René Crevel (1900–1935)

René Crevel... He was dadaist, surrealist, communist, gay, and a suicide, aged 35. Also consumptive--he actually underwent therapy in Davos, right there in the setting of Mann's Der Zauberberg. Êtes-vous fous? (Are you mad?), some say, is the first surrealist novel, if a novel can be permitted to... have no boundaries and sort of splash all around. It's a notably strange text from an epoch brimming with strange texts and damn hard to hang onto, like a live fish. The main character is the show more narrator, who is Crevel, who is called Vagualâme (wonderfully evocative of half a dozen things: vagabondage?, the sea?, an uncertain soul?, a wavy soul?, waves like blades? etc.) who receives a prophecy from a fortuneteller about a redheaded woman who'll bear him a blue child, and an encounter with a Mata Harish, femme fataleish woman-city, who turns out to be some kind of zombie, kept alive by a fakir, whose niece turns out to be the readhead of the blue child, who dies as soon as it is born etc. This is underpinned by Crevel's real-life reminiscences and introspection, revolving around his sanatorium stay in Davos, when he had a (first?) homosexual affair with an American, and faced his own death, one supposes, because it seems that his suicide, years later, was triggered by the discovery that he wasn't completely cured, that the TB had returned. show less

Lyrical tale of a bourgeois family's collapse and degradation from the perspective of its youngest member, told by poet and surrealist Crevel. The highly poetic language often borders on the incomprehensible, but the whole thing is an unparalleled rush of images. Beautiful.

No idea how to rate this one. I really enjoyed the out-of-the-blue, straight-up social/political commentary-- but it was such a weirdly inserted block within a larger surrealist framework that I'm not sure what to make of the whole thing, in terms of effective delivery of Crevel's project.

Surrealistisch, autobiografische roman over de achtergronden van een zelfmoord, die terug te voeren zijn tot een homofiele passie.

Van de Franse schrijver Rene Crevel (1900-1935) is in ons land weinig bekend. Van dit zeer toegewijde lid van de surrealistische beweging, die op 35-jarige leeftijd zelfmoord pleegde als uiterste konsekwentie van zijn opstandigheid tegen het leven, is nu voor het eerst een roman in vertaling verschenen. 'De moeilijke dood' is een sterk autobiografisch boek over show more het spanningsveld tussen een hartstochtelijke, met kwelling beantwoordde, homofiele liefde en een uitgesproken burgerlijk milieu. Het boek preludeert a.h.w. op Crevels latere zelfmoord. show less