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Impressions of Africa
Although never a member of the official surrealist movement, Raymond Roussel is undoubtedly one of the most important surrealist writers. A contemporary of Marcel Proust, he is beginning to be considered a writer whose influence could well be of the same importance, and such modern innovators as Alain Robbe-Grillet and Eugene Ionesco have acknowledged their debt to him as one of the principle fathers of the nouveau roman and the 'theatre of the absurd'. Raymond Roussel wrote several novels, some in verse and some in prose, and Impressions of Africa is the first of the two major prose works. It makes easy and enjoyable reading, being an adventure story put together in a highly individual fashion with an unusual time sequence, making use of fortuitous wit and jeux de mots and using all the surrealist techniques of automatic writing and private allusion, that while not spoiling the enjoyment of the casual reader add an extra dimension to the book for the student of literature.
317 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1910
About the author
Raymond Roussel
54 books119 followersPoet, storyteller, playwright and French essayist, born in Paris in 1877 and died in Palermo (Italy) in 1933. Author of a singular literary production of striking originality and dazzling imaginative force, applied with real obsessive fixation experiments applied to descriptive techniques and came to deploy a sort of automatic writing that made him one of the most brilliant of the surrealist movement.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
March 1, 2022
“Art for art’s sake,” decadents used to declare… Impressions of Africa is circus for circus’s sake… And Raymond Roussel is morbidly fascinated with all things bizarre and unbelievable.
The novel begins with the scenes of a grand gala: a talking horse, fencing apparatus, phenomenal sharpshooter, artistic automaton, earthworm performing czardas on a zither, ridiculous tableaux vivants, marvelous plants, astonishing creatures and exotic executions – the surreal wonders are numberless… The more senseless is a spectacle the greater is elation… In the end, all the miracles are explained but incredible explanations make the show even more fantastic…
As long as human being is sapient, the impulse to work wonders will remain irresistible.
Her cavalryman’s blue dolman, molding a superb waist, was decorated on the right with shining gold shoulder braids; from these emanated the discreet music we’d been hearing through the walls of the hut. The sound was generated by the woman’s own breathing, thanks to a surgically established connection between the lobes of her lungs and the looped braids that concealed flexible, sonorous tubing. The gilded tips hanging from the ends of her aiguillettes like gracefully elongated counterweights were hollow and contained vibrating strips. At each contraction of her lungs, a portion of her exhaled breath passed through the multiple conduits and, activating the strips, triggered a harmonious tone.
The novel begins with the scenes of a grand gala: a talking horse, fencing apparatus, phenomenal sharpshooter, artistic automaton, earthworm performing czardas on a zither, ridiculous tableaux vivants, marvelous plants, astonishing creatures and exotic executions – the surreal wonders are numberless… The more senseless is a spectacle the greater is elation… In the end, all the miracles are explained but incredible explanations make the show even more fantastic…
We had been walking for several minutes when suddenly, to our right, a bouquet of fireworks lit up the night sky, producing a host of detonations.
A spray of rockets climbed into the air, and soon, reaching the peak of their ascent, the incandescent nuclei exploded with a loud bang to form many luminous portraits of the young Baron Ballesteros, in place of the habitual and banal showers of fire and stars. Each image, bursting from its envelope, emerged independently then floated in the darkness with a gentle sway.
As long as human being is sapient, the impulse to work wonders will remain irresistible.
October 6, 2012
This is a book full of puns and double meanings--if you can read French. For example, A Farting White Horse in French could also mean a windy mountain pass. So the French reader might read this and think, "Ah...he's talking about Switzerland." The English reader just thinks, "A farting white horse...WTF?" The whole book is like that. Enjoy.
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June 4, 2020Discussed this book here: https://youtu.be/UPB74AFtOkg
November 1, 2017
Though outclassed in the loosely-defined canon of proto-Surrealism by the fantastical grotesqueness of Les Chants de Maldoror or the absurdist metaphysics of Alfred Jarry, Raymond Roussel's debut novel is nevertheless essential towards contextualizing the proliferation of formalized writing in its wake. Beyond the obvious link of influence to André Breton's Surrealist group, it prefigures the methodology of the Oulipo movement through the use of formal constraints, particularly anticipating the likes of Georges Perec by way of its prosaic objectivity and barrage of categorization. Traces of Roussel abound too in strains of contemporary experimental writing, from John Ashbery's opaque linguistic play to Alain Robbe-Grillet's effacement of the Subject in narrative fiction.
Literary legacy aside, Impressions of Africa largely retains its idiosyncratic qualities despite the numerous imitators thereof. Ignoring the questionable racial element of the work—luckily kept to a murmur throughout—the central drama, comprising a succession of stage-act vignettes and their respective dénouements, is laden with a superbly imaginative quality, at times recalling the heights of inventiveness in 19th-century French adventure novels (biographical accounts speak of how Roussel saw Verne as a literary deity), at others, a Rabelaisian extravagance. This momentum is unfortunately brought to a halt during a dry, prolonged historical account that serves to shift the narrative chronology halfway through the novel. Absent here is the wonder so profuse elsewhere, leaving in its place tedium—yet not one severe enough to allow the overall work to give way. Perhaps this inconsistency is merely to be expected from such an erratic mind.
Literary legacy aside, Impressions of Africa largely retains its idiosyncratic qualities despite the numerous imitators thereof. Ignoring the questionable racial element of the work—luckily kept to a murmur throughout—the central drama, comprising a succession of stage-act vignettes and their respective dénouements, is laden with a superbly imaginative quality, at times recalling the heights of inventiveness in 19th-century French adventure novels (biographical accounts speak of how Roussel saw Verne as a literary deity), at others, a Rabelaisian extravagance. This momentum is unfortunately brought to a halt during a dry, prolonged historical account that serves to shift the narrative chronology halfway through the novel. Absent here is the wonder so profuse elsewhere, leaving in its place tedium—yet not one severe enough to allow the overall work to give way. Perhaps this inconsistency is merely to be expected from such an erratic mind.
January 3, 2011
as this book is classified as french surrealism, i was fully expecting it to be a fairly difficult read, with little or no plot.much to my surprise then, when i started reading it, to find that it very definitely has a complete plot. quite a bizarre one to be sure, but a plot nevertheless.it's actually a very readable novel, and i enjoyed it immensely.thanks again oriana.
February 16, 2021
Should I say....? ¡Impresionante!
Audaz novela, aparecida en 1910, que poco tiene que ver con lo que se pueda leer de esos años. Hay una primera parte dónde se describe de forma febrilmente detallada un extraño espectáculo, compuesto de diversas actuaciones, celebrado en un ficticio país africano, en el que participan los náufragos de un barco francés. Se ven desde ajusticiamientos, a surreales instrumentos de música compuestos por un gusano y un líquido, un caballo que habla, pájaros que casi le roban un hijo al emperador Talú, anfitrión de la velada, en fin, algo verdaderamente raro, no me quiero imaginar que lo que pudo suponer para los lectores de entonces y en años sucesivos. Por lo visto la primera edición tardó 22 años en agotarse.
Avanzada la lectura se produce un salto en el tiempo y se nos explica cómo los náufragos llegan a esa situación. La gracia está en que esa sección de la narración no es lineal, Roussel teje una red de micro-cuentos, de historias dentro de historias, que atañen a los personajes tanto africanos y los europeos y que abarcan una gran riqueza de estilos, algunos nos recuerdan a los cuentos amorosos de las Mil y una noches, otros tienen el tono de un cuento infantil al estilo hermanos Andersen... el mosaico resultante es a mi juicio lo mejor de este libro, por su rica y variada imaginación, es imposible que adivines qué vendrá en la siguiente página.
Antes de escribir este libro, Raymond Roussel visitó África un total de cero veces. Todo lo que vemos es una pura invención, una construcción de su creatividad, en absoluto posee intenciones etnográficas, históricas ni nada que se lo parezca. Es una fiesta de la imaginación que ha engendrado numerosos herederos, desde los surrealistas, el nouveau roman (particularmente a Michel Butor), pasando por Enrique Vila-Matas, César Aira y por supuesto Georges Perec y sus compañeros del Oulipo. Quien haya disfrutado del puzzle narrativo que es La vida. Instrucciones de uso, sin duda también lo hará con esta pionera novela de Raymond Rousell, vórtice de muchas cosas que han venido después.
Audaz novela, aparecida en 1910, que poco tiene que ver con lo que se pueda leer de esos años. Hay una primera parte dónde se describe de forma febrilmente detallada un extraño espectáculo, compuesto de diversas actuaciones, celebrado en un ficticio país africano, en el que participan los náufragos de un barco francés. Se ven desde ajusticiamientos, a surreales instrumentos de música compuestos por un gusano y un líquido, un caballo que habla, pájaros que casi le roban un hijo al emperador Talú, anfitrión de la velada, en fin, algo verdaderamente raro, no me quiero imaginar que lo que pudo suponer para los lectores de entonces y en años sucesivos. Por lo visto la primera edición tardó 22 años en agotarse.
Avanzada la lectura se produce un salto en el tiempo y se nos explica cómo los náufragos llegan a esa situación. La gracia está en que esa sección de la narración no es lineal, Roussel teje una red de micro-cuentos, de historias dentro de historias, que atañen a los personajes tanto africanos y los europeos y que abarcan una gran riqueza de estilos, algunos nos recuerdan a los cuentos amorosos de las Mil y una noches, otros tienen el tono de un cuento infantil al estilo hermanos Andersen... el mosaico resultante es a mi juicio lo mejor de este libro, por su rica y variada imaginación, es imposible que adivines qué vendrá en la siguiente página.
Antes de escribir este libro, Raymond Roussel visitó África un total de cero veces. Todo lo que vemos es una pura invención, una construcción de su creatividad, en absoluto posee intenciones etnográficas, históricas ni nada que se lo parezca. Es una fiesta de la imaginación que ha engendrado numerosos herederos, desde los surrealistas, el nouveau roman (particularmente a Michel Butor), pasando por Enrique Vila-Matas, César Aira y por supuesto Georges Perec y sus compañeros del Oulipo. Quien haya disfrutado del puzzle narrativo que es La vida. Instrucciones de uso, sin duda también lo hará con esta pionera novela de Raymond Rousell, vórtice de muchas cosas que han venido después.
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March 20, 2014The basics of Impressions of Africa aren't much different than those of Locus Solus. Likewise, there's a dizzying array of curiosities, although in this case, instead of being presented by an icy scientist on his sprawling estate, it's a kingdom on the coast of Africa, performed by a band of shipwrecked ingenues. I suppose that, this being the second Roussel book I've read, I was less shocked and wowed, but it was still entertainingly weird-- I half-imagined Tim and Eric of Awesome Show fame putting on half the performances Roussel describes-- and quite often fantastic.
October 20, 2017
La novela de Roussel funciona como un epítome de sus inquietudes artísticas. Es decir, un control desaforado del descontrol. Impresiones de África, a primera vista, podría pasar como un compendio de fragmentos caprichosos, unos más divertidos que otros, que si bien muestran una actividad imaginaria prodigiosa, difícilmente ameritarían la atención que se le ha dispensado a la obra. La importancia de la obra rousseliana reside en lo formal, o para decirlo de otra manera, en su armado. ¿Y qué de su armado? Que se nos presenta tanto velado como desvelado. El científico loco que es Raymond Roussel nos obnubila con los efectos lisérgicos de la esencia resultante, pero es generoso y corre el telón para mostrarnos los alambiques, los tubos de ensayos y las mangueras que conectan una olla con otra. Lo que hace de Impresiones de África una obra programática (quizás sin querer) es que tiene una coherencia conceptual que involucra desde su fábula (los shows magníficos de Los Incomparables como "fachadas" de un esqueleto oculto que luego se muestra a todas luces) hasta su estructura (circular: en la primera parte expone los destellos, en la segunda, el cómo se crearon y en la tercera, todo vuelve a empezar), y de paso demuestra el poder del método en tanto a posibilidades lúdico/artísticas (desafortunadamente, si se lee una traducción, los juegos de palabras, las homofonías y metonimias no se perciben). La consecuencia de que tanto el resultado como el proceso para obtenerlo pueden ser igualmente artísticos, introduce una cuestión fundamental para las vanguardias y sus diferentes invenciones metodológicas: la escritura automática, el cadáver exquisito, las constricciones semánticas oulipianas, entre muchas otras. Es tan evidente la intención de Roussel de revalorizar "la cocina" de la obra, que unos años más tarde publicó un ensayo donde explica los métodos formales que utilizó para crear sus obras más conocidas. Por si no nos bastó con Los Incomparables.
Esta es una novela fundamental para comprender la dialéctica entre fondo y forma dentro de la literatura. No obstante, si el interés del lector no yace en verificar las últimas consecuencias de un juego formal, de tan alta factura dentro del arte contemporáneo todavía hoy que los trucos vanguardistas y sus "restricciones" ya no divierten tanto, hay escenas que son geniales, otras delirantes y algunas apenas divertidas.
Esta es una novela fundamental para comprender la dialéctica entre fondo y forma dentro de la literatura. No obstante, si el interés del lector no yace en verificar las últimas consecuencias de un juego formal, de tan alta factura dentro del arte contemporáneo todavía hoy que los trucos vanguardistas y sus "restricciones" ya no divierten tanto, hay escenas que son geniales, otras delirantes y algunas apenas divertidas.
February 27, 2022
I read this book as part of a challenge, otherwise it would never have made it onto my radar. The challenge was to find a book from Boxall's List of Books to Read Before You Die with less than 1000 ratings. This book fit the criteria.
This book is very strange. I began reading it from page 1 and found it to be incredibly boring as it was descriptions of events and spectacles in minutiae - rather like directions for repairing appliances. I returned to Goodreads to see what was going on and discovered that the book could be started at Chapter 10. I switched to that format and the book became a bit more interesting and linked what was in the first nine chapters with the persons from the second half of the book. When I returned to Chapter 2 to complete my reading, it was again boring, but it did make more sense.
So now I've added one more rating to this infrequently rated book. My rating did not raise the overall rating of this book because I found it tolerable and I liked it - only a little.
This book is very strange. I began reading it from page 1 and found it to be incredibly boring as it was descriptions of events and spectacles in minutiae - rather like directions for repairing appliances. I returned to Goodreads to see what was going on and discovered that the book could be started at Chapter 10. I switched to that format and the book became a bit more interesting and linked what was in the first nine chapters with the persons from the second half of the book. When I returned to Chapter 2 to complete my reading, it was again boring, but it did make more sense.
So now I've added one more rating to this infrequently rated book. My rating did not raise the overall rating of this book because I found it tolerable and I liked it - only a little.
January 28, 2019
090813: further proof that, for me, the best medium for expression of surrealism, the most effective, the most memorable- is visual not verbal. that is, visual arts like painting, etching, drawing, dance, plays, movies, or even plastic arts like sculpture, ceramics- not writing prose or poetry. maybe this loses something in translation, but for me it is one long, long, description of surrealist performance art, which may be striking, involving, interesting, in itself but not at this remove. in this, the anthropologist in me argues, there is nothing of Africa that offers these impressions...
July 6, 2012
with Lautreamont, Pessoa and a few others - Roussel is one of the category of uncategorizable authors
July 30, 2018
Kdyz jsem klikal u knihy na I'am finished, tak jsem byl opravdu finished a to ani nejsem Fin!
Rousselovo fantasmagorium Africke dojmy byla velka vyzva a jako mistr literarniho smyku musim priznat, ze jsem to nevydrzel, i prestoze jsem se jiz zdarne prekotlil pres bibli dekadence od Huysmanse nebo memoary sluzky Ivety Bartosove. Na strance 259 muj mozek prestal pracovat a jiz se nerozbehl. Toto se mi tedy stava bezne v patek vecer, kdyz reknu "a milostiva, za kolik je ta lahev jaggermeistera?" ale v pripade knih je to tuze vyjimecne. Vlastne doted stale netusim, jestli jsem clovek, zidle nebo mikrovlnka.
Africke dojmy jsou o skupine lidi, kteri na namesti predvadeji nejaky vynalezy a ritualy. Kazdej vynalez je popsanej na patnacti strankach tak slozite, ze kdyz jsem se to snazil predstavit, musel jsem u toho vypadat asi jako Agata Hanychova u ucebnice makromolekularni chemie. Kdyz dojde k bizarni performanci, nasleduje dalsi clovek a dalsi vynalez a toto pokracuje, mam ten pocit, dokud ctenar nezemre. Bylo to, jako bych cetl navod na sestaveni pracky v pakistanstine - 200 krat za sebou.
Me hodnoceni stale osciluje nekde mezi kavovarem, plivajici cernoskou a lokomotivou na analni pohon. Pokud chcete nekoho zabit a v Tete zrovna nemaji novicok, tato kniha je dostupna alternativa.
Rousselovo fantasmagorium Africke dojmy byla velka vyzva a jako mistr literarniho smyku musim priznat, ze jsem to nevydrzel, i prestoze jsem se jiz zdarne prekotlil pres bibli dekadence od Huysmanse nebo memoary sluzky Ivety Bartosove. Na strance 259 muj mozek prestal pracovat a jiz se nerozbehl. Toto se mi tedy stava bezne v patek vecer, kdyz reknu "a milostiva, za kolik je ta lahev jaggermeistera?" ale v pripade knih je to tuze vyjimecne. Vlastne doted stale netusim, jestli jsem clovek, zidle nebo mikrovlnka.
Africke dojmy jsou o skupine lidi, kteri na namesti predvadeji nejaky vynalezy a ritualy. Kazdej vynalez je popsanej na patnacti strankach tak slozite, ze kdyz jsem se to snazil predstavit, musel jsem u toho vypadat asi jako Agata Hanychova u ucebnice makromolekularni chemie. Kdyz dojde k bizarni performanci, nasleduje dalsi clovek a dalsi vynalez a toto pokracuje, mam ten pocit, dokud ctenar nezemre. Bylo to, jako bych cetl navod na sestaveni pracky v pakistanstine - 200 krat za sebou.
Me hodnoceni stale osciluje nekde mezi kavovarem, plivajici cernoskou a lokomotivou na analni pohon. Pokud chcete nekoho zabit a v Tete zrovna nemaji novicok, tato kniha je dostupna alternativa.
June 1, 2014
One thing is for sure- Roussel had QUITE the imagination! The first nine chapters of the book are descriptions of the fantastic inventions and conventions composed for the gala for King Talu. One hundred pages of descriptions. No story. It got tedious. And honestly, I struggled with picturing what he described, because they were so outlandish.
The story doesn't really begin until the tenth chapter, where it is explained why the gala with all it's performances and trappings occurred. After the previous chapters, it's a relief. Things begin to make a little more sense. Chronologically read, the book should go chapters 10-24, 1-9, and 25 to end it. I'm puzzled why it wasn't presented that way, other than to show off, which is the general impression I get from the book.
Food: a totally avant-garde meal. Presented to dazzle, the spectacle is more concerned with appearance than taste.
The story doesn't really begin until the tenth chapter, where it is explained why the gala with all it's performances and trappings occurred. After the previous chapters, it's a relief. Things begin to make a little more sense. Chronologically read, the book should go chapters 10-24, 1-9, and 25 to end it. I'm puzzled why it wasn't presented that way, other than to show off, which is the general impression I get from the book.
Food: a totally avant-garde meal. Presented to dazzle, the spectacle is more concerned with appearance than taste.
September 4, 2014
Don't pay any mind to my arbitrary rating. Impressions d'Afrique is not the kind of book that can be judged on a 1 to 5 scale. It is old, out of reference with our time, flavoured with the dubious colonialist visions of Africa, written in the most basic journalistic style of the early 20th century, awkwardly constructed.
It is also the works of a mind fascinated by the science and techniques of his times but at the same time of a vivid and unbridled imagination. The result has all the charm of a Jules Verne's novel with nothing of its dryness, despite a complete absence of dialogues. Not unlike Chirico's paintings, Impressions d'Afrique is not so much a surrealist book as a book which inspired the works of surrealists. Luis Bunuel and Salvator Dali come to mind.
Nowadays the influence of Roussel's novel has lost none of its power. Brian Catlin's extraordinary novel The Vorrh is, to this regards, the greatest homage Roussel could have dreamt of.
It is also the works of a mind fascinated by the science and techniques of his times but at the same time of a vivid and unbridled imagination. The result has all the charm of a Jules Verne's novel with nothing of its dryness, despite a complete absence of dialogues. Not unlike Chirico's paintings, Impressions d'Afrique is not so much a surrealist book as a book which inspired the works of surrealists. Luis Bunuel and Salvator Dali come to mind.
Nowadays the influence of Roussel's novel has lost none of its power. Brian Catlin's extraordinary novel The Vorrh is, to this regards, the greatest homage Roussel could have dreamt of.
January 10, 2016
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 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.
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 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.
March 20, 2021
I found Raymond Roussel's "Impressions of Africa" to be practically unreadable. I've read a lot of books over the years written about Africa and this may be the very worst one.
The first 80 pages or so are spent detailing various uninteresting performances going on while some random people (who turn out to be shipwrecked on Africa and are held for ransom.... no need to impart any of this information until nearly a dozen chapters pass.)
There are plenty of racist attitudes (as you'd expect from a book written in this period) just make it even more intolerable.
French surrealism is apparently not for me.
The first 80 pages or so are spent detailing various uninteresting performances going on while some random people (who turn out to be shipwrecked on Africa and are held for ransom.... no need to impart any of this information until nearly a dozen chapters pass.)
There are plenty of racist attitudes (as you'd expect from a book written in this period) just make it even more intolerable.
French surrealism is apparently not for me.
May 6, 2010
I kind of swam in and out of this book. A litany of strange performances and events at the ceremony of an African leader, followed by equally strange explanations, all centered around a shipwreck. Roussel's work is like nothing else. Geometrical and oblique.
August 13, 2019
Impressions of Africa by French author Raymond Roussel, first published in 1910, is a strange, surrealistic novel that breaks new ground, departing from a tradition of realism in fiction writing, to present something with an unusual timeline and form.
It is not, as the title might suggest, a travel or adventure story. Rather, the first nine chapters describe in intricate detail a series of performances put on in honor of the coronation of Tali VII, Emperor of Ponukele and King of Drelshkaf.
The performers are a mix of locals and Europeans, and the show is a peculiar mix of the exotic, the supernatural and the just plain strange.
The novel begins over from Chapter 10, providing a backstory for the characters and the performance featured in the first part.
Unfortunately, it doesn't get much more coherent and, while the writing is colorful and full of wonderful detail (it must have been difficult to translate from French to English), I found my mind wandering as I failed to fully comprehend what was going on and the point of the story.
A curious and interesting novel in the annals of fiction writing, but not really my cup of tea.
It is not, as the title might suggest, a travel or adventure story. Rather, the first nine chapters describe in intricate detail a series of performances put on in honor of the coronation of Tali VII, Emperor of Ponukele and King of Drelshkaf.
The performers are a mix of locals and Europeans, and the show is a peculiar mix of the exotic, the supernatural and the just plain strange.
The novel begins over from Chapter 10, providing a backstory for the characters and the performance featured in the first part.
Unfortunately, it doesn't get much more coherent and, while the writing is colorful and full of wonderful detail (it must have been difficult to translate from French to English), I found my mind wandering as I failed to fully comprehend what was going on and the point of the story.
A curious and interesting novel in the annals of fiction writing, but not really my cup of tea.
October 17, 2016
I found this to be quite bizarre with a kaleidoscope of characters each of whom has some sort of exceptional talent to entertain. The book starts off with a long detailed description of each act in a strange variety show put on in a town in Africa where the European performers have been shipwrecked. Then we get some back story on them and finally we get an introduction to the African tribal leaders, who also seem to have been brought up in or are connected to Europe in some way. I was left feeling I had got very few impressions of Africa but rather more of Raymond Roussel's fantastic mind. Too many characters, not enough depth, too much sparkle, not enough reality for me.
October 25, 2013
This one was remarkably readable for an author so closely connected to the surrealists. Still strange to thing that Roussel was a contemporary of Proust. Such a weird book after all, half the book being this surreal pageant of images and then the other half being an explanation of how the pageant came to be, explaining everything in minute detail. It struck me a lot like some of the X-Files episodes, the beginning actually being somewhat of the ending. In any event, saying this one is interesting is an understatatment.
May 15, 2013
Have to wonder what drugs Roussel was on when he wrote this, or was it a high fever brought on by malaria. A group of shipwreck survivors, some with remarkable talents become the entertainment for an African leader.
Spent quite a while scratching my head, not a big fan of surrealism it seems.
Spent quite a while scratching my head, not a big fan of surrealism it seems.
April 30, 2012
Sublimely odd parade of mechanical, botanical, and zoological marvels. Plot? Not really. The narrator's exceedingly minute descriptions are hilarious.
January 7, 2013
This translation is a bore. I should have read Dalkey's translation, or better, just have read it in French...
July 7, 2015
Exhausting - best taken in small chunks
October 26, 2015
Very bizarre book.
March 12, 2014
This book, published in France in 1910, is regularly cited as a proto-surrealist work, influential to everyone from Breton to Foucault to John Ashbery, in line with Lautremont's similarly strange (though far more brutal) "Maldoror." (The Oulipo movement also cited Roussel as a "pre-emptive plagiarist" of Ouplipian structures and concepts.) The premise: a group of seafarers heading from Paris to South America on holiday capsize and land on an African coast town, where they are held for ransom by the local emperor, Talou. The book opens with a strange, complex scene in which a ramshackle stage (bearing the title "The Incomparables") shares space with a bust of Kant, a reproduction of the Paris Stock Exchange, and life-size statues with moving parts. Acts come and go that even make a Jororowsky film look like Dreyer. A man paints grape seeds with immensely concentrated patterns, so that when the develop, small murals of Biblical happenings can be seen through the skin of the grape. Another person teaches a giant worm to play a zither. Another can control his mouth and throat muscles so that he can split his voice into four parts, thus singing a full round of "Frere Jacques" by himself. Another creates a plant-generated device that can draw a perfect reproduction of whatever is seen through its viewing window. And so on.
The endless invention is so immersive, so overwhelming, so non-stop, you get about 90 pages in and think, "there's no way this can keep going on for the full 280 pages!" And of course, it can't. It doesn't. Around the mid-point of the book, we pull all the way back, receiving an oral history of the African emperor and his rival tribe, their prevevious generations. We find out why The Incomparables are putting on their performances and showing off their breathtaking devices -- they are simply biding time waiting for the letters sent to their families asking for ransom money comes through. Roussel shows us what's on stage, then pulls back the curtain and shows us how we got there. But like '80s Penn and Teller routines, even the act of showing you the secret doesn't really give away much. In the end, the man still has a trained worm that plays a zither, and another can still make lozenges that turn into beautiful murals when thrown into a lake.
For all these reasons, as I thought about the book, I thought less of Lautremont (and Breton) and more about George Melies. The inventiveness here is all magic tricks, the way early movie special effects were considered large-scale magic tricks. It's also telling that 1910 is the year it was published, as it has a love of, and faith in, inventive machinery and devices to liberate us from our boring existences, a theme that would have been inconceivable 20 years before and would have been unseemly even 10 years later. The trickery lives all the way inside the bones of the writing, too...Amazon reviewers (and others) will tell you that reading Roussel in anything other than the original French is missing a lot, as many of the most improbably descriptions and phrases are built out of elaborate French word games and homonyms. To use an example from the intro of the book: in another story, Roussel started with the line "Les lettres du blanc sur les bandes du vieux billard" ("The white letters on the cushions of an old billard table" and ends the story with the line, "Les lettres du blanc sur les bandes du vieux pillard" ("The white man's letters on the hordes of the old plunderers"). Only one letter was changed, but by using words that can have two meanings, Roussel creates two pillars between which he can string the bridge of a story. (A useful companion to this and Roussel's other novel, "Locus Solus," would be the collection "How I Wrote Certain of My Books," which gives many more examples.) The translator notes that even most French readers didn't notice these subtle games of wordplay, and it took until at least 10 years after his death (from intentional barbituate overdose) before the Surrealists and others began to revere him.
As you'd imagine, the first 1/3 of the book goes like gangbusters. The middle section, a fine piece of contrived legend-building, drags a bit. The last third, showing the behind-the-scenes of the big performance, is interesting if not ravishing, and it helps explain some of the more obscure symbols (such as why the bowler hat has the word "PINCHED" on it in white chalk letters).
For being an "art book," it actually reads very well, with a straightforward narrative and a pared-down syntax style the translator took great pains to re-create. The depiction of the talking horses and quadroplegic one-man-bands and whistling epaulets and somnambulent dream generation machines requires some pretty advanced visual thinking, as Roussel clearly describes every cog and flywheel. (This could be made into a pretty breathtaking film that would be equally baffling with either a $1 million or $53 million budget.) For a book written by a Frenchman in 1910 about a continent he'd never visited, the depictions of the natives are remarkably free of cringeworthy moments. Though I should note that Bad Things Happens To Animals (copyright Monique van den Berg) regularly, though often dispassionately.
The book is exciting and radical in its structure, and unprecedented in its visual splendor. It's also a bit snoozy and skim-worthy in places unless you really like family histories and legends. It's worth a read, and if you're as fascinated as I am with the absurdities that came before Dada and Surrealism, it's a must-read.
The endless invention is so immersive, so overwhelming, so non-stop, you get about 90 pages in and think, "there's no way this can keep going on for the full 280 pages!" And of course, it can't. It doesn't. Around the mid-point of the book, we pull all the way back, receiving an oral history of the African emperor and his rival tribe, their prevevious generations. We find out why The Incomparables are putting on their performances and showing off their breathtaking devices -- they are simply biding time waiting for the letters sent to their families asking for ransom money comes through. Roussel shows us what's on stage, then pulls back the curtain and shows us how we got there. But like '80s Penn and Teller routines, even the act of showing you the secret doesn't really give away much. In the end, the man still has a trained worm that plays a zither, and another can still make lozenges that turn into beautiful murals when thrown into a lake.
For all these reasons, as I thought about the book, I thought less of Lautremont (and Breton) and more about George Melies. The inventiveness here is all magic tricks, the way early movie special effects were considered large-scale magic tricks. It's also telling that 1910 is the year it was published, as it has a love of, and faith in, inventive machinery and devices to liberate us from our boring existences, a theme that would have been inconceivable 20 years before and would have been unseemly even 10 years later. The trickery lives all the way inside the bones of the writing, too...Amazon reviewers (and others) will tell you that reading Roussel in anything other than the original French is missing a lot, as many of the most improbably descriptions and phrases are built out of elaborate French word games and homonyms. To use an example from the intro of the book: in another story, Roussel started with the line "Les lettres du blanc sur les bandes du vieux billard" ("The white letters on the cushions of an old billard table" and ends the story with the line, "Les lettres du blanc sur les bandes du vieux pillard" ("The white man's letters on the hordes of the old plunderers"). Only one letter was changed, but by using words that can have two meanings, Roussel creates two pillars between which he can string the bridge of a story. (A useful companion to this and Roussel's other novel, "Locus Solus," would be the collection "How I Wrote Certain of My Books," which gives many more examples.) The translator notes that even most French readers didn't notice these subtle games of wordplay, and it took until at least 10 years after his death (from intentional barbituate overdose) before the Surrealists and others began to revere him.
As you'd imagine, the first 1/3 of the book goes like gangbusters. The middle section, a fine piece of contrived legend-building, drags a bit. The last third, showing the behind-the-scenes of the big performance, is interesting if not ravishing, and it helps explain some of the more obscure symbols (such as why the bowler hat has the word "PINCHED" on it in white chalk letters).
For being an "art book," it actually reads very well, with a straightforward narrative and a pared-down syntax style the translator took great pains to re-create. The depiction of the talking horses and quadroplegic one-man-bands and whistling epaulets and somnambulent dream generation machines requires some pretty advanced visual thinking, as Roussel clearly describes every cog and flywheel. (This could be made into a pretty breathtaking film that would be equally baffling with either a $1 million or $53 million budget.) For a book written by a Frenchman in 1910 about a continent he'd never visited, the depictions of the natives are remarkably free of cringeworthy moments. Though I should note that Bad Things Happens To Animals (copyright Monique van den Berg) regularly, though often dispassionately.
The book is exciting and radical in its structure, and unprecedented in its visual splendor. It's also a bit snoozy and skim-worthy in places unless you really like family histories and legends. It's worth a read, and if you're as fascinated as I am with the absurdities that came before Dada and Surrealism, it's a must-read.
August 8, 2018
A delightfully weird and strange little book, full of the most extraordinary inventiveness. The author was quite clearly deranged, but the sort of lunatic one would have longed to meet, just to watch what he would say or do next. It's as if Evelyn Waugh's account of Haile Selassie's coronation was touched up and extended by Umberto Eco while he was gorging on magic mushrooms. I loved it.
May 30, 2019
Brilliant.
December 8, 2007
The first half of the book consists of detailed descriptions of spectacles arranged for the benefit of an emperor "in that part of Africa near the equator." The performances are incredible and bizarre--a basin/zither set-up allows a virtuosic worm to play Gypsy concertoes through undulations of its body, a limbless man is a one-armed band, a beautiful woman emerges from a hut with walls made from overlapping pages lit from within with a magpie on her shoulder trained to operate life-size mechanical dioramas depicting scenes from antiquity. The setting and the events seems inexplicable, a reflection of the magpie-like gatherings of a pre-industrial culture from the West: the emperor wears a blue evening gown and a blond wig, there is a miniature version of the London stock exchange at one end of the square, portraits of Spanish twin girls are treated and burned as fetishes. The second half of the book, though, recreates the events leading up to the spectacles we've just read about. Every last detail is made to make sense in its own way, without diminishing the wonder it first induced. The book becomes ideology critique and a retold dream at the same time.
April 30, 2015
It was okay. Once I realized there was a circular timeline (we started at Point B, wrapped back around to Point A, then came back and finished at Point C), I liked it better -- I liked getting the backstory of all the weird things that happened at the beginning of the book that just seemed odd and from out of nowhere, like why so many of these African natives of the jungle knew French and could act and sing and paint ().
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