Evil flowers and skeletons; Baudelaire and Rops

Les Épaves (1866) by Félicien Rops (detail)

For the Les Épaves (1866) by French poet Charles Baudelaire, Belgian artist Félicien Rops was commissioned to design a frontispiece based on the Adam and Eve with the Tree of Knowledge as Death[1] woodcut by Jost Amman as found [2] in Eustache-Hyacinthe Langlois‘s “danses des morts” essay, where it is erroneously attributed to Hans Sebald Beham.

See Félicien Rops frontispiece in Baudelaire’s ‘Les Épaves’

Grandville as the sorcerer-priest of commodity fetishism

“Les poisson d’avril” Grandville from Another World

Following yesterday’s post[1] on Un autre monde, I’ve been cleaning up my copy of the full text of that fantastic book and furthering my research on the book and Grandville (1803 – 1847) in general.

Kindred spirits

The only person coming close in sheer absurdity to Grandville in the Anglophone world is Edward Lear (1812 – 1888) of whom I recently posted his Walking Fish[2].

Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin on Grandville

To my surprise, Baudelaire doesn’t care for Grandville nor his work, literally saying “there are superficial people who find Grandville entertaining; as for me, he scares me.” (translation mine, see Baudelaire on Grandville).

The philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) saw in Grandville’s drawings, especially in Another World, a glorification of commodity fetishism: “The enthronement of the commodity … is the secret theme of Grandville’s art” and “if the commodity has become a fetish, Grandville is its sorcerer-priest.” (translation mine)

English translations

There is no public domain translation of the work of Grandville. There is Stanley Appelbaum’s Bizarreries & fantasies of Grandville: 266 illustrations from Un autre monde and Les animaux (Dover Publications, 1974, 1987).

Commodity fetishism?

Commodity fetishism was of great interest to me in the early 2000s, when I discovered the work of Walter Benjamin. I’m happy to have found a drawing that is proof of Grandville’s status as “sorcerer-priest of commodity fetishism.” The plate is called “Les poisson d’avril” (lit: The April Fishes, but actually French for ‘April Fools’ Day’) [3] in the chapter UN VOYAGE D’AVRIL and depicts fish fishing for humans in an enchanted wood. On their hooks are the commodity fetishes such as “diamants, … croix d’honneur, épaulettes, bourses d’or.” (“diamonds … a cross of honor, epaulettes and gold purses.”).

If you want to browse the on-line version with illustrations, here is the link[4].

There is another world, but it is in this one

‘Plantes marines, coquillages, madrépores’ from Un autre monde by French illustrator Grandville.

Plantes marines, coquillages, madrépores[1] (Aquatic plants, seashells and madrepores) is a plate from Un autre monde (Another world) by French illustrator Grandville (1803 – 1847).

The illustration alludes to man copying the patterns of nature, like crystallization and petrifaction.

The title of this post “There is another world, but it is in this one” is attributed both to W. B. Yeats (1865 – 1939) and French poet Paul Éluard (1895 – 1952) (as “Il y a un autre monde mais il est dans celui-ci”).

If you like sourcing quotations, you should pay a visit to Quote Investigator.

Previously on Tumblr: Crystallised Minerals[2] by Alexandre Isidore Leroy de Barde.

Mark the severe ptosis of the breasts

La Tentation de St Antoine, ornée de figures et de musique (1781)

La Tentation de St Antoine, ornée de figures et de musique, engraving by Antoine Borel after François-Rolland Elluin.

This is quite something. It’s been a while since I’ve had a find like this one. Mark the severe ptosis of the breasts and the general atmosphere which pre-dates the diableries.

The Bibliographie des principaux ouvrages relatifs à l’amour notes[1]:

La Tentation de saint Antoine (p. Sedaine). — Le Pot-pourri de Loth (p. P. Lalman, ou, selon la France littéraire, par Poinsinet). Londres (Paris), 1781, 2 part, en 1 vol. in-8 avec mus. gr.,portr. de Sedaine, front, et 17 pi. en taille douce, dont quelques-unes libres. Bozerian, 20 fr. — Il y en a aussi une édit. Cazin, 1782, in-18, av. 17 fig. non libres ; peu commune.

The math of Noah’s Ark

Over the course of last summer I read Philipp Blom‘s A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment (2010), a book about the petite histoire of the D’Holbach’s Coterie.

Beasts on the ark and what they ate by John Wilkins

One of its most memorable passages describes Abbé Mallet’s entry on Noah’s Ark which cites Bishop John Wilkins’s mathematical breakdown of the food needed on Noah’s Ark (above). Fascinating.

Also, Wicked Company notes more. It notes how the alphabetical order in the Encyclopédie was regarded as a heresy in itself (just as it had been in Bayle‘s Historical and Critical Dictionary), since according to contemporaries, God should be the measure of things, not something mundane as the alphabet. It also notes how in the diagram “Figurative system of human knowledge“[1], also known as the tree of Diderot and d’Alembert, theology is but a subclassification of both philosophy and reason, and not a source of knowledge in and of itself.

By the way, there is another fascinating diagram based on the tree of Diderot and d’Alembert, called ‘Essai d’une distribution généalogique des Sciences et des Arts principaux‘[2], representing a more narrative genealogical distribution in the shape of a very large cactus-like plant of which the leaves are filled with text.

Image sourced at the wonderful Il Giornale Nuovo.

See also: Concerning the surface of God

A summary of Roland Topor’s ‘Joko’s Anniversary’

Poster by Topor for the 1972 Patrick Roegiers staging of ‘Joko fête son anniversaire’ at the Théâtre de Poche.

Much like Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Joko of Roland Topor’s novel/play Joko’s Anniversary is the breadwinner of a family. Gregor Samsa is a travelling salesman, Joko works at the ‘Reservoir’ and his family consists of a mother, a father (who collects advertisements and is invalid) and two sisters.

“the old fellow got nimbly to his feet and leapt back on his shoulders”

One day, en route to work, Joko is jumped by a man who wants to piggyback Joko as if he were a taxi. This is his first encounter whith seven otherworldly characters who are visiting his town for a convention. Joko and his colleagues at the Reservoir start to transport Wanda, Sir Barnett, Pozzi, Professor Krank, Pan Ton, Gunnar Ader and Doctor Fersen around the city and they are handsomely rewarded for their carrying services with gold coins.

One afternoon, while Joko is being straddled by Sir Barnett, he faints and falls. When he wakes up he finds that he has ‘fused‘ with Sir Barnett at his back, as if they were glued together. Their skins have been grafted together where they touch when piggybacking. Joko takes Sir Barnett home to his room. One by one, Wanda, Pozzi, Professor Krank, Pan Ton, Gunnar Ader and Doctor Fersen come to his room and they all fuse to the body of Joko. Meanwhile, Joko, is being maltreated by his ‘parasites‘ and they proceed by killing his two sisters, his mother and father. Before they die however, his mother and father succeed in killing all of the seven parasites with an axe.

When Joko wakes up he finds that the seven have disappeared and that his wounds have healed. However, it appears that the creatures have found a place inside his body. He is the host to the seven bodies who each in turn commit terrible atrocities when being in control of his body. Joko decides to kill himself, without success however and while he and his body survive, the parasites inside him die and start to spread a stench after a week or so. Exactly one year after the parasites’ death, a bus of tourists stops in front of Joko’s door, saying in unison: “Congratulations Joko!”

See also: http://jahsonic.tumblr.com/post/49805144480/joko-viert-zijn-verjaardag-1969-by-roland-topor

We who cannot

“You who cannot” (1799) by Francisco Goya

Last weekend, I bought Joko’s Anniversary (1969) by Roland Topor.

Reading the opening pages, it dawned on me that Topor’s novel starts where Baudelaire’s “To Every Man His Chimera” (1869) left off, exactly one hundred years earlier.

Illustration: “You who cannot” (1799) by Francisco Goya, published hundred seventy years earlier.

Münchhausen, Nietzsche and the swamp of nothingness

Doré’s caricature of Münchhausen

Gustave Doré‘s caricature of Münchhausen [1] is one of the illustrations from  Les Aventures du Baron de Münchausen (1862), translated by  Théophile Gautier, fils.

It depicts the baron with a periwig, the socle of the bust bears the words “Mendace veritas,” Latin for “in falsehood, truth.”

It served as an inspiration to Terry Gilliam‘s film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen to style John Neville as the baron [2].

To my surprise, the heroic feat in yesterday’s Tumblr post[3], Baron Münchhausen pulls himself out of a mire by his own hair, is mentioned in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil:

“The desire for “freedom of will,” [...] the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, [...] involves nothing less than [...] to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the slough of nothingness. (sich selbst aus dem Sumpf des Nichts an den Haaren ins Dasein zu ziehn).”

See also Bust (sculpture), Periwig, Friedrich Nietzsche and free will.

An encapsulation of queerness and otherness

Toulouse-Lautrec Wearing Jane Avril’s Feathered Hat and Boa (ca. 1892) by Maurice Guibert.

For years I mistakenly thought that one of my fave visuals, Toulouse-Lautrec Wearing Jane Avril’s Feathered Hat and Boa (ca. 1892, above) was by Nadar.

Today, I learnt that it is in fact by Maurice Guibert.

In the process of finding that out, I discovered two fine blogs. The first The Esoteric Curiosa, the second the enigmatic ACravan.

Lautrec dressed in drag encapsulates queerness and otherness, better than any other photograph.

I’ve previously posted a photo of Lautrec, the delightfully scatological Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec at the beach at Le Crotoy, Picardie in 1898[1].

Stolen kisses

Stolen kisses from Cinema Paradiso

The enigmatic and highly original blogger “Ombres Blanches” is back with a series of posts on surrealist cinema, French surrealism and all the things “Ombres Blanches” is into.

Illustration:  deleted kiss scenes from the film Cinema Paradiso (click to see a partial list of indentified fragments) mentioned by Ombres Blanches. The collage gives a whole new meaning to the concept of the stolen kiss.

You can see it as a film scene here.