PREFACE</b></span><br />
<br />
– Where are you going?<br />
– I’m going to see death . . . While waiting, I’m fending off boredom
by fashioning myself a book, of which my suicide will be the climax.<br /> – On your word of honour, my dear despair, you’ll have the courage to play this tragic prank?<br /> – Sure.<br /> – Damn! the opus will sell itself . . . You’ve got debts?<br /> – You better believe it.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
–––</div>
Even if I do desire to disabuse myself of living much longer, I’m
nonetheless still more or less young. My head’s been plucked clean by
the blasts of furious storms, but nowadays I prefer a bald skull: this
makes you a philosopher in the eyes of our dancers, at a ball. And
listen here, I still have more teeth on my mandibles than in the
hollowed-out maw of certain cadavers. Then too, I swipe cigarettes from
all my friends, and bouquets of violets from all my mistresses!<br />
But, for example, among other things, I’ve ended up wearing myself
ragged committing adulterous jokes, without consequence; and,
constituted as I am to seek diversion at all costs, even to the point of
crime, I set to work on two or three assassinations, without question
solely to pass the time, and for the honour of the Gall system,[1]
according to the lumps that a med student could most likely demonstrate
upon the occiput of my skull.<br /> Hence, today, I’m fleeing the justice
of the community of men; and I’m rolling, seated in the carriage of a
Stagecoach, toward the sea, where I’m headed to drown myself. You’re
quite aware that I look down on the horrors of the Morgue in Paris, and
that it’s more decent to extinguish myself in the midsts of the Ocean’s
abysses, where nothingness shall clutch my bones.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
–––</div>
Right from the start I’m going to confess one thing to you, because I know how you love prefaces. <br />
This one wouldn’t have a title: such are words or ideas which possess a
mediocre value; but the money wouldn’t be minted with any effigy. <br /> – Why? . . . –<br /> Ask my century which the materialists of the French revolution have guillotined. For the head of humanity, it’s an idea: God!<br /> Laugh it up then.<br /> It’s your occupation to laugh ever since somebody rhymed the Virgin.[2] But transform into consequences.<br /> You say: I am liberal, republican or carlist;[3] I’m thinking about the country, I desire the well-being of all . . .<br /> Me, I respond: You are proper names; you never think about anything; you desire to live in order to live! . . .<br />
Back to what I was saying. You are the frigid limbs of a cadaver. What
you call Order or Liberty, it’s electrical stimulation. Flinch, you
frogs!<br /> In your disorganised society,[4] there need be no link
between a cause and an effect, and forgetting to enter, hats off, into
the logic of facts, you never wrap your head around anything but
melodramas.<br /> There are your slogans! There are your cartoons in
silhouette! All of your literature, all of your political, moral and
religious legislation, would rival one box of prints, along with a
portfolio of sketches. Here: I’ve made this for you whilst my genius was
sound asleep, the one that comes from on high!<br />
<b> </b><br />
<b> </b><br />
<b> NOTES TO PREFACE:</b><br />
[1] Franz joseph Gall was among the first researchers to identify
various functional centres within the brain, inadvbertently establishing
the groundwork for phrenology.<br />
[2] Pucelle. Possibly referring to Voltaire’s or Schiller’s works aboUT Joan of Arc, both titled La Pucelle ‘Orleans.<br />
[3] Liberal: support Constitutional monarchy, civil liberties, and a
Free Market; Republican: support representative democracy; Carlist:
Support an absolute monarchy and return to theocratic feudalism.<br />
[4] The charge of the “disorganised” state of nascent Capitalism echoes the vocabulary of socialist discourse of the time.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>#3 CHAPTERS 8-9</b><br />
<b> </b><br />
<b> </b><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b> VIII</b></div>
<br />
In the evening, it occurred to us to crack open a bottle of champagne,
and a brilliant feast in honour of a people who had died for liberty. . .
.<br /> Moreover I’ll assert it explicitly in this story, numerous
toasts were proposed. The banquet’s most distinguished members (there
were deputies!) distilled, phrase by phrase, word by word, things
perfumed with a peculiar charm. A lyre player sang tear to eye, couplets
of a disorienting mind, which he recalled in his first vaudeville. A
philanthropic subscription was voted on unanimously for an imminent
ball, where one would find lovely women, charitable magicians who dance
with crowns of flowers, necklaces of gemstones, and nude shoulders. To
wrap up, the revelers drank in a manner altogether edifying to
patriotism.<br /> Ernest and I, we behaved ourselves in order to deserve
graciously, along with the others, our citizens’ esteem and the
recognition of the Polish, who were being assailed day and night, worn
out by fatigue, starvation and thirst, under a hail of balls,[1] in the
midst of their brothers’ cadavers. . . . . .<br /> The hour having
arrived, a fashionable youth, an contraversial opposition journalist,
offered, we being his two neighbours, to smoke us up on some dried opium
leaves and tablets from Constantinople in an exquisite chibouk which
had been gifted to him, in the course of his journeys in Asia, by the
beautiful vizieress,[2] who is the favourite mistress of the Great
Sultan.<br /> We couldn’t turn him down, not without too many regrets, this virtuous republican.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>IX</b></div>
<br />
I no longer recall what went down in this unorthodox orgy, apart from
fantasizing about a conspiracy which was taken up initially by those who
were drunkest. <br /> One shouted out:<br />
– I have a glorious plan in mind! . . .<br />
Another:<br />
– We shall avenge France!<br />
Several of them:<br />
–It must begin by doing away with the tyrant!<br />
All together:<br />
–I’m on board.<br /> – Who’s going to kill him?<br /> – Me!<br /> – Me!<br /> – Me!<br /> – We’ll kill him for sure!<br />
– I volunteer myself to prick him with a pin sharpened with prussic
acid, by giving him a shake of the hand, as he’s generous with it to the
vile henchmen who tramp out to greet his horse.<br /> – This joke of a med student has spirit.<br /> – I cede my invention to you, if you like.<br /> – When shall you take action?<br /> – I’d much rather suffer on foot no more: never would I make my escape successfully . . . . .<br />
Here, there was a moment of silence . . .<br /> I wanted to change the subject, and I howled vigorously in my turn:<br />
–Friends of joy, which among you would lend me, just for this one
night, one of his mistresses? I’d come pay her one visit, with no
consequences for the future.<br />
A handsome student on the right, fashionably rigged out in his cravat and his vest like a corset, turned to me:<br />
– I have for some time had at my disposition the friendship of a young
patriot who’s going to marry an old man, her benefactor, whom she
detests for his opinions; but I confess that I promised her a dress two
months ago; and my respectable father insists that I should be forced to
eat cabbage soup with the family, quite simply because one semester I
squandered six hundred francs on red and black[3] . . . . .<br />
Ernest seemed to wake up in order to remark to me:<br />
– Are you really clinging to procuring indecent distractions? The day
before yesterday, at the Opera, I procured the fantasy of several
murderous winks in the hall . . . . I lost no time, and captivated one
downstage . . . The lover that I’d come to take to the bird-hunt, in her
turn, kept busy by making her dark gaze work to perfection . . . I gave
myself up to dazzling her a bit, by blowing her several teasing kisses .
. . . . She tugged off her glove; and as my modesty would scarcely
permit me to perceive the favourable implications of these responses
from afar, I drew nearer with so much indifference . . .<br /> – Listen up, citizens, let’s listen.<br /> – Ah well! it seems that despite myself I’ve totally revolutionized her . . . her glove fell at my feet . . .<br />
I became irritated with Ernest.<br />
– What’s all this supposed to prove?<br /> – I picked it up and handed it to her . . .<br />
With that, Ernest scanned the group with shifty eyes :<br />
Gentlemen, I drink to the virtue of your wives! but could a woman that you respect be named? . . .<br /> – No, no, no!<br />
– As I was saying . . . I handed her glove to her: it was a pretext
for thanking me and blushing with modesty . . .She took advantage of it .
. . As for me, I too took advantage of a trifling situation . . . For
it just so happened that my name and address found themselves slipped
beneath her fingers; and she didn’t write too badly, to reproach people
for their impertinence, by inviting them to no doubt earn their pardon,
at Rue Caumartin, No. 7, signed: mademoiselle Césarine B.<br /> – Ah! ah! ah! ah!<br /> – The century’s so corrupt!<br /> – Long live the republic! . . .<br /> – Is his story history?[4]<br />
I took the ladle from the bowl of punch, and helped myself twice, up to the brim of my enormous glass.<br /> Ernest tapped me on the shoulder:<br /> – Crazy artist that you are, do you want to present yourself in my place? . .<br /> – I renounce your protection for the moment.<br /> – My boy’s got his whims.<br /> – I’d rather be conspiring here . . . . .<br />
One of these drunkards lifted up his head:<br />
– And if the affair were serious?<br />
Another tugged out a dagger hidden beneath his shirt:<br />
– And if he only took action for nothing less than resuscitating liberty with one human life? . . .<br />
– That would depend specifically, gentlemen, on the manner in which
patriotism would do things. For a hundred thousand francs in annuity, I
would massacre the tyrant should he be the most courageous man in the
world; . . for a hundred thousand francs of annuity and dictatorship,
how I would forget! . . . . Furthermore, gentlemen, I’m a terrible
joker, of which you’ve no need . . .<br /> My hasty departure made no impression on them; they still had drinking to do.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>NOTES TO CHAPTER 8-9</b><br />
<br />
[1] A dark pun: the refugees persist in their misery in the midst of a
hail of “charity balls” from the privileged and middle classes, which
are not effective in stopping the hail of “lead balls” or bullets
suppressing their relatives at home.<br />
<br />
[2] Visir, an archaic
alternate form of Vizir. That government position was always held by a
male; it is unclear whether whether Lassailly is confused here about the
foreign term’s meaning, or is attempting a feminization of vizir to
designate the Vizier’s primary wife; I’ve opted for the latter.<br />
<br />
[3] Not the book by Stendhal, but the gambling game of this name.<br />
<br />
[4] In the French, the same word serves for “story” and “history”, hence the(virtual) pun: L’histoire est-il historique?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">from Charles Lassailly, <i>Les Roueries de Trialph, notres contemporain avant son suicide</i>. 1833. Silvestre: Paris.</span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-33999943147028619792020-05-07T22:30:00.001-04:002020-05-07T22:30:17.046-04:00Théophile Gautier, "Sonnet VII" (1830)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Didot;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="background: transparent;">Gautier
played a
central role in underground, experimental culture for over 40 years,
and his influence on the literary avant-garde was both profound and
problematic – so much that he was almost systematically erased from
the avant-garde 's collective consciousness by the Surrealists. Yet
he is ignored to our peril. The problem: he has been enshrined
(especially in anglophone criticism) as the father of de-politicized,
“Art for Art's Sake” (a term he tossed out when describing what
he called the 'cult of art' in his massively influential </span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Didot;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><b><span style="background: transparent;">Preface
to Mlle. de Maupin)</span></b></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Didot;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;">.
Gautier truly does have much to answer for here – in retrospect, we
can see how he set a politically distanced pattern that was not
shaken free of until the Modernists. However, when read carefully and
outside of Walter Pater's critical shadow, even his famous </span></span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Didot;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><b><span style="background: transparent;">Preface</span></b></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Didot;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;">
turns out much more nuanced and complex, if still flawed. I would
propose (some other time) that the vision he proposes there is as
close to Hakim Bey's Ontological Anarchy as Pater's Art for Art's
Sake. In fact, he specifically </span></span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Didot;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><b><span style="background: transparent;">espouses</span></b></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Didot;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;">
Fourierist socialism in that tract, giving the very same reasons that
the Surrealists and Situationists would later offer. What he
renounces is his belief in the “political” electoral plane as an
effective vehicle for change. This poem from his 1st collection, is
explicitly political and calls out the current "Liberal
Monarchy" that took over after the July Revolution of 1830, the
year of publication, and its suppression of multiple democratic
uprisings in its wake. Four years later, in the </span></span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Didot;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><b><span style="background: transparent;">Maupin
</span></b></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Didot;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;">Preface,
he echoed the poem's point: “What matters it whether 'tis a sword,
a holy-water sprinkler, or an [bourgeois-republican] umbrella that
rules you? It's a stick all the same... it would be far more
progressive... to break it and throw away the pieces.” In
experimental fashion, even his syntax fractures here, along with his
faith in positivist revolution.</span></span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Didot;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;"></span></span></i></span></span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Didot;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;"> </span></span></i></span></span></span></span></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Averia Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Sonnet
VII <span style="font-size: small;">(1830)</span></b></span></span></span></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>by
Théophile Gautier</i></span></span></span></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Liberty
of July! Woman of bust divine,</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> And
whose body ends in a tail!</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Gérard
de Nerval</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> And
this blind life of theirs is so debased,</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> They
envious are of every other fate.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Cochin;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black;"> </span><span style="color: black;"><i>Inferno,
canto III</i></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> <span style="font-size: small;">With
this disgraceful age tis high time that we break it; </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"> The
fatal finger placed upon its brow condemned<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8288489318537254189#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"> As
upon hell’s gates: Hope depleted! – Friends,</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span>Enemies,
public, kings, all trump us taken in.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"> A
budget elephant sucks gold by trunk taken in;</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"> In
their thrones yet a-quake from yesterday’s ascents,</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Cochin;">From
kinsmen overthrown they keep all, but rescind</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"> The
palm prompt with gifts and pomp breathtaking.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
</div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"> And
yet in July, neath the sky’s indigo,</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Cochin; font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> There
where the cobbles lurched,<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8288489318537254189#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc"><sup>2</sup></a>
they proffered promises</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"> Equal
to Charles tenth’s overseen masses!</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
</div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"> Alone,
Poetry manifest in Hugo</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"> Refused
deluding us, of which palms divine</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"> Enshadow
our debris, destiny inclined.<br /> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><i><span style="font-size: small;">–
Trans. Olchar E. Lindsann</span><br />
</i></span></span></span><br />
</div>
<div align="left" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0.04in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Cochin;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background: transparent;">from
Théophile Gautier, <i>Poésies Complètes, Tome premier.</i> 1884.<i>
</i>Charpentier: Paris. p.107.<br /> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8288489318537254189#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a>
<span style="font-family: Optima;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In
the original, this line ends with </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Optima;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">a
mis,</span></span></i></span></span><span style="font-family: Optima;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
“placed”, which is an exact homophone of </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Optima;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">amis</span></span></i></span></span><span style="font-family: Optima;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">,
“friends”, in the next line. I have found it impossible to
translate this wordplay.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote2">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8288489318537254189#sdfootnote2anc" name="sdfootnote2sym">2</a>
<span style="font-family: Optima;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Referring
to the paving-stones of Paris being pried up to build barricades, a
potent symbol of revolution in France throughout the 19th Century.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
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p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; page-break-before: auto }
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-83688028407280677582019-12-07T16:04:00.001-05:002019-12-07T16:04:17.562-05:00New Releases: Jarry's PERE UBU'S ALMANAC and THE REVENANCE OMNIBUS!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: center;">
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on <a class="profileLink" data-hovercard-prefer-more-content-show="1" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/page.php?id=149154511812628&extragetparams=%7B%22__tn__%22%3A%22%2CdK-R-R%22%2C%22eid%22%3A%22ARATUO3ijVqAhgvBWR2Qb3ACDpNyOem7qdfmpXCRCGcUf6D7c0ol_agKGcFsq3cX17inoTLTFG6mbnF4%22%2C%22fref%22%3A%22mentions%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/Monocle-Lash-Anti-Press-149154511812628/?__tn__=K-R&eid=ARATUO3ijVqAhgvBWR2Qb3ACDpNyOem7qdfmpXCRCGcUf6D7c0ol_agKGcFsq3cX17inoTLTFG6mbnF4&fref=mentions&__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARCK3wmBs8vJWbhKw1cPhMPhKSObpuqbRAWD4NXQ8g3UmX_Andb2jJV-reX8ZJItaI6-RoALw_RN935_0jfMzZfcOqX0RArJs1gk66Uysk04k2UhRb3fBSF1e3Wk8TfOiSOVMrFq8G3yerR04oNjrxUFFDpsr4Q5WuoQ-DtxVfmq0A4IkNgvEcR5tjZ0oF9ic-i1ctNmBRvaifQ7NQ">Monocle-Lash Anti-Press</a>:</h3>
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<br /></div>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">
#1: UBU'S ALMANAC for Jan-March 1899</h2>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
by ALFRED JARRY</h4>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Just in time to help plan your upcoming year!<br /> translated by Amy Oliver</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZH0sfPXdqsdpyC4Lj0VsnTEPVmsSIB6icRnY8XEKnE85aRIRelVOYwtIbRblK49x7Eo8sYHdL_VUNambAfL4DHk3bya-vuxzOq_NFSvsZjzbwqD3gVmn_hfhlyt8om_CmNFWtRwbzQCU/s1600/UBU_ALMANAC_8.5x8.5_Front_Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1578" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZH0sfPXdqsdpyC4Lj0VsnTEPVmsSIB6icRnY8XEKnE85aRIRelVOYwtIbRblK49x7Eo8sYHdL_VUNambAfL4DHk3bya-vuxzOq_NFSvsZjzbwqD3gVmn_hfhlyt8om_CmNFWtRwbzQCU/s320/UBU_ALMANAC_8.5x8.5_Front_Cover.jpg" width="315" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
and</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">
#2: THE REVENANCE OMNIBUS, Vol. I</h2>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Issues 1-5 of the journal (2016-18)</h3>
<div style="text-align: center;">
bound & lovingly indexed<br /> edited by Olchar E. Lindsann<br /> 190 pp.<br /> 50% through the end of the year = $12.50 +s/h</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBJCRnDASvNEL7rLzhe9WoMLt5k44g78S6NYWVgfTfcj-T-bj9HumbQ41gMHTGOyRIcyoM0K8n7NMbkP8nJfPIW7u_iFbde7FVfHWqHaJai0VTA17HaH3_2rVd2lVtfwlIRg1VeI0dGHw/s1600/Revenance+Omnibus+Vol+1+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1234" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBJCRnDASvNEL7rLzhe9WoMLt5k44g78S6NYWVgfTfcj-T-bj9HumbQ41gMHTGOyRIcyoM0K8n7NMbkP8nJfPIW7u_iFbde7FVfHWqHaJai0VTA17HaH3_2rVd2lVtfwlIRg1VeI0dGHw/s320/Revenance+Omnibus+Vol+1+cover.jpg" width="246" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And why not top off your 'pataphysical venture with Olchar Lindsann's
chapbook treatise</div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://monoclelash.wordpress.com/2019/12/06/toward-and-away-from-a-potential-nagean-pataphysics-by-olchar-e-lindsann/" target="_blank"><i><b>Toward (and Away From) a (Potential) Nagean Pataphysics</b></i></a></h3>
<div style="text-align: center;">
& the accompanying pamphlet explaining how 8.375 words
are in actuality 4,989.5 words?</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Both books = 55 pp. for another $4.50</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
OR TRADE! (email <a href="mailto:monoclelash@gmail.com">monoclelash@gmail.com</a> to set up)<br /> PLEASE REPOST & SPREAD THE WORD – Support PRINT Micropress Counterculture!</div>
</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-19860238892623513312019-09-18T13:19:00.001-04:002019-09-18T13:19:21.018-04:00Archives of Khazad-Dum: Louis Boulanger - La Ronde du SabbatI've often noted the similarities of the Jeunes-France Bouzingo of the 1830s and the sensibilities of contemporary metal. Here's undeniable proof: a blog with FOURTEEN black metal and death metal albums all using the Jeunes-France artist Louis Boulanger's frenetic romanticist masterpiece "Ronde du Sabbat" for the cover art. I have NEVER seen it reproduced in any art book except the single monograph on Boulanger, from 1924. Hmmmm. <br /><br />
<br /><br />
<a href="https://archivesofkhazad-dum.blogspot.com/2010/09/231.html?spref=bl">Archives of Khazad-Dum: Louis Boulanger - La Ronde du Sabbat</a>: Original Louis Boulanger - La Ronde du Sabbat Vociferian - Exxakschionnistiik Warmageddon Xzul Stutthof - And Cosmos From Ashes ...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-19427849178059246842019-07-15T10:29:00.002-04:002019-07-15T10:37:02.945-04:00Lecture: A Social History of the Avant-Garde<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On July 4 at the AfterMAF festival in Roanoke, VA, I delivered a lecture on the 19th Century Avant-Garde, focusing on the social history, rather than the aesthetic – an anthropological and micro-historical rather than "art/literary history" approach. Here's the video of the presentation. I only got through the Symbolists in the lecture that day, but I'm posting here the lecture notes carrying the story all the way up to the present, and the corresponding slides for the notes, which contain much more detailed information.<br />
<br />
I've not had time to assemble a bibliography specific to this lecture, but to trace a bit of information or do follow-up research on your own, email me at <a href="mailto:olindsann@gmail.com">olindsann@gmail.com</a> (messages sent via the blog have a tendency not to reach me for months) and I can point you toward relevant sources and/or my bibliographies of related projects. This may eventually become a book, but that would be several years down the road.<br />
<br />
Here's the video of the lecture up to the end of the 19th Century (Romanticism through Symbolism & Decadence):</div>
<br />
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qkurPqRJ1L4" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
Here are the <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=16s5twKN2mmamW0OnAJDIwXsYyoj-syND" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>LECTURE NOTES</b></span></a> for the entire history.<br />
<br />
Here the accompanying <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Hkd4r27F-Sood9RbdllQnzNTGce5WMNR" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>SLIDES</b></span></a> including images, charts, and more detailed information referred to in the lecture. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-34178111903288219272019-04-11T09:47:00.000-04:002019-04-11T09:47:32.004-04:00Gérard de Nerval, "Fantasy"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Fantasy</b></span><br /><br />There is a tune for which I’d freely trade<br />All Rossini, all Mozart and all Weber,[1]<br />Archaic tune, faded fast and sepulchral<br />Which for me alone offers secret allure.<br /><br />Now, each time that I happen to hear it,<br />Two centuries my spirit revives; <br />Tis under Louis Thirteenth; I envision outspread<br />A verdant slope, which the sunset ambers.<br /><br />Then a brick-built manor with stony corners,<br />With stained-glass windows of roseate colours,<br />Girt in vast parks, a rivulet there<br />Rinsing its feet, which slides among flowers;<br /><br />Then a lady, at her lofty window,<br />Blond with darkling eyes, her apparel antique,<br />Whom, in another existence perchance,<br />I’ve seen before . . . – of whom I remind myself!<br /><br />NOTE<br />[1] Pronounce it “Webure”.<br /><br />(Nerval’s original footnote instructed the reader to pronounce it as “Webre”, to rhyme with “funèbre”, sepulchral. This is as close as I could come to reproducing the joke in a free verse translation.)</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-85571485118558545222018-10-28T22:48:00.002-04:002018-10-28T22:48:15.884-04:00New Issues of "Rêvenance: Hauntings From Underground Histories"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've got too many websites to keep updated, and I've been derelict here: So now I present not one, but <i>two</i> issues of the <i>Resurrecting</i> blog's de facto magazine, <i>Rêvenance: A Zine of Hauntings From Underground Histories.</i> As for direct Jeunes-France/Bouzingo links, Issue 4 includes a Gautier poem and an essay on translating Gautier, and an article about the complicated situation of the terms <i>Bousingot, Bouzingot, Jeune France, Jeunes-France, </i>and others even more obscure; Issue 5 includes a poem by Philothée O'Neddy, an etching by Célestin Nanteuil, and an 1832 article poking fun at the Bousingots.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://monoclelash.wordpress.com/new-publications/" target="_blank"><b>Click Here</b></a></span> to order physical copies, follow links from there to free e-book versions! (I trade too – email at the address below to set up a trade of zines, research books, or whatever you've got.<br />
<br />
A couple of our translators got in touch with me as readers/users of this site – please don't hesitate to send along translations, short essays, transliterations, reviews, suggested public domain texts, letters or pieces responding to articles in past issues, or whatever else you're prompted to contribute! <i><b>monoclelash@gmail.com</b></i><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</div>
<br />
<strong>Rêvenance: A Zine of Hauntings from Underground Histories. Issue 5</strong>.<br />
<em>–ed. Olchar E. Lindsann</em><br />
<em> </em><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjaJ15Te2X9oR69KGSRArwmk4LUJ0hos_v70_sa63DFa9N3dafH08P5RzlFmXSBSbYPIdDGDH_lw_pRL40pbsDt5aFJ-mnRxY4cFc7rn5ICa1ltyugiksOmS0K0o0emCHudfhUBjCtZmE/s1600/1245_001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1313" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjaJ15Te2X9oR69KGSRArwmk4LUJ0hos_v70_sa63DFa9N3dafH08P5RzlFmXSBSbYPIdDGDH_lw_pRL40pbsDt5aFJ-mnRxY4cFc7rn5ICa1ltyugiksOmS0K0o0emCHudfhUBjCtZmE/s640/1245_001.jpg" width="523" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #0000ee;"><u><br /></u></span>This issue is built around a special feature on the
multi-generational battle between the concierges of Paris, known as
‘Pipelets’, and the writers and artists of the Bohemian community, with
secondary threads investigating poverty, Frenetic Romanticism, Utopian
and Syndicalist Socialism.<br />
<i>Featuring</i>: Philothée O’Neddy, Thomas Hood, Marceline
Debord-Valmore, John Everett Millais, Sapeck, Célestin Nanteuil, J.-C.
Sailer, The Mapah Ganneau, Eugène Sue, Cham, Faustin Betbedder, Gustave
Karr, Arthur Verneuil, & J. Grand-Carteret; translations by Olchar
E. Lindsann, Harriet Preston & Elizabeth Birdsall.<br />
<em><strong> </strong></em><br />
24 pgs on folded 8.5”x14”. July, A.Da. 102/A.H. 188 (2018)<br />
$6.00 + 1.50 s/h or <strong>FREE DOWNLOAD</strong><br />
<strong> </strong><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***~~***~~***~~***~~***~~***~~***~~***~~***~~***~~***~~***</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<strong>Rêvenance: A Zine of Hauntings from Underground Histories. Issue 4</strong>.<br />
<em>–ed. Olchar E. Lindsann</em></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<em> </em></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzBLarypX3B3rWaQn3avj19JQHd7CoiQ1NxqF-N-oK-Tm3uJTXWgYZWQZSpH1D-GNNQb2Nm6dGmHqlVr4naNVeQKRmHxTkStPRnp6xORqFn-Qg83TAWXv8IGfdrhMQ0xfMHrejXaBjEpI/s1600/cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1318" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzBLarypX3B3rWaQn3avj19JQHd7CoiQ1NxqF-N-oK-Tm3uJTXWgYZWQZSpH1D-GNNQb2Nm6dGmHqlVr4naNVeQKRmHxTkStPRnp6xORqFn-Qg83TAWXv8IGfdrhMQ0xfMHrejXaBjEpI/s640/cover.jpg" width="526" /></a></div>
<br />
This issue is built around a special feature on the dance club
micro-culture of the Badouillards (c.1833 – 50), with secondary threads
investigating lexicography, neologism and Parisian slang, the naming of
subcultures and micro-scenes, and a couple items relating to 19th
Century feminism.<br />
Featuring: Théophile Gautier, The Princess de Salm-Dyke, Georges
d’Heylli, Albert Giraud, The Grandees of Badouillery, Alexandre Privat
d’Anglemont, M. Adolphe, Lucien Rigaut, A.B., and Gustave Morne;
translations by Olchar E. Lindsann & Raymond E. André III.<br />
<em><strong></strong></em> <br />
24 pgs on folded 8.5”x14”. July, A.Da. 102/A.H. 188 (2018)<br />
$4.00 + 1.50 s/h or <strong>FREE DOWNLOAD</strong></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-82173032365366591522018-10-07T13:21:00.002-04:002018-10-07T13:21:21.246-04:00Alphonse Brot, "Chat in the Garden" (15 Sept., 1829)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Alphonse Brot, a co-founder of the Jeunes-France, is the earliest poet on record to describe his work as "avant-garde" (employing a recently-coined Saint-Simonian socialist usage of the originally military term), in his manifesto-Preface to the book in which this poem was published. Ironically, his close friend Philothée O'Neddy, (whose unpublished manuscript 'Parisina' is quoted here under his real name Théophile Dondey) recalled that the group considered Brot's work as a whole insufficiently experimental. Brot himself admits this in the Preface, explaining that while he is a moderate in terms of poetic form, he declares himself a member of "the avant-garde of Romanticism" due to its association with leftist politics.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is (in addition to being a bit racy for its day) one of his more experimental texts – pretty interesting, actually, in the way the lines fracture into syntactically vague fragments that force the hemistiches of the lines to drift metrically apart, the ambiguities of the seams between dialogue, speakers, and narration, the jamming together of archaic/formal language with casual and ironic usages, the intense formal mirroring occurring within and between certain lines through repeated words, syntactical formulations, and internal rhyme, etc... I've tried to recreate as much of this as possible.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</div>
<br />
<b>Seventh Song of Love.</b><br /> <i>15 September 1829.</i><br /><br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b> Chat in the Garden</b></h3>
<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">It is of gentle moments in this cruel life.<br /> The count Jules de Rességuier.[1]<br /><br />’Tis time, when with voice undefiled and alone,<br />The nightingale beneath the frail boughs moans,<br />Sensual time when the heart of the lover<br />At secret rendezvous redoubles its flutters!<br /> Théophile Dondey.[2]<br /> Fragment of <i>Parisina</i>.</span><br /><br /><br />Speak to me, speak to me of those ravishing balls,<br />Of those charming soirées, for whose delights we yearn; <br />Oh, speak to me in main of those so-sprightly waltzes<br />Be they in lovely halls or all upon the ferns;<br />Speak to me of rebuffs, diplomatic approaches,<br />Of kisses, of pledges in sighs heeded and broached; <br />Speak of pleasures of the treacherous cavalier<br />Who in his palm so long a timid palm clasps near,<br />Whose stare of fire captivates a trembling stare,<br />Who feels pressed to his heaving breast a burning breast,<br />Who may, mother’s keen gaze being far from there, <br />Pry questioning in whispers his shy waltzess,<br />Praising all her fine traits, in soft murmurs to share<br />Those words almost unknown to lasting tenderness.<br />Speak to me, speak to me, of bowers, of shadows,<br />Of the overgrown boughs and meandering groves,<br />Where one may be ensconced for hatching passion’s plans.<br />Here’s what I overheard in the garden one eve,<br />When, worn out by the waltz and worn out by the dance,<br />Desiring silence all alone I took leave:<br />– Two years since at the ball, back in times long-flown,<br />Madame, I last listened to your voice’s tones,<br />I spoke to you of love and of soft tenderness,<br />For that you were, madame, and yet still……. your mistress, <br />And nuptials…… – oh my friend, hush yourself, for pity;<br />We’ll speak no more of love, but speak……. of amity!<br />– Back then, like tonight, were you young and pretty,<br />The thing is, you seemed less plain and more rebellious,<br />You’ve a noble demeanor, and more glowing discourse,<br />Tonality and mien than one can find at court,<br />You have rubies galore, an opulent escort,<br />And titles, distinction, your valets and flunkies;<br />But no, your heart has lost that boldness unalloyed<br />Which for so long a span constituted our joy!<br />For the love that your soul now no longer understands,<br />You coldly proffer me . . . your companionship, madame!<br />To me, your companionship, me who adores you so,<br />Me! me, for whom a trice far from you’s a fatal blow;<br />Yet does paltry friendship, friendship guerdon[3] bestow<br />For remorse, a sempiternal fire’s ennuis?<br />– Oh, speak of something else! – No, . . . keep thee memories<br />Of celestial moments kneeling at your knees?<br />Back then, just as today, the forest, ferns loomed near;<br />But then your glances were not nearly so severe;<br />You didn’t drive me off, you welcomed all my vows,<br />And my hair by your hands was softly ruffled through;<br />Have you even forgotten that memory now<br />Of that day when two times you told me I love you!<br /> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <br />And the voice was snuffed out, and ‘neath the citrus branches<br />Then the sound of sighed moans, soft rustling met my senses,<br />Of faint words of love, and not-quite silences!<br />There we’ll shut up….., and me, I returned to the dances.<br />Speak to me, speak to me of those ravishing balls,<br />Of those charming soirées, for whose delights we yearn; <br />Oh, speak to me in main of those so-sprightly waltzes<br />Be they in lovely halls or all upon the ferns.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Translated by Olchar E. Lindsann</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> <br />from Chants d’Amour, et poésies diverses. 1829. Dureuil / Janet: Paris. pp. 43–49.</span><br /><br /><b>NOTES</b><br />
<br />[1] The poet Rességuier was relatively obscure, but exercised a considerable influence on the younger Romanticists.<br />
<br />[2] Soon to become Philothée O’Neddy. Dondey/O’Neddy and Brot seem to have been particularly close prior the formation of the Petit-Cénacle/Jeunes-France, and probably became involved with the Romanticist underground community together, developing some of their theories and poetic processes collaboratively until O’Neddy continued onto more radical paths than Brot was prepared to tread.<br />
<br />[3] paîraît. An extremely rare word (thus my choice of translation), apparently a variant, slang or very archaic conjugation of payer, to pay/repay. Although appearing in no lexicographic source I can find, his spelling seems to have taken on some currency within Romanticist circles specifically, cf. Hugo in The Burgraves, Debordes-Valmore’s ‘Un ruisseau de la scarpe’, Hégésippe Moreau’s ‘La princesse’, Dumas’ Charles XVII, etc..</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-28423358056028512132018-09-09T12:48:00.004-04:002018-10-08T13:04:45.969-04:00Text on the Kabbala by Gérard de Nerval & Henri Delaage<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
New AVANT-OCCULT TRANSLATION – I've translated the Gematria chart
printed in Gérard de Nerval's and Henri Delaage's hermetic anthology,
"The Red Devil: Cabalistic Almanac for 1850". (I discussed this in part 1
of <a href="https://bouzingo.blogspot.com/2018/07/lecture-notes-occultism-politics-and.html" target="_blank">my lecture on 19th Century avant-garde occultism this summer</a>.)<br />
<br />
In the original, this was accompanied by numerological findings
regarding prominent political and cultural figures; if anybody wants to
do the m<span class="text_exposed_show">ath for some names of
international and/or avant-underground people, I'll publish them in
Issue 5 of Rêvenance (#4 is already in preparation) and/or a separate
chapbook . . . just send them along to <a href="mailto:olindsann@gmail.com">olindsann@gmail.com</a>.</span><br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/11v8J_6LfItnJQYvczw5zKZUr3mM9gxl6/view" target="_blank">Click Here for the PDF.</a></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">(Must click on PDF to access chart of Letter-Number correspondences; formatting does not support it here)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Cabalistic Calculus</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>on family and given names</b></span> </div>
<br />
<br />
These calculations have always been carried out by the magi, sooth-sayers and philosophers of antiquity. The Chaldeans transmitted them to the Hebrews; moreover did the greater part of the predictions in the Bible and the Talmud adopt the science of numbers. The rotation of the starts gave them the initial foundation. Oriental fatalism found in the traditional combinations, which were thus transmitted from people to people, a way to explain all of the fatalities attached to the life of nations and those of individuals. Pythagorus, Plato, Porphery[1], Ptolemy, Philo were just as attached to these adroit combinations as was one camp of the apostles and Church Fathers. According to the opinion of the mystics, every being, from God to the tiniest atom, has a particular number which distinguish them and become the source of their traits as well as their destiny. According to Cornelius Arippa, “chance is only in essence an unrecognised progression, and time only a succession of numbers.” However, the future being a composite of chance and time, it should not be more difficult to discover by this means the outcome of an event of the future of a destiny than to carry twice the same roll of the dice, or to often make fifth and fourteen.[2]<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
___________</div>
<br />
Note. – It is important to be assured of the exactitude of of names inscribed on the baptismal documents. The mystery that make people choose on or the other of these names gives way to errors. One must inscribe the [family] name and given names of the person whose number one seeks, and take for all letters that compose the the numbers indicated in the following alphabet:<br />
[INSERT TABLE HERE]<br />
One must add the numbers of each letter to obtain a total. In order to obtain the meaning of it, the following table must be consulted, while taking care to count the thousand separately and afterward seek the meaning of hundreds, tens, and singles.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
___________</div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />Tables of Numbers – Their Power and their Meaning</b></span><br />
<br />
1. Passion, ambition, desire.<br />
2. Destruction, catastrophe.<br />
3. Religion, destiny, soul, charm.<br />
4. Solidity, wisdom, power.<br />
5. Stars, good fortune, grace, marriage.<br />
6. Accomplishment, redemption, labour.<br />
7. Imperfection, diminution, attempting an attack.[3]<br />
8. Justice, plenitude, conservation.<br />
9. Course of life, repose, liberty, divinity, virgin, Minerva.<br />
10. Accomplishment, reason, unity of the soul and body, future good fortune.<br />
11. Defaults, penitence, discord, prevarication.<br />
12. Town[4], good omen.<br />
13. Impiety, Incredulity.<br />
14. Sacrifice, purification.<br />
15. Piety, contemplation.<br />
16. Good fortune, hedonism, love.<br />
17. Forgetfulness, ill-fortune.<br />
18. Hardening.[5]<br />
19. Nothing.[6]<br />
20. Dignity, sadness.<br />
21. Love of people, sympathy.<br />
22. Creation, mystery, wisdom.<br />
23. Scourge, divine vengeance.<br />
24. Education, desire for the good.<br />
25. Intelligence, birth.<br />
26. Useful labours.<br />
27. Firmness, courage.<br />
28. Amorous favours.<br />
29. Nothing.<br />
30. Receptions,[7] celebrity.<br />
31. Love of glory, virtue.<br />
32. Hymen, chastity.<br />
33. Purity, childbirth.<br />
34. Suffering, spiritual pain.<br />
35. Harmony, holiness.<br />
36. Universe, genius, vast conception.<br />
37. Soft virtues, conjugal love.<br />
38. Imperfection, envy.<br />
39. Nothing.<br />
40. Parties, receptions, satisfaction.<br />
41. Disagreement, ennui.<br />
42. Voyage, well-traveled life.[8]<br />
43. Religious ceremonies, priest.<br />
44. Power, pomp, energy.<br />
45. Conception, loss of virginity.<br />
46. Population, fertility.<br />
47. Long and happy life.<br />
48. Tribunal, judgement, judge.<br />
49. Nothing.<br />
50. Pardon, redemption.<br />
60. Widowhood.[9]<br />
70. Initiated, science, charms<br />
73. Nature, understanding.<br />
75. Sensitivity.<br />
77. Pardon, repenting, charm.<br />
80. Healing, enlightenment.<br />
81. Adept, belief.<br />
90. Blindness, error, to repent.<br />
100. Election, political virtue.<br />
120. Divine love, patriotism.<br />
150. Praise.<br />
200. Irresolution.<br />
300. Salvation, belief, faith, philosophy.<br />
315. Calamity.<br />
318. Divine messenger, new man.<br />
350. Hope, justice.<br />
365. Tough and grueling journey.<br />
400. Astronomy.<br />
490. Priests, theology.<br />
500. Love of mankind.<br />
600. Success<br />
666. Infernal spirit, plot,[10] conspiracy, ennemies.<br />
700. Force, control.<br />
800. Empire, catastrophe.<br />
900. War, combat.<br />
1000. Character, kindness.<br />
1095. Aloofness.<br />
1260. Torment.<br />
1390. Persecution.<br />
<br />
We have given above the mystical table of holy books to which one can avail oneself when writing the hebrew names and letters. What we reproduce here was composed in the seventeenth century upon the principles of the other [hebrew system]. We can seek here for any name without attaching an absolute importance to the result, due to the vagueness of ancient correspondences. At the same time it does often offer curious serendipities; for example, Napoléon Bonaparte yields the numbers 755, which give us for 700 force, domination; for 50, pardon, redemption; and for 5, stars, etc.<br />
<br />
from Henry Delaage, Gérard de Nerval, et. al. <i><b>Le Diable Rouge: Almanach Cabalistique pour 1850</b></i>. 1850. Aubert: Paris. (see Re-issue with introduction, ed. Michel Brix, 2013. Plein Chant: Bassac.)<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>NOTES</b></span><br />
[1] find English spelling<br />
[2] faire quinte et quatorze. I sense that this is a reference to playing cards (quinte is also a “flush” in cards), but can’t nail down what exactly it means, maybe because I don’t play card games . . .<br />
[3] Attentant.<br />
[4] Ville.<br />
[5] Endurcissement.<br />
[6] Nul.<br />
[7] Noces.<br />
[8] Vie traversée.<br />
[9] Viduité.<br />
[10] trame.</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-89494266581865205252018-08-24T17:03:00.001-04:002020-08-09T18:48:17.714-04:00 Lecture Notes: Occultism, Politics, and the Decadent Avant-Garde, Part 2: 1850–1900. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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</h3>
Here are the outline and powerpoint for Part 2 of Olchar Lindsann's lecture on <i><b>Occultism, Politics, and the Romanticist Avant-Garde</b></i>
at the AfterMAF Festival in Roanoke, Virginia, 14 July 2018. (Part 1 is <a href="http://bouzingo.blogspot.com/2018/07/lecture-notes-occultism-politics-and.html" target="_blank"><b>HERE</b></a>.) The recording of Part 1 was lost; here is the video of Part II:<br /> <br /></div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7cXBpD0XaYw" width="560"></iframe><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz9jaVwFS8khY6vzcR63iPfbsLaNwhBkVREHnYxv2_KcpqQhvfgtoOaUE3qN0kwPoTTFUs2205HhRDXSMVOSrETyoAc2dPpLsR9EzShTB0OxRKnxFhexIHyDZ3kaPuEqxpInKFSH8Ry3Y/s1600/moreau_jupiter-and-semele.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="853" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz9jaVwFS8khY6vzcR63iPfbsLaNwhBkVREHnYxv2_KcpqQhvfgtoOaUE3qN0kwPoTTFUs2205HhRDXSMVOSrETyoAc2dPpLsR9EzShTB0OxRKnxFhexIHyDZ3kaPuEqxpInKFSH8Ry3Y/s320/moreau_jupiter-and-semele.jpg" width="170" /></a></div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is less concerned with explaining proto-socialist and hermetic
concepts themselves (a doomed attempt of hubris in two 2-hour lectures),
than with exploring <i>precisely</i> how the social fabric of the
Parisian intellectual underground became permeated with hermetic ideas
and practices – tracing the avant-occultist practitioners and groups who
planted and cultivated the first seeds of what would later blossom as
the Rose+Cross, the Golden Dawn, Dada and Surrealism, the Grand-Jeu,
Acéphale, Vienna Aktionism, Chaos Magic, the Church of the Sub-Genius,
ToPY, etc. etc. – </div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Ow4GnFzs0EpwdOocDkb9sU4sZRLjtaRE" target="_blank">Full Outline of Both Parts</a> / <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YHZ_x5kIa72eNywmHLfjHQy9pSVHz8KE" target="_blank">Slides (large file)</a></b></span> / <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1c30kjdTrD0b4xaTUEqG2jAp2jurdVKA-" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Slides (small file)</b></span></a></div>
</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-55890291131738780282018-07-19T19:36:00.016-04:002020-08-09T18:51:31.738-04:00Lecture Notes: Occultism, Politics, and the Romanticist Avant-Garde, 1800–1850.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here are the outline and powerpoint for Olchar Lindsann's lecture on <i><b>Occultism, Politics, and the Romanticist Avant-Garde</b></i> at the AfterMAF Festival in Roanoke, Virginia, 14 July 2018. Unfortunately, the footage of this part of the presentation was lost so the following materials must suffice. The video is available for Part 2 of the lecture <a href="https://bouzingo.blogspot.com/2018/08/lecture-notes-occultism-politics-and.html" target="_blank"><b>HERE</b></a>, which carries us from 1850 up to 1900 and the modernist avant-gardes.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj14jqUuM1Qui83-6saHoEXQZduKEoL7awn34YJTwha1CkxcRjs4AcPmdt3m3YvXpp_aHUhUaNqoqZMpyL14Owhyphenhyphen2l9ilZVQme1sJjRBbXEibuqM_BlWJ5Q2Qt6JxHSJfvRqWD9hLpJ5WE/s1600/Ganneau+-+Manifeste_en_faveur_d%2527une_association_+1840+emblem.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1557" data-original-width="1600" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj14jqUuM1Qui83-6saHoEXQZduKEoL7awn34YJTwha1CkxcRjs4AcPmdt3m3YvXpp_aHUhUaNqoqZMpyL14Owhyphenhyphen2l9ilZVQme1sJjRBbXEibuqM_BlWJ5Q2Qt6JxHSJfvRqWD9hLpJ5WE/s320/Ganneau+-+Manifeste_en_faveur_d%2527une_association_+1840+emblem.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is less concerned with explaining proto-socialist and hermetic concepts themselves (a doomed attempt of hubris in a 90-minute lecture), than with exploring <i>precisely</i> how the social fabric of the Parisian intellectual underground became permeated with hermetic ideas and practices – tracing the avant-occultist practitioners and groups who planted and cultivated the first seeds of what would later blossom as the Rose+Cross, the Golden Dawn, Dada and Surrealism, the Grand-Jeu, Acéphale, Vienna Aktionism, Chaos Magic, the Church of the Sub-Genius, ToPY, etc. etc. – </div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jMrx0mOntepON72ubXpQaZoh7GHppQsS" target="_blank">Outline</a> / <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-gyFfm4e5leO6mqgaBLaFy7nfq-UopQF" target="_blank">Slides (large file)</a></b></span> / <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=187X3UVCnuTCNtov6ZXT5nyloxPkRDc4I" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Slides (small file)</b></span></a></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-5679404975942468592018-04-23T23:03:00.001-04:002018-04-23T23:03:38.971-04:00The Archive of the Revenant Avant-Garde: Major New Collection: Célestin Nanteuil & three ge...<a href="http://revenant-archive.blogspot.com/2018/04/major-new-collection-celestin-nanteuil.html?spref=bl">The Archive of the Revenant Avant-Garde: Major New Collection: Célestin Nanteuil & three ge...</a>: This major new collection of 94 items consists of a massive, lavishly produced, DIY folio of over 80 lithograph reproductions of an indepe...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-3855832714758439572018-03-04T21:25:00.001-05:002018-03-04T21:25:48.360-05:00Incantation, by Philothée O'Neddy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Ninth Night.</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Incantation.</b></span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">My hardships and my blood determine my career;</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">My blood speaks to me, to me, ’tis my blood that I hear:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">I do not think, me, I have sensations,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">And my simple desires merit my passions!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> Victor Escousse.</span></blockquote>
<br />
To his palace abhorred beneath boulders deep-bored,<br />
Itobal comes alone; underneath the low lintel,<br />
He snatches up his gun and his bronze-tinted sword;<br />
Then, on a bed of rushes, branch dead and brittle,<br />
His spent height allows to tumble soil-ward.<br />
But in vain this throatslicer,[1] whom fatigue so exceeds,<br />
Ceasing three days of marching and bloodspattered fight,<br />
Seeks slumber here within his cavern’s frigid bite:<br />
Profound vertigo on his obsession feeds.<br />
<br />
– A thousand curses! quoth he behind his bite:<br />
There, close upon my ear, a swarm musters and roils;<br />
My spasming muscles convulse, my lifeblood boils;<br />
You would think I was on rageous[2] anthracite!<br />
I know not which cruel sprite is so spitefully frantic<br />
To thus strip an old wolf of the slumber he’s won:<br />
So what? Do I not own an arcane magic,<br />
To souse my senses with a balm lethargic,<br />
For three entire reigns of night and of the sun? . . .<br />
– Hey there! Do you stir, dull and vacant skulls<br />
Of all the craven viles[3] whom my knife-hand has splayed!<br />
Skulls, who slumber longside broad well-trampled ways,<br />
In the water of wells, in the forests baleful,<br />
Bring it on! Bring it on! Upon the winds take wing.<br />
Profit then from the dark, in your advent aerial;<br />
Then, alongside faint screams, with wheezings funereal,<br />
Around my bedside valence dance, dance madly circling![4]<br />
<br />
He’d scarcely dared to issue these demonic bulls,<br />
Than, through the cloven rocks, boistrously in there bound, <br />
Upon amber rays, a cortege of skulls,<br />
By whom swiftly the bloodspattered bedside is crowned.<br />
The dance tightens round, tis convulsed and whirled amiss;<br />
And beguiled, mesmerised by the arhythmic course<br />
Of psalms that the ball is buzzing in its bliss,<br />
Fervently our highwayman to slumber deep is forced.<br />
Yo! all you moralists, what’s that about remorse?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: small;">–trans. Olchar E. Lindsann </span></i></blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
NOTES:<br />
[1] égorgeur. A neologism when O’Neddy used it, the word has only rarely appeared since then, hence I’ve chosen a less familiar phrase than the common English “cutthroat”<br />
<br />
[2] ardens in the original, a distortion of ardents, raging.<br />
<br />
[3] O’Neddy is employing an adjective, vils, as a noun. His love for such grammatical disruptions and transpositions was a large part of the reason that his verse remained nearly unpublishable even in sympathetic Romanticist publications. (His only collection was self-published.)<br />
<br />
[4] en rond, i.e., in a ring. In frenetic Romanticist circles, this was understood to refer to the dionysian rond de sabbat, or witches’ dance – which in turn was related to the Infernal Gallop, the favourite dance of the frenetics, which was essentially the same as contemporary punk circle-pits, and in which dancers who tripped were routinely trampled.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-85565922689901635452018-02-03T20:00:00.001-05:002018-02-03T20:03:25.364-05:00The Archive of the Revenant Avant-Garde: Great new addition: 1830 Anti-Romanticist satire, ...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">The <a href="http://revenant-archive.blogspot.com/2018/02/great-new-addition-1830-anti.html" target="_blank">Revenant Archive</a> has added the following . . .</span></span></h3>
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<b>Antoine Jay, </b><i><b>La Conversion d'un romantique, manuscrit de Jacques Delorme </b></i>[<i>The Conversion of a Romanticist, manuscript of Jacques Delorme</i>]<i>.</i> 1830. <i>First Edition. Moutardier, Librairie-Éditeur: Paris. </i>Hardbound Octavo, 431 pp. <u>Inscribed in Red Pen: [cf]. So. / Paris 8[?] 16 1848" & "A. [O?eg?es?]".</u><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9COFUG5c0XGYloCRwpVA4G0kmrHv4cs00mIo4cxC6Dm5W1l1D7fu-ntewWiTBw-jhVb44DmEVbSwMIlc9_6nXaxXkfaZn2t16g985KnNIORpCY3G9maHnoJOAuxBfxO7PjZOOfLlwtI1h/s1600/jay-conversion+of+romantic+cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="216" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Bwnr76nE4_2aB9oRKM9L0oYaCZ8muHqzIIePbrabiFzPicoC9mWv5yi4N7x02B0A3GHAV3PrgRaUAgmpIA_qf5dKLnIKnrLB8CLzww14w_-Zyjm6o0LKqvpbArhjxVgHEVZ9Hj9b5_5h/s400/jay-conversion+of+romantic+spine.jpg" width="53" /><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1043" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9COFUG5c0XGYloCRwpVA4G0kmrHv4cs00mIo4cxC6Dm5W1l1D7fu-ntewWiTBw-jhVb44DmEVbSwMIlc9_6nXaxXkfaZn2t16g985KnNIORpCY3G9maHnoJOAuxBfxO7PjZOOfLlwtI1h/s400/jay-conversion+of+romantic+cover.jpg" width="260" /> </a></div>
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From the early 1820s until the "Battle of <i>Hernani</i>" in February of
1830, French Romanticist subculture became increasingly eccentric,
militant, and visible to the public eye, at least in Paris. The
resistance of the Classicist mainstream was ramped-up apace, and found
its most forceful expression in this harsh anti-Romanticist satire by
Antoine Jay, which rallied and catalyzed the Classicist opposition. </div>
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Like many on the left in the 1820s and early '30s, Jay was progressive
in political matters but deeply reactionary in linguistic and cultural
matters. This book made him one of the most prominent critics of "The
New Literature" as Romanticism was often called. Two years after its
publication, Jay was elected to the Académie Française, where he
militated against the admission of Victor Hugo in 1841; though Hugo was
admitted, Jay saw his revenge the following year when Classicist
audiences organised riots at the first performances of Hugo's play <i>The Burgaves</i>, spelling the end of the Romanticists' dominance of the popular stage since <i>Hernani</i> premiered within months of this novel.</div>
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The satire claims to have been written by Jacques Delorme, parodic
brother of Saint-Beuve's arch-romanticist nom-de-plume Joseph Delorme.
Jay parodies the "excesses" of the emerging avant-garde's lifestyle
(attacking the <i>Jeunes-France</i> group by name), skewers Romanticist
poetics, insults the movement's leaders and canon, and argues its
literary principles. He spreads rumours about the subculture,
exaggerates them, and invents others. He criticizes their experimental
language, the distortion of grammar in their work, their use of
neologisms, their employment of bizarre and inscrutable figurative
language, even reprinting large passages of Romanticist verse and drama
in order to ridicule it.</div>
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</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
The book thus swiftly entered the Romanticist canon as a favoured target
of invective and ridicule, and probably exercised some reciprocal
influence on the radicalization of the movement's extreme fringes into
the avant-garde, which was accelerating just as the book was published.
It certainly affected the movement's representation of itself to the
public, for the avant-garde Romanticists typically portrayed themselves
in satirical form, as a function of their generally destabalising
project. Gautier's roman-à-clef <i>The Jeunes-France</i> is, in one
dimension, a parody of Jay's satire, as explicitly signaled in the tale,
"Daniel Jovard; or, the Conversion of a Classicist".</div>
<br />
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This first-edition copy has been well-read but also well cared-for by at
least one generation already, and probably at least two; the binding is
tight and the pages clean, but the spine and edges are worn from use.
The book's first owner has left no discernible trace, but an inscription
in red ink, which I can only read in part, records its purchase in
Paris during the 1848 revolution. A descriptive note in pencil, written
on the back of a scrap of paper
torn from an advert for fountain pens, has been tipped in as a bookmark
by a subsequent owner, probably in the 1920s.</div>
</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-73737851250708136182017-11-11T20:40:00.002-05:002017-11-11T20:40:54.432-05:00Alphinse Brot, 'The Young Girl' (1829)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>The Young Girl</b><br />
<i>–by Alphonse Brot</i><br /><br />
She is far from the soil where Ivandor rests,<br />
A mob of suitors presses around her;<br />
She weeps, she flees from their drunken disorder,<br />
For her heart is possessed absolutely by death!<br /> <br />
She sings tunes from her lovely land derived,<br />
Those sung long past by a hero favoured in her choice;<br />
Oh, you can scarcely guess, you dazzled by her voice!…<br />
The devouring regrets that lay waste to her life;<br /><br />
If, near her, Ivandor for moments seemed to thrive,<br />
Too soon for his beloved island he was killed: <br />
His island weeps upon his war-like ashes still,<br />
His Emma far from him shall not for long survive.<br /><br />
Raise a modest mausoleum for the maid,<br />
Near winding woods, which both the lovers knew so well,<br />
So that at last toward evening tender vows might knell<br />
To come beguile at times her desolated shade!<br />
<br />
<i> –Translated by Olchar E. Lindsann</i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-42604145719707251802017-11-11T20:38:00.000-05:002017-11-11T20:38:03.525-05:00Alphonse Brot, 'The Minstrel'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>The Minstrel</b><br /><i>by Alphonse Brot</i><br /><br />The young minstrel of the war party;<br />
In the ranks of death he hurls himself fearlessly;<br />
The paternal sabre arms his vengeful arm,<br />
His harp is hung at his haughty shoulder.<br /><br />
“Noble land of songs, called the bellicose bard,<br />
When for you the Universe is indifferent,<br />
A sword shall shine at least for your defense,<br />
A lute with soft chords shall bless your laurel!”<br /><br />
The Minstrel was captured; on the foreign riverbank<br />
He kept his pride; the lyre of Tara,<br />
Beneath his scornful fingers, never breathed,<br />
For he casts off his cord to the light breeze.<br /><br />
You wither my fetters, my harmonious lute,<br />
Who so often sang of love and courage;<br />
Your chords were born for generous hearts,<br />
They never not resound in slavery.<br /><br />
-<i>Translated by Olchar E. Lindsann</i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-87265232708537374102017-11-11T13:02:00.002-05:002017-11-11T13:03:03.650-05:001842 Article on the "Hugophiles"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A recent addition to the <b><a href="https://revenant-archive.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Revenant Archive</a>,</b> about the Romanticist-Classicist debates swirling about Hugo and his supporters – I posted this on the Archive site a few weeks ago, but I've just scanned the interior so that the entire article is available (in French) and the interior image, and expanded the catalogue description accordingly as below. I can provide a larger-res image for any potential translator.<br />
<b><br />Le Charivari </b>(The Hullabaloo)<b>.</b> March 7, Year 11, No. 66 (Monday, March 7, 1842) Paris. Paperback Quarto, 4 pp.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwt5-vCFp-om4dnZbOEFbcezfS7ZlmhxroccAF1oFIaq-1rKWLlVdsxykMvQdb1B_R7c2xix8qezac-7umW5Eybzev7dNJatVGOT_lWr24nMd0m0dcHW-aznX5GdhY2Ta29kX7tDARF53J/s1600/0691_004.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1104" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9oYMP3C7HxYj7o9vYI-LAiYTD8_xS-ViwoNw452xqPwGsbI6_bnczHJMJ23c7jhSsQZ60DflAb1aPpWYd24STJsmB3bL4mDZw9Pb_F_eOZTp0nUefcFLHhq_BPJXwnRyiUcy_UoPm0rli/s400/0691_003.jpg" width="275" /></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgund5qzZkJ0mEdUvVQ5HfqeFI1-7Kuj9ON0p7xYTGfmlnyfTGpfClVAweXffV3Ux6qjQGGXjzew5MaXI7W-kQxXP07IOJ39tPM_w6Upuk3_lDe0xEVNPU2y4kWYtUAvxLFhyCsMgA9cwpi/s1600/charivari+hugophile+interior+1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1096" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgund5qzZkJ0mEdUvVQ5HfqeFI1-7Kuj9ON0p7xYTGfmlnyfTGpfClVAweXffV3Ux6qjQGGXjzew5MaXI7W-kQxXP07IOJ39tPM_w6Upuk3_lDe0xEVNPU2y4kWYtUAvxLFhyCsMgA9cwpi/s400/charivari+hugophile+interior+1.jpg" width="273" /></a></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Despite its early association with Romanticism and continued publication of Romanticist cartoonists, the satirical journal <i>Charivari</i>
had established a position outside the Romanticist-Classicist debate by
the 1840s, and was in a position to skewer both sides. By 1842,
Classicism was experiencing a resurgence as Romanticism, now
infiltrating every aspect of French culture, was beginning to split into
several divergent subcultures and cultural tendencies, many adherents
to which felt little connection with the movement in its current,
mainstream form. While young people in the Romanticist orbit did not
remember the movement in its underground, revolutionary stage but simply
as the backdrop of further innovation, young Classicists were now able
to see themselves as rebels against Romanticist hegemony. </div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In
1842, a renewed Classicist campaign was launched, ultimately aiming to
bring down the impending premier in 1843 of Hugo's new Romanticist play <i>The Burgraves</i>. This issue of <i>Charivari</i>
contains a quirky relic of this critical campaign, which resulted in a
Classicist riot at the premier, and the end of organised Romanticism in
France. It addresses the critical debate swirling around Victor Hugo's
Romantic travel guide of <i>The Rhine,</i> between the "Hugophiles"
(Romanticists) and "Hugophobes" (Classicists), though generally
sympathetic to Hugo. At issue is an argument about <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=aOJvpwryJvsC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=hugo+rhin+asculum&source=bl&ots=sCY91NOos7&sig=yHP1hT2pBLQhnD_dkln7rew_qeI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwichITa7ZPXAhUQ02MKHUSlBlUQ6AEIKzAA#v=onepage&q=hugo%20rhin%20asculum&f=false" target="_blank">a side-comment there</a> in which Hugo suggests the orthography <i>Asculum</i>
for a (possibly apocryphal) Roman town briefly mentioned in Horace,
OEquotuticum, which Hugo argues cannot be scanned within a French
alexandrine line of verse. The Classicist press, it seems, was outraged,
asserting that one must retain the Latin at all costs; as more
publications joined the fray, this spiraled into a heated battle about
poetic scansion. The article pokes fun at both sides in the debate, but
unequivocally blames the Classicists for stirring it up, hearkening back
to, "the beautiful evening on which the two enemy camps [the Romantics
and Classicists] had at it not only with the mouth, but even with hair
in the stalls of the Théâtre-Français, over the first performance of <i>Hernani."</i><br />
<br />
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<i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjspDsaBAZ5p5a68gi-wOZs9uOOVeWsVebD2Or3hivSs3Wy4XYf4PdKK2Qaf9Gzgx5Cw8qBmjCgeK3b3D_NWXPs09ZJqpxjgknwYf3KebBYN5LNEXzVKjUoaEwgIpm4hChe_ZPrLQHWoROe/s1600/charivari+hugophile+interior+2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1096" data-original-width="1600" height="438" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjspDsaBAZ5p5a68gi-wOZs9uOOVeWsVebD2Or3hivSs3Wy4XYf4PdKK2Qaf9Gzgx5Cw8qBmjCgeK3b3D_NWXPs09ZJqpxjgknwYf3KebBYN5LNEXzVKjUoaEwgIpm4hChe_ZPrLQHWoROe/s640/charivari+hugophile+interior+2.jpg" width="640" /></a></i></div>
<i> </i><br />
The
featured cartoon in this issue caricatures a group of dandies (or
"lions" in Parisian slang) at the opera, peering about the audience with
opera-glasses from their private box. It is labelled "The Lions' Pit"
(a double-pun, since the cheapest seats, below them, were known as "the
pit"). One dandy exclaims, "Naught shall have talent, save us and our
friends," to which his companion/s respond in English: "Yes!" Dandy
subculture was strongly anglophilic, owing in part to the movement's
British roots.<br />
<br />
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<span style="color: black;"> </span><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1100" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwt5-vCFp-om4dnZbOEFbcezfS7ZlmhxroccAF1oFIaq-1rKWLlVdsxykMvQdb1B_R7c2xix8qezac-7umW5Eybzev7dNJatVGOT_lWr24nMd0m0dcHW-aznX5GdhY2Ta29kX7tDARF53J/s400/0691_004.jpg" width="275" /></div>
<i> </i></div>
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-72259071742261558972017-09-09T12:03:00.001-04:002017-09-09T12:03:35.798-04:00The Archive of the Revenant Avant-Garde: Major New Addition: Ten-volume anthology of Romant...<a href="http://revenant-archive.blogspot.com/2017/09/major-new-addition-ten-volume-anthology.html?spref=bl">The Archive of the Revenant Avant-Garde: Major New Addition: Ten-volume anthology of Romant...</a>: Le Livre des Cest-et-un (The Book of a Hundred-and-One) . (1831) First Edition . Ladvocat: Paris. Frontispiece by Henry Monnier. Paperback...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8288489318537254189.post-76738460933376423112017-08-20T11:47:00.000-04:002017-08-20T11:47:02.680-04:00New Release: REVANANCE Journal, Issue 2!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i><strong>Rêvenance: A Zine of Hauntings from Underground Histories. Issue 2.<br />
</strong></i><i><em>–ed. Olchar E. Lindsann</em><br />
<img alt="Revenance 2 cover" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1415" data-attachment-id="1415" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Revenance 2 cover" data-large-file="https://monoclelash.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/revenance-2-cover.jpg?w=640" data-medium-file="https://monoclelash.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/revenance-2-cover.jpg?w=247&h=300" data-orig-file="https://monoclelash.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/revenance-2-cover.jpg" data-orig-size="1050,1275" data-permalink="https://monoclelash.wordpress.com/revenant-editions/revenance-2-cover/" height="300" src="https://monoclelash.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/revenance-2-cover.jpg?w=247&h=300" width="247" /><br />
<br />Rêvenance</i> is the flagship journal of the Resurrecting the Bouzingo project and Revenant Editions series,
dedicated to the forgotten or untold histories of 19th Century
avant-garde and other countercultures. It includes essays, translations,
and many experimental forms of historical writing and research that
connect those traditions to continuing radical communities today.<br /> <br />
This issue includes an 1832 satire
of the Bouzingo translated by Elizabeth Birdsall, essays on experimental historiography by Olchar
E. Lindsann and Gleb Kolomiets, poems by Arthur Cravan, Marceline
Debordes-Valmore, Ivan Gilkin, and Francis Vielé-Griffin (the latter
from a manuscript previously unpublished even in French), the preface to
Roger de Beauvoir’s 1840 book about the 18th Century black musician and
revolutionary soldier the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a biography of a
17th Century female scam artist known as The German Princess, a 1912
review of Arthur Cravan’s proto-Dada journal <i>Maintenant</i>, transductions by O. Lindsann of poems from the Chat Noir group, and images by Célestin Nanteuil.<br /><br />
Featuring: Olchar E. Lindsann, Gleb Kolomiets, Elizabeth Birdsall,
Raymond E. André III, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Arthur Cravan,
Célestin Nanteuil, The Chat Noir, Ivan Gilkin, Roger de Beauvoir,
Fernand Clerget, Albert Sérieys, Francis Vielé-Griffin, “The German
Princess”, Alphonse Karr, Charles-Henry Hirsch, Charles Whitehead, John
Payne, & Léon Gozlan.<br /><br />
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36 pgs on folded 8.5”x14”. Sept., A.Da. 100 (2016).<br />
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