Raymond Roussel (1877–1933)

Do I have a favorite poet? No. Do I really enjoy reading poetry that much? No. Do I think Raymond Roussel is a great poet? YES. I might not've answered YES before reading this bk.. but now I'm convinced. I'd previously been very impressed by his "The View" for reasons that're typical of me: THE IDEA OF IT: the idea of writing a long poem based on describing what the author can see reflected in the convex surface of a paperweight. This attn to detail, this amazing focus, this novel formal show more restriction. But, still, impressed as I was by "The View", it was possible to dismiss it somewhat as not enuf beyond the novelty. Not so w/ "New Impressions of Africa".

I'd been wanting to read this for many a yr. Then I read Eddie Watkins' excellent review & learned from it of the bk's availability. Hence I got it ASAP. But, THEN, I had to READ it.. - & this was a slow process. Anyone knowing that Roussel's "Impressions of Africa" was a novel might expect something entitled "New Impressions of Africa" to be a sequel - &, perhaps in Roussel's mind it was.. but the connection between the 2 wd be highly abstract indeed.

Roussel's writing is procedural, proto-OuLiPoian - formal restrictions channel the content in ways unlikely to be traveled by other means. &, in some cases, this may seem TOO forced. Here, it seems.. 'perfect'. The writing seems to me to be a panoramic view of reality from the perspective of a constantly cross-referencing human encyclopedia. A human encyclopedia w/ a sense of humor, wise, even.

In the main body of the text, after the Introduction, the TOPS of the pages are uncut. Enclosed w/in these sealed sections are deliberately conventional illustrations that Roussel solicited anonymously so that the artist wdn't create them knowing he was doing so for Roussel. The reader is encouraged in the introduction to leave these pages uncut. In the poem on p125 there's this:

"Opening a crib's white drapes, for two uncut
Pages when prised apart; angles that jut"

& then on the following pages (enclosed by their tops uncut) there's Roussel's illustration instruction on the left:

"A man sitting by a table on which a book is positioned
vertically; he is prising apart two uncut pages to read a
passage"

- opposite wch text is an illustration of this. HOWEVER, the illustrator has pictured this so that the man is looking DOWN onto the uncut top rather than into its recess. This seems sloppy to me on the part of the illustrator but perhaps it's not, perhaps the illustrator is showing the uncut fold as part of the content. At any rate, what we have here is a newborn baby of a bk, enclosed in "a crib's white drapes". Roussel has prised apart his mind & loosed language full of surprise & history & PERSONALITY - & this latter is what surprised me the most. Take this passage:

"The prude's eye dodges, for the red behind
Of a whipped rascal; - the bead left behind
On a snapped rosary, for an old convict
Dragging a ball and chain; - a boil when pricked
And liquid flows out; not a water-skin
Pierced basely in the desert; - in a spin,
A masted ship blown whichways in a storm,
For a teetotum, - the red rhomboid form,
Of poison-warning sign's on a flask's label"

Instead of having the content close w/ each rhyme completed, Roussel propels it all forward w/ a sortof restlessness of constant change, a fluidity of meaning that metamorphoses its degrees of viscosity. Bravo!

& the translation by Ian Monk must certainly be highly praised too!! show less

I'm joyously astounded to see how many people've read this on GoodReads! I'm fond of saying that Roussel was the greatest Surrealist writer WITHOUT ever having been a Surrealist (despite the promotional labelling of this bk as "French Surrealism" on the cover of the edition I have). Each individual scene in the tour of the main character Martial Canterel's Locus Solus has more imagination than most entire novels do. Just the way in wch the mural of multi-colored teeth is made is worth the show more price of admission into Roussel's world. Roussel was, of course, widely lambasted in his time & eventually committed suicide. So much for the famous French pride in its clever literature. show less

The first third or so of this book is a long series of fantastic theatrical, pseudo-scientific and artistic events performed for an african king. The extraordinary tableau's march past in excruciatingly specific detail in the literary equivalent of a dull monotone.
It was one of the dullest and most painful reading experiences i have had in quite some time.
The rest of the work is a flashback which explains each of the previous scenes you didn't care about. The convoluted sequence of events show more with numerous tangents, is at least mildly engaging in places.
Overall some of the details are at least interesting if not the delivery but 2 stars still feels like i'm being generous. show less

What does it mean, exactly, to read this book?

First, I think it must mean that you have already read 'How I Wrote Certain of My Books,' 'Locus Solus,' and 'Impressions of Africa': that is, you are thoroughly immersed, hypnotized, pithed by Roussel's absolutely unimpeachable, unapproachable weirdness. Then, I think it should mean you have read something about Roussel: Foucault's very literary book, or possibly Mark Ford's very sober appreciation.

But then what can it possibly mean to read a show more book that keeps opening parentheses (like this ((and then parentheses within those, like this (((or this))) apparently endlessly (((and not at all always rationally ((((or so it seems)))) )))) )) ), playing arcane word games, making unconsciously ridiculous similes, proposing utterly opaque allusions, proposing the reader stop to cut the intentionally uncut octavo pages, and posing book-length puzzles that can never be solved because they aren't even (proper) puzzles. Even that sentence is easiest to read by plowing straight through. If I try to read it according to the order of the parentheses, I need to parse it carefully, and that is at once tedious and unrewarding.

Here are the two most obvious ways that 'New Impressions of Africa' proposes that it be read:

1. Read straight through, including footnotes whenever they appear.

2. Read the way the surrealist's machine for turning the pages of the book supposedly worked: i.e., read to the opening of the first parentheses, find the place where that parenthesis closes, read from there to the end of the canto, return to the opening of the parenthesis, read (skipping interpolated parentheses), etc. -- until you have read the very last quintuple-nested parenthesis.

The first kind of reading cannot yield the sense of any canto, because the logic, the argument -- whatever it should be called -- will be impossible to follow. The second raises two further possibilities:

2a. Read mechanically, assiduously, skipping nothing, but reading in the moment, taking in each new stanza or couplet or page as it presents itself.

2b. Read as you would read a piece of argumentative non-fiction, or a detective story: that is, try to keep the argument, or logic, or story, or grammar in mind as you go.

I propose this last is the real challenge of the book, and I see almost no evidence that critics have tried it: and yet I think the logic and structure of the book itself makes such a reading just barely possible, and therefore necessary.

I claim to have read Canto 2, 'The Battlefield of the Pyramids,' in this way, keeping the logic of the entire canto in mind as I read. It opens with three nested arguments in the space of half a page: a description of a coat (then a parenthesis opens, and inside it begins a description of a scarecrow, as an allegory of faith ((then a double parenthesis opens, and inside it a meditation on the cross apprently begins)) ); the first two argments end where the parentheses close, on the last page of the canto. It was possible for me, one afternoon, to keep the entire top-heavy, preposterously artificial, tottering, twisted, perverse, inhuman argument in mind at once. At that moment -- which is now long gone -- I felt I had expended the effort Roussel demanded, and found my way to a new kind of rigor. A useless rigor, of course, but that is entirely the point. show less