mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press

Feb. Update!!!

2011-02-18T21:09:00.001-06:00

mOnocle-Lash has been silent but not idle this winter, and are ready to announce the release of five new publications (including one at 1,000 pages in three volumes!), plus some new distro material.

Go to the mOnocle-Lash Website:

While many of these are perfect-bound and not available for trade because they must be ordered through the printer online, all except the TLP are available as free downloads as well. I've been trying a few different printers; Avant the Avant-Garde is through CreateSpace and seems to be available only through Amazon at present; the others are through Lulu. The storefront page for all mOnocle-Lash publications printed by Lulu is HERE. Drumroll...:

NEW RELEASES

Textis Globbolalicus, by John M. Bennett. Introductions by Jim Leftwich, Olchar Lindsann, and Bob BreuKl.

Spanning three volumes and nearly 1,000 pages, this is THE DEFINITIVE collection of texts in that that most indecipherable of tongues, Globbolalia, by its only native speaker, the inimitable Dr. John M. Bennett.
Vol. I: 354 pp., Introduction by Bob BrueckL, cover by C. Mehrl Bennett.
Vol. II: 351 pp., Introduction by Jim Leftwich, cover by Blaster Al Ackerman.
Vol. III: 292 pp., Introduction by Olchar E. Lindsann, cover by Musicmaster.

Avant the Avant-Garde: Childhood and Family in the Culture of the Avant-Garde, compiled by Olchar E. Lindsann.

Childhood and family are rarely highlighted in discussions of, by, or about the avant-garde; this exploratory investigation takes the form of hundreds of short passages gleaned from memoirs, letters, poems, and autobiographical works of avant-gardists from the past 200+ years, and numerous introductions and biographies, woven into an impressionistic survey of this neglected aspect of avant-garde life.

Anti-Prophesies: Post-NeoAbsurdist Prophesy Poems, A.Da. 86-94. by Aaron Andrews, Megan Blafas, Bradley Chriss, Bruno Franklyn, Warren Fry, Jim Leftwich, Olchar Lindsann, the Montana PNA group, & other anonymous Post-Neos.

One of the first and most versatile Post-Neo microforms, dozens of Anti-Prophesies have appeared in Post-Neo journals, books, and performances since A.Da. 87 (2003). Through them a characteristic but heteroclite tradition, mythology, and poetic has coalesced. This is the first comprehensive collection of PNA Anti-Prophesies drawn from the Post-Neo archives, with an introductory essay by Olchar E. Lindsann.

The Hymn of Stone, by Imogene Engine & Olchar Lindsann.

Dark and atavistic cycle of verses, collaboratively composed by Imogene Engine and Olchar Lindsann, adorned with collages by the writers. Crisp was the clock / shutting its eye to all of the bodies. // Bring me the sorrowful creature/ with its forehead of wood / and its skin marked with notches / like a soldier marked for his sins.

War Storm, by Warren Fry.

Fight the vicious Glandelinian army as one of the heroic Vivian Girls, in this tiny game based on the world created by Henry Darger. The first in a series of TLP-RPGs: 8-page mini-role-playing games with minimal rules & character-generation, experimental systems, and a lot of room for play.

DISTRO

from the Spart Action Group: Transmission. ed. Justin McKeown.

from Mycelium: A Zoum/Asemic History of Post-NeoAbsurdism. by Olchar Lindsann. Facsimile distribution of Lindsann's minimal and indirect history of Post-Neo, using only Post-Neo talismanic catch-phrases; the original edition of 20 copies is completely hand-stamped and already spoken for.

from [Pro]-[Anti] Press: Dada n’est rien. ed. Tomislav Butkovic. A French language mini-[Anti-]primer on Dada, with work by Hausmann, Ball, Hennings, Picabia, Tzara, Duchamp, plus a quiz and other embellishments by Butkovic.

FORTHCOMING FROM MONoCLE-LASH

Babbage's Disease & Other Fictions, by David Beris Edwards. British Post-Neo comedian and writer Edwards' long-awaited nonsensical-historical novella on the final weeks of the life of Charles Babbage, godfather of the computer, anchors this collection of long and short fiction, newly revised.

On Fun, by Olchar Lindsann. First published in SPART Action's Transmission, Lindsann's essay On Fun in pamphlet form.

The Prelude, Part II, trans. Fast Sedan Nellson. Nellson informs us that he is within pages of completing the second volume of his long-awaited translation of Wordsworth's long-winded epic The Prelude into Even-More-Boring-And-Trite.

Ubu Enchained, trans. Amy Oliver & Ubu Roi Special Edition. Two different Post-Neo takes on Ubu: British Post-Neo Amy Oliver's translation of Ubu Enchained, which served as the script for the American Post-Neo production of the play in Roanoke, VA in A.Da. 93 (2009), and a special edition DVD of Lindsann, Lennard & Lennard's A.Da. 89 (2005) film version of Ubu Roi, with audio commentary and other questionable goodies.

Scoria of the Bouzingo & Romanticist Manifestos. Translation is still afoot, but keep an eye out for the first printed fruits of the Bouzingo project: an anthology of writings and images of the Jeunes-France/Bouzingo group with introduction and short bios of the members; and a collection of manifestos, prefaces, polemics and theoretical texts from the French Romanticist community that will trace the context and emergence of the first(?) avant-gardes in the 1820s and '30s in the words of the participants themselves.

Imogene & Olchar: Ephemera as Memoir. First issue of an occasional 'zine by Olchar Lindsann & Imogene Engine, in collage & calligraphy.

And much more, as it becomes ready...

An Intersticial Update, Part 1

2010-08-27T21:18:00.008-05:00

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

2010-08-27T20:42:00.005-05:00

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

2010-07-13T20:20:00.001-05:00

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

2010-06-08T19:03:00.014-05:00

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

2010-04-24T22:22:00.022-05:00

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.

Laying the Foundations...

2010-04-10T17:38:00.021-05:00

It's one thing to conduct research; another thing to analyze, interpret, mentally collate and extrapolate that research; and yet another to bring the fruits of that process into a comprehensive form.

For this project, I shall try to do so through a series of targeted feature posts or mini-essays, which will gradually mark out the terrain which will be explored in greater depth, precision, or detail later on.

This will happen slowly; to give at least a glimpse of the picture of the Bouzingo/Jeunes France, the ways in which they operated, and the broader Romanticist community, network, or subculture of which they were a node early on, I'm posting a list indicating what those topics are likely to be dealt with.

The completion of these will occur in the time and order that circumstances dictate. If there is anything below that somebody finds particularly intriguing or pertinent to research/translation/etc. that you are involved in, let me know and I'll probably turn my attention there next.

I also encourage any writings coming from those of you doing independant research or translation--just let me know and I'll send you an admin invite so you can post.

Look forward to features on:

Timeline
I'm working on this now; should help greatly in getting a grasp on everything.

The Jeunes France/Bouzingo:
Aloysius Bertrand--writer
Petrus Borel--writer/organizer/theorist/translator/painter/architect
Joseph Bouchardy--playwright/engraver
Louis Boulanger--painter, scenographer
Alphonse Brot--playwright
Achille Devéria--painter/lithographer/eroticist/writer
Eugène Devéria--painter & possibly writer, Achille's brother
Théophile Gautier--writer/painter/organizer
Augustus MacKeat--historian/novelist/poet/playwright
Gerard de Nerval--writer/translator/organizer
Philothée O'Neddy--writer/organizer/theorist/publisher
Célestin Nanteuil--engraver/possibly writer
Jehan de Seigneur--sculptor & possibly painter
Napoléon Thom--painter
Jules Vabre--translator/architect/theorist
XXXX Vigneron--no first name or other information yet

Friends, Collaborators, & Broader Romanticist Community of the Bouzingo
Charles Asselineau--Romanticist Archivist
Charles la Battut--Dandy/Organizer/Devisor of practical jokes
Pierre-Jean Béranger--Writer of subversive songs
Hector Berlioz--Composer/Conductor/Writer
Roger de Beauvoir--Dandy/Writer
André Borel--Writer
Francisque Borel--Leftist Romanticist Publisher
Nicolas Brazier--Writer of Subversive Songs
François Chateaubriand--Writer/Politician
Émile Debraux--Subversive Songwriter/Publisher
Eugéne Deligny--Playwright/Novelist
??? Dondey--Publisher
??? Dupré--Publisher
Évariste-Desiré de Forges de Parny--Subversive Songwriter
Xavier Forneret--Writer, possibly member of the Jeunes France
Charles Fourier--Socialist Utopian Theoist & agitator
Graziano--Romanticist Tavern-keeper
'La Mapah' Ganneau--Mystic Occultist/Utopian Theorist & Organizer
Gavarni--Caricaturist
Delphine de Girardin--Organizer/Writer
Victor Hugo--Writer/Playwright/Theorist
Jules Janin--Novelist/Leftist Polemicist
Alphonse Lamartine--Writer/Polemicist/Leftist Politician
Abbé Felicité de Lamennais--Defrocked Priest & Leftist Polemicist
Eugéne Lassilly--Poet
Froment Meurice--Goldsmith/Designer
Prospere Mérimée--Writer/Historian/Translator/Perpetrator of Hoaxes
Hippolyte Monpou--Composer/songwriter
Napoléon Musard--Composer/Conductor/creator of Romanticist Dances
Alfred de Musset--Writer
Charles Nodier--Organizer/Writer
Ollivier--Publisher
Éduard Ourliac--Writer/Dandy
Count Ourlioff--??? [possibly Jeunes France-period pseudonym of Ourliac]
Ren[d]uel--Romanticist publisher
Théodore Rousseau--Painter
The Marquis de Saint-Criq--Dandy/Devisor of practical jokes
Henri de Saint-Simon--Proto-Socialist utopian theorist & agitator
George Sand--Organizer/Writer/Theorist
Eugéne Sue--Novelist

Thematic Features
Intertextuality in the Bouzingo
On Researching the Bouzingo
Historiography of the Bouzingo
Singing and Song in the Bouzingo
On Romanticist Dance
Translation and the Bouzingo
Public Spectacle and the Bouzingo
Clothing, Myth, and the Bouzingo
The Significance of Naming for the Bouzingo
Multidisciplinarity in the Bouzingo
On Romanticist Organizing
Publication and the Bouzingo
Working Collaboratively in the Bouzingo
Collective Living in the Bouzingo
Speech, Conversation, and Myth in the Bouzingo
The Politics of Language in the Bouzingo
The Bouzingo and Gothic-Horror Subculture
The Bouzingo and the Satirical Tradition (Villon, Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne)
The Bouzingo and Dandyism
The Bouzingo and Libertinism, Évadanism, and Erotica
The Bouzingo as Self-Declared Anachronism
The Bouzingo and Theatre
Victor Hugo and the Bouzingo
Alexandre Dumas, The Petit Cenacle, and Augustus MacKeat
Bouzingo Poetics
Bouzingo Aesthetics
Utopia, Radical Politics, and the Bouzingo
Class Politics and the Bouzingo
Romanticism and War
The Bouzingo as Anachronistic Barbarians
Money, Work, and the Bouzingo
The Bouzingo and Family
The Bouzingo and Bohemian Subculture

Related Romanticist/Proto-Romanticist/Utopian/Avant-Garde Groups
The Badouillards (France, c. 1830)
The Bohême Doyenné (France, c. 1833-35)
The Carbonari (Italy/France/Portugal, c. 1810-1915)
The Caveau Moderne (France, 1806-1835/1937)
The Club des Hashihins (France, 1844-1849)
The Cénacle Group (France, c. 1826-30)
The Évadanistes (France, 1830)
The Lake School (England, c. 1790-1820)
The Hunt Circle/'Satanic' Romantics (England, c.1815-1825)
The Jocky Club (France, c.1833-1840)
The Nazarine Group (Germany, 1809-1830)
The Petit Cénacle (France, 1830-31)
The Saint-Simonistes (France, c.1825-1832)

Comparative Studies
The Bouzingo and Hermeticism/the Occult
The Bouzingo and Gothic Horror
The Bouzingo and the Byron circle
The Bouzingo, the Flaneur, & Psychogeography
The Bouzingo and Decadence
The Bouzingo and Pataphysics
The Bouzingo and Futurism
The Bouzingo and Berlin Dada
The Bouzingo and Paris Dada/Surrealism
The Bouzingo, Lettrism, & Situationism
The Bouzingo and Fluxus
The Bouzingo and Neoism
The Bouzingo and Post-NeoAbsurdism
The Bouzingo and Vernacular Subculture: Heavy Metal, Punk, and Noise

UPDATES!

2010-03-29T20:13:00.009-05:00

A quick survey of what's in the works right now, and a more detailed update-package on the first fruits (or germs) of the Bouzingo project. Firstly:

Prepare yourselves for the Exquisite Crypt #2--More Post-Neo Exquisite corpses. This volume is a single, 20-page long exquisite corpse poem, which traveled all over the world to be written. It was begun by Warren Fry and I when we were in the UK to visit the British PNAs & other Dartingtonians; it was vaastly expanded over the course of the week by David Beris Edwards, Eleanor Francis Waterfowl, and Amy Oliver, as well as Rhiannon Chaloner and possibly a few people I"m forgetting. Then a breather of a couple months, and it was pulled out again in New Jersey by Warren, Tomislav Butkovic and I, upon the occasion of a visit by Brad Chriss and Megan Blafas. Upcoming Exquisite Crypts will include Surrealist games etc. played by various PNA communities as well, and will/may focus on NJ Post-Neo, a long-withheld typewritten Exquisite Opus from Columbus PNA, the Lennard family, Crypts made in the workplace, etc.

The printed version will be officially printed up next month, but the free pdf is available now as part of the new issue of the online journal word for/word, along with other texts and video footage and a delightfully and densely fractal interview by Michael Peters (who put the feature together) of Chriss, Fry, Edwards, and myself.

I am slowly getting contributors' copies of Synapse out, bear with me.

Otherwise, probably no new publications for a month or two, everything's in the works. But by late summertime look for (possibly):

The Adventures of Jackalope Caesar (CD). An exquisite corpse story made by the international Post-Neo community back in the early days of facebook, recorded by Lindsann & Fry, and presented with a full soundtrack composed by Chris Lennard.
The Adventures of Mr. Squibbles, Vol. I (DVD). An underground Post-Neo classic (does such a thing exist?) for nearly a decade, the Mr. Squibbles films finally made officially available sometime this year along with audio commentary tracks and maybe other things.
Also sometime this year, Deluxe re-issue of the full-length film of Ubu Roi--brought to you by those responsible for Squibbles. On a SINGLE disc, also with audio commentary, production stills, etc.

THE BOUZINGO UPDATE

Translation has begun! Below I've posted one complete translation and several in-progress ones (more on that later). Anything else is up for grabs, either for those of you who have not yet given it a go or if you want to try another one. This is what is currently being worked on (or completed):

Aloysius Bertrand, The Dead Horse: John M. Bennett
Petrus Borel, Preface to Rhapsodies: Joseph Carter
Petrus Borel, Fate and Fatality: Tomislav Butkovic & Olchar Lindsann
Théophile Gautier, A Verse From Wordsworth: Olchar Lindsann
Gerard de Nerval, Gothic Song: Tomislav Butkovic & Olchar Lindsann
Philothée O'Neddy, Forward to Fire & Flame: Joseph Carter

And Warren Fry is taking on the research for the Devéria brothers, Achille and Eugéne, both primarily visual artists.

I know there are a few people who will work on some texts etc eventually but are in the midst of other things at the moment.

I've posted two unfinished poems below which I am currently attempting to work into English verse, according to the plan I've already described. The Nerval I am versifying from Tomislav's translation, the Gautier I am working directly from Google Translate, so It's especially murky. This is an exceedingly interesting and maniacally frustrating endeavour, which I am enjoying immensely. However, I have no idea ultimately whether my texts bear any meaningful relationship with the originals. I'm not reading the French, since I can't, but am rather looking at various transliterations, half-transliterations, potential cognates and latinate roots, and scattered fragments of context and inferring what the text ought probably to be (before fitting it into iambs...). I'm thinking of it as Forensic Translation. These attempts are primarily tests, to figure out whether this will be a feasible way of going about things or if I'm helpless to assist in the translation; and if it DOES seem feasible, I need to know how to go about it better, so if you read French PLEASE do not hesitate to let me know how these look, and what kinds of things I seem to be missing.

Research is going pretty swimmingly, all considered. I'm finding more than I have time to read just yet (given that it's all in French), let alone make sense of and blog about; but I'll try to intermittently post regarding people/subjects/themes that have been turning up or resolving themselves as a sift and uncover, as well as posting sources so that the curious can take a look themselves and/or strike out on their own research if they desire. I'll hopefully post the first of these next weekend.

I have received pseudonymous communications indicating that the elusive Kohoutenberg Institute for Study and Application is interested in undertaking a parallel Bouzingo project, instigating the re-injection of the Bouzingo into the contemporary avant discourse in a way that reflects the 175 years of development in the community since they were active. This will probably take the form of a potentially vaast number of transductions, homeophonic translations, cut-ups and text-collage, google-translate sequences, etc. Through this activity, the texts, names, and recognition of the Bouzingo as such will inevitably seep into the Eternal Network in myriad forms, as such things do, and when the straight-up translations, histories, and bios begin to appear an interesting dialogue should result, the foundations having been laid in such an unusual fashion... More on this project as it develops...

One personal effect of this project on me has been a re-approaching of closed-form verse, which I'd not written for many years. On my personal blog, I've posted the lecture notes of a lecture I gave in Roanoke, VA last month on the development from poetic recitation to performance poetry during the 19th Century. While I had too little information to discuss the Bouzingo in this context yet, the notes serve at the same time as an indication of the radicalized use or employment of verse (its relation to the body, to memory, and to cognition) that characterized poets of the 19th century avant-garde. I've also posted a closed-form poem in progress, in indication of how I approach writing such texts when I'm not translating them from google.

Finally, here are the primary research sources so far for the Bouzingo that have been translated into English. I'll be posting links etc. to more as the weeks go by:

Starkey, Enid . Petrus Borel, The Lycanthrope: His Life and Times. (1954). Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions. This was my primary (i.e. only) source for the Bouzingo group during the writing of The Ecstatic Nerve. While frustratingly (for the researcher) under-cited and involving the somewhat sloppy scholarship typical of the mid-20th Century (several quotes attributed to the wrong people, vague sweeping generalizations, failure to translate quotations, etc), overall a good read and a pretty facinating book; Starkey is a staunch partisan of Borel (and O'Neddy) and this book is her successful bid not only to ressurect Borel himself, but to give a good sense of the cultural context in which the group worked. Out of print for nearly 50 years, but you can still get some used copies on Amazon for $10-15 (I've got it linked).

Gautier, Théophile & Sumichrast, F.C., trans. A History of Romanticism: The Progress of French Poetry Since 1830. (1908). New York: George D. Sproul. First published in 1874, this is a history of French Romanticism by one of the Bouzingo, about 35 years after the group dissolved. It hasn't been translated or annotated in over a century, but fortunately you can get a facsimile edition cheaply on Amazon or read it from a computer screen. I've just started it and it is a ROLICKING good time. Highly recommended--as engaging, generous, down to earth, and as energizing as Hans Richter's history of Dada.

Houssaye, Arséne & Knepler, Henry. (1970). Man About Paris: The Confessions of Arséne Houssaye. New York: William Morrow & Co. I've just begun this one too; Houssaye was a member of the Bohême du Doyenné group that included many of the Bouzingo after that group folded: Gautier, Nanteuil, Nerval, MacKeat, etc and there's a fair amount of relevant information and description, plus a good deal of contextualizing material. It's edited down from a few thousand pages to 350, so a whole lot's missing, particularly stuff relating to 'forgotten nobodies' like those we are so interested in... Again, it's been out of print for decades, but amazon has used copies for $10-20.

Aloysius Bertrand, The Dead Horse, translated by John M. Bennett

2010-03-28T21:00:00.005-05:00

Unlike many of the Bouzingo, Bertrand has been less utterly forgotten in French than in English; Baudelaire positions his collection Paris Spleen as a continuation of the project suggested by Bertrand in the Gaspard de Nuit (1836), the collection from which this poem comes, the Symbolists discussed him as a key developer of the prose-poem, and Breton cites him as a precursor of Surrealism. All of which makes sense after reading this piece...

The beginning is presumably an epigraph from something which I am in the process of tracking down.

Sadly blogger keeps fucking up the formatting for the epigraph, I don't know...

the French:

Le Cheval mort

Le fossoyeur: — Je vous vendrai

de l'os pour fabriquer des boutons. Le pialey: — Je vous vendrai de l'os pour garnir le manche de vos poignards. La Boutique de l'Armurier.

La voirie ! et à gauche, sous un gazon de trèfle et de luzerne, les sépultures d'un cimetière; à droite, un gibet suspendu qui demande aux passants l'aumône comme un manchot.

* *

Celui-là, tué d'hier, les loups lui on déchiqueté la chair sur le col en si longues aiguillettes qu'on le dirait paré encore pour la cavalcade d'une touffe de rubans rouges.

Chaque nuit, dès que la lumière blémira le ciel, cette carcasse s'envolera, enfourchée par une sorcière qui l'éperonnera de l'os pointu de son talon, la bise soufflant dans l'orgue de ses flancs caverneux.

Et s'il était à cette heure taciturne un oeil sans sommeil, ouvert dans quelque fosse du champ de repos, il se fermerait soudain, de peur de voir un spectre dans les étoiles.

Déjà la lune elle-même, clignant un oeil, ne luit plus de l'autre que pour éclairer comme une chandelle flottante ce chien, maigre vagabond, qui lape l'eau d'un étang.

and the English:

The Dead Horse

The gravedigger: -- I’ll come to you from the bone to make buttons.

The squawker: -- I’ll come to you from the bone to decorate the stain on your daggers.

The Gunsmith’s Boutique.

The garbage dump! and on the left, under a lawn of clover and alfalfa, the tombs of a cemetery; on the right, a hanging gallows which demands of passers-by some alms like a one-armed beggar.

*
**

Him there, killed yesterday; the wolves have shredded his flesh down his collar in such long strips that one might say he was still ready for the parade with a tuft of red ribbons.

Every night, when the light pales in the sky, this carcass will be flown, mounted by a sorcerer who will spur it on with the sharp bone of his heel, the wind blowing through the organ of his cavernous sides.

And if there were at that taciturn hour any sleepless eye, open in that pit of the field in repose, it closed suddenly, in fear of seeing a specter in the stars.

Already the moon itself, blinking an eye, doesn’t shine the other except to illumine like a floating candle that dog, thin and stray, which laps the water from a pond.

.

Gerard de Nerval, Gothic Song; translated by Tomislav Butkovic and Olchar Lindsann (in progress)

2010-03-27T22:01:00.006-05:00

My first attempt to render a poem into English verse, this is still in draft form, missing a couple of lines; and if one rhyme, tense, etc. changes, it tends to send ripples through all the rest of the system so it may be far from finished.

I'm working from a transliteration by Tomislav Butkovic, supplemented by a google translation and a couple dictionaries. This poem's main challenge to my part of the process is in its extremely short lines--four syllables per line!--which leaves very little elbow-room for the inevitable jostlings that affect sentence structure, rhythm, and their relationships with the metric scheme, not to speak of accommodating rhyme or at least slant and near-rhyme.

The poem itself, IF I have managed to reconstruct it aright, is a properly sadistic turning-of-the-knife song addressed to a woman abandoned at the alter. The title, Gothic Song, would seem to contextualize this scenerio in relation to the Gothic subculture (which consisted of both an intellectual element engaged with the re-approaching of medieval culture, and a popular subculture which bore the embryos of later horror, heavy metal, etc subcultures) which was a defining element of the Bouzingo as a group (as it had been for the British 'Satanic' Romantics typified by Byron as well). And indeed the bride left at the alter is a recurrent figure in Gothic fiction (with about equal chances that her beloved either has fallen into the hands of a band of Brigands sent by his as-yet-unidentifiable archenemy, or is about to reveal himself as the agent or avatar of the Devil, or some thing cast out by God).

There are a number of points in the translation that I recognise as potential trouble-spots, and undoubtedly some I do not even suspect. I need to fill an empty syllable in the first line (first word) in order to set the rhythmic journey of the poem off with an intuitively recognizable (and therefore precise) iambic rhythm, though I don't know how best to inflect the line with whatever word I put there; the end of the second stanza seems to involve linguistic subtleties that I do not apprehend, her tears 'suiting' or 'becoming' the flowers; I'm uncertain whether to use 'strew' or the more direct (I think) 'sow' in the second stanza; and 'pleasure' is a hell of a thing to rhyme in such short lines, not to mention forcing me to add a bastard syllable to the iambic meter that seems to be the best suited to the original--while at the same time it seems of paramount relevance that the the poem terminate on this word, impaled upon it as if upon a spike, and that moreover it must be 'pleasure' properly, with the ambiguity that the anglophone face of the word also carries with it, not withstanding google's translation to the more innocuous 'joy'--and then there is so little room in which to arrange the content of the second line around such a rhyme in an elegant manner. I am still rather unsatisfied with my use of 'treasure' because it introduces a metaphor (albeit an idiomatic one) which is not in the original text; but so far have been unable, withing the grammatical conditions imposed by the form, to switch to the verb form of this word whose sensory associations are less direct. Etc etc.

I am extraordinarily open to advice and criticism; in fact this is largely a test to begin figuring out what role/s I can or cannot play on the translation side of the project. So--

the French:

Chanson gothique

Belle épousée,
J’aime tes pleurs !
C’est la rosée
Qui sied aux fleurs.

Les belles choses
N’ont qu’un printemps,
Semons de roses
Les pas du Temps !

Soit brune ou blonde,
Faut-il choisir ?
Le Dieu du monde,
C’est le Plaisir.

...and the English:

Gothic Song

A XXX lovely bride,

B Your tears XXXXXX !

A Like dew they slide

B Into the flowers.

A That lovely pair,

B Whilst Spring is prime,

A Strews roses there

B In the wake of Time!

A Brunette, or blonde:

B Why split his treasure?

A For this world's God

B Is surely Pleasure.

Théophile Gautier, Un Vers de Wordsworth; translated by Olchar Lindsann (in progress)

2010-03-27T18:12:00.007-05:00

This is a particularly rough one, not only because I'm working exclusively from Google Translate and a couple dictionaries, but because it involves a dense web of literary allusions that has necessitated a good deal of specific research. This research, like the filling out of the verses themselves, is in an incomplete state; the Wordsworth quote is indeed easily tracible (and included in Bartlet's Familiar Quotations, published a couple decades previous to the novels mentioned). The novel it is drawn from is Louisa, ou les doulours d'un fille de joie. I'm still tracking this book down, but expect little trouble in that direction. Google translates the title as 'Louisa- A Prostitute's Pain' but the last word is evidently the translation of a euphomism, I think 'daughter of joy/pleasure'...? And as Gautier informs us, this book's author draws his pseudonym (if I'm inferring correctly from Google's garbled transliteration) from a third book (Gautier does not quote the complete title), which turns out to be the 1829 book L'Ane Mort et la Femme guillotinée (The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman) by one Jules Janin, a subversive novelist eventually forced into exile. I've obtained the text of this novel (in the French, of course) but haven't had an opportunity to peruse it yet.

(Of course, all of this is conveyed via inflexible units of vocabulary singularly ill-suited for easy versification, so that I get to ineptly grab at the shadow of Gautier's virtuosic rhythm and scansion.)

And I've not yet even begun to start addressing the reference to Shakespeare's Tempest...

I suspect this research is precisely the point of Gautier's writing this poem; especially when one considers that he implies that he is not only directing you toward these other texts, but has at the same time avoided other authors in response to similar textual embeddings, in this case the universal condemnation of Wordsworth's political and poetic apostasy by the second generation of Romantics--Byron, Shelley, Keats, Hazlitt, Hunt, etc.

This historiographic function is why this poem seems to me like a good candidate for the introductory volume of the project; not to mention of course that it partakes of the same tradition of excoriation continued not only by Gautier but by Fast Sedan Nellson and myself. To which is added the extent to which the poem is about translation and readership: Byron and Shakespeare were both being translated for the first time into French, the latter specifically by one of the Bouzingo group, translator/theorist/architect Jules Vabre (more on this fascinating character in a couple weeks--I'll be putting together a post focusing on the practice and role of translation within the group), and were defining influences on the Bouzingo both poetically and in self-presentation. And the ready availability of the line at hand in Bartlett's opens the possibility that the writer of the novel in which Gautier found the line had not read Wordsworth in his entirety either. AND, Gautier quotes the line in English as his own epigraph (doubly quoted), then repeats it in French in the poem's body, paraphrasing it again in the final line. This poses interesting questions to the translator rendering the poem back into English, especially as even the Google translation of Gautier's translation makes a smoother and more grammatically correct iambic pentameter line than Wordsworth's original (in which the plural subject and singular verb do not agree). I decided to add my bit to the ongoing intergenerational smearing of Wordsworth's face in the mud, and use the re-translated line (especially as the rhyme is easier as well, Wordsworth's requiring a double-rhyme; the original, of course, is in blank verse...)

la rime boite-- Google translates as 'the rhyme box' and my dictionaries bear this out. Eh? My current hypothesis is that this may be French technical terminology--or literary slang--for a poetic stanza... anyone know?

The translation so far is no doubt full of holes:

the French:

Un Vers de Wordsworth
Spires whose silent finger points to heaven.

Je n’ai jamais rien lu de Wordsworth, le poète
Dont parle lord Byron d’un ton si plein de fiel,
Qu’un seul vers ; le voici, car je l’ai dans la tête :
— Clochers silencieux montrant du doigt le ciel. —

Il servait d’épigraphe, et c’était bien étrange,
Au chapitre premier d’un roman : — Louisa, —
Les douleurs d’une fille, œuvre toute de fange
Qu’un pseudonyme auteur dans L’Ane mort puisa.

Ce vers frais et pieux, perdu dans ce volume
De lubriques amours, me fit du bien à voir :
C’était comme une fleur des champs, comme une plume
De colombe, tombée au cœur d’un bourbier noir.

Aussi depuis ce temps, lorsque la rime boite,
Que Prospéro n’est pas obéi d’Ariel,
Aux marges du papier je jette, à gauche, à droite,
Des dessins de clochers montrant du doigt le ciel.

...and the English so far:

A Line From Wordsworth

Spires whose silent finger points to heaven.¹

A I've never read the poet Wordsworth, he
B Against whom Byron let such venom fly,
A Except one line; its voice comes back to me:
B -The silent steeples pointing to the sky--

A It served as epigraph, a freakish ruse,
B For the initial chapter of -Louisa,-²
A A Hooker's Pain, a sludgy novel whose
B [ pseudonym drawn from] The Dead Ass XXX³

A This pious verse, abandoned in this book
B of lewd XXXXXX , was XXXXXX to my eyes:
A It was a XXXXXX bloom, XXXXXXXXX [took [shook [looked
B XXX fallen] XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX [lies

A And since that time, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
B
A Across the paper's margins, left and right,
B I XXXXXX steeples pointing to the sky.

1from The Excursion, Book VI, line 19.

2Louisa, ou les doulours d'un fille de joie (Louisa: or, the Pain of a Daughter of Pleasure[?]), by Abbé Tiberge [Regnier Destourbet].

3L'Ane Mort et la Femme guillotinée (The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman), by Jules Janin, 1829.

Petrus Borel, Isolement--Anti-translation from the Kohoutenberg Institute

2010-03-27T10:15:00.000-05:00

An initial exercise for the Kohoutenberg Institute's parallel Bouzingo translation project: Petrus Borel's Isolement, translated via google from French to Croatian to Catalan to Danish to French to English again, The dedication is to fellow Bouzingo Gérard Nerval:

Insulation

Gerard, poet

General forest restoration
Osama in the valleys
Clos d'Effroy all!

Ronsard

Under the scorching sun in beautiful rural Creole
How bamboo bow African English,
Towards Hurricane withers Palm
In the hands of wine in units of dense forest.

In our old tree, mistletoe, parasitic St.
The return of oaks and feel and dream;
The combination of grass suffer a kind of fragile and
Trunk monasteries in southerly winds.

GUI! Liane! cake! would my soul!
My heart, like ivy and the cover.
Ford spent a little of this life
Wonder Woman, the support friend!

- Angel on Earth? ... Flower, a woman? ...
Bard, and just chose this playful swarm
Rondo rounded meal instead. --
No, my heart to a heart that understands his soul.

This is not theater, festivals, daughter
Who can lay life is happiness:
This field at night, wrapped in shawl,
Werther hand fainting.

It is a brunette with dark eyelashes, air Moorish;
It is a lazy goose, blue-eyed Ondine
Also a large almond and death, anxiety,
As noted in Germanic coast.

When this magic? - When my voice call? --
Bring spring in my heart, I do.
But even he would be faithful to Cypress!
On the beach when I'm alone?

Sparrow in my ceiling of the room with his girlfriend;
My mare had a foal love.
Let me in this forum and others accompanying
The torrent of fire, I did spend my days.

Reconstructing the Bouzingo

2010-03-06T13:31:00.007-06:00

Here's a massive update/overview of the proposed project to uncover and explore the Bouzingo, an almost entirely forgotten (and I suspect very important and certainly instructive) early French avant-garde group operating in the early 1830s. Very, very little of their work has been translated into English, and it is my hope that by working together, the extended community that mOnocle-Lash touches on can make this whole body of work, and the community from which it sprang and for which it was designed to function, available and comprehensible for the first time in over 150 years.

TRANSLATION BEGINS THIS WEEKEND. While the project itself is undoubtedly ambitious, I think that if gone about in the right way (and with patience) it can be accomplished without requiring a great deal of concentrated time from anybody. I hope you can be a part of it.

I have tried to make this post comprehensive, something that can provide a foundation for updates to come as the project develops over the coming months and years. That said, and granting my propensity for over-elucidation, I'll outline the project below.

If you'd like to be involved in the translation process, the practical info is at the bottom, if you want to go straight for that first. For any other ideas, question, or ways of being a part of it, leave a comment or email me at monoclelash@gmail.com or olindsann@gmail.com.

THE BOUZINGO
The Bouzingo insofar as we understand it so far has been described to most of you already, and I am attaching the passage from my Ecstatic Nerve relating to them, which contains the bulk of I know of them so far. Briefly, the group emerged from the constantly merging, splitting and name-changing that has apparently characterised avant-garde culture since at least the 1820s. It grew essentially out of the Petit-Cenacle and Jeunes France groups, this third name signaling a plunge into a kind of politically motivated group social-experiment: living collectively in voluntary destitution, their house devoid of furniture but the walls filled with Bouzingo murals of both Classical and erotic traditions, writing and spreading seditious drinking-songs at working-class pubs, plotting and carrying out various provocations of the bourgeoisie in the streets, experimenting with opium and hashish, orchestrating orgiastic parties involving dances requiring pistols fired into the ceiling, holding philosophical debates nude in their back yard, hurling fake corpses from their windows into the street, engaging in various occult and alchemical practices, and carefully cultivating an elaborate gothic mythology about themselves, in which they drank wine from their parents' skulls, stocked their otherwise bare rooms with exotic weaponry, and kept human foetuses in jars on their mantelpiece.
At the same time they were producing a very wide array of work in a number of different media, often collaboratively--from gothic horror novels to classical sculpture to politicized plays and operas to translations from French and German to erotic prints to buildings (I've yet to find any examples by the Bouzingo architect Jules Vabre) to history paintings to Byronic poetry to opaque prose poems. What seems to make the Bouzingos work cohere in sometimes unexpected ways (insofar, again, as I can tell via google translate) is that all seem to share a similar and very heterogeneous set of cultural contexts and resources--various forms of Post-Robespierre, pre-Marxist socialism, popular gothic fiction, the dark Romanticism personified first by Byron (to whom the group's main organiser, Borel, was often compared), both literary and graphic erotica and libertinism, an element of genuine alchemical and occult investigation, the adventure novels of Scott and Cooper, French comedy, and satirical and polemic song.
In all of the printed work that I have unearthed and scanned, it is evident that there are numerous conversations being played out in these poems, and that both writing and publishing (as well as not publishing) were being conceived of not only (or even primarily) as outward products for a public, but as gestures within the social context of the group, as well as its relationship to the broader communities that intersected with it and with its own history and future.
It is also quite clear that future (as well as past) avant-garde communities were considered part of this more intimate audience; frankly it's rather uncanny to dig up these texts (more than once) and find an exhortation or reference to the future reader who will have rediscovered one's existence after having been forgotten to history for generations. More uncanny yet when Aloysius Bertrand even relates to me fairly accurately what the historical trail was that I followed to his discovery. There is a whole social poetics of epigraphs to be read in the literary work of this group. (especially when they can be read.)
These inferences, again, are based on my quasi-readings of material as I find it, and on widely scattered and isolated atoms of information. If you want to know in more detail what it is that I'm looking at in cobbling together this reconstruction of their activity, or investigate beyond the links I'll include below, just email me.

A LIST OF BOUZINGO
Up to a few weeks ago I was still discovering new people so this may not be comprehensive. Nearly everyone used pseudonyms, most of them Anglicized and some of them brilliantly funny:

Aloysius Bertrand--writer
Petrus Borel--writer/organizer/translator/painter/architect
Joseph Bouchardy--playwright/engraver
Louis Boulanger--painter, scenographer
Alphonse Brot--playwright (no complete texts so far)
Achille Devéria--painter/lithographer/eroticist

Eugène Devéria--painter & possibly writer, Achille's brother
Xavier Forneret--writer
Théodor Gautier--writer/painter/organizer
Augustus MacKeat--writer (no texts yet)
Gerard de Nerval--writer/translator/organizer
Philothée O'Neddy--writer/organizer/publisher
Célestin Nanteuil--engraver/possibly writer
Jehan de Seigneur--sculptor & possibly painter
Napoléon Thom--painter
Jules Vabre--translator/architect/theorist
XXXX Vigneron--no first name or other information yet

Léon--I don't even have his full name; is this his first or last? What did he do...?

WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING
I do not read or speak French; hence my insistence that this work be translated! In addition to working on the English-language side of the translation process (more on that below), my role is to locate texts and co-ordinate the translation and other elements of the project; to carry out the bulk of the historical research and make sense of it, eventually writing the grounding essay/s for the contextualizing material; to coordinate whatever other material is written by people in the community with regard to the project; researching and writing explanatory and contextual footnotes etc. for the texts; compiling the various appendices and bibliographies that will be called for as the project progresses; and of course editing, publishing, and distributing the books.
The past few months have been spent (among many other things...) gradually tracking down texts online and following or taking note of every possible lead that I can find to give us a broader historical picture of the milieu in which the group operated. Of course this is still in the early stages, and much of the material will only emerge as texts begin to be translated and speak to each other, as it were. Naturally, not only all of these texts, but most everything is in French, so I've become fairly adept at scanning the Google translation of a text to gain the general gist and cobble together some hypotheses about what was being done; it is through this process that I've come up with the specific texts that I'm attaching for provisional inclusion in the initial book, highlighting those aspects of what seems most intriguing about the group.

THE LONG-TERM PLAN
I do not have a definite time-table for the project; I, like most of you, am busy with far more things than I really ought to be doing, and consider it a given that things must move along at a pace that is manageable for everyone involved, and which does not require a definite commitment in terms of quantity or time. I hope to keep the chapbooks coming out at a steady enough pace to feel a momentum--at least one or two a year--but I doubt that that the project as a whole will see completion in less than five years (at the least). We'll see.
We start with this first chapbook, which opens the series with a kind of overview of the group--a bit of work by everyone involved (if I can find it...), and a general introduction/history of the group.
After this, one chapbook at a time, each dedicated to one member of the group. Each book will have up to 50 pages, depending on how much work has survived, and will include a critical biography, translations of texts / reproductions of images with both translators' and historical notes, bibliography, and possibly dedications/responses/illustrations by people working in the contemporary avant/PNA etc. community.
When everyone involved directly with the Bouzingo has been treated, work will begin (mostly my work...) on a massive, perfect-bound volume which will compile all of the translations, images, bios, etc and add more, with expanded histories, notes and bibliographies, a number of essays examining various aspects of the group's structure, dynamics, strategies, and legacy, and whatever responses, essays, transductions, etc. any of us living people want to add. By this time, after all, we ought to be pretty familiar with these dudes.

EDITORIAL ORIENTATION
The basic editorial position from which I am approaching the project, that is in fact at the root of why I (specifically) am attempting to make it happen and asking the mOnocle-Lash community (specifically) to be a part of it, can be conveniently expressed by an observation about the way that the group itself seems to have approached historiography (one of their major concerns, like many avant-gardes):

It appears that the shift in the Bouzingos' activity and deepening of their radicality (and name) coincided with the phenomenon of one of their circle of friends--Victor Hugo--becoming rather suddenly a household name, with a genuine chance to greatly affect the direction of culture, and the relationship of intellectual to mainstream culture as Democracy and Capitalism set the paths they would be following for centuries. They had themselves masterfully planned and executed this virtual coup (which ended, sadly, like most coups) of the on-and-off republic's cultural mechanism through a complex campaign of mythic and journalistic memes and the complex spectacular phenomenon that they mounted at the opening of Hugo's play Hernani. But in the wake of this victory, he (probably inevitably) drifted away from the group. (this would later recur as Gautier, who would become Baudelaire's mentor, gradually moved into a certain amount of public consciousness; Nerval would become canonized within the avant-garde shortly after his death and more widely by the end of the century.) Much of the Bouzingos' work (especially that which addresses Hugo, none with straightforward bitterness) address the obscurity to which they have willingly consigned themselves, and their adherence to a small and intense community and an obscure and disreputable tradition. They began to see radicalized poetics in terms of the cultivation of an experimental utopian community that is marginal on principle, rather than the struggle to become the dominant official ideology or cultural model.
It seems likely, in light of a number of declarations (especially by Borel, O'Neddy, and Bertrand) that much or most of the group would have preferred that the rediscovery they had so cunningly engineered take place in micropress, among the tiny and mingling radical communities that are their direct descendants, perpetrated collectively by people connected through direct human friendships, than that they appear in a university edition, translated by a bourgeois academic, professionally produced and appropriately de-fanged and made respectable for the Literature (or worse, art) departments and the shelves at Barnes & Noble. Thus the importance of this project being taken on in the current form before academia renders it 'merely literature'.
When a group or individual, like the Bouzingo, is active both in the realm of political subversion/psychosocial experimentation/public performance/intervention on the one hand, and in the production of texts, paintings, etc and the discourse surrounding them, there is a tendency for only one aspect (if that) to be seriously investigated. Either the texts are published and discussed as if created and disseminated in a social and personal vacuum, with only vague and secondary reference to their contexts ('oh, and when he was young he hung around with some forgotten bohemians'); or their exploits are told in conversational style and with complete disregard for the theoretical, political, and traditional underpinnings and corollaries to their behaviour. It is my hope not only to avoid both of these pitfalls, but to discover and tease out how these apparently disparate realms of activity related to and inhered within one another.
This has been my primary prerogative in selecting the texts for this first book; I am more than open to changing or adding to these selections however, if translators or others in the community find pieces that strike them as particularly interesting or engaging. The same will go for future chapbooks; I'll likely find a certain number that I would like to ensure are included, and otherwise encourage those translating to work on whatever they find most engaging.

BOOK #1
The plan is to begin with this first chapbook, which will at least give a general indication of what the group was and provide a groundwork for fuller understanding of the group as it emerges from the process of translation and research. It will include one or two texts or images from each member of the group, a fairly concise critical description and history of the group, possibly some bios, and a bibliography.

FOR PROSPECTIVE TRANSLATIONS
To the extent that it's possible (and of course that extent is limited), I think we ought to strive at least to approximate the rhythm, meter, and scansion of the poems; ideally, to preserve or translate the rhyme and sound as well. The physical form and linguistic constraints that these represent--the semiotic rhythms they appealed to, the subtle counter-communications playing out through them, and the force of effort required to confront and utilize them--were constitutive of what verse was, and therefore inevitably vital to why they were writing verse in the midst of all their other activity.
Easy for me to say, I know. And many of you have indicated that while you can transliterate meaning and basic grammatical structure, you might not be down for then attempting to rewrite that result in rhymed dactylic hexameter or whatever. Never fear. I spent most of my poetic apprenticeship writing closed-form verse, and would actively enjoy taking on this latter-task: translation by tag-team.
So if this is the case, simply make an accurate semantic translation, and send that to me, accompanied by notes that let me know about anything unusual, striking, or important that you were unable to translate: puns, plays with word gender or other word permutations that don't exist in English, noticeable concurrences of sound, onomatopoeia, archaic or formal vocabulary, odd syntax, etc. It may be worth looking out for intentional misspellings and grammatical errors--the very name of the group is reputedly an intentional misspelling. I'll take it up from there, working side by side with the French, and make as good an English poem out of it as is possible. If we run into problems, we'll figure it out.
I understand that due to differences in how the languages are structured, and their relationships to what is considered one 'breath's worth' of air, that the standard French alexandrine line (seven metric feet of two to three syllables each) is usually translated into the English pentameter line (five feet). However the Bouzingo do often seem to have preferred the shorter line.
If you too will enjoy the challenge of dealing with these kinds of things, carry on; please include a similar set of notes however, as I'd like each poem to be published with translators' notes as well as editorial notes (which I can do) tracking down various cultural and historical references. If you too would like to help with the English 'poeticization' of the texts, let me know.

WHAT YOU CAN DO (if you'd like)

1: Take a look at the 'bouzingo preview texts for translation' and see what you'd like to try your hand at. Let me know. Whomever tells me first that they want to work on a certain text gets it. (Tomislav Butkovic has already started work on Nerval's Gothic Song.) And/or if you'd like, follow the links below to find other work that you like.

2: Put together a working english transliteration in whatever way seems best to you.

3: Annotate anything unusual, striking, or potentially important that you were unable to translate: puns, plays with word gender or other word permutations that don't exist in English, noticeable concurrences of sound, onomatopoeia, archaic or in/formal vocabulary, odd syntax, intentional misspellings or variant forms, etc.

4: Either play around with it to shape it into an appropriate rhythmic pattern etc., OR simply go ahead and

5: send it along to me.

LINKS
These are the best sources I have found for Bouzingo texts (even project Gutenberg isn't particularly helpful); there are others but the material in them is very scattered and piecemeal. I am trying to concentrate on work of the Bouzingo period specifically, or shortly before and after, let's say 1825-1840 at the outside; particularly in the cases of Gautier and Nerval, who have not themselves been terribly neglected but whose social context and even early work itself has been to a large extent swept under the historical rug. I have yet to find complete usable material by MacKeat, Brot, or Bouchardy, though the latter has some stuff scanned online (i.e., no text files yet; one way or the other we can get him taken care of).

http://www.florilege.free.fr/florilege/
http://poesie.webnet.fr/lesgrandsclassiques/poemes/liste_auteurs_a.html
http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Index_des_auteurs
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

As the project progresses, I'll expand this bibliography and post periodic updates on research and freshly translated texts.

A kind of Preview

2010-01-12T19:59:00.002-06:00

Here are the prefaces to the books of two of the central writers and thinkers of the Bouzingos, Philothée O'Neddy and Petrus Borel, as translated by Google. Though our translations will hopefully be more faithful (in some ways), these have a nice ring to them as well. Interestingly, the O'Neddy text seems to have given the translator less trouble.

I'm currently attempting to track down at least one piece by every writer associated with the group, and will then (finally) contact all of the volunteer translators and begin work on a small anthology to kick off the project, with one poem or image from everyone involved with the group (if possible) and a basic historical and critical introduction. Then we'll get to work on a full chapbook of texts by O'Neddy, and onward.

Until then, entertain yourself with these:

Philothée O'Neddy
from Feu et flamme (Fire and Flame), 1833.

FOREWORD.

─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─

An author, head erect, proud in his preface,
In public he was fine insult exclaim Place! ...

Quite a long time, motionless, arms crossed over the threshold of my house pariah, I gazed in admiration of a lazy, teenage walls of Babel artistic and moral elite [vii] intellects of our age began to build.

Now, at this time, deeper, more compelling, more excited, my sympathy orders me to mix a little action to contemplation, to get me confused in the crowd of workers.

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

Workers muscular and strong, do not push my little cooperation, you'll never have enough arms for the erection of such great work! And perhaps I am not altogether unworthy to be called your brother. - Like you, I despise the whole height of my soul the social and especially political order which is the excrement - like you, I do not care [viii] of the old and the academy - as you, I ask myself incredulously cold front magniloquence the tinsel and religions of the earth - like you, I have piles of stitches towards the poetry, the twin sister of God, starting from the physical world of light, harmony and perfumes; the moral world, love, intelligence and willingness!

Certainly, though nascent, is already very impressive and miraculous, that Babel! His belt of walls encloses already myriad stages. The sublimity of his tricks already burst the clouds more distant. Alone has already more arabesques and statues that all the cathedrals of the Middle Ages together. Poetry has finally a city, a realm where it can deploy to ease his two natures - the nature [ix] human is an art - its nature is divine passion.

Undoubtedly, you remember the wondrous assurance with which, soon after the fall of the last king of France, some newspapers prophesied that it was all the young writers, she entered the coffin along with the old legitimacy. - The early literature has been so little danger, so it has developed its vital principle, that she not only managed to multiply his own strength, to complete its revolution, but it has yet to be rich enough, powerful enough to herald a glorious crusade against metaphysical society. Yes, now that it has completed all its beautiful reforms in the costume of the art, it is dedicated exclusively to [x] The ruin of what she calls the social lie - as the philosophy of the eighteenth century doomed to destruction of what she called the Christian lie.

Every day, many young people patriotic convictions come to realize that, if the work has a political nature of Caliban, he is directly to blame the social work, her mother - then they give birth Republican fanaticism, and rushed to enlist in the joints of our Babel.

What is incredible is that the hotheads fairs finance, sublime skills that make fun of chivalry and love the national guard, insist on denying even the existence of this great intellectual ferment. Because the outdoor life, material life and [xi] is positive, thanks to our civilization mathematically stingy, almost reduced to a state of petrification, - they rely on an eternity of calm - they do not see in contrast, the inner life, the metaphysical and romantic life is as turbulent as adventurous, as free as the Arab tribes in their solitudes.

Then they remember that the day before the famous eruption of Vesuvius that buried all alive two cities, Herculaneum and Pompeii, ignorant of naturalists, is to walk near the edge of the crater, one wondered at the other was real if the bowels of the mountain contained a volcano! ...

I hasten, before closing this prose, to say the honest people who are willing to [xii] leave their ivory knife Devirgination leaves of my book, I have not the slightest vanity to believe the subsequent poems, up to the solemn concerns touched on in these preliminary lines.

This book has no other ambition than to be the beam of my best schoolboy sketches, which consist simply passionate reveries and artistic studies.

It is true however that there is here and there some strong impressions Lycantrope few anathemas against the social lepers, but it should not be taken literally these events, which are for the most part, that fiery outbursts. - It would be wrong to regard them as the ultimate expression of my true feelings. If I gave to publish [xiii] A second book, it is more logical, more in line with my kind of thinker, I say my last word - so you can judge me.

What if the shops of civilization deigned to tell me angry that someone is allowed to post outside the company, I irreverence of them observed that two classes of men have the right to an inalienable way - those who are better than the company - and those that are worth less. - I agree in one of these two categories.

.

.

.

Petrus Borel
from Rhapsodies, 1831

Preface

November 1831.

There must be a child throws his dribble before Frankly, we need the poet throws his, I threw mine: here! ... requires that the hot metal in the crucible slag rejects her; poetry bubbling in my chest has rejected his own: here! ... - So, these are Rhapsodies of slime and slag? - Yes! - Why then, wisely, s'inculper vis-à-vis the crowd? why not shut up and destroy? - Because I always want to break with them is that I am released, I want to expose them, and turn the face, is that as we keep these things, we always comes back, we can not detach; that is seriously a new era dates back to the poet who takes a seriously long flight, the day when it falls on the day he is the painter 's exposure means the bard printing.
Those who read my book know me: perhaps he is below me, but it is really me, I did not made to do so, I did not disguise it is a whole a set, juxtaposed corollary, cries of pain and joy thrown in the middle of a childhood rarely dissipated, often abused and always miserable. If sometimes we find positive and common, so it rarely open the heavens, he must attack my position, which has nothing to Celestin. Reality always gives me his arm, the need is still there for terrifies me when I take my Escousse.
I am neither cynical nor prude I say what is true for tear a complaint, it must be my evil good cooking, I never got melancholy to use the ladies attacked with consumption. If I took pleasure in spreading my poverty, because our contemporary bards I stink with their so-called poems and luxuries Pachal, their shape aristocrat mummeries their church and their sonnets to headlines, to hear, you'd see a hair shirt or coat of arms on the side, a rosary or a swivel in hand. One would see the great ladies of their thoughts, viscountesses ... Their viscountesses! ... So rather tell their washerwoman!
If I remained obscure and unknown, if nobody ever tympanitic for me if I've never been called eagle or swan, however, I have never been any mattress I've ever banged the crowd to gather around a master, no one can tell me his apprentice.
Certainly, the bourgeoisie will not be frightened names dedication to meet it in this volume, only that they are all young people, like me, heart and courage with which I grew up, I like all! They are the ones that kill me for the dullness of life that they are all French friends, comrades all our comradeship, togetherness tight, not glue Henri Delatouche: ours he does not understand. If I were not afraid of seeming paragon of our small to big names, I would say that ours is that of Titian and Ariosto, that of Molière and Mignard. To you especially, comrades, I give this book! It has been done among you, you can claim. It is law, Jehan Duseigneur, the statuary, beautiful and good heart, bind and courageous in action, yet innocent as a girl. Courage! your place is beautiful: France for the first time would have a French sculptor. - To you, Thom Napoleon, painter, air, free, handshake soldier. Courage! you are in an atmosphere of genius. - Yours, Gerard good: when will directors excisemen literature leave they reach the public works committee, so do welcome their little committees. - To you, Vigneron, who have my deepest sympathy for you, which proves the coward that can perseverance if thou hast the trough Jamerai Duval was drover. - To you, Joseph Bouchardy, the recorder, the heart of saltpeter! - To you, Theophile Gautier. - To you, Alphonse Brot! - Yours, Augustus Keat-Mac! - To you, Vabre! to you, Leo! to you, O'Neddy, etc..; you all! I like.
Those who judge me by this book, and who despairs of me, deceive those who m'ajourneront a top talent, is also mistaken. I do not modesty, because for those who accuse me of métagraboliser, I do believe my poet, I laugh.
I have nothing to say except that I did to make a preliminary paranymph or my ETHOPéE, or even on the art, a long treatise professedly but I am reluctant to sell the preface and then, would it not ridiculous to say so much about so little? But I think I have some parts flawed policy: not going there not m'anathématiser and Jaspar to Republican? - To prevent any questioning, I will say frankly: Yes, I am a Republican! Let them ask the Duke of Orleans, the father, if he remembers when he went s'assermentcr August 9 at the former House of voice which pursued him throwing in the face cries Liberty and Republic, amid cheers of a mob pipe? Yes! I am a Republican, but not the July sun that brought forth on this high I thought, I am of childhood - but not Republican red or blue garter to my blouse, and delivered himself to shed planter poplar; I hear the Republican as a lynx; my republicanism is to lycanthropy! - If I speak Republic, because that word to me is the greater independence that could leave the association and civilization. I am a Republican because I can not be Caribbean, I need a huge amount of freedom: the Republic will give me the she? I have no experience for me. But when this hope will be disappointed like so many other illusions, I will Missouri! ... When you're down here shared with me when we are irritated by so many evils, we dreamed of equality, we call him the Agrarian Law, it would deserve even applaud.
Those who say: This volume is the work of a madman, one of these goats were given romantic soul and God in fashion, which, according to figarotiers, eat children and make grog in skulls. To those I can avoid them, I have to report their findings.
Front as depressed or strangled by forceps back hair filasseux each side of the cheeks a thong rind furry collar shirt do burying the plate and forming a double triangle of white canvas hat stovepipe, coat and umbrella in whistle .
To those who say: this is the work of a saint-simony! ... for those who will say: It is the work of a Republican, a basiléophage: he must be killed! ... For them, the shopkeepers will not Catchment: regratiers without the barges are tigers ... notaries who lose everything to reform: the lawyer is like a lace Philippist! ... This will be good people, seeing the Republic in the guillotine and paper money. The Republic for them is a pollard. They do not understand the lofty mission of Saint-Just: they accuse him some necessities, and then admire the carnage of Bonaparte - Bonaparte! - And its eight million people killed!
To those who say: This book has something suburban repugnant, the answer indeed is not mocking the king's bed.
Besides, is it not the height of an era when the rulers were to stupid discounters, dealers of guns and monarch, a man whose legend and motto: "God be praised, and my shopping too! "
Fortunately, as a consolation for all this, we still have adultery! Tobacco Maryland! and papel español por cigaritos.

BOUZINGOS BREAKTHROUGH!

2010-01-11T20:33:00.002-06:00

This very half-hour, I have uncovered the entire French text of Philothée O'Neddy's 1833 book of verse, Feu et Flame online--meaning that the O'Neddy translation is only a week or so away from being ready to move forward! No more worries that I shan't be able to find enough material for a 20 page chapbook; we've got 130 pages worth to work with.

Too busy following this up to go into more detail, especially seeing as nobody really reads this.

onward!

Things afoot

2009-12-26T21:19:00.003-06:00

I'm spending 10 days tooling around the Midwest, during which a number of plans continue to move forward. In brief:

I'll be beginning the process of making everything available for purchase on the website via paypal.

I'm hoping to print everything that was not printed during the last attempt (see previous post), including some good copies of Synapse.

Recording audio-commentary tracks by everyone involved with making the full-length Ubu Roi film and possibly some early PNA video pieces (the Squibbles films and/or those available thru mOnocle-Lash as Poorly Made Films, Vol. I). This means that we can look for some new deluxe editions of these films by the end of A.Da. 94/2010 by either mOnocle-Lash or [Pro]-[Anti].

Making & collecting more material from Surrealist games played by various Post-Neo and Post-Neo allied groups for the upcoming Exquisite Crypt 2 anthology, booked for January or early February publication.

Interviews with Robert Inhuman and John M. Bennett are underway for the book on DIY/subcultural organising, and more should be undertaken as we move into January.

A book of collaborative collage with bela b. Grimm, Warren Fry, and myself.

I'll be working with Imogene Engine on another poetic collaboration; we're still considering where to move next on another yet-to-be-titled text.

I am currently assembling texts and research materials for what will probably be the first installment of the series of translations of work by the Bouzingos group, poems by Philothée O'Neddy. I'm having difficulty finding texts--only 5 so far! So we may have to begin with somebody with more texts available online (probably Borel or Bertrand) while I try to track down more texts from archives and harder-to-locate printed material; an arduous process. (I can only imagine how hard it will be finding work by Augustus MacKeat or Deveria...) Once I've got enough material to translate, I'll send it all out to our team of willing translators and get this ball rolling!

SYNAPSE vs THE BLIZZARD!

2009-12-23T19:03:00.004-06:00

This past weekend I loaded up all of the master copies for the new publications, a zip drive, glue sticks, and a quarter ream of A4 paper and took the bus out to Kinkos to actually PRINT the first contributors' copies. All went well for awhile, as I whipped through the usual last-minute changes, numeration, and other chores that for reason's I shan't go into unless someone actually wants to know, are most easily done there. Time to print up the first batch of Synapse 4.

First photocopier: big gash across the glass.
Second machine: different, but similarly disfiguring scar across the flatbed.
Third machine: small specks tossed across the glass.
Fourth machine: beauti-no, no, it wrinkles every piece of 11x17 that it touches.

And that's it. Machine #3 it is.

The final master prints off pretty well; so far so good.

Then I discover that I'm being stranded in a blizzard.

It is announced that Kinkos, the 24-hour place, is closing in less than an hour. Fuck. So, rather than my usual laborious procedure of separately scanning and checking each sheet before I print the full batch, I scan all 14 double-sided sheets in at once, and hit PRINT, as I scramble for another control card to start printing the TLPs on machine #4, which can handle letter-size paper. It's then announced that they'll be closing even earlier and will shove me out into the snow when the employees' rides arrive.

The key thing to remember here is that if I am caught out in the snow for 45 minutes waiting for the bus, more than $100 worth of paper is likely to be ruined. Also my feet might fall off, as my shoes are full of holes.

So, Warren with his hearty little car heroically ventures out into the increasingly snowy New Jersey roadway system (Midwest drivers could have handled this snow, but this is Jersey, so everything's fucked from the get-go, it's an ontological principle). Meanwhile I have discovered that Machine #3 is mis-registered, and is shifting everything 1/8 inch up, so that I'm losing text at the top of the page. I frantically re-print the worst offenders whilst packing up the materials for the publications I no longer have time to print and verbally sparring with the anxious employees in order to prevent myself getting tossed out.

Then Warren gets a flat tire.

I throw the still-warm pages of Synapse into a box, finagle a plastic bag from the employees to buy the copies some time, and lunge out the door into the cold, plunging through the virgin snow, up and down the footbridge over Route 18, through some parking lots gaping like white deserts, over the islands of corporate gardens studding whitely from them, to the hotel lot where Warren is propping the perennially half-attached trunk open. The spare tire is literally frozen to the floor of the trunk. It will not budge. Like a fat rubber Excalibur.

So we drop the unassembled Synapses inside and trudge back to catch the bus back to New Brunswick after all.

The next day Warren retrieves his car and the box of Synapses returns. The following day I open it and begin to assemble it:

IT'S SHIT.

In addition to the mis-registration, good old Machine #3 printed everything at an inexplicably dark range, meaning that the images are flattened and obscured, the traces of the opposite side of each page are printed on the front, and columns of text close together have shadows added to them. It looks like a bad bootleg.

The moral of the story? Fuck Kinkos.
......aaaand, fuck snowstorms.
and even more their unholy progeny.

THE REASON YOU PAY $$ AT KINKOS IS BECAUSE THEY TAKE CARE OF THEIR MACHINES.
They ought to take care of their machines.

So now the first 15 copies/$80 of Synapse are down the drain. Good ones, and everything else, soon! I hope to be sending out around five packets of contributors' copies out a week starting after Christmas (and a number will be distributed in person before then, as I do a quick string of meetings-up with people in Ohio). Other things are simmering--more soon!

To Synapse 4 contributors (and everyone else)

2009-11-24T21:10:00.004-06:00

To all of you 60 Synapse contributors: I will begin mailing out contributors' copies in December. It will be a long process since I have literally no capital to print them at all once (or to pay all of my bills next month), so I'll be sending them out in small batches every two weeks. This staggered printing schedule is a part of the larger strategy that I outline on the website. My apologies for the wait, but don't pay for them unless you're in a damned hurry (and actually, even then just let me know and I'll try to send it out with the next batch).

This issue has taken 2 years to put together. In the interim there has been a three-month run of bi-weekly events, an international Post-NeoAbsurdist Festival, two festivals in Roanoke, VA, the production of a Jarry play, and a year (or more) of nearly utter stagnation. Some of you probably don't even remember giving me this work! Others gave me work just weeks ago. So it's an even more heterogenous issue than usual. At the same time, it covers a fuller range than ever before and begins to reflect the expansion of Post-Neo activity into various networks, communities, traditions, and fields of action; a development that will be much more fully at play in the next issue.

It is also the last issue to be hand-collaged. I love this intensely laborious process, I love the multifaceted and intimate relationship that it forces me to develop with each text and image in the journal; but it is simply not sustainable, and for Synapse 5 I will be switching to a digital process to lay it out. The advantages, however, will be many. The next issue ought not to take two years to put out; the reproductions for images will be clearer, formatting prose digitally should free up a bit more space for additional material; and the positioning and juxtaposition of contributions can be more pointed and refined.

Amid so many preparations--the website, Synapse, the new books, and all of the other invisible infrastructure being put into place, it just wasn't possible to prepare a CD Sound Supplement with this issue. Synapse 5 will see the return of the Supplement, with the cover that Aaron Andrews had originally designed for this issue (a year and a half ago).

...and there's a blog, too...

2009-11-24T20:52:00.003-06:00

I smash a Gargantua-n bottle filled with marmalade and meat chili against the hull of this maiden blog.

I view this blog as an extension of the mOnocle-Lash website, insofar as whatever discussion and communication ends up occurring here (if anything) will play an integral role in how mOnocle-Lash continues to develop and operate. What form that takes remains to be seen.

In addition to responding to individual releases or making observations about our general strategy and catalog, this is a venue to let us know what you would like to see published, or (better yet) would like to help us make a reality; or to arrange collaborative projects; or to fill in or add to the context of a publication, or follow up its effects; or to ask questions or provoke discussion with those involved with the press; or anything else you (and we) decide to do with it.

In this spirit, we'll be making charming use of the otherwise-often-annoying 'poll' widgets such as the one to the right.links will be added within a few weeks; until then, there's the links page on the website proper.

Somebody start this off...