The difficulty one has, at a certain distance, in telling a genuine automaton from a false one has held man’s curiosity spellbound for centuries. From Albert the Great’s android doorman, who ushered in visitors with a few words, to the chessplayer that Poe made famous, via Jan Müller’s iron fly that flitted about and came to rest on his hand and Vaucanson’s famous duck – not to mention the homunculi, from Paracelsus to Achim von Arnim – the most troubling ambiguity has always existed between animal life, especially human life, and its mechanical simulacrum. The specific response of our age has been to transpose this ambiguity by shifting the automaton from the outer world to the inner world, by letting it develop freely within the mind itself. Psychoanalysis has detected the presence of an anonymous mannequin in the recesses of the mental attic, ‘without eyes, nose, or ears,’ not unlike the ones Giorgio de Chirico painted around 1916. This mannequin, once the cobwebs that concealed and paralysed it were brushed away, has proven to be extremely mobile, ‘superhuman’ (it was precisely from the need to give this mobility free rein that Surrealism was born). This strange character, freed from the monstrous deformities that mar Mary Shelley’s admirable creature in Frankenstein, enjoys the faculty of moving about without the slightest friction, in time as well as in space; in a single bound, it eliminates the supposedly unbreachable gap separating reverie from action. The marvellous thing is that this automaton is in everyone, ready to be liberated: we need only, following Rimbaud’s example, help it recapture the sense of its absolute innocence and power.
We know that ‘pure psychic automatism,’ in the sense that these words are understood today, claims to designate only a borderline state that would require man to completely relinquish logical and moral control over his actions. Without needing to go so far – or, rather, without needing to remain in that state – it sometimes happens, after a certain point, that man finds himself motivated by an engine of unsuspected power, that he mathematically obeys an apparently cosmic impulse whose origin eludes him. The question that arises, apropos of these and other automatons, is whether a conscious being is concealed in them. And, one might wonder in the presence of Raymond Roussel’s works, conscious to what degree? Certainly, in his lifetime, a few individuals already suspected that he owed his prodigious talent for invention to a method he had discovered and were utterly convinced that he used an imagination prompt (as there are memory prompts). Roussel himself divulged this method in the posthumously published work entitled How I Wrote Certain of My Books. We now know that his technique consisted of composing, by means of homonyms or close homophones, two sentences with completely different meanings, and of establishing these sentences as pillars (first and last sentences) of his narrative. The story would move from one to the other via a new process performed on the constituent words of the two sentences: relate one word with double meaning to another word with double meaning. As Roussel said, ‘The purpose of this method was to bring forth a variety of factual equations that I then had to solve logically.’ Once this vast arbitrariness had been introduced in the literary subject, the issue was then to dissipate it, to make it disappear by a series of passes in which the irrational is constantly limited and tempered by the irrational.
Roussel is, along with Lautréamont, the greatest mesmerizer of modern times. In him, the extremely laborious conscious self (‘I bleed over every sentence,’ he said; and he confided to Michel Leiris that each line of New Impressions of Africa cost him roughly fifteen hours of work) is constantly at odds with the highly demanding unconscious (it is rather symptomatic that he maintained a philosophically untenable technique for nearly forty years without seeking to modify or replace it). Raymond Roussel’s humour, voluntary or not, resides entirely in this play of disproportionate balances: ‘There are a few of us who hear [in Roussel] the lugubrious tick-tock of the infernal machine that Lautréamont left on the mind’s doorstep,’ says Jean Lévy,1 ‘and who greet each of its liberating explosions with admiration.’
The same critic has rightly noted that no one has yet come close to determining the relative portion of humour, obsession, and repression in this work. Roussel, in fact, had some dealings with psychopathology, and his case even furnished Pierre Janet with the pretext for a paper entitled ‘The Psychological Characteristics of Ecstasy.’ His suicide (?) only seemed to confirm the idea that throughout his entire writing career he had remained abnormal. At the age of nineteen, upon finishing his poem La Doublure, he experienced Nietzsche’s final ecstasy: ‘One feels that a particular work one has created is a masterpiece, that one is a genius … I was the equal of Dante and Shakespeare; I experienced what the aged Victor Hugo felt at seventy, what Napoleon felt in 1811, what Tannhauser dreamt at the Venusberg. What I was writing was bathed in radiance. I closed the curtains, for fear that the slightest opening might let out the rays of light shining from my pen; I wanted to yank back the screen all at once and illuminate the world. To leave these papers lying about would have caused luminous beams to shine all the way to China, and frantic crowds would have stormed the house.’
All the way to China … The child who adored Jules Verne, the lover of Punch and Judy shows, the very wealthy man who had built for his travels the most luxurious mobile home in the world remained until the end the worst detractor, the harshest critic of real voyages. ‘In Peking,’ said Michel Leiris, ‘he shut himself away after a cursory tour of the city,’ just as he remained writing in his cabin for several days, passing up his first opportunity to set foot in Tahiti.
The magnificent originality of Roussel’s work significantly refutes and definitively affronts the champions of an outmoded primary realism, whether called ‘socialist’ or not. ‘Martial,’ as the author of Locus Solus is identified in Pierre Janet’s study, ‘has a very interesting conception of literary beauty: the work must contain nothing real, no observations about the world or the mind, nothing but completely imaginary constructions. These are in themselves ideas from an extrahuman world.’
BIBLIOGRAPHY: La Doublure, 1897. La Vue, 1904. Impressions d’Afrique, 1910. Locus Solus, 1914. Pages choisies, 1918. L’Etoile au Front, 1925. La Poussière de soleils, 1926. Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique, 1932. Comment j’ai écrit certains de mes livres, 1935.
BIBLIOGRAPHY IN ENGLISH: Impressions of Africa. Locus Solus. The Star on the Forehead. The Dust of Suns. How I Wrote Certain of My Books. Selections from Certain of His Books.
The C was still vibratin in the distance when Fuxier came towards us, clasping to his breast, with his right hand spread round it, an earthenware pot from which sprouted a vine.
In his left hand he held a transparent, cylindrical jar, fitted with a cork with a metal tube running through it, and displaying in the bottom a heap of chemical salts, blossoming into beautiful crystals.
Placing his two burdens on the ground, Fuxier took from his pocket a small dark-lantern which he set down quite flat on the surface of the soil, so that it was just touching the inside edge of the stone pot. An electric current, turned on in the heart of the portable lamp, suddenly projected a dazzling beam of white light, directed towards the zenith by a powerful lens.
Then, picking up the jar, which he held horizontally, Fuxier turned a key placed at the end of the metal tube, from which an outlet, carefully directed at a particular part of the vine, sprayed out a heavily compressed gas. A brief explanation by the operator informed us that this fluid, on coming into contact with the atmosphere, at once produced an intense heat which, combined with certain very peculiar chemical properties, would ripen a bunch of grapes before our eyes.
He had scarcely finished his commentary when already the sight he had announced began to appear visibly in the form of a minute cluster of grapes. Fuxier, possessing the power which legend attributes to certain fakirs of India, was accomplishing for our benefit the miracle of sudden blossoming.
Under the influence of the chemical current, the embryo fruit developed rapidly, and soon a single bunch of white grapes, heavy and ripe, hung on the side of the vine.
Fuxier replaced the jar on the ground, after closing the tube with another turn of the key. Then, drawing our attention to the bunch of fruit, he pointed out tiny figures imprisoned in the centre of the translucent spheres.
By executing in advance on the incipient fruit modelling and colouring processes more intricate even than those involved in the preparation of his blue and red pastilles, Fuxier had deposited in each seed the embryo of a pleasing picture whose development had just followed the phases of the ripening so quickly achieved.
Through the skin of the grapes, which was particularly fine and transparent, it was possible, by standing near them, to study without difficulty the different groups which were lit from above by the electric beam.
The modifications carried out in the germinal phase had resulted in the suppression of pips so that nothing disturbed the clarity of the translucent, coloured, Lilliputian statues, whose material was provided by the pulp itself.
‘A glimpse of ancient Gaul,’ said Fuxier, pointing with his finger at the first grape, in which a number of Celtic warriors were preparing for battle.
Each of us admired the delicacy of the lines, so effectively thrown into relief by the luminous effulgence.
‘Odo being sawn up by a demon in the dream of Count Valtguire,’ continued Fuxier, indicating the second grape.
This time one could distinguish, within the delicate skin, a sleeper in armour lying at the foot of a tree; a wisp of smoke which seemed to issue from his forehead, to represent a dream, contained in its fine coils a devil armed with a long saw, whose pointed teeth were cutting into the body of one of the damned, contorted with pain.
Another grape, summarily explained, showed the circus in Rome, packed with a large crowd, watching with excitement a fight between gladiators.
‘Napoleon in Spain.’ These words of Fuxier’s referred to a fourth grape, in which the Emperor, dressed in his green costume, rode as a conqueror on horseback among the inhabitants, who seemed to revile him by their sullen, menacing attitude.
‘From the Gospel of St Luke,’ Fuxier went on, lightly touching three grapes which hung side by side from the same parent stalk, divided into three branches, and in which the three scenes which follow were composed of the same characters.
In the first instance, Jesus was seen stretching out his hand to a little girl with her lips half-open and a fixed stare in her eyes, who seemed to be singing some light, long-drawn-out trill. Beside her on a straw pallet a little boy, lying motionless in the sleep of death, clutched between his fingers a long wand of osier; near the death-bed the father and mother, overcome by grief, wept silently. In the corner a sickly, hunchbacked girl remained humbly in the background.
In the middle grape, Jesus, turning towards the bed of straw, was looking at the dead child who, miraculously restored to life, was plaiting the light, flexible wand of osier like a skilled basket-weaver. The family, filled with wonder, showed their joyful amazement with ecstatic gestures.
The last scene, in the same setting, and with the same characters, glorified Jesus, as he touched the crippled girl, who suddenly became beautiful and erect.
Leaving this short trilogy to one side, Fuxier lifted up the bottom of the bunch and showed us a splendid grape, commenting on it with these words:
‘Hans the woodcutter and his six sons.’
Inside, a remarkably robust old man was carrying on his shoulder a tremendous load of wood, consisting of whole trunks, mixed with bundles of fire wood, tied together with creepers. Behind him, six young men were all bent, severally under a burden of the same type, but infinitely lighter. The old man, half turning his head, seemed to be mocking the laggards, who were less enduring and less vigorous than himself.
In the penultimate grape, a youth, clad in the costume of the reign of Louis XV, while out for a stroll, gazed with emotion at a young woman in a flame-red gown who was sitting in her doorway as he passed.
‘The first pangs of love, experienced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile,’ explained Fuxier, who, turning the grape in his fingers, caused the electric beams to play among the bright red reflections of the gaudy dress.
The tenth and last grape contained a superhuman duel which Fuxier presented to us as the reproduction of a painting by Raphael. An angel, hovering a few feet from the ground, was driving the point of his sword into the breast of Satan, who staggered back, dropping his weapon.
Having thus surveyed the whole cluster, Fuxier extinguished the dark-lantern, which he replaced in his pocket, then went away, once more, as at his entrance, carrying the earthenware pot and the cylindrical container.
(translated by Rayner Heppenstall and Lindy Foord)
* * *
Sixteenth Tableau: A flat, empty place. At the back of the stage, an iron railing behind which a cross rises. Stage left, an outdoor table which the seated collection-taker supervises while plying her needle.
REARD: I’m certain, Monsieur Blache. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that we’re still on the right track.
BLACHE: So in your view the three asterisks underlined among all the rest on the Okleat stamp that we found in my uncle’s collection –
REARD: – can only indicate the three stars carved on this cross.
BLACHE: Is someone buried here?
REARD: Quite the opposite – someone whose name, François Patrier, is on every tongue. Over there lies a stretch of quicksand that in former times, before this railing existed, was fenced off by no more than a sign – on one occasion overlooked by a dizzy youngster with a butterfly net whom a common hawkmoth lured beyond it. On the run when he heard the shouts of the foolhardy boy came François Patrier, a fisherman, who could only wrest him from the clasp of death by enduring it himself.
BLACHE: He sank – ?
REARD: – very quickly, alas, and soon was obliged to hold over his head the child to whose voice he had joined his own in vain. The sand was almost level with his lower lip when at last a group appeared on the horizon, hurrying towards them.
BLACHE: The distance remaining couldn’t fail to take several minutes to cover –
REARD: That’s why, seeing, where he was concerned, that help would come too late, François Patrier made of the boy a final request. Anxious to demonstrate that no part of what had motivated him resembled a desire for fame, he asked that on the cross to be erected near the site of his disappearance there be merely inscribed three stars.
BLACHE: And when the rescuers arrived?
REARD: Nothing more emerged than two hands sustaining the boy, whom they were able to reach by firmly linking arms to form a long and sturdy chain – while François Patrier finally vanished for good.
BLACHE: The boy conveyed his last wish – ?
REARD [pointing to the cross]: – which was faithfully executed.
BLACHE: I see – three stars, not even the year …
REARD: Nonetheless there soon arose a literally irresistible need to satisfy – so great was its sway – the universal yearning to honour such a hero; and since his brief oral will concerned only his burial cross, it was felt that raising a statue to him in town would not disobey his wish.
BLACHE: So a public subscription was opened – ?
REARD: – and is not yet closed. One touching detail: it’s right here, every day, that contributions are taken and deposited in this urn. The minimum is five francs, and any greater sum must correspond to the product of one of the powers of that digit.
BLACHE: Then someone wanting to give more than five francs –
REARD: – must choose between twenty-five francs, one hundred and twenty-five, or six hundred and twenty-five, and there is nothing to stop him proceeding to three thousand one hundred and twenty-five, or fifteen thousand six hundred and twenty-five, or even … Let’s stop there. It is hoped that this progression will suggest high figures to the rich.
BLACHE: We must find out whether my uncle … How can we make this woman –
REARD: Would you like to make a contribution?
BLACHE: Of course, and with all my heart.
REARD [going up to THE COLLECTION-TAKER]: This is Monsieur Blache, who wishes to participate –
THE COLLECTION-TAKER: Blache – I already have that name in my donation records. [Thinking.] Under five squared, or cubed … More likely cubed.
REARD: You understand, contributions are scrupulously classified in a series of registers, all bearing the number five, the first unmodified, the remainder displaying, in order, the scale of powers up to the sixth.
BLACHE: And the registers accordingly decline in thickness from first to last.
THE COLLECTION-TAKER [after leafing through one of the registers]: Yes – here’s the name. It does appear in the third register.
BLACHE [taking out his wallet]: In that case, out of family loyalty I’ll follow this good example. I choose for my donation that number that will allow it to reappear there.
(translated by Harry Mathews)
1. A.k.a. Jean Ferry, who later figures in this anthology in his own right. [trans.]