Intimate Bureaucracies and Kitsch

       While reading about some of the amazing mail art and Boggs’ bills in Networked Art, I was reminded of the National Park Passport book I own. The park system sells a small passport book for people to buy and have stamped at each National Park, Historic Place, or Monument they visit, exactly as one would stamp a passport when visiting a country. Each park or monument has their own unique stamp that mirrors the type of stamp one would get while going through customs (looking exactly like the canceling stamp of Guy Bleus on page 15). I have collected hundreds of these passport stamps over the years during my travels. In fact, the National Park passport program seems like it derives from (or at least is parallel to) the mail art movement.

       However, I would argue that these stamps are not mail art, but pure kitsch, precisely because they do not fit Craig Saper’s theory of intimate bureaucratic art. While these passport stamps are directly based on the bureaucratic passport system of international customs offices and are a part of a collective endeavor by travelers, they are not conspiratorial, do not share a new language, do not destroy the origin of the international passport system, and do not depend on an individual artist’s craft. In other words, these stamps are merely kitsch: mass produced imitations designed to appeal to the largest number of tourists.

       I find it interesting that a bureaucratic entity has turned a mail art element into a kitsch product that advertises its own governmental program. To me, this idea of an “intimate bureaucracy” is what separates mail art from kitsch. It seems like a very fine line—many of the mail art examples in the book seemed “kitschy.” However, the ultimately subversive qualities of this art that resists the label of kitsch can be found in the idea of the intimate bureaucracy, which the National Park Passport program fails to have. (But I will still collect those stamps!)

Hitchcock's Rope as Quasi-Oulipo

       This is a difficult blog entry for me to write, since I had trouble thinking of a text that uses Oulipo constraints, beyond the ones we have discussed in class. The only text that comes to mind is Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, which attempts to show the on-screen action in real-time without a single cut. The technical difficulties of achieving this in cinema (as opposed to one long, 80-minute stage production) included trying to have consistent sound (and microphone placement) throughout extended takes that often moved from room-to-room, organizing props in a way that would allow the camera to move freely, silent stage-hands who would move set pieces off-camera to allow camera and microphone movement during filming, and actors who wouldn’t consistently ruin takes deep into filming. In fact, even after Hitchcock solved each of these problems, he still was forced to shoot the film in ten segments due to the limitation of film in each camera. Even if he had the capability to have more film in a canister, he would have had to deal with camera over-heating. Therefore, each long-take had to be timed so as not to run out of film before completing the scene. Each edit was masked so as to seem as if the film were shot in real time for one long, continuous take. Often, the cuts were masked in black (for example, an actor would step in front of the camera, momentarily causing a black screen, where Hitchcock would make the unnoticeable cut). The last limitation had to do with projecting the film in theaters, which required a projectionist to change reels (about three times for an 80-minute film). Since these moments would actually seem like they were interrupting the action, Hitchcock purposely made three unmasked cuts at the moments of reel changes, which would actually seem much more seamless to audiences watching the film in theaters.

       The result is a film that feels real-time and incorporates the best possible traits of cinema and theater. Unlike a staged drama, mistakes could be fixed with new takes and pauses were not needed between acts. Set pieces could be moved silently in one room behind the camera as action was being filmed in an adjoining room. Unlike the manufactured feel of cinematic multi-camera set-ups with over-the-shoulder shots and quick edits, this film felt more personal, with less technical distraction.

       This also brings up an interesting theoretical point: in placing these limits on himself, Hitchcock designed the entire film as a way to mask his self-imposed constraints. In the other works we’ve read or seen, the artists have been practically flaunting the constraints as obstructions that must be over-come. Perhaps the reason I like Rope (it is my favorite Hitchcock film) is that the constraints don’t actually feel like they are obstructing anything at all, just because they are disguised so well. It feels like a different text than the ones we’ve discussed in class because those works announced their constraints instead of trying to conceal them.

Episodic Obstructions

            There are a few similarities in If on a Winter’s Night, The Five Obstructions, and A Void, including direct reference to audience (in Vowel’s diary, in Lars Von Trier’s written monologue at end of the film, and throughout Calvino’s work) and  ekphrastic descriptions of works of art within each work (including Leth’s cinematic quotation of his own film). The one that struck me as being essential, as I mentioned last class, was the episodic nature of each.

            However, “episodic” is not quite the correct word, since episodes in the truest since can be arranged in any order without impacting the overall narrative structure of the work. The “episodes” in all three works do have a specific order that must be maintained as the story builds. For example, in The Five Obstructions we couldn’t have the Brussels segment occurring before the India segment (the punishment must necessarily follow the crime), while in If on a Winter's Night… we must have the chapter before the “anti-chapter,” with each chapter building toward a conclusion at the end of the novel. Perec’s novel is the least episodic, with each chapter feeling more like scenes from a play sprinkled with diary entries.

            We might conclude that the obstruction in each work is not leading to destruction of all order, but generating new systems within an older, necessary order. In that sense, understanding each work as episodic reveals how the function of each obstruction slightly changes the function of each episode while always fostering a structure that builds toward narrative closure of some sort. Of course, one wonders how these texts might be different if these episodes were re-arranged out of chronological order.

Research Project: Jungian Alchemical Cycles of Transformation in Locus Solus

        For my research project, I’ll be writing a short article-length research paper (16 – 18 pages) based on parts 1 and 2 of my blog entry on Roussel. Most of the primary works on Roussel and alchemy are only available in French (specifically works by Jean Ferry—a contemporary of Breton—and Ricahrd Danier). However, I’ve found sources in English that summarize and explain these sources, so I can have a basic understanding of how Roussel is already read in alchemical terms. In brief, previous scholars have focused on Roussel’s linguistic wordplay and cryptic metaphors connecting to alchemical materials and processes. Breton noted references to cabbalistic ritual and Tarot in Roussel’s work; however, he was primarily examining Roussel’s play La Poussiere de soleil. 

       Since my knowledge of alchemy is really only second-hand from Jung’s writings (in which he examines alchemy metaphorically to illustrate the functioning of the psyche—the union of the Self through opposites, as symbolized in the Lapis Philosophorum), I am doing a great deal of background research on the literal practices of alchemists. I am also researching critical interpretations and biographies of Roussel that don’t directly mention alchemy, such as Foucault’s Death and the Labyrinth and Mark Ford’s Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams. Finally, I’m tracking down as much of Breton’s readings of Roussel I can find in English. This week I’ll be reading Breton’s Arcanum 17, which includes discussions of Jung and Tarot. 

       My unique angle (which I haven’t seen any scholars address, although I’m still in the midst of my research) is to take into consideration Jungian alchemical cycles in Locus Solus. I plan to argue that the novel's cyclical structure (in the way I have mapped it out in the chart on my blog) reflects certain traits of alchemy that Jung also describes as metaphors for individuation. With this reading, I’m trying to understand the novel as the artist’s search for wholeness or completeness of the fractured self. Instead of focusing on wordplay or finding linguistic connections to alchemy (which previous scholars have covered), I will do a very specific Jungian reading. In the process, I also hope to illuminate the cyclical narrative structure of the novel, based on my chart, which I argue mirrors Jung’s claim of “inner alchemy” as a process by which imagination fosters a cycle of creative death and resurrection that leads to transformations of both the unconscious and the outer physical world. To me, the narrative structure that I’ve mapped out is essential for understanding how the novel emphasizes death and rebirth as inner, creative processes that are expressed through the act of artistic creation. I also hope this reading will compliment and extend Foucault’s analysis.

Oulipian Constraints

       The constraints of Oulipo seems to be directly at odds with the Surrealist emphasis on automatic writing or allowing the language of the subconscious to emerge through the creative process. Whereas the Surrealists break starkly from tradition, the Oulipos seem to reappropriate old forms. If the sonnet stands at odds with the type of poetry generated through automatic writing, then the Oulipian use of the sonnet form makes the old form new by revealing the freedom of restriction.

        Since I’m not a creative writer, the only time I’ve really dealt with constraints or restrictions on a regular basis is with academic writing. We don’t often think of the stylistic conventions of academic writing as being particularly liberating or creatively stimulating, but sometimes I do my best thinking when crafting a formal essay. How might I synthesize a complex idea into a fifteen-page maximum essay? Or how might I challenge myself to expand an idea into an article-length essay? How can I craft an idea in one field that might be of interest to readers across disciplines?

        In my experience writing story variations of this class, I was venturing into completely new territory. Whereas the poetry assignment was challenging, it didn’t feel overwhelming because I had at least some previous experience writing poetry when I was younger. But since I’ve had no experience writing short fiction or creating various plots and scenarios with re-written material, I felt as if I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t even know if I was doing the assignment in the right way (or even if there was a “right way”). I had to ask myself questions I had never asked before of my own writing (or at least, not in terms of writing short fiction): What exactly is a “linguistic” variation? How does a variation in narrative differ from a variation in genre? Can one story actually contain all three types of variations, and if so, is that allowed? (This might perhaps relate to Le Lionnais’ idea of “levels of constraint.”) After asking these questions and looking at the example from Queneau, I just barreled ahead and gave it my best shot.

        It’s hard for me to answer the question of which movement is more “revolutionary.” When reading the Surrealists, I felt I was encountering literature I had never experienced before. In reading the few Oulipo texts we’re been assigned so far, I feel as if some of these techniques are not as new or as unique as what the Surrealists were doing. Calvino’s novel in particular seemed too close to Hoffmann’s The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr with the idea of a meta-narrative of intertwined stories, complete with printer’s errors, parallel chapters, and shadow characters. The idea of Oulipo writers “embracing” previous writers as those who were Oulipo but just didn’t know it, seems to suggest that they also realized that perhaps their ideas weren’t new, even if they were trying to push boundaries with older traditions.

Zürn and the Wound of the Knife

        Near the beginning of her novella Dark Spring, Unica Zürn presents a striking image of a little girl mutilating “a big, expensive doll” given to her by her father’s female companion. The moment both reveals the inner psychology of the character and introduces a symbol that will become important later in the story: the knife. Because she is “[angry] and desperate about the unhappy conditions inside her home,” the girl “takes a knife and cuts out the doll’s eyes” and “slices open the belly of the doll and tears her expensive clothes” (40). At first glance, this appears to be an abortive act, slicing open the womb of the doll to express frustration in her struggle to understand her budding sexual desires and her inability to have her father all to her own. Two of the novella’s primary themes are a search for a lack of completeness and for a feminine identity, which are both symbolized in slicing through the doll’s womb.

        In The Uncanny, Freud links blindness and fear of losing one’s eyes to castration anxiety. For women, this happens is when a young girl attaches to the father and grows separate from the mother at the phallic stage. In the previous paragraph, Zurn describes the girl’s initial rejection of her mother’s body as monstrous, setting up a tension throughout the novel between the girl and her overbearing mother.

        The Freudian reading of the scene is even more apparent when the word “knife” again appears in the text when the girl’s brother forces himself onto her and “drills his ‘knife’ (as she calls it) into her ‘wound” (56). By referring to her brother’s penis as a “knife,” the girl links the aggressive sexual act to the violent dismembering of the doll—the moment at which she first acknowledges her own psychological wound. We must then return to the doll scene and understand the slice across the belly as not only abortive, but also sexual—both a creation of and an attack on the vaginal “wound” that foreshadows the sexual thrusting of her brother. In this sense, the doll scene can be read as the girl performing her own “wounding”—that is to say, both coming into the sexuality of her own womanhood and lashing out against the lack of completeness she feels as a direct result of that sexual awakening.

Cut-and-Paste Found Poetry Part II

Based on the poem I wrote in the previous entry (which you should probably read first), Lane asked me to do the following: "1) out of this, 'mine' a short poem that feels definitively 'modern' (in a contemporary way, not in a classical Modernist way) and 2) using only this text, (connective words are allowed) turn this poem into a sonnet."

Below I've written two new poems using only the words and punctuation found in my initial poem with no extra or connective words. The sonnet is first, followed by the contemporary poem. I loved writing Shakespearean sonnets when I was a teenager, but I haven't written one in over ten years (and never with these constraints). I don't think I've ever tried to write a contemporary poem, per say. In all honestly, I don't read much poetry beyond the 1970s, and mostly it's late stuff from James Dickey or Robert Penn Warren, both of whom rejected contemporary poetry in different ways. But, I gave it my best shot!

As mentioned in the previous post, these words all come from movie titles in my DVD collection.

*******************************************

Strange Sanctum

Beyond the scarlet-golden sunset light,

A raven dreams of death. Condemned to fly

On silent wings across the winter night.

Her lonely sacred burden is to die.

The violent voyage of eternity

Will long escape this phantom with no name.

Her fugitive flesh now chained to body,

With soul reborn in rhapsodies of flame.     

A distant lightning echoes in my eyes--

The moonlight shadows at midnight are long.

The Darkness broken by savage sunrise.

I wake up to witness God's hollow song.

Passion of night now vanishes in fire--

My dream an illusion of inner desire.

***********************************************

Bridal Shadows

My wife is chained

to my shame. I murder her

heart, and smile as I kiss

her naked tears.

We live a hollow life.

At night we scream

as in a tomb.

I speak of her

as a saboteur of my passion--

But I am her.

Cut-and-Paste Found Poetry

Here is my cut-and-paste poem from found sources. Below the poem I provide a link to where I drew the material. I figured it would be more fun to read the poem first before discovering how I pieced it together. I rewrote this countless times over the week until I got it just the way I like it, so this is pretty close to how the final draft will look.

***************************************

The Triumph of Dream Shadows

Temptress Satan, my lady of whims,

keeper of the flame as the long

day closes: witness your black legion gambling

with souls. Invisible agents of destiny, they live by lessons

of darkness. Phantom fiends with no name,

wolf riders by gaslight, herdsmen

of the lonely dawn. Flesh and the devil

duel for inner sanctum.

Each sunset I die.

Tonight: behind locked doors, a savage

bridal procession. Fallen angels dance with burning

flowers, desperate sinners on a paradise path

of passion. Death smiles on the women

condemned--demons who fire-walk on a violent sea of grass

where serpents dream of winter light. Dangerous Juno--Killer

of Men! Royal Wife of the Goat! Sitting high and strange across

the distant valley of vengeance--who

leaves nothing sacred in this narrow

corridor of sleeping bondage. 

Chained raven of Hell strikes scarlet streets of panic. 

My marked woman of shadows

reborn in moonlight--assassin of youth in the persona

of a stolen face. Her heart of glass. Her naked

kiss a fog of evil. Lethal decoy, strange illusion,

discreet downfall of

Shame.

Saboteur of ecstasies on broken wings of hope.

The midnight bride came D.O.A.

Call it murder! Or the conquest of a lesser god.

For her, I wept a golden reservoir of tears.

Eternity remains a hollow triumph for

God's lonely man,

a sinner in the land of silence and darkness.

Glitterbug soul, rise from my wild eyes (Look:

A dragonfly in the stardust!).

Fly beyond the last door of the living flesh to

escape the Chariots of Death.

We are spellbound searchers for the moonstone of life....

 (*But sweet rhapsodies also die--the burden of dreams

at Bellevue.) 

Sunrise! 

And with it Death. 

I wake up screaming. Chimes of a sombre empire ring

bells from the deep. A scream of stone:

song of fear in the night like lightning over water. A trick of light

echoes in the tomb of the blind dead. The midnight

voyage vanishes. My fugitive soul encounters its body

in the final shock of day. 

I speak now my ballad of fire: a tribute to

the fata morgana of lost desire.

***********************************************

My list of found items for this poem consisted of titles from my DVD collection, which can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/notes/mike-sanders/my-dvd-and-vhs-collection/10151104618662489 (I made this Facebook note public, so I think everyone should be able to see the list from this link). Every word in the poem comes from the list, and I didn't reuse words unless they appeared on the list multiple times. For example, I used the word "of" 23 times. It appears on the list far more than 23 times. (I stopped counting after 23 because I didn't use the word any more!) "Death" appears on the list seven times. I used it twice.  At one point I wanted to use the word "drink" or "eat," but I didn't have them, so I had to go in another direction. I also could only use "as" twice and "but" once. Thankfully, I had Woody Allen's Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask, or I would have been unable to use it at all! 

Notice that I also incorporated the asterisk in the title before the word "But," as in Allen's title. All punctuation marks that appear in the poem--periods, commas, dashes, exclamation points, and parentheses--also appear on the list, and I didn't use any more than are on the list. Thankfully, I had many titles with "Mr." and "Dr." or abbreviations like "C.O.D." or "D.O.A.," which I mined for periods in my poem. I also had Lindsay Anderson's IF...., from which I drew the ellipsis after "moonstone of life...." 

Since I’m a fan of old B-movies from the 30s, film noir, and German cinema, the tone of the poem is fairly dark! I think the best lines in the poem come from the German film titles.

Found on the Internet...

Man Ray

        The most difficult part of writing about Man Ray is trying to decide which work to discuss. He was a master photographer, painter, and filmmaker. His photographic nudes somehow seem to be steeped in both classical tradition and modernist aesthetics. He captures the curves and shadows of the female form like the finest master painters, while providing shocking new ways of looking at the body that literally defined avant-garde photography. For me, twentieth-century photographic art begins with Man Ray, with apologies to Stieglitz, Strand, and others.

        Of all Man Ray's photographs, his macabre 1932 photographs on suicide, including his self-portraits, are the most fascinating. For me, these photos have always been strangely positive images—not morose meditations suicide, but Man Ray’s wry comment on the rather silly ways we trap ourselves in ruts or self-destructive rituals of our own design.

        Although all three have very different meanings for me, for the sake of this blog entry I’ll just examine one—the first photograph of Jacqueline Goddard. It is reminiscent of a cigarette advertisement, as if the model is blissfully unaware of her collection of vices. As in an ad, she invites the viewer to follow her lead, in this case down a path of oblivious folly, smiling all the while. She seems comically blind to her own self-destruction (I’m thinking of celebrities like Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen as modern examples), even though we all see it quite clearly. Of course, the joke is on us: the implication is that each of us is largely blind to the causes of our own personal demons and hang-ups, which might be easily perceived by outside viewers. Yet, we all must persist with our metaphorical heads-in-the-noose. This idea is probably best summed by Beckett’s famous final line of The Unnamable: “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

        I read in a biography of Man Ray that he decided to take these photos one day in his studio in Paris after going through one of the most challenging and depressing periods of his life up to that time. By staging these scenes with such obvious props, Man Ray seems to be expressing the absurdity of our own self-loathing. Photography, as a ritual staging of the death of a moment (to borrow an idea from Roland Barthes), is a cathartic moment of release that counteracts the self-loathing. It is the process of generating art that allows the artist to "go on" by ritualistically and metaphorically ending one phase of life and moving on to another.

Robert Desnos and Creative Awakenings

       The two most striking features of Robert Desnos’ poetry are his use of anaphoral language with wildly differing metaphors at the end of each line, and his use of traditional poetic images (especially flowers, stars, and  “kisses”) that often set-up or frame those surreal juxtapositions. I found myself frustrated at times by the second point, wondering just how many times Desnos was going to rely on stars and cosmic objects to describe mystical or dreamlike experiences. However, I was able to push beyond my mild annoyance to appreciate some of the truly odd and unique turns of phrase that emerged in each poem, due in part to his automatic writing method.

                                    Robert Desnos - Man Ray, 1928.

        I found his poem “Awakenings” (reprinted below) especially interesting for its mediation on the unknown side of the Self encountered in dreams. Desnos personifies this part of the psyche as “that night visitor with the unknown face” who is “trying to re-enter us,” only to discover the key no longer fits the lock of our bodies. Desnos links the dream world and the creative act as two ways to re-connect to the Shadow side of our psyche that often lies outside our awareness while awake. When this re-connection happens in dreams, we often experience “a reflection of ourselves in the mirror” that seems alien to us. Desnos writes of this stranger (in an example of anaphora): “Is it a poor man begging food and a place to sleep / Is it a thief a bird…Is he pain? Where will he go   next / Is this the origin of ghosts? / of dreams?” The Shadow side, as the storehouse of our unconscious desires or repressed memories, often appears as a dark or even evil figure in our dreams. Desnos suggests that upon waking (and in order to awaken), we must reconstruct the Self even as part of our identity will remain always an unknown but essential part of our inner lives.

        What is so striking at the end of the poem for me is Desnos’ declaration of renewal: “Never knock at my door again / There’s no place at my hearth or in my heart / For old images of myself.” Upon waking, we often tell ourselves that we never want to meet that Dark Stranger of our dreams ever again. Yet such encounters are essential for individuation, at least according psychoanalytic theory. The “old images” of our identity—the ones we wish to lock out—are often the ones most responsible for charting the course of our waking reality, and to “meet” them in a dream is to have an opportunity for self-knowledge. The "awakenings" (plural) of the title are two-fold: the moment in which the unconscious mind generates a new Self ("we've changed..."), and the moment in which the poet externalizes that change through his art. Both awakenings are acts of self-creation. As a poet who desires so strongly to connect to the unconscious mind, Desnos realizes that encounters with the dark side of the psyche can be dangerous, but also rewarding, for these moments ultimately lead to the construction of new images and ways of understanding the inner world, which also stands as an apt description of Desnos’ poetry.

 "Awakenings"

It's strange how sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night
Fast asleep someone knocked at your door
And in that extraordinary town of half-awake half-memory
iron gates ring heavily from street to street. 

Who is that night visitor with the unknown face?
what's he looking for is he spying
Is it a poor man begging food and a place to sleep
Is it a thief a bird
A reflection of ourselves in the mirror
Back from transparent depths
Trying to re-enter us 

Then he notices we've changed
his key no longer turns the lock
Of the mysterious door to our bodies
Even if he just left seconds ago
in that anxious moment when you turn out the light 

What happens to him then
Is he in pain? Where will he go next?
Is this the origin of ghosts?
of dreams?
the birthplace of regret? 

Never knock at my door again
There's no place at my hearth or in my heart
For old images of myself.
Perhaps you recognize me.
me, I'll never know if you recognize yourself.

Source:
Desnos, Robert. "Awakenings." The Voice of Robert Desnos: Selected Poems. Trans. William Kullick. Riverdale-on-Hudon: Sheep Meadow P, 2004. 37.

Raymond Roussel's Locus Solus

(Please note: Sorry for the length. This is a combination of what I wanted to say in my oral presentation last week and my response to Roussel, so it's a little long.)

Part 1: Roussel, Alchemy, and Jung

          When reading the opening chapters of Locus Solus, I wondered if Roussel had any familiarity with alchemy. By the time I reached the story near the end of the novel of the alchemist Paracelsus' experiments with white powders and skin, I was convinced he was. The opening myth--with its references to cabbalistic rituals, gold ancestral crowns, and the kingly signature of "Ego" (12-13)--sounded like the perfect Jungian alchemical tale. Jung himself believed that alchemists' search for transforming base metals into gold was a metaphor of the human search for a soul, or the process of individuation. Of course, Roussel was writing years before Jung began his interest in alchemy. However, Roussel's opening chapter leads to an interesting psychoanalytic reading that can be informed by Jung's ideas. If gold might be read as the soul, then Jouël's story becomes a metaphorical warning: if we lock the ideal self (the "Ideal I" of our fantasy) so tightly within, then we risk losing access to the very object of value. The Ego's over-protection of the soul (in this case, the cave marked "Ego" protecting the sacred gold with a dream-inspired password) renders the soul hidden forever, buried away, and useless. Although the "sacred gold was buried in a safe place" (13), it was nearly impossible to access, ironically placing it out-of-reach, as if the gold had not existed at all. Only when the dream-message overcomes the Ego (17) might we be allowed access to the gold buried beneath--that is to say, reach individuation. In the terms of Roussel's novel, we might say this is a merging of the mythic and the scientific, the imaginative and the real, and the past and the present.

          Roussel seems to suggest that this process happens through the artistic process. He begins his novel with a mythic tale of "Jouël" and ends with a performer named "Noël," linked to each other by similar-sounding names, but also connected to Canterel as mysterious men who transform fetish objects into art, but in opposite ways. Jouël turns his object (gold inside a cave) into myth, while Noël gives us the rational explanation for his parlor trick--the dice are literally loaded (214). Jouël was the "first to wear the Load" (9) in ancient times, becoming the earliest-living person in the narrative to have access to a fetish object, whereas Noël is the last to appear in the novel to show his metallic material to the visitors. It is interesting to note that Noël learned his trade from alchemist Count Ruolz-Montchal (210), again linking to alchemical themes in the opening chapter. (When I tried searching for connections to Roussel and alchemy, I stumbled upon the following passage from A Critical Bibliography of French Literature: "Breton suggests that at present we read R. with pleasure and little understanding; comprehension would increase our enjoyment. The key should be sought in traditions of alchemy and initiatory literature." (A Critical Bibliography of French Literature: The Twentieth Century, ed. David Clark Cabeen, Douglas William Alden, and Richard A. Brooks. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1979. 1104.) In a final connection, Jouël dies and appears as a mythic presence in the stars (11-12), while Noël begins his fortune-telling by offering a prayer to Saturn, "a dazzling star standing almost at zenith" (202). Noël finds a book with "a cabbalistic code whose secret he explained to us [the visitors to Locus Solus]" (204), which again links to the power of Jouël's "cabbalistic utterance" (11). Of course, Noël appears at the end to reveal the trickery behind his mystic objects, not to extend the myth surrounding an object, as Jouël's story achieves. But before explaining further how Roussel synthesizes the stories of Noël, Jouël, and Canterel, I must pause to show how I interpret the novel's structure and how certain important themes function in relation to each other within the narrative arc.

Part 2: The Narrative and Thematic Structure of Locus Solus

          In order to do this, I created the chart below to map the cyclical nature of Roussel’s narrative. An explanation follows the chart...

          Here we see the important themes of the novel arranged around the fetish object, which might be any number of various artifacts that appear in the text, from The Federal to Danton's head to the fatal revolver. The black arrows indicate the narrative arc, beginning with the Artist (Canterel being the prime example) and moving clockwise to a mystical reconstruction of a famous narrative or myth (such as found in the Locus Solus exhibits); then to a narrative of the myth itself; then to a Dream World that often appears within the mythic narrative (this might also be a reference to night, sleeping, or even the "Nocturnal wax"); then to the images of death that are very often closely associated with the dream or sometimes following the dream; then to the rational or "scientific" explanation that lies behind both the myth and the fantastic Locus Solus reconstructions; and then finally leading full circle to the Artist who is giving the rational explanation to assure us that neither trickery nor supernatural elements are involved. The fetish object links items next to each other on the narrative chart, as indicated by the dotted lines. (Therefore, the fetish object connects the Artist to the reconstruction; it also connects the reconstruction to the mythic narrative, and so on...) Notice that the Artist is suspended between the mystical on the right and the rational/scientific on the left (an important theme in the novel, as mentioned in class), but also mirrors the Dream World, which stands directly opposite the Artist. Opposite items on the chart are meant to have a direct correlation through the fetish object, indicated by the dotted lines connecting those items across the diameter of the circle. (Please excuse my poor skills as an artist/graphic designer, but yes, this is meant to be a circle!) Therefore, we can see a dotted line connecting Artist/Dream World, Rationality/Mythic Narrative, and Mystical Reconstruction/Death, pairings that I think are related in the novel through possession or placement of the fetish object.

          As with all such charts, the arrangement over-simplifies a dynamic that is quite complex. This is just a way for my mind to grapple with how these themes function in the novel within the narrative. Others might feel the need to add, swap, or re-arrange items. However, I wouldn’t remove any of these items, as I think each one is essential to understanding the novel.

          Finally, I want to take a moment to give my definition of "fetish object," which we discussed briefly in class. I see the fetish as a tangible artifact that gives access to a distant, unobtainable object of desire. The fetish functions as a substitute for what cannot be possessed. I'm basing this on my previous readings of Lacan's objet a, which was in turn developed from Freud's writing on the totem. As Freud writes, a totem can offer protection or be a communal item, whereas a fetish is always individual (Totem and Taboo. 2nd ed. Trans. James Strachey. London: Routledge, 2004. 120.). Henry Krips writes that the totem appears "lacking as a site of desire," whereas the fetish is the point at which desire is located (Fetish: An Erotics of Culture. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1999. 66-67.). I would add to this that the fetish offers a point of access to desire, which I think is the key to understanding how the fetish objects function in Locus Solus.

Part 3: Artist-as-Trickster

          Although many of the artists' narratives in the novel tend to follow the same cyclical route mapped above, I think the three most important center on Jouël, Noël, and Canterel. I'm calling Jouël an "artist" because of his mythic ability to create a chamber/tomb in a mountain out of magic. Indeed, I think the "artist-as-magician" is an important idea in the novel. Whereas Jouël is the mythical artist and Noël is the "real life" example (i.e. explaining away his "magic" as tricks), Canterel walks a line between the two. He is constantly trying to prove no trickery is taking place ("Look: nothing up my sleeve!") while at the same time clearly engaging in imaginative play that mimics the mystical and mythical events from which he draws inspiration. By ending with Noël's loaded dice, Roussel is suggesting that the artist must be mystic, alchemist, performer, and trickster rolled into one. The novel portrays the act of generating art as cycles of creation and destruction, imaginative dreaming and real-world application of craft, and death and life. Like desire, art is a cycle that reproduces itself. It is no surprise that the figures represented at Locus Solus are a menagerie of artists: several poets, an actor, a writer, a sculptor, a weaver, fortune tellers/stage performers, orators, craftsworkers, etc.

          By the end of the novel, I was reminded of the opening scene of Orson Welles' documentary F for Fake (1973), which explores the art of fraud and trickery in film, painting, and writing. The first two minutes of the film have Welles performing a magic trick for a young boy as a film crew records the events:

          As we can see from the opening shot, the key functions here as the fetish object ("a small, personal object"): the tangible item in front of our eyes that is certainly real, but also has a story linking it to the imaginative and the seemingly unreal. “Hold it above your head," Welles commands the child, as if he were holding a sacred object. “TEN FEET over your head!” Here is the fetish object to be elevated and observed—a point of access to the magic soon to come. In transforming the key into a coin (from base metal into gold, no less!), Welles as the writer/poet/artist, like the metaphorical alchemist or magician, has created a work of art from the objet a. Something ethereal has taken place. But what then happens to the key, that all-important object offering access to the realm of dream/fantasy and prompting the artist to create in the first place? It doesn’t really “go” anywhere. It has never left. That twin desire--to possess both key and coin, imagination and reality--cycles back to the beginning, awaiting the next sleight of hand. As Welles intones with a coy smile, "What happened to the key? It's been returned to you...Look closely, sir. You’ll find the key…back in your pocket." The fetish object is “returned to us” through the transformative nature of the work of art (the novel, the painting, the wunderkammer, the parlor trick, etc.).  I say “transformative nature” because the work of art, in the act of its very creation, becomes a tangible replacement for the initial objet a. The artist has essentially transferred the power of the fetish from the original fetish object (which might still exist or be long lost—it ultimately doesn’t matter), to the work of art itself. (“As for the key,” Welles deadpans, “it wasn’t symbolic of anything. This isn’t that kind of movie.” Of course, Welles, as the self-proclaimed “charlatan,” is pulling our leg. He cuts to a shot of the film crew on the word “symbolic,” letting his audience know with a wink that this is exactly “that type of movie”…). 

          The prime example of the work of art taking the place of the fetish occurs in chapter six when Canterel elicits fear in Sileis, the Sudanese fortune teller, by showing her a painting of a Sudanese mythic sacrificial rite (197). Notice the arc of the narrative in terms of my chart, all linked by the painting titled Dancing girl with Fruit: Artist (Canterel/Vollon) --> a mystical reconstruction (the painting of the ritual) --> myth (the fruit tree predicting death) --> dream (the trance-state of Sileis) --> death (Sileis’ fear of death in seeing the mythic image in the painting) --> rational explanation (the process of inducing a chemical reaction to create a small explosion).  The painting as an access point to the power of the myth generates real emotion and fear from Sileis, bringing her too close to the myth. For her, there is no "rational explanation" (that is reserved for Canterel and the visitors). As seen in the chart above, when this step in the cycle is skipped, the only result can be an arrow linking death to the artist, which is precisely the fear felt by Sileis as she performs her fortune telling while staring at the painting. 

          To take the idea of artist-as-trickster to the extreme, one might suggest that the entire reason Canterel brought his visitors to Locus Solus was to get their signatures as witnesses to the transformation of globules to gunpowder. After all, the visitors were only more than willing to sign a legal document as witnesses to the extraordinary event after being prepped all day by a long string of amazing sights and tales. Perhaps Canterel was simply out to make money? But such a cynical reading would fly in face of everything Canterel had told us up to that point. Like the visitors to Locus Solus, we have to take Canterel's word that the final experiment was "based on a unrepeatable effect of surprise and illusion" (199). If this is true, then there would be no money to be made in the creation of something that can never be repeated. We can only conclude that the entire event was just a bit of imaginative fun, and that like any good magician, Canterel never repeats the same trick twice.