Gaya Scienza

Lautréamont in the TLS: A Tour de Force...

To finish with the back issues of the TLS that piled up during my absence, here are the other most interesting things.

David Coward reviews several books in the July 9 issue, including Simon Burrows's A King's Ransom, The life of Charles Théveneau de Morande. "Théveneau de Morande (1741-1805), not a man dedicated to the general good, was in it for the money. An ex-soldier, a fraudster, a professional gambler and high-class pimp, in 1770 he fled to London, where he cheated at cards and blackmailed vulnerable homosexuals." The Chevalier d'Éon and Beaumarchais crossed his life when they were dispatched to buy him off as he was writing a book with revelations on Mme du Barry, the King's mistress...

In the same issue, Chris Given-Wilson is a bit hard on Seymour Phillips's biography of Edward II, "an absorbing blow-by-blow account of the follies and misfortunes" of the era, which leaves "open the question of the significance of these events." If you want to know the answers provided by Phillips to "the only two things, according to Given-Wilson's lecturer when he was an undergraduate, that students want to know about Edward II: 'Firstly, was he queer, and secondly, is it true about the poker?'" read either the book or the review...

Further down, J.P.E. Harper-Scott reviews two recent biographies of Tchaikovsky and Chopin. In one of the letters to his brother, translated in the biography and quoted by Harper-Scott, Tchaikovsky, referring to a youth, fifteen years his junior, sadly confesses (at least I felt it that way...):

When he caresses me with his hand, when he lies with his head inclined on my breast, and I run my hand through his hair and secretly kiss it... passion rages within me with such unimaginable strength... Yet I am far from the desire for a physical bond. I feel if this happened, I would cool towards him. It would be unpleasant for me if this marvelous youth debased himself to copulation with an aging and fat-bellied man.

Harper-Scott is very critical of the way Chopin's biographer discusses his sexual life. He mentions, en passant, his 'homoerotic relationship with Tytus Woyciechowski.' I knew...

Mark Silverberg's The New York School Poets and the Neo-Avant Garde - Between radical art and radical chic is reviewed in the July 16 issue, "mostly, a reliable introduction to five poets who had, at least, one another, a city or two, and a set of fine painters in common; five poets the future is going to continue to read." These are: Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler and Barbara Guest. All lived in NYC in the 50s and 60s. Four are or were gay...

Roger Cardinal reviews in the July 23 issue the excellent new edition of the Oeuvres complètes de Lautréamont in La Pléiade collection (see Lautréamont in La Pléiade). His paper, filling up a full page of the TLS is a tour de force: not a single reference to the homosexual flavor of Les Chants de Maldoror...

But I don't want to end on a sour note.

As so often on Sunday morning my day was enlivened by Frank Rich columns in the NYT. Read Angels in America:

Make no mistake about it: The Proposition 8 trial, Judge Vaughn Walker's decision and the subsequent reaction to it (as much a non-reaction as anything else) constitute a high point in America's history-long struggle to live up to its democratic ideals.

Lautréamont in La Pléiade

Les Chants de Maldoror and their author are even more mysterious than Rimbaud and his poems. Very little is known. Jean-Jacques Lefrère has still been able to put together a thick biography (Isidore Ducasse - auteur des 'Chants de Maldoror, par le comte de Lautréamont', Fayard, 1998, 690p). His style, by moments, is very unpleasant ("le monsieur venu habiter la capitale"), with irritating easy punning. It is unfair to blame him for waiting until page 487 to ask: "Ducasse était-il homosexuel?". At least the question is there. Its frankness, though, masks a disappointing discussion.

Jean-Luc Steinmetz, in his recent excellent edition of Lautréamont in La Pléiade (Oeuvres complères, Lautréamont, Gallimard, 2009, 796p), does a better job.

The first half of the volume is dedicated to the complete works of Isidore Ducasse, the Montevideo-born author who published Les Chants under the name le comte de Lautréamont and died at 24 in Paris in 1870. In addition to Les Chants the works include Poésies I and Poésies II, as well as a few letters.

The second part of the volume, Lectures de Lautréamont, is a selection of the most significant papers published on Lautréamont since a brief review, signed Épistémon, appeared in the short-lived journal La Jeunesse in 1868, to an interview with Philippe Sollers in 1997. It is amazing that nowhere in these texts is discussed, even obliquely, the homosexual content of Les Chants. Yet, the references are clear and ubiquitous:

Ô poulpe, au regard de soie! toi, dont l'âme est inséparable de la mienne; toi, le plus beau des habitants du globe terrestre, et qui commandes à un sérail de quatre cents ventouses; toi, en qui siègent noblement, comme dans leur résidence naturelle, par un commun accord, d'un lien indestructible, la douce vertu communicative et les grâces divines, pourquoi n'es-tu pas avec moi, ton ventre de mercure contre ma poitrine d'aluminium, assis tous les deux sur quelque rocher du rivage, pour contempler ce spectacle que j'adore! (chant premier)

Steinmetz's short introduction and extensive notes shed a comprehensive light on what he describes as "une obsession, qui pour une part, semble avoir motivé l'écriture":

Le monde des pédérastes (c'est le nom que l'on donnait aux homosexuels de ce temps) environne Rimbaud et Ducasse. Milieu des séminaristes d'Un coeur sous une soutane pour l'un. Pour l'autre, réalité de l'internat, éveil sensuel dans un milieu dépourvu de femmes. Admirations et répulsions entre élèves.

Isidore Ducasse was familiar with the places where homosexuals cruised in Paris:

Cet enfant, qui est assis sur un banc du jardin des Tuileries, comme il est gentil! Un homme, mû par un dessein caché, vient s'assoir à côté de lui, sur le même banc, avec des allures équivoques. (chant deuxième)

And he had, clearly, read some of the medical books that began, by mid century, to be published on the topic of "pederasty and sodomy", in particular Ambroise Tardieu's Étude médico-légale sur les attentats aux moeurs (1857):

Ô pédérastes incompréhensibles, ce n'est pas moi qui lancerai des injures à votre grande dégradation; ce n'est pas moi qui viendrai jeter le mépris sur votre anus infundibuliforme.

Bruno Guitard wrote, several years ago, an excellent paper decrypting Les Chants de Maldoror as a love song, love between boys (Tendresse de Lautréamont, revue Europe, août-septembre 1987, nº 700-701, 68-77). The paper, which is cited by Steinmetz, argues, convincingly that homosexuality is Les Chants's generator (it would have deserved to be included in Lectures de Lautréamont...). So, as Guitard,

Lisons Lautréamont comme nous écoutons Puccini: à la fois goguenards et subjugués. Bel canto du vieil océan, aria de l'hermaphrodite, romance de Mervyn, et cette musique parfois si ténue: 'Les paupières se recherchent comme deux amis.'

2009.12.06