An Intersticial Update, Part 1

Until I have a home and full access to my files, archives, materials, workstation etc. mOnocle-Lash is still in half-gear. But things ARE moving, and here's a scattered and meandering update in-between 'official' website news posts, partly on current and future projects, partly on potential directions and focuses for mOnocle-Lash:


The Jeunes-France Bouzingo

Here, I shall be brief, for fear of being far too long-winded. Suffice to say that things procede swimmingly, as one can see by going HERE. This new Jeunes-France/Bouzingo website is not quite ready for official launch, but since this blog has only two regular readers, I doubt it will hurt to mention it here.


OSU Avant Writing Symposium

From Aug. 19-21, Ohio State University hosted one of the largest gatherings of visual poets, performance writers, avant-gardists, mail artists, and theorists, critics, and archivists of experimental writing in years, drawing attendees from across the US, Canada, Cuba, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Spain, and elsewhere. The symposium included over 40 lectures and performances (12 hours a day!) in three languages, several exhibitions, and various other activities.

A Post-Neo/Collab Fest delegation drove up from Roanoke, including Olchar Lindsann, Warren Fry, Jim Leftwich, Sue Leftwich, and Aaron Bensen; in Columbus we met up with Ohio Post-Neos Bela b. Grimm (our host), Imogene Engine, Aaron Andrews, and Tomislav Butkovic in from New Jersey for quite a strong Post-Neo showing. We were able to see old friends again, meet long-time ocllaborators for the first time, and begin new relationships. I'll not go into detail or I'll never finish, but among a great many stimulating presentations were Fluxus actions by Keith Buchholz and Reed Altemus, a very thought-provoking presentation by Lizabel Mónica on underground literary activity in Cuba (more below), some provocative questions regarding the efficacy of the avant-garde by William James Austin, a performance by the Be Blank Consort, several presentations on digital writing in South America, a fascinating and spirited presentation by Michael Peters of materials relating to Fleury Colon donated to the OSU Archive, superb performance-lectures by Geof Huth, Martin Gubins, and mIEKAL aND, a joint reading in memory of Thomas L. Taylor, a wonderful mail art show organised by C. Mehrl Bennett, Collab Fest organised by Jim Leftwich, also a lecture and performances by myself--and much, much more.

In addition, and more on-topic for this particular blog, was a store with stalls of material from 15 or 20 micro-presses focusing on experimental writing, including mOnocle-Lash. In addition to transactions carried on here, there was a large amount of direct trading among us. It was wonderful to see so much variety both in content and in publishing approach, especially as print becomes increasingly rare in micropress publishing. These exchanges include Reed Altemus' Tonerworks, mIEKAL aND's Xexoxial, Endwar's IZEN, Tom Cassidy's Musical Comedy Editions, Crag Hill's Meritage Press, and of course John Bennett's Luna Bisonte. There was much more that I have yet to check out. I've added links on the mOnocle-Lash webpage to some of these presses (as well as to some additional online presses), and plan to distribute catalogs of of some who do not have webpages along with outgoing packets.

mOnocle-Lash publications available there included the journals Synapse 4 and BARM 1; the anthology Lung Crackle; Imogene Engine's The Iuk Kide; b.b. Grimm & O.Lindsann's The Myopic Deathray; David Beris Edward's Mr. Rutabega & the Clockwork Mince; Megan Blafas' DadMama Baroness Paper Dolls; my The Ecstatic Nerve, Toward a Breathing Text, Ananchronism as Dissent, and Feral Pool; and the mOnocle-Lash catalog.



Some Thoughts on What's Next

As one would hope, I went into the symposium with certain thoughts in the back of my mind, and emerged with them at the front. The participation of many writers from Spanish-speaking countries--and in particular the presentation by Lizabel Mónica of Desliz on Cuban dissenting literature, conversations with her later in the weekend, and the accompanying packets of work and documentation that she brought along--helped to bring into focus a concern that I have had for some time, already made pointed by my interaction with Gleb Kolomiets' Slova in Russia and the linguistic and traditional complications that make up the fabric of mOnocle-Lash's own Bouzingo project. This concern is the isolation of the anglophone avant-garde.

I have for some time become increasingly impatient with the ethical and political complacency of marginal creative communities--what I would like to consider avant-gardes. My attempts both to think my own way out of this impasse and to goad the milieus with with I engage to more rigorous self-reflection and action in this regard are complex and have met with widely varying degrees of success so far. These attempts repeatedly pose the questions: How can we define, and then achieve efficacy? What must my own generation--those of us now entering our intellectual maturity and faced with a field of possible ways forward--achieve in order to re/establish a groundwork from which the avant-garde can become a social force rather than a literary-artistic genre? What must we address, and how?

These questions have been sharpened and recontextualized through my engagement with Gleb's Slova project and the group of writers, performers, and intellectuals with whose work I am slowly becoming familiar through it. As I interact further with communities across languages, in political situations vastly different from my own--realising along the way how deeply isolated my own Anglophone conception of the avant-garde community and tradition has become, and how difficult it is to overcome this limitation in the absence of adequate translation--this line of questioning solicits further and even more uncomfortable questions:

What can be the role of a Western, Euro-American Avant-Garde, especially an Anglophone avant-garde, which is in the final analysis an avant-garde of the undeserving elite? Of the only such communities who can afford to be "apolitical", or to choose to be otherwise, who have the privilege to risk complacence? To what extent does the Anglophone avant-garde reproduce within itself, unconsciously and hypocritically, the isolationism and nationalism of the society it wishes to subvert, an isolationism that takes the form of a blindness and an obliviousness to its own linguistic and political situation that is only possible when one speaks the language that is, after all, the literary equivalent of the Dollar, by which every other linguistic and literary currency is oriented and, all too often, devalued?

What are our responsibilities, and to whom? What are our unique resources, and how might they best be utilized in service of a vision of a truly global and transnational avant-garde?

And, most pointedly to the purpose of this particular blog, what role ought mOnocle-Lash to play in asking and then answering these questions, and providing platforms for response?

I am groping toward answers to the initial questions posed here, or more precisely toward a platform through which these questions might be asked. The most obvious and immediate answer is an increase of translated texts in Synapse and other venues; the practical issue of getting texts translated can come largely through increased dialogue and involvement with the communities themselves from which texts originate, and some hurdles might be overcome via the experiments in collaborative translation being carried out via the Bouzingo project.

But beyond this, platforms of exchange must be established through which these questions can be asked and answered within an international context. Here again I find excellent models in Slova (and the associated decentralized press Mycelium) and Desliz, both of them multifaceted projects, network-nodes whose focus is on facilitating exchange on local/national levels and on international/transnational levels simultaneously, both of them establishing a loose centre via journals that bring together poetic, artistic, and theoretical work from an array of nations and, to the extent possible, languages.

Desliz in particular uses the internet to host this wide range of discourse, creative work, documentation, announcements, calls for entries, etc and as the most effective way (despite its illegality in Cuba) to slip through national borders. Lizabel in fact upbraided me for this reason for having so little of the mOnocle-Lash material in pdf form. (I am in the long, slow process of digitizing--new publications will almost all appear simultaneously in both forms.) This kind of thing must be a long-term goal, but it is long-term.

In the meantime, there is at least one way in which the pervasiveness English can be turned against itself; as the language most commonly translated into and out of, it can serve as a kind of way-station of translation. A text translated from Russian to English may stand a better chance, on the underground level in which we work and if directed toward this purpose, of ending up in Spanish. Etc. etc. The same goes for discourse in general, including strategic exchange.

The most recent issue of Gleb's Slova includes a number of English texts translated into Russian, including SPART/Post-Neo's Nobody Go Anywhere Essays, and a number of Russian texts rendered into English. He's sent me a text detailing the current conditions of micropress and small press activity in Russia, which I'm waiting for an opportunity to publish. Lizabel's presentation last weekend, also translated, covers analogous territory. In both cases I have discussed potential translation/publication/distribution of work by others in their communities.

While I'd initially conceived of carrying these ideas out primarily in Synapse--and certainly there will be translations and quite possibly untranslated work in future issues--I am moving toward the notion of a separate journal, with an emphasis on expanding dialogue regarding these issues and resolving the challenges that avant-gardes and related communities face in their various contexts, evolving ways of coordinating internationally with an understanding of the very different resources and conditions that face cultural workers everywhere. What such a project might turn into would be decided organically as a result of this conversation.

This is where I am right now. Such a project as outlined above would not be put together until early next year (I still need to find a job, rent an apartment, and help establish an educational co-op this year...) I am on something of a precipice, and welcome ideas.

An Interstical Update, Part 2-Current Projects

New Semi-Publications:
No new publications per se since the Exquisite Crypt #2, but a couple new things--

• Greatly expanded version of Megan Blafas' DadaMaMa: Baroness Elsa Paper Dolls. In preparation for the OSU Avant-Writing Symposium (see below), we decided to do the first 'expansion' of the Baroness Elsa folder. Added were three calligraphic poems by Megan dedicated to the Baroness, each on custom-cut cardstock, and a four-page biography by me. They went like hotcakes at the Symposium. If you've already got a copy of the Dolls I'll be including the new materials in my next package to you (remind me if you'd like).
• Also prompted by the Symposium, there is a printed 24-page summer/Fall catalog for mOnocle-Lash, something I'd like to update several times a year.
• I am now able to distro SPART Action Group's journal Transmission #3, on folded A3. Reproductions will be a bit imperfect, but there are great contributions by Vittore Baroni, Istvan Kantor, Justin McKeown, Mark Greenwood, Olchar Lindsann & others. I'm hoping to distro other issues of Transmission as well; this will be reflected on the website soon.

Current Projects:
These are all currently and concretely being prepared--

• John M. Bennett, Textis Globbolalicus. Monstrous 1,000 page collection of poems in Bennett's Zoumish language of Globbolalia, in three volumes with introductions by Bob BruekL, Jim Leftwich, & Olchar Lindsann.
• Imogene Engine & Olchar Lindsann, The Hymns of Stone. Collaborative verse and collage.
• Alfred Jarry & Amy Oliver, Ubu Enchained. Oliver's translation, used for the Post-Neo production of the play at the 2009 Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival.
• David Beris Edwards, Collected Fiction. About cocking time! This will no doubt have a wittier and confusing title than this.
• William Wordsworth & Fast Sedan Nellson, The Prelude Translated into Even-More-Boring-And-Trite, Volume 2. Also about cocking time. Get off your arse, Nellson!
• The Jeunes-France Group, Scoria of the Bouzingo. The first sampler of fruits of the ongoing Bouzingo research/translation project (more below).
• Achille & Eugéne Devéria, Prints & Erotica, ed. Warren Fry. The first publication focusing on specific members of the Bouzingo group, the Devéria brothers.
  
• The Adventures of Mr. Squibbles, Vol. I. I've been saying for years that this DVD of seminal pre-Post-NeoAbsurdist short films was about to appear, but I really mean it this time!

• Other planned but further-off projects include an anthology of Post-Neo Prophesy-Poems, A DVD Poorly Made Films collection, pamphlets by Lindsann On Fun and Redefining the Avant-Garde, a follow up to Lennard & Lindsann's Compulsory Bingo (recorded but not yet mixed), and many other things.
  

July A.Da. 94 Update

It's an incredibly busy period right now between a relocation to Roanoke, VA and a two-week tour around England and Cornwall, but projects continue to press forward with mOnocle-Lash. To-whit:

NEW PUBLICATIONS:

• Exquisite Crypt #2, a relic of a previous Post-Neo travel extravaganza, a 20-page exquisite corpse worked on by the British, New Jersey, and Washington Post-Neo groups in the course of an interlocking set of travels and visits. The most recent three pages at any given time were off-limits for viewing as we worked, while previous pages could be perused; the result is a series of re-insertions and developments of themes as the poem progressed, an interesting experiment in the process of exquisite corpse.

• Dartington, A Eulogy, by O. Lindsann. The closure of the experimental school at Dartington, UK examined as an investigation into current creative education, the problematics of utopian undertakings, and the strategies that we adopt to account for their ephemeral nature. First distributed as a pamphlet at the final Dartington Festival in June.

• Bouzingo Anti-Translations, w/the Institute for Research & Application, Kohoutenberg. The first six Tacky Little Pamphlets of homophonic, google-skewed, and alinear anti-translations from our colleagues in Kohoutenberg. Very fun little mini-collections. There will eventually be scores of these handy little volumes, which can serve among other things as quasi-previews of the more straightforward translations yet to come from the Bouzingo project.

See the NEW PUBLICATIONS tab on the mOnocle-Lash website for more information or to order.

In other news, we'll soon begin distro of the SPART Action Group's new issue of their journal Transmission, hot off the press in Northern Ireland, not to mention a couple new (for us) titles from Mouse Milk Books. And from August 15-17th I'll be participating along with many members of the Post-Neo/mOnocle-Lash community in the Avant Writing Symposium organised by John M. Bennett at OSU in Columbus, OH, where we'll have 12 titles available at the symposium shop along with numerous other micro-presses run by friends and collaborators.

FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS:

Some projects that are well on their way and which should appear before autumn--

• Textis Globbolalicus, by John M. Bennett. A gigantic compendium of poems in Bennett's seminal anti-language, Globbolalia. Nearly 1,000 pages, in three volumes, each with a separate introduction and cover art.

• ???????, by Imogene Engine & Olchar Lindsann. A long-form poem in ten sections, written collaboratively and simultaneously by two long-time Post-Neo versifiers and illustrated the same way. All it needs now is a title and some simple editing.

• Compulsory Bingo follow-up, by Chris Lennard & O. Lindsann. This time with vocals, theramin, marimba, xylophone, hammond organ, a large array of drums and symbols, slide-whistle, other noises, and texts by Lindsann, Leftwich, Edwards, Bennett, and Altemus.

• More Bouzingo Anti-Translations. The current focus is on texts by Bertrand and O'Neddy.

IN PREPARATION

Definitely planned and with initial groundwork underway, but with completion a ways off; most of these are not yet definitively titled.

• Collected Short Stories, by David Beris Edwards. A long-overdue perfect-bound anthology of absurdist, nonsense, and comedic short fiction from Post-NeoAbsurdism's consummate Anti-prosodist.

• Book of Anti-Prophesies. Post-NeoAbsurdist prophesies, anti-prophesies, and various hermetically coded texts have been appearing from both known and anonymous quarters since before the inception of the movement itself. It is time now that they were compiled.

• Scoria of the Bouzingo. Together for the first time since 1833 (in fact for the first time ever, since their planned anthology fell through for lack of funds): representative poems, essays, etchings, paintings, drama and fiction by (we hope) all 15 or so members of the Bouzingo/Jeunes France group, with a critical history and copious translators' and contextual annotation. This chapbook will be merely a foretaste of the eventual full-sized anthology and history, and of the series of chapbooks to be commenced soon, each dedicated to an individual member of the group.

• Portfolio, by Achille Devéria, ed. by Warren Fry. Among the first publications dedicated to the Bouzingo will be a portfolio of images by painter, lithographer, and eroticist Achille Devéria, who was along with his brother Eugéne a guiding light of Frenetic Romanticism in visual arts communities. Reproductions will be xerographed, in colour where appropriate, on high-quality paper with a critical and biographical introduction, tipped into a folder with custom cover.

• Ubu Enchained, by Alfred Jarry, translated by Amy Oliver. The long, long awaited publication of Amy Oliver's translation of Jarry's play, the text used for the Post-Neo production of the play at the Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival in Feb. A.Da. 93 (2009).

• Ubu Roi Special Edition, by Jarry, Emilie Lennard, Olchar Lindsann, Angee Lennard, Chris Lennard, & Terri Lennard. The Symbolist-cum-Post-Neo classic on one disc with audio commentary by the, er, cast & crew (and possibly other tracks), production stills, and whatever else.

Philothée O'Neddy: Preface to FIRE AND FLAME

Here, at long last, is the preface of Philothée O'Neddy's 1833 collection of verse, Fire & Flame. Joseph Carter has meticulously translated and annotated the text, to which I have added historical notes pertaining to my research into the Bouzingo group. Progress is halting at the moment while I am travelling all over the place, but look for Carter's translation of Borel's insanely opaque Preface to Rhapsodies in the next week or so. Quite a treat, let me tell you, and an excellent compliment to this text.

Philothée O'Neddy was, along with Petrus Borel, one of the principal organisers of the Bouzingo group, and among its most politically and ideologically radical and outspoken. According to his friend Gautier, "In all he did the tone was excessive, the colouring extreme and violent, the utmost bounds of expression reached, the very originality aggressive, and the whole almost dripping with originality". He was known for his "absurd paradoxes, the sophistical maxims, the incoherant metaphors, the turgid hyperbole and the six-foot words." He wore his eyeglasses even in his sleep, claiming that without them he could not see his dreams clearly enough.

Gautier considered O'Neddy one of the most skilled poetic craftsmen of his generation: "Philothée was a metrical writer; he knew how to fashion a line on an anvil, and when he had drawn from the fire the incandescent alexandrine, he could give it, amid a shower of sparks, the form he wanted by means of his heavy and persevering hammering."

His father died in the cholera epidemic of 1832, several months from retirement after 29 years in public service, and his family was denied pension; O'Neddy began to live a double life, taking his father's job to support his mother and sister while continuing as a ringleader of the Bouzingo. While Fire & Flame, published the following year, was hailed by the extreme wing of the avant-garde as a Romanticist masterpiece, the psychological strain of this way of living began to burn him out as it did Borel. By the end of the decade, his spirit broken, he had reverted to his given name, Théophile Dondey, though he continued to published Gothic novels and occassional verse under that name, and to support the Romanticist community through his influence on the press co-owned by his brother, the 'Oriental Library of Dondey-Dupré'.

For nearly decade he fell out of touch with his old comrades; finally in 1848 he attended a banquet thrown for fellow Bouzingo Célestin Nanteuil, who had designed the frontispiece for Fire & Flame. Gautier, overjoyed, asked him, "when will your second volume of verse appear?"

'He gazed at me with his watery, frightened blue eyes,' relates Gautier, 'and answered with a sigh:--

"When there are no more Bourgeois."'

From this time he attended most of the Romanticist reunions until his death in 1875.

For more context and information, refer to the timeline of French Romanticism, posted below.

Translator's note by Joseph Carter:

Here is a translation that I have tried to keep as true to the source text as possible. While there may be contained therein much opportunity to have further anglicized some parts, syntax or expressions, I chose not to do as such on condition that it still made sense, and still conveyed what I felt the author was trying to express (in a manner still comprehensible to the English reader). I have done this in an attempt to give the English reader a clearer taste of O'Neddy's style, and also some exposure to the manner in which the French communicate in general. It is still, alas, my regret to inform you that despite my efforts, some of the originality, creativity, and beauty of the source text has been, as we so often say, lost in translation.

The punctuation, which is at times bizarre in my opinion, has been left unaltered; except of course that there are no spaces between words and: colons, semicolons, and exclamation marks. Also, my keyboard cannot make a dash, in its place I have used two hyphens.

Unless otherwise indicated, notes are by Carter; notes by Lindsann are italicized and marked (OL)

Foreword.

An author, head held high¹, in his proud preface,²

To the public he insults though trying to cry out: Places!³

Long enough⁴, immobile and arms crossed on the front step of my pariah hut, have I contemplated, in idle admiration, the great adolescent walls of artistic and moral Babel which the elite with secret information of our age have embarked on edifying.

Having become⁵, at this hour, more profound, more imperious, more exalted, my sympathy ordains me to combine a little action with this contemplation, to go merge myself into the worker's crowd.

So, here I am: I bring to the gigantic slabs a puny handful of cement.

Strong and muscular workers, keep yourselves from pushing away my feeble cooperation; never will you have enough hands⁶ to erect such a grand opus⁷! And perhaps am I not quite unworthy to be named your brother. -- As you, I despise from the depths of my soul the social order and above all the political order which truly⁸ is excrement; -- as you, I mock the ancientists[sic]⁹ and the academy; -- as you, I pose myself incredulous and cold in front of the magnoliquence[sic] and the faded finery of the religions of the land¹⁰; -- as you, I have no pious yearnings but for Poetry, this twin sister of God, who allots to the physical world light, harmony and perfumes; to the moral world, love, intelligence and will!

Certainly, though incipient, she is already very well miraculous and grandiose, this Babel! Her belt of grand walls already tightly fit around myriads of stadiums. The sublimity of her towers already pierces the most distant heavens. Belonging to her alone, she has already more arabesques and statues than all of the cathedrals of the middle ages together.¹¹ Poetry¹² possesses at last a city, a kingdom where she may easily deploy her two natures: -- her human nature which is art, -- her divine nature which is passion.

Without a doubt, you recollect the fabulous confidence with which, straight after the fall of the last king of France, certain journals¹³ prophesied that this was being done with young¹⁴ literature, that it was entering the coffin at the same time as old legitimacy.¹⁵ -- Young literature has so little been in mortal danger, it has so well developed its vital principle, that not only has it managed to multiply tenfold its own strength, to put the finishing touches on its revolution¹⁶, but that it has yet known being rich enough, powerful enough gloriously to prelude a metaphysical crusade against society. Yes, now that it has completed all its beautiful reforms in the disguise¹⁷ of art, it devotes itself exclusively to the ruin of that which it calls the social lie; -- as the philosophy of the eighteenth century devoted itself to the destruction of that which it called the christian lie.¹⁸

Each day, many young people of patriotic convictions come to realize that, if political work has a Caliban type nature, it must directly be blamed on social work¹⁹, its mother; -- so, they put down republican fanaticism, and rush to enroll in the phalanxes of our Babel.

What is unbelievable, is that the powerful²⁰ heads of the financial establishments, the sublime capacities who mock the knighthood and adore the national guard²¹, persist in denying the existence of this large intellectual fermentation. Because the exterior life, the material and positive life finds itself, thanks to our mathematically miserly civilization, somewhat reduced to the state of petrification, -- they are counting on an eternity of boorish calm; -- they do not see that on the other hand the interior life, the Romanesque²² and metaphysical life is as turbulent, as adventurous, as free as the Arab tribes in their solitudes.

Let them then remember that, on that very day before the famous eruption of Vesuvius that buried very much alive two cities, Herculaneum and Pompeii, of ignorant naturalists, who must have been strolling not far from the edge of the crater, asking each other if it was very well true that the bowels of the mountain contained a volcano!...

I hasten, before closing this vile prose, to affirm to the honest people who will well want to let their ivory knife devirginize[sic] the pages of my book²³, that I have not the slightest vanity in the world to believe the subsequent poems, at the level of the solemn preoccupations touched lightly by these preliminary lines.

This volume has no other pretension but that of being the body of my best schoolboy drafts; which consist simply of passionate reveries and of artistic studies.

It is very well true however that one finds here and there a few footprints of lycanthropy²⁴, a few anathemas against the social lepers; though we would be wrong to take word for word²⁵ these manifestations, which are, for the most part, but lively witticisms. -- One would be wrong to regard them as the absolute expression of my veritable sentiments. If it's given to me²⁶ to publish a second work, it will be more logical, more in touch my nature as a thinker; inside it I will say my last word; -- so then, one will be able to judge me.

What if the bric-à-brac traders of civilization deigned to tell me in anger that no person is permitted to put himself outside of society, I would have the irreverence to make them observe that two classes of men possess this right in an imprescriptible manner; -- those who are worth more than society, -- and those who are worth less. -- I fall into one of these two categories.²⁷

1front levé means either forehead raised or brow raised. In English a raised brow usually indicates confusion or suspicion. Here a reference to pride is intended.

2The preface was the traditional form of the Romanticist manifesto--other examples include Hugo's preface to Cromwell, Borel's preface to Rhapsodies, and Gautier's preface to Mlle. de Maupin.

3The only sense I can make from this is that he means this in the way that a director or choreographer might yell: ''Places everybody!'' (JC) This is epigraph is treated as quoted verse, but if it is I've been unable to trace the source, which means it's EVEN more obscure than everything else we're looking at here. If it IS a quote (or is simply meant to resemble one), it explains the superfluous capitalisation, for it implies the beginning of a new line of verse. It should be noted that elsewhere O'Neddy uses as epigraph a 'quote' attributed to his given name (employed there as a pseudonym!) (OL)

4I'm working from the assumption that tems is actually supposed to be temps and that this signifies nothing more than an innocent typo.

5Because in French adjectives agree with the gender of the noun, this sentence is very precise in indicating that his sympathy has become more profound etc. Plus, in French, the verb to become has a more obvious past participle, thus does not risk being confused with predicates of present tense or imperative. In an attempt to achieve the same clarity with minimal alteration, The auxiliary gerund (which is absent in the source text) has been added to the past participle of to become.

6Though O'Neddy said arms, I felt that hands woks better in English.

7If it is felt by the reader that opus is too specific to music, than it may be substituted for work.

8While the adverb truly was not used by O'neddy, it was added to convey the same emphasis indicated by the en in the sentence (a literal translation of which is impossible).

9I love these neologisms. This one would refer to the Classicist school, the arch-enemies of the Romanticists (and thus the Bouzingo, who were arch-Romanticist) intellectually and often ideologically. Classicism grounded creative activity and thought in abstractioin and the immutable logics discovered or laid down by the ancient Greeks, while the Romanticists grounded it in the particular and the constantly-changing prerogatives of society. Classicism was effectively the official ideology of the French Academy. (OL)

10The Bouzingo were without a doubt the most blasphemous and outrageously atheist of the Romanticists (Borel, O'Neddy, and Nerval in particular); rumour had them as out-and-out Satanists, though in fact most of them seem rather to have been atheist mystics and/or Voltairian skeptics who (immensely) enjoyed the aesthetic of blasphemy, having been raised on Gothic novels, the 'Satanic School' of British Romanticism (Byron, Shelley, etc), etc. Probably not unlike contemporary horror or death metal fans--atheists who enjoyed that particular transgression. (OL)

11There might be a sly little dry joke here; the Bouzingo were utterly steeped in things Gothic, both medieval poetry (esp. Villon, Rabelais, and the Minstrels), art, and architecture itself, and contemporary movements in painting and literature that revived and recontextualized the medieval, including Gothic novels whose conventions were a huge part of how the Bouzingo presented themselves to the world. The name of 'Romanticism' itself is a ressurection of the Medieval (Romanesque), and that's probably what's being indirectly refered to by 'arabesques'. The use of that term also carries a shade of the orientalism which was a part of not only the Bouzingo's mythologizing of the East, but also of Europe's past (and present, for that matter...). They were more medieval than the Medievals. (OL)

12Poetry is capitalized here not just because it's at the beginning of the sentence, but also because O'Neddy is still personifying it. One will notice in the source text that poetry is the second word and with an upper case p.

13Journal in the sense of newspaper.

14The adjective new is arguably more appropriate, but I felt that young was in better keeping with O'Neddy's style (and it is, after all, what he wrote).

15This refers to the "July Revolution" of 1830, when the Bourbon Monarchy was overthrown in city-wide rioting, and another, slightly more liberal king put in his place by the Liberal opposition in order to forestall a proletarian republic. Borel and O'Neddy were not happy about this last-minute reinstatement of Monarchy. The 'Young Art' refered to by O'Neddy would of course be Romanticism, but more specifically O'Neddy is refering to the “Battle of Hernani”, the opening of Victor Hugo's Romanticist play where there had been a riot of physical brawling between Romanticists and Classicists; the rioting was in fact instigated according to a carefully planned and rehearsed programme devised by Hugo, Borel, and Nerval, and then spread through the Romanticist community in a remarkably organized way. It was planned as a literal coup d'etat of the french cultural establishment, with the 'battle' being the spectacular, newsworthy event which would secure Romanticism a voice and the support of the French people. It worked remarkably well. Presumably the Classicists (and Monarchists, since Romanticism considered itself a fundamentally democratic movement) were hoping that the political turmoil, and its termination, would spell the end of Romanticism as a cultural force. (OL)

16Although this has the nuance that I felt while reading the source text, it may well be more colourful than O'Neddy intended. To write ...to complete its revolution might have sufficed.

17He may have perhaps meant in a suit of art.

18It's rare to see this idea of art being primarily a mask for social and metaphysical revolt stated so explicitly in the 19th century. This paragraph sounds uncannily like something that the Situationists would have written 130 years later--see in particular Vaneigam's definitions of Poetry in Revolution of Everyday Life, which accrd closely with O'Neddy's use of the term. Reversing direction, he seems to be implying that he sees the Bouzingo's activity as a continuation of the project of Voltaire, Rousseau, etc., redirected from the Philosophical to the cultural realm. (OL)

19I suspect he does not mean social work the way we know it today.

20O'Neddy wrote strong, however I used powerful in the translation to avoid mistaking head for the anatomical version because he certainly did not mean to say strong heads as in stubborn heads, he is clearly using head as the synonym of leader.

21The National Guard had fought on behalf of the capitalist Liberals in the July Revolution. (OL)

22The very term 'Romantic'/Romantique is derived from 'Romanesque', though the relationship between the two in early 19th Century usage seems quite complex and we are not yet at the bottom of figuring it out. Certainly O'Neddy's use of the term would have borne heavy ovetones of the contemporary subculture of which he was an ardent spokesman. (OL)

23A reference to the knife used to seperate the uncut pages of a newly-printed book, in a metaphor also used by fellow Bouzingo Théophile Gautier. (OL)

24This is a reference to Borel, who was given the nickname of 'The Lycanthrope' within the Avant-Garde (as he mentions in his own preface); the term seems to have bled out to refer to the 'frenetic' or extremist wing of Romanticism, for which he was the principal spokesman, generally. Interestingly, O'Neddy here positions the Bouzingos' 'lycanthropic' behaviour to a response to social disease and social revolution (which, after all, had in fact occured only three years previous and would again in another ten). (OL)

25Prendre au pied de la lettre = To take to the foot of the letter, and this expression means to take some thing literally/word for word, or, in the case of a command or order, to carry out precisely as ordered.

26I suspect this translation is possibly a gamble. O'Neddy means more less given the chance. In my translation, chance or opportunity is implied, but I am not certain if this implication is evident enough (at least the way it is in the source text).

27If not both. This statement is reminiscent of the way that the Bouzingo lived and the way that they built their public face. They reconciled what were up to that time considered mutually exclusive opposites (aside from a few figures whom they had studied quite a bit, such as Villon, Rabelais, Caravagio, etc), being fiercely intellectual, individualistic, and careful of manner and appearance as befited an aristocrat (of birth or of intellect) worth more than society, while at the same time rowdy, over the top, proudly destitute, and immersed in popular subcultures as befitted reprobates and criminals, and perhaps the most exploited of the working class.

TIMELINE OF FRENCH ROMANTICISM

Here is a skeletal timeline covering the entire lifespan of the Jeunes France/Bouzingo, and the broader Romanticist community they were a part of. It will be continually updated as research progresses. There's a good deal of conflicting evidence, and even more which is vague or uncited and therefore requires circumstantial guesswork; so things will change. I've tried to indicate areas of uncertainty.

This should be a handy reference once I start posting essays on the group, and in its present form will hopefully give a basic idea of what was going on.

Names of the groups' members have been rendered in boldface. Broader social or political events are in brown; groups related in various ways to the Bouzingo are in crimson. The most concentrated activity of the group took place between late 1829 and 1833. I've been selective with work done after this period.

At some point I'll implant links in here. Someday.

1800

• Feb. 6: Achille Devéria is born in Paris.

1802

• Feb. 26: Victor Hugo is born, the son of an atheist republican general in Napoleon's army, and a Catholic Royalist mother.

1804

• Napoleon is proclaimed Emperor of France, ending the First Republic.

1805

• April 22: Eugéne Devéria is born in Paris.

1806

• March 11: Louis Boulanger born in Piedmont, Italy (under Napoleonic control at the time) to French parents.
• The Romanticist Songwriter's group La Caveau Moderne is founded, including Pierre-Jean Béranger, Nicolas Brazier, Évariste-Desiré de Forges de Parny, and Émile Debraux. Over coming decades the group's output will become increasingly subversive, and gain mass appeal.
  

1807

• April 20: Louis (later Aloysius) Bertrand born in Piedmont, Italy to French parents.

1808

• May 22: Gérard Labrunie (later Gérard de Nerval) is born in Paris, son of a military surgeon.
• ???: Jean Duseigneur (laterJehan du Seigneur) is born in Paris.

1809

• June 29: Petrus Borel born in Lyons, the twelfth son of an ironmonger.

1810

• Joseph Bouchardy is born in Paris.
• Gérard Labrunie's (later Nerval) mother dies in Silesia, accompanying his father on campaign with Napoleon's Grand Army. He is brought up by a great-uncle in the countryside.

1811

• Jan. 30: Théophile Dondey (later Philothée O'Neddy) born in Paris.
• Aug. 30: Théophile Gautier born in Tarbes, France, son of a minor public official.
  

1813

• Célestin Nanteuil born in Rome.
• Sept. 13: Auguste Maquet (later Augustus MacKeat) born in Paris.
• Pierre-Jean Béranger begins writing political songs criticizing the Napoleonic regime in thinly-coded language.
  

1814

• The Bourbon Monarchy is restored in France, the combined armies of Europe placing Louis XVIII on the throne.
• Louis/Aloysius Bertrand's family moves from Italy to Dijon, France. As he grows he becomes fascinated with the culture and history of the city.
• Théophile Gautier's family moves to Paris.
• Gérard Labrunie's (Nerval) father returns from campaign, and they move to Paris.
  

1815

• March 1: Napoleon Bonaparte returns from exile, returns to power in Paris for 100 days, and is defeated at Waterloo. Louis XVIII re-established.
• July 7: Paris is handed over to British and Prussian troops, who will occupy the city for the better part of a year under the restored Bourbon Monarchy.
  
• Pierre-Jean Béranger of the Caveau Moderne publishes his first collection of satirical anti-Monarchist songs, which quickly gain immense popularity among both the working classes and the intellectual left.

1820

• Petrus Borel moves to Paris.
• Amand Bazard founds 'The Friends of Truth', a semi-occult socialist group that develops into the French wing of the Carbonari.
• Feb. 13: The heir to the French throne, the Duc de Berri (also spelled Berry) is stabbed to death by a Bonapartist assassin in the doorway of the Paris Opera House.
  

1821

• The French Carbonari organize armed uprisings against the Monarchy in Belfort, Thouars, La Rochelle, and other provincial towns. All are put down, and the leaders go to ground for the better part of a decade before several become involved with the Sant-Simonists.
  
• May 5: Napoleon Bonaparte dies.
  
• Pierre-Jean Béranger releases his second popular volume of political songs, and is imprisoned for three months for 'offending public decency, religion, and the King's person and encouraging sedition'.
  
• Louis Boulanger enrolls in the École de Beaux-Arts, studying under the Neoclassical painter Guillaume Lethiére.

1822

• Victor Hugo publishes his first volume of Romanticist poetry, Diverse Odes and Poems.
• Emile Debraux publishes his first collection of political songs.
  
• Achille Devéria begins exhibiting in the Paris Salon.
  

1823

• Victor Hugo publishes his first novel, Han of Iceland; it makes a deep impression upon the future Bouzingo who are just discovering Romanticist subculture.
• Borel apprenticed to Classicist architect Antoine Garnaud.
• Emile Debraux publishes Child of the New Gouguette, an anthology of political songs by 25 poets and songwriters. He is imprisoned for a month for these songs' political "outrage to good manners".
  

1824

• The journal The Globe is founded, becoming a standard-bearer of the Intellectual left.
• Émile Deschamps and Victor Hugo found the Romanticist journal La Muse Française.
• Eugéne Devéria begins exhibiting at the Paris Salon.
• Sept. 16: Louis XVIII dies; Monarchy falls to Charles X.

1825

• Béranger publishes a third collection of subversive songs, which are sung in working-class pubs across France.
• ???: Louis Boulanger befriends the Devéria brothers and Victor Hugo.

1826

• ???: Jean Duseigneur (soon Jehan du Seigneur) is studying sculpture under Classicist masters.
• ???: Joseph Bouchardy is studying under the engraver Samuel William Reynolds.
• ???: Théophile Gautier attending school at the Collége Charlemaigne, concentrating on Latin.
• ???: Gautier befriends Gérard de Nerval at school, and starts writing verse.
• The Saint-Simonist socialist journal Le Producteur folds.
  

• The Romanticist Cénacle group is formed, with the aim of consolidating, articulating, and polemicising the principles of Romanticist culture, and of organising a cultural assault on Classicism for control of France's artistic infrastructure. They meet and operate from the weekly salons at the home of Charles Nodier.

The core group includes Nodier, Alfred Vigny, Émile Deschamps and his brother, and soon Victor Hugo, Charles Saint-Beuve, and Alphonse de Lamartine; peripheral members include Alfred de Musset, Prosper Mérimée, and Alexandre Dumas.

• ???: Hugo publishes Odes and Ballads, hailed as a Romanticist masterpiece.

1827

• Monarchist party suffers defeats in the polls.
• April: Large Anti-Royalist demonstrations are held in Paris, some culminating in gunfights in the streets.
• Boulanger releases another volume of anti-Monarchist songs, and is imprisoned for sedition for nine months.
  
• Victor Hugo publishes the virtual manifesto of French Romanticism as his Preface to Cromwell.
• Boulanger's painting Supplice de Mazeppa wins a medal at the annual Salon, in an area segregated off for Romanticist work.
• Eugéne Devéria's painting The Birth of Henry the IV is critically lauded by the Romanticist party at the Paris Salon.
• Antoine-Louis Barye's proto-Romanticist sculpture is shown at the Paris Salon.
  
• Célestin Nanteuil becomes a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, studying under the engraver and history painter Langlois.

1828

• Ex-leader of the French Carbonari Amand Bazard gives a long series of lectures polemicizing Saint-Simonianist Socialism, well attended by the intellectual left, likely including Borel and Dondey/O'Neddy.
  
• Twenty-year old Gérard de Nerval brings out his translation of Geothe's Faust, illustrated by Achille Devéria, to critical acclaim. Goethe himself claims that Nerval's translation helps him to better understand his own work.
• ???: Théophile Gautier begins training as a painter in the studio of Romantic painter Louis Rioult.
• ???: The Cénacle group come into touch with Bertrand through his work published in Dijon.
• Dec: Pierre-Jean Béranger is imprisoned a second time for subversive literary-musical activity.

1829

• Aug. 8: Charles X appoints Ultra-Royalist cabinet The Globe and other Liberal and left journals attack the move.
• Borel, opposed to contemporary architecture in favour of Medieval Gothic models, sets up unsuccessful architectural practice, and probably begins writing Rhapsodies.
• Théophile Dondey (soon Philothée O'Neddy) begins work on Fire and Flame.
• Borel meets Eugéne & Achille Devéria, begins painting.
• Borel & the Devérias become involved with the Charles Nodier's Cénacle salon, meeting on Sunday evenings. Through the Cénacle they become involved with Hugo.
• Romanticist composer Hector Berlioz composes his first published score in response to Nerval's translation of Faust.
• Victor Hugo's play Marion Delorme is banned for its anti-monarchical flavour.
• Aloysius Bertrand moves to Paris?
• Spring?: Vigny's Romanticist adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello becomes the first non- Classicist play to be produced by the Comédie Française.
• Summer?: Alexandre Dumas' Henry III and his Court at the Comédie Française combines popular and aristocratic audiences.
• Sept 22: Pierre-Jean Béranger is released from prison.
  
• Fall: Planning begins for the Romanticist 'coup' of the creative establishment at the premier of Hugo's Hernani. The central committee consists of Hugo, Borel, and Gérard de Nerval.
• ???: Théophile Gautier is dismissed from Rioult's studio for his Romanticist tendencies and devotes himself increasingly to writing.

1830

• Hector Berlioz is awarded the Prix de Rome for a cantata inspired by Delacroix's Romanticist painting The Death of Sardanapolus. Also this year, he meets fellow Romanticist Franz Liszt at a performance of Shakespeare's Tempest for which Berlioz has written the prelude.
  
• Feb 25: 'Battle' of Hernani at the premier of Hugo's play.

• Spring? More radicalized members of Nodier's salon form Le Petit Cénacle group, including: Petrus Borel, Eugéne and Achille Devéria, Jehan du Seigneur, Aloysius Bertrand, Gérard de Nerval, Augustus MacKeat, 'Count' Ourlioff, Philothée O'Neddy, Célestin Nanteuil, Alexandre Dumas, and Théophile Gautier.

The primary meeting-place for the Petit Cénacle is a studio space rented by Jehan du Seigneur in the spare room of a fruit-shop.

Members of Le Petit Cénacle take on pseudonyms with foriegn and aristocratic implications, and initiate a grotesque detourne of Dandyism, adopting outlandish and identifying costumes, hair, and beards calculated to offend bourgeosie, aristocrats, and dandies alike; their behaviour at Salons, parties, balls, etc. follows suit.

• Dondey takes on the pseudonym Philothée O'Neddy. He finishes his collection Fire and Flame, but cannot find a publisher or capital to publish himself.
• Summer: Gautier's Poésies is published, but not distributed due to the revolt.
• In the wake of Hernani, Joseph Bouchardy gradually shifts his focus from visual art to dramatic writing.

• July 25: Four Ordinances signed--putting the press under crown control, stripping suffrage from 75% of voters, and dissolving the lower chamber of the Assembly.
• July 26: When the Four Ordinances are made public, rioting breaks out in the streets of Paris.
• July 27: Streets are barricaded, the Carbonari and much of the intellectual left take up arms against Monarchist troops, who are fought from barricades, windows, and rooftops.
• July 28: Much of the army deserts or joins rebellion. Borel, on a visit to his family, is restrained and locked into a closed room by his father to prevent him from joining the battle.
  
• July 29: The Royal Palace at the Louvre is attacked and evacuated. Hector Berlioz, immediately after finishing composing his Cantata No. 4, takes to the streets with a pistol.
  
• A Republican government is established at the Hotel de Ville, but the Socialist-Republican block is unable to keep power from the Bourgeois Liberal party.
• July 31: A Consitutional Monarchy is established under Louis Phillipe.

• Aug?: The Saint-Simonist group issues a manifesto demanding the enfranchisement of women, the abolition of the inheritance of property, and the communalization of property.
  
• Aug. 27: During a state-sponsored memorial service for the Duc de Beri, the Orleans heir apparent assassinated ten years earlier, a riot breaks out; rioters attack priests (associated with support of the Monarchy and anti-proletarian advocacy), seize and don ecclesiastical vestments, tear down crosses from the roofs of nearby churches, and spontaneously mock a Catholic procession, sprinkling their urine as 'holy water'.

• Fall: Gautier's family moves to the suburbs; he spends most of his time with the Petit Cénacle, returning home on weekends.
• Alphonse Brot, Victor Hugo, and Edgard Quinet dine at the home of Franz Liszt's family.
• Dec. 5: Berlioz' Romanticist Fantastic Symphony premiers, and fighting breaks out in the audience as it had at the premier of Hugo's Hernani; many members of the Petit Cénacle and the broader Romanticist community attend every performance and engage in 'battle' with the Classicists.
  

1831

• The Globe becomes the mouthpiece of the Saint-Simonist Socialism. Meanwhile a saint-Simonist utopian co-op is set up in Paris.
• Gautier begins writing art criticism to support himself, beginning with the Mercure de France. Meanwhile he begins the Gothic narrative poem Albertus.
• Augustus MacKeat is made professor of History at the Lycée Charlemaigne (Gautier's old school) at age eighteen.
• Jehan du Seigneur exhibits his sculpture Orlando Furioso (from the romance by Ariosto) at the annual Salon, where it is hailed as the first truly Romanticist sculpture.
• Victor Hugo publishes the hugely popular Gothic-Romanticist novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
• Spring?: Borel is briefly imprisoned for lack of a proper passport.

• The most radical members of the Petit Cénacle group re-organise as Les Jeunes France, including: Petrus Borel, Célestin Nanteuil, Joseph Bouchardy, Jehan du Seigneur, Philothée O'Neddy, Gérard de Nerval, Théophile Gautier, Eugéne & Achille Devéria, and Gérard de Nerval.

They live collectively in a single large room and an adjoining garden filled with tents, naming the compound “The Camp of the Tartars”. In the inside room, no furniture iss provided, but the walls are covered with murals, plaster-cast 'medallions' or relief sculptures (many of the latter portraits of the members), daggers and other weapons, and a human skull on the spot on the mantlepiece which traditionally held the clock.

Meanwhile, an additional, less hectic gathering-place is the studio rented by Jehan du Seigneur in back of a fruit merchant's shop.

• Summer: The Jeunes France organises “concerts” at the Camp of Tartars, in which they present atonal noise on brass instruments none can play.
• The “Camp of the Tartars” is visited by police and threatened with arrest for practicing Nudism.
• Members acquire a dressmaker's dummy to use for various pranks, such as throwing it into the street in a shroud, claiming that they have just dug up a corpse from the cemetary.
• Petrus Borel acquires the nickname/title of The Lycanthrope ('Wolf-Man').
• ???: The Saint-Simonist utopian experiment is plagued with internal turmoil and splits into separate camps.

• Aug: The Jeunes France, habituating both working-class pubs and intellectual salons, become increasingly rowdy and provocative in public, recognizable not only for their Romanticist paraphenelia but for their absurd, seditious, or aggressive drinking songs, including one written about themselves.
• Paris newspapers begin publishing articles about the Jeunes France group.

• Fall?: The Jeunes France inadvertently cause a near-riot when passers-by misinterpret their chants of “Long live Bouchardy!” as they charge down a street. Gérard de Nerval is detained by the police and imprisoned for a month.
• Oct: Seven newspaper articles have been published about the Jeunes France since August.
• Winter??: The Saint-Simonist group headed by Bazard hosts a number of extravagant and reportedly hedonistic events.
• Nov. 21: A textile workers' uprising takes control of France's second-largest city, Lyon, in fighting resulting in 600 casualties.
  
• Dec. 3: Government troops regain control of Lyon.
  
• Dec: Borel's collection of poems Rhapsodies is published, incorrectly dated 1832. It has labels by Napoléon Thom and a frontispiece by Célestin Nanteuil.

• Dec?: The Jeunes France are evicted from “The Camp of Tartars”.
• The group re-organizes again as the Bouzingo, comprising: Petrus Borel, Philothée O'Neddy, Théophile Gautier, Achille & Eugéne Déveria, Louis Boulanger, Célestine Nanteuil, Aloysius Bertrand, Jehan du Seigneur, Augustus MacKeat, Gérard de Nerval, Joseph Bouchardy, Alphonse Brot, Jules Vabre, Tom Napoleon, and 'Vigneron'.

They move to a tiny, one-story house with a basement on the Rue d'Enfer (several blocks from the convent where the Marquis de Sade's mother had once lived). In addition to murals and medalions, the wals are decorated with various weapons with satirical labels identifying them as exotic weapons or greusome artifacts.

1832

• Gautier publishes Albertus; the volume includes poems from the undistributed Poésies collection.

• Jan: The Bouzingo inaugurate their new base in the Rue d'Enfer with an event in which guests attend in full Romantic costume, eat ice-cream and custard out of human skulls. Music by Musard is played, and the Romantic dance 'The Infernal Gallop' (reminiscent of modern Circle-Pits) is performed; as the dance is too violent for the enclosed space, the doors are opened and the orgy spills out into the street. The punch is so strongly spiked, and the physical and emotional exertion of the Infernal Gallop so exacerbating, that a 'casualty station' is set up in the basement of the Rue d'Enfer for unconscious guests.
• Newspaper articles begin to appear describing the exploits of the Bouzingos.

• Feb 11?: Romanticist dances are introduced at Paris' Ash Wednesday Carnival: Napoléon Musard directs the orchestra, and despite police intervention, Romanticists storm the dance-floors in masks, dancing the Cancan and the Infernal Gallop, while Romanticist dandies smuggle in a nude woman who reveals herself as 'Salomé'.
• March: Cholera epidemic begins in Paris.
• Spring?: Philothée O'Neddy's father dies of cholera. One year from retirement, his family is denied his pension and O'Neddy takes a job at the Ministry of Finance to support his mother and sister.

• The Bouzingo develop a reputation on the streets of Paris for their aggressive pranks, seditious and anti- bourgeois drinking songs, and cultivation of absurd and morbid eccentricities, habits, and opaque ways of speaking, resulting in frequent run-ins with police.
• Stories spread accusing the Bouzingo of Satanism, of keeping human feotuses in jars, and other morbid preoccupations and transgressions.
• A Bouzingo anthology is planned, for which funding is never found.

• May: The Saint-Simonist compound in Paris is shut down by police. A new colony of about 40 members is founded on a farm outside the city.

• Summer?: The Bouzingo are banned from Nodier's salon, which most have been attending for at least two years. This signifies a split between 'high' or appolonian Romanticism and the Decadent/Frenetic/dark Romanticism exemplified by the Bouzingo.
• June: Twenty articles have appeared in the past six months focusing on the Bouzingo, including news reports, urban legends, editorials, and a satirical biography.

• June 6-7: An anti-Monarchist riot breaks out during the funeral procession of Gen. Jean Maxime Lemarque. Arséne Houssaye and others of the Romanticist community fight on the baricades until the revolt is squelched by Monarchist troops.

• Summer/Fall?: The Bouzingo group reverts to the name Jeunes France.
• The rural Saint-Simonist experiment in Ménilmontant is shut down by the Government. A small group of Saint-Simonists soon sets out for Egypt.
  
• Sept: Nerval publishes his story for the abortive Bouzingo Anthology (Main de Gloire, Conte de Bouzingo) in the journal Cabinet de Lecture.
• Borel launches the Journal La Liberté, Journal des Arts; Jehan du Seigneur is Sculpture editor, Eugéne Delecroix Painting editor. The journal's manifesto declares a war on all of the creative Institutions as such.
• Nov. Cholera epidemic subsides after 20,000 deaths in Paris.

1833

• Pierre-Jean Béranger publishes his final collection of poems, critical of the Government of Louis-Phillipe, and announces his retirement from active publication.
  
• Lord Henry Seymour founds the Jockey Club, which by 1835 evolves into the most influential Dandyist circle, including the Marquis de Saint Criq, Charles la Battut, Nestor Roqueplane, Roger de Beauvoir, and Barbey d'Aurevilly.
• Gautier publishes a fictionalized account of Decadent Romantic subculture as the novella Les Jeunes France: Tales Told with Tongue in Cheek.
• Aloysius Bertrand leaves Paris and returns to Dijon?
• Feb: Borel's journal La Liberté ceases publication for lack of funds.
• Spring?: Borel's collection of Gothic short stories, Champavert, is published.
• Summer: Champavert, predictably, is a financial failure, and despite scattered stories and articles in newspapers Borel is soon close to starvation; he gives away his dog, which he is no longer able to feed.
• July 28: King Louis-Phillipe survives an assassination attempt by Republican dissidents.
• Aug: O'Neddy's Fire and Flame is finally published, under the imprint of his cousin Dondey-Dupré, with a frontispiece by Nanteuil. 300 copies are printed.
• Fall?: The Jeunes France are by this time no longer living in the Rue d'Enfer; O'Neddy is living with his mother and sister.
• Petrus Borel and Jules Vabre, working together as clerks for an architectural firm, rent or squat the basement of an otherwise vacant building. They cook meals over a fire built on the floor, have blueprints spread on an improvised table of barrels and scavenged wood planks, and write on the floor.
• Dec: Alexandre Dumas mounts a spectacular Christmas Ball with decorations/scenography by Nanteuil.

1834

• April 9-15: Workers in the silk industry in Lyon stage an unsuccessful revolt. 10,000 workers are imprisoned or deported for supporting the rebellion.
  
• Borel [arguably] becomes the regular guest of a widow, Marie Antoinette Grangeret, and her children.
• As Borel and O'Neddy, chief organizers of the Jeunes France, become increasingly exhausted and overstrained, the group becomes looser and gradually drifts apart as members begin to explore other modes of activity.
• Nov. 23: Berlioz premiers his viola concerto Harold in Italy, based on the poem by British Romanticist George Gordon, Lord Byron.
  

1835

• Borel, unable to support himself in Paris, moves to the village of Le Baizil, where he rents a tool-shed to live in, subsisting off of vegetables he grows in the attached garden. He calls the place 'Lycanthropolis' or alternately 'The Inn of the Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman' in reference to Janin's most famous Gothic novel. He is visited frequently by (among others) O'Neddy, Nanteuil, and Gautier.

He begins work on an unfinished play and two novels including Madame Putiphar, and a translation of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

The Caveau Moderne Group bans political content; Béranger and Brazier leave the group in protest, becoming involved with more radicalized groups on the goguette model.

• May: Nerval and Anatole Bouchardy (?) found a journal entitled, The World Drama: a review of ancient and modern events.

• Fall?: Ex-Jeunes France/Bouzingo members join with the more Bohemian-leaning Dandies from the Jockey Club to form the Bohême Doyenné group. Members include: Théophile Gautier, Camille Rogier, Gérard de Nerval, Arséne Houssaye, Roger de Bouvoir, Célestine Nanteuil, Eugéne & Achille Deveria, Augustus MacKeat, Louis Boulanger, Edouard Ourliac, Hector Berlioz, August de Châtillon, Eugéne Delacroix, Jean-Babtiste Corot, Théodore Rousseau, and Théodore Chasseriau.

The group operates from a flat rented by Gautier in the Impasse du Doyenné, from which they took their name, decorated with murals, paintings, and fixtures with decadent and classical themes, painted by members of the group.

• Borel, in the countryside, is largely immobilized by alternating bouts of fever, depression, and near- starvation.

• Nov: The Bohême Doyenné throw an opening event for the Impasse du Doyenné house. Guests (invited and otherwise) attend wearing full Romantic costume. The event includes a ballet-pantomime entitled The Crippled Devil, a pantomime in which Ourliac plays the role of Harlequin, and several 'parades', in which texts by Gautier and Ouliac are recited from behind a curtain while the scenes described are silently acted out in accompaniment.

1836

• Feb 7: The first production of a play by Bouchardy, written in collaboration with Eugéne Deligny--The Son of Bravo, mounted at the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique, who will go on to produce eight plays by Bouchardy.
• May: Nerval and Bouchardy's journal World Drama announces a change in editorial direction.
• ???: Borel's translation of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is published by his brother, Francisque Borel. It includes illustrations by most of the visual artists associated with the Bouzingo: Eugéne and Achille Devéria, Célestin Nanteuil, Louis Boulanger, and Napoléon Thom.

Borel remains in poverty, reduced to making night excursions to steal vegetables from the fields to supplement his own gardening.

• Classicists take complete control of the hanging committee of the Paris Salon, and a host of Romanticist artists are rejected, including Delacroix, Barye, Rousseau, Corot, Préalt, and Maldron.
  
• June 11: Bouchardy and Deligny's Hermann the Drunkard is produced at the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique.
• ???: Gautier publishes his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin, with a Preface denouncing all practical utility as inherently bourgeois, and calling for creative activity which formulates its own demands exclusively according to its own internal structure, ('Art for Art's sake').
• Aloysius Bertrand finishes and sells Gaspard de la Nuit, but actual publication is held up for years, until after his death.
• Célestin Nanteuil accompanies Victor Hugo on holiday in Normandy

1837

• Jan. 14: Bouchardy's Gaspardo the Fisherman is mounted at the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique, with a preface by Gautier, and becomes a huge success.

• ???: The Bohême Doyenné group is evicted from their apartment by their landlord, who lives directly underneath.
• Berlioz premiers his Mass for the Dead, a requiem for those killed in the Revolution of July, 1830 in which he himself had fought.
• Oct. 11: Four hundred people attend the funeral of the utopian socialist Charles Fourier in Paris.
  

1838

• Gautier publishes his long narrative Gothic poem, The Comedy of Death. On the cover of this or another volume of Gautier's published this year is a notice for an essay by Borel entitled Do You Like the Bagpipes?.
• Nerval introduces Augustus MacKeat (now once again Auguste Maquet) to Alexandre Dumas.

1839

• May 12: An uprising by followers of the Socialist agitator Jean Blanqui is quelled in Paris; over 900 insurgents take control of the national Assembly, the Palace of Justice, and City Hall, but are unable to hold them against the French army.
  
• MacKeat/Maquet's play Night Carnival is re-written by Alexandre Dumas and produced as Bathilde, acheiving considerable popularity. Dumas and Maquet begin collaborating regularly, though Maquet's name is supressed. He is compensated through a higher cut of the income.
• Borel publishes his novel Madame Putiphar. His old friend and fellow writer of Republican Gothic fiction Jules Janin attacks it in a review, claiming that it has gone too far, comparing Borel to the Marquis de Sade.
• O'Neddy publishes two short stories, “The Purse and the Rapier” and “The Abbot of Saint-Or”, drawn from chapters of his unfinished novel Sodom and Solime.
• Borel returns to Paris.

1840

• ???: Aloysius Bertrand enters the critical stages of tuberculosis
• Dec: Francisque Borel founds the leftist satirical journal Les Coulisses (or Backstage).

1841

• Hugo is elected to the French Academy, after nearly a decade of successful opposition from the Classicist and Monarchist party.
• April 29: Aloysius Bertrand dies of tuberculosis.
• Nerval suffers his first nervous breakdown.

1842

• Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit (Treasurer of the Night) is published postumously, five years late.
• O'Neddy publishes his novella The Charmed Ring: A Chivalric Romance.
• Nerval travels the Near East.

1843

• O'Neddy publishes the short story “The Lazarus of Love”.
• Jan-March: O'Neddy writes theatre criticism for la Patrie.
• Feb: Francisque Borel's journal Les Coulisses changes its name to Satan.
• May-Oct: O'Neddy writes theatre criticism for the French Courier.
• June-July: Francisque Borel is imprisoned for a month for publishing seditious articles in Satan.
• Nov: Francisque Borel is imprisoned again, now for five months, for seditious publication.

1844

• Maquet/MacKeat and Dumas' collaborative novel The Three Musketeers achieves huge success, though Maquet's name is not on the cover.
• Ex-members of the Bohéme Doyenne/Juennes France join with the experimental psychologist and physician Jacques-Joseph Moreau to form the Club de Hasischins, dedicated to the exploration of modifying psychological functions, primarily through the use of opium and hashish, in concert with other mystic and social methods many had already been exploring for some time. Members include: Moreau, Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, Eugéne Delecroix, Alexandre Dumas, and Charles Baudelaire.
  
• Feb: Petrus Borel returns to Paris, becoming editor of Satan while his brother, the former editor, is in prison.
• Sept: Financially unviable, Satan merges with the journal Le Corsaire; Borel's editorship ends.

1845

• Borel co-founds the journal La Revue Pittoresque along with Déchéres, publishing Nanteuil, Gavarni, Gautier, Nerval, & Sainte-Beuve.
• Borel and Nerval co-found a press, publishing Cazotte's Le Diable Amoureux, illustrated by Edouard de Beaumont. It soon folds, financially inviable.
• Dec: Borel reluctantly accepts a bureaucratic post in the colony of Algeria.

1846

• The economy flounders as a draught sweeps Europe.
• Jan: Borel arrives in Algeria.
• Dec. 6: Berlioz uses Nerval's translation of Geothe's Faust as the principal text for his 'concert opera' or 'dramatic legend' The Damnation of Faust.

1847

• France plunges into economic depression, with 30% unemployment in Paris. Small peasant rebellions break out in the provinces but are put down by the Government; anarchist and socialist groups proliferate.
• July: Leftist organizations, denied the right of political assembly, launch a series of 'fund-raising banquets' to evade the new law.
• Oct: Borel's family moves into a house in Algeria that he names 'The Castle of Lofty Thought'.

1848

• Feb: Leftist 'fund-raising banquets' are specifically outlawed.
• Revolt breaks out in Paris; barricades are built and fighting ensues between the army and the populace. Many of the young generation of Romanticists, including Charles Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle, and Louis Ménard, fight on the barricades as does the older Delacroix.
  
• Feb. 23:The Prime minister steps down; at the announcement, confrontation between the army and the people leads to the shooting of 52 demonstrators. Violence in Paris escalates, and King Louis-Phillippe flees the city.
• A Socialist-Republican radical government is established at the Hotel de Ville, but fails to gain legitimation.
  
• Feb. 26: Bourgeois-Liberal elements of the rebellion begin to organize a republican government.
• March 2: Suffrage is restored to all adult males in France

• April 16: A Socialist demonstration for more comprehensive social change and postponed elections is fired on by troops of the provisional government.
• April 23: Conservatives win a majority in elections to the new General Assembly, though leftist Republican Romanticists such as Victor Hugo, Charles Lassilly, and Pierre-Jean Béranger are elected to the opposition.
  
• May 15: A Socialist demonstration for the support of Polish independence almost escalates into insurrection when demonstrators force their way into the National Assembly.
  
• June 21: The Conservative majority government closes down the National Workshops established to support the otherwise unemployed. Barricades again appear in the working-class quarters of the city.
  
• June 23-26: Government troops launch assaults against blockaded parts of the city against working-class, Socialist, and other radical elements. Unlike previous uprisings, the Bourgeosie and middle-classes take the side of the government against the proletariat.
  

• Nanteuil becomes director of the Academy of Arts in Dijon, and Conservator of the museum there.

There is a Romanticist reunion at the celebration thrown for Nanteuil. Philothée O'Neddy is seen by his friends for the first time in a decade.

• Dec. 10: The supposedly moderate-conservative Louis Napoleon is elected President.

1849

• The Club of Hashischin meets with decreasing frequency.
  
• Achille Devéria is appointed head of the Bibliothéque Nationale's Department of Engravings, and assistant director of the Louvre's Egyptian department.
  

1851

• Dec. 2: Louis Napoleon stages a coup d'etat, declaring himself Emperor Napoleon III and instituting an anti-parlaimentary consitution.
• Openly attacking Napoleon III as a traitor to Democracy and France, Victor Hugo goes into self-imposed exile.

1855

• Jan. 26: Gérard de Nerval hangs himself.
• April 25: Napoleon III undergoes an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
  

1857

• Dec. 23: Achille Devéria dies.

1859

• July 17: Petrus Borel dies in Algeria, aged 50.
• Baudelaire publishes an article on Borel in La Revue Fantaisiste.
  

1861

• O'Neddy's mother, who has been paralyzed for years, dies.

1865

• Feb. 3: Eugéne Devéria dies.

1866

• March 6: Jehan du Seigneur dies.

1867

• March 5: Louis Boulanger dies in Dijon.
• June 21: The revival of Hugo's Hernani serves as the final and largest reunion of the Romanticist community, attended by Gautier, O'Neddy, probably Bouchardy and Nanteuil, and most of the other Romanticists who are still living.

1869

• Baudelaire's collection of prose-poems Paris Spleen is published postumously; in the preface Baudelaire states that he read Aloysius Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit 20 times in preperation for the writing of his own volume.
• March 8: Hector Berlioz dies.
  

1870

• May 28: Joseph Bouchardy dies.

• July 19: Napoleon III declares war on Prussia.
• Sept. 2: Napoleon III captured at the battle of Sedan.
• Sept. 4: The 'Government of National Defense' takes hold of the reins of government in Paris, instituting the 'Third Republic'.
• Sept. 19: Prussian armies besiege Paris and begin shelling it.
• Sept.-Dec: The population of Paris is progressively starved, and disease runs rampant

1871

• Jan 28: Paris surrenders to the Prussian army.
• Feb: German armies return to the re-negotiated borders of France.

• Hugo returns to France, and is once again elected to the National Assembly.

1873

• Dec. 6: Célestin Nanteuil dies.

1874

• Théophile Gautier publishes A History of Romanticism, focusing on the Jeunes-France/Bouzingo group and their immediate community.

1875

• Feb. 19: Philothée O'Neddy dies.

1885

• May 22: Victor Hugo dies.

1888

• Jan. 8: Augustus MacKeat dies.