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The Myth of the World: Surrealism 2
international anthology of Surrealist fiction
292 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1995
About the author
Michael Richardson
27 books2 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 14, 2019
So, here's the second volume of Dedalus' survey of Surrealist writings, the sequel to The Dedalus Book of Surrealism, I: The Identity of Things which I reviewed a while back. As I said there, Dedalus is to be lauded for putting this much surrealist writing into English translation. So much of this interesting material was unavailable before, and the two volumes really do succeed at the goal of being a thorough survey of a potent and important strain of writing. Perhaps even better, at the end of this volume is an amazing essay by Michael Richardson. I had noted that Volume 1's introduction led me to believe that Richardson had some theory or definition of how surrealist writing was to be distinguished from related approaches like Absurdist or Fantasy or Magic Realism, Well, the "Afterword" in this volume does an incredible job of just that, laying out Richardson's views on what the Surrealists were/are trying to do (and how it is different from those aforementioned movements/styles) in such a clear and interesting manner that I wish it had been at the beginning (in fact, I get the feeling that this may have been intended to be one huge volume but printing restrictions made that impossible).
There are 47 pieces here so, as in Volume 1, I really can't touch on everything. Ostensibly, this volume is more focused on the Surrealists fascination with "Myth" (in varied respects), so there is a stronger narrative of fable structure here, yet as always standard expectations can be dispensed with. Imagery to expect: hands, sex, dreams, journeys, paths, streets, rooms, books, colors (red, white), the Moon, The Sun and alchemy.
Particularly Good
"The Astonishing Adventure of the Blind Magician" by Antonin Artaud, which is a retelling of Lafcadio Hearn's famous ghost story "Hōichi the Earless".
"The Adventures of Footstool" by Jacques Prévert has clever scenes of absurd logic wielded against authoritarianism.
"Homage to Raymond Roussel" by Paul Colinet, a fable about a useful but blighted personality.
"The Life and Work of Alfred Jarry and Isidore Ducasse" by Louis Scutenaire, in which the famous tale of inbred cannibal serial murderer Sawney Bean (or is it Christie-Cleek?) and his clan is detourned with the names of the father of Ubu Roi and Maldoror and the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont.
"The Room" by Vera Linhartová, which seems to have a relationship to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic tale "The Yellow Wallpaper", as a girl dissolves into apathetic stasis as language dissolves into signs.
"Borne On The Red" by Xavier Domingo, a beautiful, overwhelming evocation of the color RED.
"My Aquarium" by Jean Ferry, about the care and feeding of suicidal thoughts.
"The Hand" by Nanos Valaoritis, in which a man gets into a relationship with the titular body part.
"Solidary Pleasure" by Nelly Kaplan, in which necrophilia leads to resurrection.
"Art, Pleasure and Gardening" by Alain Joubert, a nice little fable about the return of, and re-fall from, Eden.
"The Sun and his Rose-Pink Buick by Zuca Sardan, in which an inevitable astronomical event is recast as cartoon fable.
"The Ghost of a Shadow" by Marcel Mariën, an absurd little thing about a man who becomes fixated on a minor historical figure and his forgotten descendants.
"The Road" by Andreas Embirikos, which is a meditation on...roads, of course.
The best of anthology:
"Carmen and Carmen" by Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, a fairy-tale about identical twin gymnasts with the same name who cheat on their lovers, this generates a very creepy atmosphere and has almost an alchemical feeling to the symbolism.
"Notes on Fantômas" by René Magritte, in which Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre's seminal super-criminal character, icon of the Cubists and Surrealists, is caught napping...
"Just a Story" by António Pedro is a legend about the death and dismemberment of a giant in the Amazon rain forest.
"The Path" by Julian Gracq - probably my favorite story in this collection, this is a profound symbolic evocation of an overgrown road that runs through the forests and countryside, mostly reclaimed by nature. Simply amazing!
"Ashes of the Sun" by Floriano Martins, powerful musings on pain, love, lust, life, death and god.
"The Treasure" by Robert Lebel, a wonderful fable in which the ability to imaginatively notice small flaws or variations in the world MAY lead one to discover hidden treasure.
"Feldheim's Secret Notebook" by Paul Nouge is an intense depiction of a random sexual assignation.
"Moon Wardrobe" by André Pieyre de Mandiargues, in which an oneiric, symbolic seduction masks a brutal sexual reality.
"The Volatized Ceiling of Baron Munodi" by Rikki Ducornet is an excellent semi-fable, almost like a surreal Angela Carter story. Stirring and beautiful.
There are a few impenetrable excursions into stream of consciousness or nonsense language ("Sondue", "Solution H: Or About The Second Imaginary Journey of Mr. H.") which didn't work for me, plans for a surrealist scenario ("Once Upon A Time"), fairy-tales about birds ("The Birds") and lustful gods ("Fedor Rascalaub or the Gods of Stupre") and wars between funeral parlors ("The Bridge of Fire"). There's a meditation on an abandoned mannequin that name-checks Duchamp, De Chirico and Magritte ("A Mannequin on the Pavement"), an intense interrogation of language itself ("I Love You") or the human hand ("The Familiar Object"), symbolic evocations of beaches and lighthouses ("Orpalee"), the dangers of abandoned pulp novels to lonely ladies on empty train stations ("The Man With The Hundred Knives") and the collapse of memory and location itself ("Pergamum").
Needless to say, an incredible two-volume set, well worth the time of those interested in different approaches to writing.
There are 47 pieces here so, as in Volume 1, I really can't touch on everything. Ostensibly, this volume is more focused on the Surrealists fascination with "Myth" (in varied respects), so there is a stronger narrative of fable structure here, yet as always standard expectations can be dispensed with. Imagery to expect: hands, sex, dreams, journeys, paths, streets, rooms, books, colors (red, white), the Moon, The Sun and alchemy.
Particularly Good
"The Astonishing Adventure of the Blind Magician" by Antonin Artaud, which is a retelling of Lafcadio Hearn's famous ghost story "Hōichi the Earless".
"The Adventures of Footstool" by Jacques Prévert has clever scenes of absurd logic wielded against authoritarianism.
"Homage to Raymond Roussel" by Paul Colinet, a fable about a useful but blighted personality.
"The Life and Work of Alfred Jarry and Isidore Ducasse" by Louis Scutenaire, in which the famous tale of inbred cannibal serial murderer Sawney Bean (or is it Christie-Cleek?) and his clan is detourned with the names of the father of Ubu Roi and Maldoror and the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont.
"The Room" by Vera Linhartová, which seems to have a relationship to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic tale "The Yellow Wallpaper", as a girl dissolves into apathetic stasis as language dissolves into signs.
"Borne On The Red" by Xavier Domingo, a beautiful, overwhelming evocation of the color RED.
"My Aquarium" by Jean Ferry, about the care and feeding of suicidal thoughts.
"The Hand" by Nanos Valaoritis, in which a man gets into a relationship with the titular body part.
"Solidary Pleasure" by Nelly Kaplan, in which necrophilia leads to resurrection.
"Art, Pleasure and Gardening" by Alain Joubert, a nice little fable about the return of, and re-fall from, Eden.
"The Sun and his Rose-Pink Buick by Zuca Sardan, in which an inevitable astronomical event is recast as cartoon fable.
"The Ghost of a Shadow" by Marcel Mariën, an absurd little thing about a man who becomes fixated on a minor historical figure and his forgotten descendants.
"The Road" by Andreas Embirikos, which is a meditation on...roads, of course.
The best of anthology:
"Carmen and Carmen" by Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, a fairy-tale about identical twin gymnasts with the same name who cheat on their lovers, this generates a very creepy atmosphere and has almost an alchemical feeling to the symbolism.
"Notes on Fantômas" by René Magritte, in which Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre's seminal super-criminal character, icon of the Cubists and Surrealists, is caught napping...
"Just a Story" by António Pedro is a legend about the death and dismemberment of a giant in the Amazon rain forest.
"The Path" by Julian Gracq - probably my favorite story in this collection, this is a profound symbolic evocation of an overgrown road that runs through the forests and countryside, mostly reclaimed by nature. Simply amazing!
"Ashes of the Sun" by Floriano Martins, powerful musings on pain, love, lust, life, death and god.
"The Treasure" by Robert Lebel, a wonderful fable in which the ability to imaginatively notice small flaws or variations in the world MAY lead one to discover hidden treasure.
"Feldheim's Secret Notebook" by Paul Nouge is an intense depiction of a random sexual assignation.
"Moon Wardrobe" by André Pieyre de Mandiargues, in which an oneiric, symbolic seduction masks a brutal sexual reality.
"The Volatized Ceiling of Baron Munodi" by Rikki Ducornet is an excellent semi-fable, almost like a surreal Angela Carter story. Stirring and beautiful.
There are a few impenetrable excursions into stream of consciousness or nonsense language ("Sondue", "Solution H: Or About The Second Imaginary Journey of Mr. H.") which didn't work for me, plans for a surrealist scenario ("Once Upon A Time"), fairy-tales about birds ("The Birds") and lustful gods ("Fedor Rascalaub or the Gods of Stupre") and wars between funeral parlors ("The Bridge of Fire"). There's a meditation on an abandoned mannequin that name-checks Duchamp, De Chirico and Magritte ("A Mannequin on the Pavement"), an intense interrogation of language itself ("I Love You") or the human hand ("The Familiar Object"), symbolic evocations of beaches and lighthouses ("Orpalee"), the dangers of abandoned pulp novels to lonely ladies on empty train stations ("The Man With The Hundred Knives") and the collapse of memory and location itself ("Pergamum").
Needless to say, an incredible two-volume set, well worth the time of those interested in different approaches to writing.
February 26, 2022
Pretty even three-way split here between word-soup automatic works (this style has aged like milk), forgettable faux-philosophical yawnings (I swear that every thing I read from Andre Breton makes me want to travel back in time and bully his self-important self), and, thankfully, some genuinely good surreal (with a small "s") tales.
As I get older I realise that, in a lot of ways, Breton's surrealism was just a rehash of Symbolism with slices of Freud (yawn), and the best writers of the era were generally those outside of his dogmatic circle of faux-revolutionaries. There's exceptions to this, like there are in all rules, but that's a subject for another time.
A few personal highlights: Emmy Bridgwater's pastoral "The Birds", Gisele Parassinos' truly bizarre "Sondue", Marcel Marien's GREAT shaggy dog story "The Ghost of a Shadow", and the beautiful "Bridge of Fire" from Eugenio F. Granell.
Pesonal lowlights: Breton's convoluted bullshit and pretty much every piece of automatic writing included here (with the exception of Gherasim Luca's wonderful "I Love You").
If you're familiar with the movement and want to dig deeper, by all means pick this up, but if you're new to the surrealist tradition you'll be rewarded better by looking at the various patron saints of the movement (Rimbaud, Jarry, Lautreamont, the symbolist movement, etc).
As I get older I realise that, in a lot of ways, Breton's surrealism was just a rehash of Symbolism with slices of Freud (yawn), and the best writers of the era were generally those outside of his dogmatic circle of faux-revolutionaries. There's exceptions to this, like there are in all rules, but that's a subject for another time.
A few personal highlights: Emmy Bridgwater's pastoral "The Birds", Gisele Parassinos' truly bizarre "Sondue", Marcel Marien's GREAT shaggy dog story "The Ghost of a Shadow", and the beautiful "Bridge of Fire" from Eugenio F. Granell.
Pesonal lowlights: Breton's convoluted bullshit and pretty much every piece of automatic writing included here (with the exception of Gherasim Luca's wonderful "I Love You").
If you're familiar with the movement and want to dig deeper, by all means pick this up, but if you're new to the surrealist tradition you'll be rewarded better by looking at the various patron saints of the movement (Rimbaud, Jarry, Lautreamont, the symbolist movement, etc).
May 10, 2016
The second volume of the essentially cohesive monolithic survey of surrealist storytelling begun with The Dedalus Book of Surrealism: The Identity of Things, this expands on the depth and global scope of the authors and selections in the first, as well as incorporates translator/editor/surrealist prose authority Michael Richardson's theories of the progression and central purposes of prose fiction to the surrealists. Naturally the actual selections are all over the place, but full of noteworthy moments and intriguing leads. Notes:
Andre Breton, "Once Upon a Time" :: I'm not the biggest Breton fan, but even I can wish he'd had the means to open this speculative hotel designed entirely to provoke the imagination.
Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Carmen and Carmen :: A rather macabre tale of twinned and interchangeable identity. He came out of the Dada era, and chafed under the more systematized Surrealist Group, soon distancing himself. His three plays The Emperor of China, the Mute Canary & the Executioner of Peru are forthcoming via Wakefield, but Michael Richardson credits his (entirely untranslated?!) novels as his greatest achievements.
Georges Limbour, "The Actor from Lancashire or the Illustrious White Horse" :: A longer, basically cohesively narrative yet somewhat arbitrary-feeling piece, but reminds me that I've got an entire Limbour novel(la) to test the waters with in The Automatic Muse: Surrealist Novels.
Prassinos Gisele, "Sondue" :: A longer Prassinos tale not found in the only yet-existing collection Surrealist Texts (but Wakefield has another on the way). A distinguishing feature of all Prassinos automatic tales, immediately noticeable, is that like Peret's, they always maintain a sense of narrative consistency and logical (of a sorts) progression. So while much that is incredibly bizarre unfolds over these 18 pages, you can actually hold onto it much more than even a couple pages of automatism from a lesser pen. Even summarize later in a cogent way. This one's about a kind of fragmented nuclear family. A women adopts a makeshift child when it attaches itself to her face, later to be accidentally divided into two parts and split between the "mother" and her proxy counterpart, a shop-keeper with whose life she becomes entwined with after she inadvertently, um, catches his eyein the bottom of a bucket. Sensible nonsense.
Unica Zürn, "It is Such a Beautiful Day" :: Predictably far more lucid and designed than most of these. Unlike many others here, Zurn wasn't so much of an automatist. Instead, she gave a generative power to anagram, though these inform her texts in more subtle ways usually (or else, are displayed directly for what they are, their full alchemy outlined on the page). Perhaps it's just because her involvement in surrealism was a little later than many of the writers here, but I also think that her aims were somewhat different. As here, in a concise, elegant, bitter fable about an execution. I wish more of her short stories had been published in English, but we're soon to get (even better!) a never-previously-translated novella from Wakefield, so stay tuned.
Eugenio F. Granell, "The Bridge of Fire" :: An odd, highly vivid story about a street that becomes host to a bridge of land and forest extended between warring funeral parlors, perpetually burning, until only an apocalyptic landscape fulfilling the half-remembered obligations of the past remains. Kind of amazing. It's an extract from the untranslated (from Spanish, Granell fought in the Civil War there before joining the Surrealists via Peret) novel La Novela del Indio Tupinamba, which Richardson credits as one of the finest of surrealism.
Julien Gracq, "The Path" :: Another unsurprising but excellent inclusion. Gracq's ability to describe landscape exceedingly compellingly carries this, even as a kind of plot, or at least a progression creeps in. A lovely travelogue of depopulated landscapes.
André Pieyre de Mandiargues, "Moon Wardrobe" :: Oh Mandiargues. I don't entirely think we'd get along, even if you were evidently friendly enough with Nelly Kaplan to introduce her first book of stories. I think I'm pretty familiar with your erotic impulses at this point, since that's most everything you write about, and though you give them brilliant settings and atmosphere, always (and here is no exception), I just find them a little transparent. Particularly when you strip away the veneer of consent from your fantasies in the last couple sentences, as here. When I want to get really irritated with you, I'll read The Portrait of an Englishman in His Chateau.
Nelly Kaplan, "Solidary Pleasure" :: On the other hand, Nelly Kaplan herself writes about desire fantastically, and with clever social subversion balancing her playful transgressions. (I won't apologize for having a bit of a double standard in granting female transgressives more leeway -- historical power structures in need of destabilization provide ample justification). Anyway, this is a kind of fairy tale about a loveless life bearing fruit beyond the grave. It's great, as is pretty much everything of Kaplan's that I've been able to lay hands on. Which speaking of, Michael Richardson here spares me one more laborious (though delightful) translation, as this is also in my French-only-ever copy of Kaplan's first collection under the nom-de-plume "Belan".
Andre Breton, "Once Upon a Time" :: I'm not the biggest Breton fan, but even I can wish he'd had the means to open this speculative hotel designed entirely to provoke the imagination.
Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Carmen and Carmen :: A rather macabre tale of twinned and interchangeable identity. He came out of the Dada era, and chafed under the more systematized Surrealist Group, soon distancing himself. His three plays The Emperor of China, the Mute Canary & the Executioner of Peru are forthcoming via Wakefield, but Michael Richardson credits his (entirely untranslated?!) novels as his greatest achievements.
Georges Limbour, "The Actor from Lancashire or the Illustrious White Horse" :: A longer, basically cohesively narrative yet somewhat arbitrary-feeling piece, but reminds me that I've got an entire Limbour novel(la) to test the waters with in The Automatic Muse: Surrealist Novels.
Prassinos Gisele, "Sondue" :: A longer Prassinos tale not found in the only yet-existing collection Surrealist Texts (but Wakefield has another on the way). A distinguishing feature of all Prassinos automatic tales, immediately noticeable, is that like Peret's, they always maintain a sense of narrative consistency and logical (of a sorts) progression. So while much that is incredibly bizarre unfolds over these 18 pages, you can actually hold onto it much more than even a couple pages of automatism from a lesser pen. Even summarize later in a cogent way. This one's about a kind of fragmented nuclear family. A women adopts a makeshift child when it attaches itself to her face, later to be accidentally divided into two parts and split between the "mother" and her proxy counterpart, a shop-keeper with whose life she becomes entwined with after she inadvertently, um, catches his eyein the bottom of a bucket. Sensible nonsense.
Unica Zürn, "It is Such a Beautiful Day" :: Predictably far more lucid and designed than most of these. Unlike many others here, Zurn wasn't so much of an automatist. Instead, she gave a generative power to anagram, though these inform her texts in more subtle ways usually (or else, are displayed directly for what they are, their full alchemy outlined on the page). Perhaps it's just because her involvement in surrealism was a little later than many of the writers here, but I also think that her aims were somewhat different. As here, in a concise, elegant, bitter fable about an execution. I wish more of her short stories had been published in English, but we're soon to get (even better!) a never-previously-translated novella from Wakefield, so stay tuned.
Eugenio F. Granell, "The Bridge of Fire" :: An odd, highly vivid story about a street that becomes host to a bridge of land and forest extended between warring funeral parlors, perpetually burning, until only an apocalyptic landscape fulfilling the half-remembered obligations of the past remains. Kind of amazing. It's an extract from the untranslated (from Spanish, Granell fought in the Civil War there before joining the Surrealists via Peret) novel La Novela del Indio Tupinamba, which Richardson credits as one of the finest of surrealism.
Julien Gracq, "The Path" :: Another unsurprising but excellent inclusion. Gracq's ability to describe landscape exceedingly compellingly carries this, even as a kind of plot, or at least a progression creeps in. A lovely travelogue of depopulated landscapes.
André Pieyre de Mandiargues, "Moon Wardrobe" :: Oh Mandiargues. I don't entirely think we'd get along, even if you were evidently friendly enough with Nelly Kaplan to introduce her first book of stories. I think I'm pretty familiar with your erotic impulses at this point, since that's most everything you write about, and though you give them brilliant settings and atmosphere, always (and here is no exception), I just find them a little transparent. Particularly when you strip away the veneer of consent from your fantasies in the last couple sentences, as here. When I want to get really irritated with you, I'll read The Portrait of an Englishman in His Chateau.
Nelly Kaplan, "Solidary Pleasure" :: On the other hand, Nelly Kaplan herself writes about desire fantastically, and with clever social subversion balancing her playful transgressions. (I won't apologize for having a bit of a double standard in granting female transgressives more leeway -- historical power structures in need of destabilization provide ample justification). Anyway, this is a kind of fairy tale about a loveless life bearing fruit beyond the grave. It's great, as is pretty much everything of Kaplan's that I've been able to lay hands on. Which speaking of, Michael Richardson here spares me one more laborious (though delightful) translation, as this is also in my French-only-ever copy of Kaplan's first collection under the nom-de-plume "Belan".
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